My Magdalene Feast Day Return
Posted by Joan Norton at 6/27/2009 6:56 AM 
Categories: Mary Magdalene Feast Day
Tags: Mary Magdalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene
Categories: Mary Magdalene Feast Day
Tags: Mary Magdalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene
Years ago when I was in psychology graduate school Louise Hay came to talk to our class about healing and health. She told her own story of the discovery of healing her mind's thought processes which in turn brought her body to a better state of health. She talked about getting to know your own state of psychological/physical health by knowing the "clues" your body gives to indicate emotional depletion which will end up in sickness. She told us that her best clue was her fingernails.... they'd get ragged looking when she was "over the edge" and burnt out. She knew she simply had to stop and renew her energies when she saw this. A person who doesn't understand symbolism would think that's crazy. But she knew that her ragged fingernails were "standing in" for the message of depletion of her whole body-mind-soul system.
Mine is that I start longing for fabric and quilt patterns. They represent for me the entire Source of life of the great and abiding Feminine, She who renews the life within and without. She who weaves life, who nutures life and sustains life through every single little thing, good and bad. She is both flow of life and pattern-maker of life, container and protector, watchtower and wall, queen of heaven and queen of earth.
Quilts aren't really that, Louise Hay's fingernails aren't really that..... but when they're symbolic they are all that and more . They're our personal symbols. Mary Magdalene is a collective symbol, a woman symbolic of a timeless inborn, inate pattern of thinking and feeling, image and thought. As you are symbolic of the Great Mother to your children, even though you are just your own little human self, Mary called "the Magdalene" is symbolic in christianity of the archetype of the Sacred Feminine. An archetype is a deep and abiding universal pattern of thought, feeling, and image. Mary Magdalene stands in human form for the archetype and she tells us her stories to help us be in harmony with our lives. Symbols like that evolve over time as people's thoughts and feelings and consciousness change. If symbols don't evolve they don't mean anything to people. Such as the symbol of Mary Magdalene as a sinner. We have evolved and we intend to recapture the living presence of the sacred feminine and we want to tell stories of that kind.
It's not helpful or useful to real lives to relate to the sacred as an idea only, we need stories of the heart and soul and real life. We deserve to have our deity talk to us and feel with us and for us to think of "them" as real people like us.
As Mary Magdalene's Feast Day approaches I find myself wanting to return to one of her primary symbols, her alabaster jar. It's not enough to say she's symbolic of the quality and capacity of "sacred containing" , of the feminine ability to hold life together. I like to see a picture of a container, a basket, a cauldron, a valley, a womb, an alabaster jar. Mary Magdalene has had so much else taken from her, but not her alabaster jar.
In our story, her alabaster jar contained a healing ointment, a healing balm. The jar, it's contents, and it's healing capacity was immediately under threat of denigration by the apostles. But the truly Sacred Masculine knew and knows today within the heart of good men, that the healing capacity of the feminine must be protected. Jesus prevented the men from bullying her and degrading her with their overly-rational analysis of what she was doing. It's often the sacred masculine energies within a woman which must rally in self protection when no one else will protect her.
The sacred feminine energies of the alabaster jar, the cauldron, the womb, and the Mystery are what can renew us in our individual lives, in whatever way "renewal" comes to you. As Mary Magdalene's Feast Day returns again for the year I'm in awe that we're able to find our own healing ointment over and over again.
Hi Joan,
Thank you for your lovely piece on Our Lady Magdalene. I very much relate to the idea of her healing power as you have written here. The poetic aspects of all Sacred Feminine myths, reach deeply into our souls, particularly for women; these myths are so meaningful for us. I've spent decades writing about many Goddesses, reaching in and contacting their essence through personal reveries, delving into their myths and relating their qualities to self. But Mary Magdalene feels as though she is on a different sphere.
I know that she walked the earth and that her story is more than myth, I know that her experiences are the experiences of a real woman, a holy woman, a very special woman who had much to give. And the fact that her relationship with a holy man was one of friendship, love, and miraculous power, these are truths that have created a new space in me, a place where "holy woman" and "holy man" can live in love and union. I feel a great sense of gratitude to her for helping to make 'inside' and 'outside' feel more whole.
Healing is a big part of the liturgy that I wrote for "The Feast Day of Mary Magdalene" in my most recent book. For me, healing is a major aspect of her nature, it seems to emanate from her in the same way that a beautiful flower sends its fragrance out into the world. How can I help but love Her?
Love, Jennifer
"The Holy Book of Mary Magdalene"
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Hi Jen,
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You are so lucky that you actually met and heard Louise Hay speak in person. What a force she is; in some ways she's the mother of the positive thinking movement and of connecting body and mind together in the healing process.
