Magdalene's Crown
Posted by Joan Norton at 3/29/2009 5:48 AM 
Categories: The Magdalene Rosary
Tags: Mary Magdalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene
Categories: The Magdalene Rosary
Tags: Mary Magdalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene
You have daughters, don't you? What do you do for their sense of self, their self esteem, their sense of confidence? Maybe you tell them they're beautiful and that they can be whatever they want to be. And when they have stumbles along the way, maybe you tell them a story about someone else who managed to get through just such a time. You read them stories about little bunnies whose mothers love them more than anything, and then stories about little girls who know how to hold their own when people tease or bully. And then later the stories about young women who develop their talents and their minds against all personal odds. And somewhere in there you read them fairy tales about love and weddings. And then you take them to church and they're told they can be the very best apostle if they're good and not a sinner. What a difference it would make to your daughter's self confidence and her feelings of sovereignty in her own world if you told her that God lives equally in Jesus as a man and in Mary "the Magdalene" as a woman, and that in their marriage together they create life itself.
What if you told your daughter that Jesus was God's chosen Son and Mary God's chosen Daughter and that God planned for them to learn from each other all about the ways of Heaven and Earth together? What if you told your little girl that when she grows up she will probably meet a man who loves Jesus and wants to have a Queen of Earth in his life? She can read the story in the Gospel of John 12:1 about Jesus coming to Bethany where Mary lived with her sister Martha and her brother Lazarus, at the Mount of Olives where it had been prophesied that the new Messiah would arrive to "make peace among the nations." No wonder there's no peace...we haven't let him get married yet. We haven't let him pledge himself to a woman and listen to her as his teacher. We've spent 2,000 years telling young girls that they have nothing inherent to teach.
Let's write a new book for our daughters and tell them that Easter week is the week of the Magdalene Mysteries, the week in which we re-enact the marriage of Heaven and Earth, Earth and Sky, Sun and Moon, Mary and Jesus. It's the week where Mary of Bethany becomes Mary "the Magdalene" and accepts her role as Queen of the land and the people.
Let's tell the Easter week story of an important alabaster jar which the Bride carried to her wedding and it was full of such costly substance that people were shocked, but she knew that she was the pearl of great price and that her role as Queen would not come without sacrifice. People who heard the tale of this wedding with it's alabaster jar of spikenard would recognize that they were witnessing a Sacred Marriage as in the Song of Songs. A Queen will take her King, a marriage is made, a birth will come, and the land and people will prosper. Mary of Bethany will become Mary the Magdalene, Queen of Heaven and Earth. The prophecy will be fulfilled of the Bridegroom on the Mount of Olives, and peace will come to the nations.
Let's also tell our daughters that they can expect to be defended and to be listened to by man and God, as Mary Magdalene was by Jesus. He defended her from criticism and said that the ritual of the Sacred Marriage and his anointing would be repeated and repeated in memory of her. He said it so forcefully you just know how highly he thought of her, how much he had already been listening to her. It's as though he said, you'll miss me when I'm gone but it's her story that you need to keep telling.
Let's tell our daughters they are that important to the world. Let's tell them that they have the role and the responsibility to tell their men "the way of the heart" of the Magdalene, queen of heaven and earth. Let's tell them that they are not to listen to the ones who question her role as Queen.....Jesus said so.
click here to order a Magdalene Rosary
What if you told your daughter that Jesus was God's chosen Son and Mary God's chosen Daughter and that God planned for them to learn from each other all about the ways of Heaven and Earth together? What if you told your little girl that when she grows up she will probably meet a man who loves Jesus and wants to have a Queen of Earth in his life? She can read the story in the Gospel of John 12:1 about Jesus coming to Bethany where Mary lived with her sister Martha and her brother Lazarus, at the Mount of Olives where it had been prophesied that the new Messiah would arrive to "make peace among the nations." No wonder there's no peace...we haven't let him get married yet. We haven't let him pledge himself to a woman and listen to her as his teacher. We've spent 2,000 years telling young girls that they have nothing inherent to teach. Let's write a new book for our daughters and tell them that Easter week is the week of the Magdalene Mysteries, the week in which we re-enact the marriage of Heaven and Earth, Earth and Sky, Sun and Moon, Mary and Jesus. It's the week where Mary of Bethany becomes Mary "the Magdalene" and accepts her role as Queen of the land and the people.
Let's tell the Easter week story of an important alabaster jar which the Bride carried to her wedding and it was full of such costly substance that people were shocked, but she knew that she was the pearl of great price and that her role as Queen would not come without sacrifice. People who heard the tale of this wedding with it's alabaster jar of spikenard would recognize that they were witnessing a Sacred Marriage as in the Song of Songs. A Queen will take her King, a marriage is made, a birth will come, and the land and people will prosper. Mary of Bethany will become Mary the Magdalene, Queen of Heaven and Earth. The prophecy will be fulfilled of the Bridegroom on the Mount of Olives, and peace will come to the nations.
