Mary Magdalene's Gift from the Dark
Posted by Joan Norton at 10/11/2009 5:26 AM 
Categories: Goddess and the Sacred Masculine
Tags: Mary Magdalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene
Categories: Goddess and the Sacred Masculine
Tags: Mary Magdalene 14 Steps To Awaken the Sacred Feminine Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene
One of the gifts of the "Descent to the Tomb" sequence of the Sacred Union love story is prophecy, which is on the spectrum of experience we'd call Intuition. Mary Magdalene goes into the cave/tomb of Jesus because she loves him and he has loved her, she is simply following her heart. But she comes out of the cave/tomb with a prophecy for her people, the "good news" that there's life after death. Life's cycle includes death and life again, on the physical plane in nature and the spiritual plane in life after death.
That was Mary Magdalene's gift of the the cave, one that echoes still. It is a seminal story of Western Civilization and the Western Mystery Tradition, our own modern version of the ancient rites of the descent to the goddess. We go to the underground, to the dark places of our soul, to discover a new spark of life which will take us through the next year or the next phase of things. The moist dark place inside us is likely to be populated with unattractive feelings, feelings that are worn out from the year or feelings that are too difficult to express politely in public. But they're ours and they have their place and their value, and it's often by giving them a place and a value "in the cave" that they can transform into something new.... something that feels like "good news" and the good life has come again.
Can you imagine with your woman's heart what Mary Magdalene felt about her life being ruined by other people's treachery ?
Yes, I do believe she was aware of "the big picture" spiritually because she was a a great soul of wisdom and purpose, surely chosen for just this "cosmic job". But it was a cosmic job carried out throught the heart of a woman, a heart like yours and mine. Because only through the humanness of the story can we understand that we too are GodGoddess living an earthlife.
It might seem out of sync to be talking about Mary Magdalene's cave/tomb Mystery right now in Autumn when we're beginning to feel the Christmas story coming, but I think it fits more when the earth's light begins to turn dark. The darkness coming on scares us, reverberates in our ancient bones as something to be suspicious of. There are people who become more excitable during Autumn, as a kind of defense against the "laying down" of the light time of the year. But our Mary Magdalene makes it clear that there's a purposefullness to going into the dark. That's where the saving grace is. Going into the dark can mean laying down your rational thought processes and allowing intuition or feeling to guide you for the moment. She becomes "the gnostic Magdalene" while she's in the tomb/cave as well as the woman grieving for the man she loved. She has a vision, she sees through the dimensions, she sees a dead man and he talks to her, she experiences a great revelation from God. Intuition is said to be "knowing without knowing why you know it". It's when you know the answer to the math question but you can't give the proof in steps. Your rational mind processes aren't at play, you're being shown the way by some other means. Jesus had been telling them all that there was life beyond the physical senses, a "God within". What are we to think that it was Mary Magdalene who proved him right? And she even left us the "proofiness" about how to do it. It's called "The Way of the Heart" and it involves love, intuition, and living those in the sacredness of her body.
If we want to get abstract we can say that Mary Magdalene represents the right brain's function as intuition and feeling and we can say that therefore, it's through our right brain which we perceive God directly. She showed us how to do that. You act bravely and go into the dark where your rational thought processes have no sway but your heart is longing. You weep for the loss of what you thought would be yours, and you wait for an insight about what comes next.
Apparently there's a danger when you come out of the cave/tomb with your direct experience of God or your insight about something important, and our Mary Magdalene story tells us about that too. They tried to steal it from her ! If we think of Peter as the rational mind and the intellectual left brain approach, it really can't tolerate the irrational and the purely spiritual. He tried to steal her story and make it all about him. I think the way this functions internally is that we de-value our own intutions and deeper feelings. It's understandable that we're shy about things we learn "in the dark", about insights we have. They're often not popular. But let's not let them be stolen over and over again by the rational intellect, or by Peter's Church. Mary Magdalene walked the way of the heart, she's the one who risked her heart in love. Let's stand up for the rewards of knowing about this path of the heart, let's believe our own experiences "in the dark".
I've heard the Christ Light experience called "the Diamond Light".... maybe that's why we have such an affinity for diamonds. We know we've got a strong right brain capacity for spiritual insight and direct experience of God. Let's live it and share it.
Do we also call it "the Pearl of Great Price"? Wear the crown if it fits.
My heart has long wanted to believe that when Mary Magdalene ascended from the cave and encountered Jesus in the garden that he did not deny her as she reached out to touch him. Your description of this inner journey and the care we must take to keep alive the treasures we receive in ourselves affirms my knowing that the writers of the gospel got that part of the story wrong or that the way the story has been interpreted missed a deeper truth.
The church's depiction of Jesus turning the feminine aside because he had not yet ascended to the father is taken to be a separation of the physical and the spiritual life, the clean and the unclean.
Perhaps the deeper truth still comes through the story picture, though, as for me the tableau becomes a warning, a guidance, about how She was to safeguard her gift and keep to herself what the Father or rational mind would seize and use in its own ways. Perhaps there is love in Jesus' refusal to be receive her touch, in his act of turning her back to herself and her own renewed gift of prophecy. Perhaps he didn't want her to touch him because what she held would have flowed into him and would have be taken over by the Father/rational mind. I don't know.
But I do know that sometimes even those we love the most and who also love us deeply must leave us to ourselves, to our solitude, so that our gifts can manifest through us. Your description of this cycle of death and regeneration of the spiritual gifts within us, gives me the heart to go forward into the newness of deeper intuition and prophecy. Thanks.
Love,
Sandra
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I see what you mean, that maybe there was love in Jesus' turning aside from Mary Magdalene. That it recognized that the physical Sacred Union and her spiritual visionary experience of him now had to be carried and safeguarded by her alone? When I recognize that part of Jesus' mission was the raise up the Sacred Feminine again from it's lowly place, I think of his "don't touch me" gesture as confidence in her.
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Hi, Joan,
I like what you wrote: "I think of his 'don't touch me' gesture as confidence in her."
It affirms that the turning aside emanated from love, rather than from disdain as my church taught, and it keeps the Sacred Union alive between them, even in the separation that death has brought.
Thanks again!
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Amen to that!.....and lets just have the diamond, too. XO
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Hi Sally, Does this mean you're going to create a diamond Magdalene Rosary? Just kidding! These ones are wonderful enough. Also the new chaplets are really beautiful. You can see them by clicking here.
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