I saw her speak recently on a TV show, she started her publishing business at the age of 62 and now 20 something years later she is still the picture of wholeness and dynamic health.
She's amazing!
Love, Jennifer
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Hi, Yes, really amazing luck. this was in about 1982-3-4 --ish. Can't remember. she was a really nice, grounded, regular person who had a truthful story to tell, with no pretense about it. I've learned so much from her "retraining " program to catch negative thinking before it gets out of hand. She taught me to give active love to just about everything in my physical surroundings. I used to make my kids laugh by saying "I love my refridgerator": And Louise looks absolutely amazing, doesn't she? She's one of our Women of Wisdom, that's for sure. xoJoan
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Hello.#
What do you think of the idea that archetypes actually exist?
Linda
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Hi Linda, My way of understanding them is that they manifest in thought and feeling and imagery and art of all kinds through us, therefore we make little portions of them physical. You can't be an archetype, they move as consciousness through us . When people get too close to identifying exclusively with one archetype, it becomes a dangerous situation becuae it's not human. The person thinks they are a god or goddess and not human. The archetypes are not physical in and of themselves... they're like great patterns of consciousness. Always a bit of a confusing subject! xoJoan
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Ah, yes~ As I read this the image of the wineskin came to my mind. At the first recorded miracle of Jesus, the wedding at Canaan, he turned water into wine. My container is the wineskin and I am changed from the ordinary (water) into the extraordinary (wine) by the love of God/Goddess. This is the on-going miracle in my life to be changed from the inside outward. As I am "aged" I become more potent, more alive in my love for self, for God/Goddess, for my family, friends, students, co-workers, indeed for the world. This realization is a blessing to me this day!
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Hi Laura, Thanks for being here with your tender heart. And thank you always for sharing the spiritual images that come to you, because it's through the visionary, image-making part of us that "the divine" speaks so profoundly.
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Hello, Joan! I do see images when I write. The song on the cd called, Our Journey, was especially beautiful in my mind. It, too, is a Magdalene song as Jesus is speaking to her (me) (whoever is listening). Jesus is embracing/holding her from behind and speaking into her ear through her hair, as they sit in the breeze along the shore in the early evening as the sun is setting. Delicious imagery for me to experience! xoxo,laura
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Oh my goodness, what a wonderful scene! Thanks for sharing it and giving us all a sense of being loved. xoJoan
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Hi, Joan, I love it, too, that Mary Magdalene was a real woman who walked on the real earth and that when she was bullied, she received protection. Somehow her story gives life to the archetype of protection, and I can feel that its energies are mine, too.
The way you describe archetypes is so helpful and so powerful. I know they're not magic, but knowing the story of Mary Magdalene receiving protection allows me to imagine myself as her getting that protection. Then I feel that particular possibility, that consciousness of my right to protection start to flow within. It's a real shift. A real good one.
Thanks,
Sandra
P.S. What are you doing for Mary Magdalene's Saint's Day?
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Hi Sandra, It's wonderful how different nuances of the story are meaningful to us at different times, isn't it? The idea of protection is so potent to me too, as a woman often unprotected.
Jesus was protecting not only his Beloved but the whole consciousness of the Sacred Feminine when he enacted and upheld the ritual and the message of Sacred Union. I think that the scene of turning over the tables in disgust was part of his rejection of the male-only monopoly of the temple. xoJoan
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Hi Joanie, Your blog entry today made me think about my reactions to being over stressed. Amazing how everyone is different, and how subtle it can be. For me, my mind just leaps away from my life and I am filled with dreams of paradise. Pretty, tropical places far away. I used to think I needed to MOVE there, but now I know it's a sign of being in need of nurturing rest for body, emotion, and mind. I still enjoy the ride, though and go there whenever my mind leaps! XO Sally
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Hi Sally, Thanks for sharing this piece of "soul process". It's such a wonderful relief to figure out our personal patterns of reaction to the world.... how they work as our allies. With Louise Hay's fingernails, and my longing for quilt patterns, and your travel to paradise, I think we're talking about how sensitive people cope with "too-muchness" . One way women get stronger and healthier and more sensitive to the inner spiritual world is by stopping the constant giving and learning to listening to our own personal clue system about "retreat and restore". Thanks for being here. xoJoan
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Hello,
I wanted to give my compliments on the article.
I was wondering if you have more information on alabaster, it's religious connection and healing qualities. I am very interested in studying this in more detail.
Thank you so much for your time,
Best Regards,
Kyle
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Dear Kyle,
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