Let's also tell our daughters that they can expect to be defended and to be listened to by man and God, as Mary Magdalene was by Jesus. He defended her from criticism and said that the ritual of the Sacred Marriage and his anointing would be repeated and repeated in memory of her. He said it so forcefully you just know how highly he thought of her, how much he had already been listening to her. It's as though he said, you'll miss me when I'm gone but it's her story that you need to keep telling.
Let's tell our daughters they are that important to the world. Let's tell them that they have the role and the responsibility to tell their men "the way of the heart" of the Magdalene, queen of heaven and earth. Let's tell them that they are not to listen to the ones who question her role as Queen.....Jesus said so.
click here to order a Magdalene Rosary
Ah, so gorgeous and so true is your "right telling" of the Sacred Easter Mysteries. Thank you for showing me how I am included in this season as a partner, not just as someone left behind to mourn and be rejected.
Joan, you know that at Christmas I anoint with myrrh and frankincense, have two creches, one for Her and one for Him, and place gold on my altar for the season.
I am inspired now to begin to build my inclusive Easter ritual. . .
And I will be brave and forward a link to your beautiful healing words to my daughters.
Love!
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Hi Sandra, I feel like we're at the beginning of developing a whole new pattern of ceremony and ritual for Magdalene's Easter Mysteries. I know Jenny Reif has beautiful poetry and ritual for this time of the year. When I read your words my mind created this sentence instead of your sentence, " ...two creches, one for Her and one for Him, and gold in between". Something about that feels right, as gold represents the highest spiritual energy on the earth realm. I think we're behaving "in the gold" with our new altars and ceremonies and such. It's the highest spiritual energies which are connecting "those two".
Anyway, that's so much for your comments..... I was afraid I'd gone too far with the crown for the wedding. Love to you, Joan
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Hi Joan,
I love the crown, and such a beautiful crown is never too much! We can imagine him placing it lovingly upon her head, as she placed a crown upon him.
At this time of year, I celebrate her finding him outside of the tomb. I honor the Bride attending the Bridegroom with the rites of their people, only to find that his promise to return to her is a true promise. He did not leave her as it had seemed, but only journeyed away for a time, to fulfill his destiny. I feel her great joy at his return, and even though he does not remain with her in body, he does fully remain with her in spirit, and that while she walked the earth, she remained in Sacred Union with her Beloved. That's how it feels to me, just one view.
Love, Jenny
Jennifer Reif
"The Holy Book of Mary Magdalene"
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Hi Jenny,
I'm glad you are creating ritual, ceremony, and prayers for the Resurrection cycle in the Easter Mysteries, for a future edition of your book. I too had never identified their Sacred Marriage as being a part of the Easter ritual cycle. My sister Sally (of the rosaries) suggested that the anointing, the sacred marriage of Easter week , might be an "anniversary wedding" which re-enacted an earlier marriage. I like that idea....no one can bear thinking of poor Mary Magdalene marrying her great love and losing him in one week.
It might not be important where we put the marriage ritual , as it represents the archetype of Union that you speak about so eloquently. We repeat the cycle of physical growth of the year symbolically in Sacred Marriage, and we repeat the cycle of psychological/spiritual growth in inner "conunctio" processes all the time (hopefully). I believe that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were openly influencing each other throughout their ministry , which is a "sacred marriage" pattern of mutual influence in itself. We just need to accept that there is a Sacred Marriage in christianity, more than we need to worry about exactly when it was. One reason to see the Sacred Wedding as the Easter week anointing at Bethany (Mary's house) , is that it spiritually/psychologically balances the sacrifice of the bridegroom on Friday. One must be seen with the other to create the whole archetypal pattern and experience, either telescoped into one week or spread out over one year. Without the celebratory wedding anointment squarely in the week's story, we have a dreary pagent of physical death and only a spiritual marriage for Magdalene. Not to detract from her "enlightenment" at the tomb, it's just different than the joy of physical marriage.
Aren't we lucky to live in a time and place where we can talk about the joy of physical union being a part of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's life?
Thanks for being there for these interesting discussions.....xoJoan
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Hi Joan,
Thanks for your great insights and support. You are a wonder. It was challenging to write an annual cycle of Holy Day Festivals for Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and the challenge continues as I write the Resurrection Cycle Holy Days.
