Mary Magdalene is the Instinctual Feminine
Posted by Joan Norton at 9/26/2009 6:10 AM 
Categories: Starting A Magdalene Circle
Tags: Mary Magadalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene Sacred Marriage hieros gamos Bride of Christ
Categories: Starting A Magdalene Circle
Tags: Mary Magadalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene Sacred Marriage hieros gamos Bride of Christ
Our instinctual spirituality was fed last weekend at the Mary Magdalene workshop that Margaret Starbird and I gave in Massachusetts. As our hearts and bodies become free and more free from the constraints of worn-out concepts of God, we've begun to feel God more through our senses. Don't you think so? So when we go through a guided meditation on the theme of "beloveds in the garden" or "journey in a boat with no oars" our visionary capabilities are working and our bodies are expressing a variety of feelings to us. Everyone has an instinct for spirituality. 
We listened to some beautiful music, we watched slideshows about the unicorn tapestries and the amazing watermark symbols "from a dark time", and we told and listened to each other's personal spiritual journey stories. I brought one of my alabaster jars, some rosaries, a beautiful embroidered cloth for the altar, and a painting of Mary Magdalene which my friend Ruth Thompson did. These were in the middle of our circle, on the floor in the middle of the circle where I like them.
It's our physical senses which bring the instinctual experience of spirituality to us, that's why the altar is important and the visual beauty of the paintings are important, why the music is important, and why the visions created in the guided imagery meditations are important. We're not so much concerned with how to get to heaven as we are with how to re-create our earth to mirror a benevolent divinity. We need our senses to guide us to increasing love for the beauty of things, honoring beauty as sacred divinity.
Even though this painting is speaking to the idea that her "carnal nature" had to be redeemed, it's still beautiful and it gives her an obvious connection with the earth's beauty. So many of the old paintings of Magdalene through the centuries are like that. They have a scriptural "idea" of sin or something which they purport to express, but the beauty of the sacred feminine just can't help but show through and it never looks very sinful.
Natural instinct for comfort, safety, and a harmonious environment is the gift of our body because it expresses through our body. A "knowing" about what color goes with what color, what food is right for our stomach, what friend is helpful and uplifting, what reading material will support our spiritual life. It's much easier to allow our instinctual bodies to guide us in these directions than to have an intellectual plan for each aspect of life. Mary Magdalene represents instincts, our senses which guide us towards a more fulfilling life.
I think about instincts a lot because of working with women who've been betrayed and molested in body and soul. If our instincts were known to us, were honored, uplifted, and valued, we might have a better chance to recognize thieving energies when they're near. A lot of us have been trained directly against our own good, and this is underscored repeatedly by a "male only" God-concept. In Magdalene Circles it's usually good to spend time in the beginning talking about bad experiences in church. It's like bringing sexual abuse out of the closet so healing can begin.
I like this picture because of the relative size of each of them. I believe that the Sacred Feminine Herself is capable of putting suffering in it's place. We're in the "cave time" of autumn right now where we allow ourselves to suffer the end of things for the year, and to suffer the end of some parts of our life in particular.... but the Magdalene of Sacred Union holds the pattern of cyclic renewal and new life bubbling up again.
One way I've noticed my own body's instinct for spirituality lately is that I feel my fingers wanting to hold my Magdalene rosary beads. I'm not aware of it as a thought process at all, only that my fingers want the beads. My spiritual instinct is expressing through my body. When I repeat words such as the "Dear Mary Magdalene , love incarnate" prayer I'm "enhancing neural functioning" which creates an experience of well-being. Well-being has all kinds of good effects on my life and the lives of those around me.... good to know the instinct for it is felt in my fingers.
Maybe you've been making your own 7-groups-of 7 rosaries...that's good. Maybe you'd like to be inspired by these ones.... click here for rosaries
Spiritual instinct in women will always be towards nurturing life on all levels; our precious physical life and the exciting, expansive life of consciousness.
Joan, you write so powerfully.
Thanks.
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Hi Cintra,
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