What Happened to Mary Magdalene?

Artwork by Krishna Rose (copyright 2010)

What Happened to Mary Magdalene?

Why all the sudden interest in Mary Magdalene?  Who was she?  Who is she?  Why is she such a key factor in our current movement towards a feminine divine centered worship? 

Mary Magdalene is a fascinating person in history.  Whether she was the wife of Jesus or not is not the real issue at hand.  Whether she birthed children that created the worlds Kings, Queens and Popes of today, is not even the reason for her speciality.  What makes her special is her story.  I became fascinated by Magdalene after reading Kathleen McGowan's amazing book "The Expected One".  What a read!  My interest in her all these years later has not waned, but rather, increased.  Not merely because she is a woman whose story has many people confused, but because through her we can understand our own femininity and struggle with power.  She was never a prostitute as the Church would have you believe.  There is no documented evidence of this anywhere.  In fact she was a Princess in the line of Benjamin, she was sister to Martha and Lazarus, and was a very wealthy woman in her own right.  She became a principle leader and figurehead in the early Jesus movement, funding all the their tours and retreats that they gave everywhere they went.  The church 300 years later decided to name her "whore' inorder to belittle her station and ruin her pure reputation as the apostle to the apostles.  In fact she was a teacher in her own right, who led the group for many years to come, after the Crucifixon as well as before.  Jesus would often ask her to preach and heal.  It was her who taught Jesus how to heal the blind with dirt and spit from the hands.  The washing of the mans feet and anointing with oil in the ancient world, was a Judaic ritual for engagement and wedding vows.  There is no other reason a woman would ever be allowed to wash and anoint a mans feet, unless she was with his child.  This set apart, her story is interesting since it seems through her life, the current male insitutional religions in the world, have maintained a thoroughly masculine focused dogmatic approach to spirituality.  It is a rare religion that balances the devotion to God, with mention of a Goddess at all.  The hidden aspect of Judaic culture is God / Goddess worship, and is similar in it's essence to the ancient teachings from Vedic Culture, of which Hinduism is an off-shoot.  Goddesses were as much a part of the worlds culture for thousands of years, before Christianity founded be Rome, came along.  The Pagans, Celts, Native Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Vedic Indians (and Hindu's), Buddhist, Jews, Romans, Greeks..... all of them worshipped Goddesses openly.  So what happened?  How did it all begin that the word Goddess was alikened to heresy and would be worthy of good hanging or burning in most cases?

In my next blog, I will explain........

Blessed be,

Krishna Rose