I've realized that sometimes we get rather stuck in the idea of one year, of a single year, as it relates to seasonal events and holidays. I believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene may have known each other for more than one year, and so they could have married one or two years before the crucifixion. We somehow want to lump everything that happened to them in a single year or less. But they could have been married in the Jewish month of Nissan (March-April), in the previous year before the crucifixion, so that these events, the wedding and the crucifixion, would not have actually taken place in the same month of the same year. Anyway, I think that these two pivotal events happened in separate years.
On what we call "Palm Sunday," all of the Jews were entering Jerusalem for the weeklong Passover holiday. Passover celebrates the end of Israelite slavery and bondage in Egypt, and the Exodus out of Egypt. The themes of the Passover time period don't feel to me like they lend themselves to weddings, but who knows...
I do firmly believe they were married in the previous year (or more) and not quite so close to the Passover holiday. But of course this is just an opinion, among many.
Love, Jennifer
"The Holy Book of Mary Magdalene"
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Hi Jenny, Thanks for these thoughts...I love it that we Magdalene women have our various creative drives towards different areas of research and experience It sounds like the idea of a "anniversary anointing" might be compatible with your sense of the timing of the story.
I think your ceremonies, rituals, and prayers are going to get alot of play in the coming years. xoJoan
P.S. I'm going to tack this information right here ..just because I'm thinking about it right now. Here's a website that does a very nice job of describing, showing pictures, and talking about the meaning of the goddess energies in the 2008 crop circle season. She even identifies the goddess energies with Magdalene. It's here http://www.circularsite.com/nieuw-eng.htm The crop circles are a modern miracle, continual manifestations of an intelligent direction-giving energy which we might called Godde.
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Joan, I do like the "gold in between" and your expansion of symbolism of that word. Dare I say it feels like we are entering a "golden age"?
And I especially love the pearls in the crown and think it is the perfect gem to place upon the crown chakra of a "bride" because the pearl begins to be formed when a bit of sand gets into the oyster and it coats the irritant with layers of nacre. If in the process and after a long time, the original particle that started the pearl-making dissolves, a perfect pearl of immense value is formed.
What a symbol for earthly and sacred unions!
LOVE
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Oh Joan!
Your words hit me to the core! Rather than misery over death, your telling is celebrating the Truth! And how much I try to do this for my Moira. At 8 years old, my daughter has grown increasingly more excited over the Magdalene, having heard me talk of her for years. While my 6 year old son tends to shrug it off, I can see it striking some chord within her. How different will her spiritual experiences be? I can only imagine more broad and inclusive, full of possibility rather than relegated to the land of Pergatory that so many of my spiritual dreams/dreads were.
Are you ever on iTunes? There is a podcast series by the Irish channel RTE called Woman of the Wild Things Heart and it's on the Magdalene. As of last week, there were 4 programs with more to come! And they are very interesting!!!
Again, thank you for the joyous post!
Much love to you Joan!
Jen
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Hi Jen, How wonderful to have young children at this time of great changes. And how much work it all is...that much I know. You are living what I wrote about, passing on to your children your excitment about Magdalene. They will remember your feelings more than anything, your sense of excitement and emphasis on the joy of the feminine. Lucky them!
I"m not on iTunes but I'll ask my daughter about the Wild Things Heart program . She's my technological guru, maybe she'll tell me how I can listen. I love the title. I think the Irish celtic spirit inherently carries so much of the deep feminine. I think they had more continuity from the older goddess cultures and then druid religions into christianity. If you feel like talking more about what you've heard on the programs, feel free. We'll all benefit. Love to you, Joan
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Glad to be with a community of the Sacred Divine and standing for this energy to be awakened and reawakened within; for ourselves and our daughters. I've been communing with Mary Magdalene for three years now and looking at how to get all this inspirations published to share with others. Thank you for courage and willingness to speak out into this wounded patriarchal and matriarchal culture and stand for empowerment of the Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine.
I think it is also necessary to remind our daughters, our sisters and ourselves that this journey of reclaiming the Sacred Feminine in our own lives and on the planet in all ways, requires courage and sometimes is met with resistance and persecution. Its important to be prepared for this and to continually reinforce our partnerships on the earth and in the spiritual and soulful realms in order to find comfort and continued courage together.
Blessings and love,
Sally
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Hi Sally, Thanks for your comments...how true it is about being strong and courageous. The old thought-forms in us don't give up without a struggle. I see Mary Magdalene coming to be in the lives of women who are well suited for bringing her reality out into the world...well suited for a courageous path. She is so strong an inner figure, so strong a "heart voice" (remembering that the word "courage" means heart) that I'm sure we will all do just fine in the years to come as we work towards changing our culture. Thank you, Sally, for your work and emphasis on the body because "that's so Magdalene". She is the body in our christian story, she is the body's divinity.
You can see more about Sally's work at www.BlessingsFromMary.com . xoJoan
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