MaryMagdaleneWithin

The Bride is Coming..The Bride is Coming!

Joan Norton — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 16:54:02 GMT

   The Magdalene ....the Bride...the Goddess...Spring....begins to slowly return and her return is acknowledged in my house by setting her a place at the table, or baking her a cake, or weaving her a cross of wheat. February 1 and 2nd...and let's just make it the entire week....is the time she comes back from winter's descent and begins to make her way to spring's sacred marriage and rebirth. When the Greek storytellers and scribes of the Jesus stories placed the "hnh" at the end of "Magdal" they directed people to think of her as "Great" and "Exalted"...in the manner of their diety. They understood the Magdalene as representing the cycles of renewal that the goddesses are within us.The same three letters were sometimes attached to Athena, the Greek diety of wisdom. In the Celtic cultures of great influence at that time she was already Brighid...soon to be called Bride.


     The Magdalene we remember at this time of the year is the maiden Mary, the one who has not yet met her Beloved in the Garden. Our creative, generative energies for the year are just now bubbling up from the deep, from below, from the winter. They are not married to an idea, a pursuit, a creative project. They are not old enough yet to be anointed with the masculine and the marriage. We honor them as they are, tender and beginning to slowly grow. Our perceptions of what we can accomplish or start or grow need to be cared for steadily, like regularly watering new seeds as they peek out. We need to behave with regularity to grow what we want to grow...not in fits and spurts. Feeding regularly and with intention. Often that which has been met in the dark of winter comes slowly to life in spring. That means holding the Grail---the cup of life--with a steady hand.




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Rene Barnett and Gloria Amendola are preparing to take another group in May on a sacred journey to France's Magdalene country, to help support an initiation process into the mystery traditions of the Magdalene. We talked about that on her January 30, 2013 Nightvision radio show. Scroll down to the January 30 show here

Rene Barnett and Joan Norton on Nightvision radio podcast

Feast Day for Jesus' Grandmother

Joan Norton — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:53:08 GMT

     Today is Grandmother's Feast Day on the Christian calender. September 1 is the feast day of "Saint Anna the Prophetess" who was with Jesus' family when they brought him to the Temple for a ceremony of renewal for his mother. I doubt that she was a random visionary who just happened to be there to speak out in prophecy that those looking for redemption in the Jerusalem tribes would look to this baby.
    Anna is the one on the right side of the picture, the one shrouded in mystery with a scroll in her hand.




The Gospel of Luke describes her as a wise older woman who had lived her life in service to God. Somewhat of a priestess. Her story describes that she fled to Galilee from her abusive husband Joachim....whose parents legend says came from the Fortingall area of Scotland.
     And that she was of the tribe of Asher, which had been deported from Galilee in 723 B.C. ...and wandered. Galilee is thought by some---because of the "gl"-- to be "the country of the circle" ....the country of the Gael....the country of a celto-hebraic lineage. A prophet-giving holy  woman would not be unusual to that culture.




    The grandmother speaks out in public to announce the baby, just as it might be today. It is a grandmother who apparently knows the secret of renewal and redemption.The spiritual dimension, the intuitive realm, had spoken through an angel; but here is the first voice of the Sacred Feminine in the earth dimension telling the story of renewal. A baby represents the continuous cyclic renewal of life on symbolic and physical planes. Cyclic renewal is the philosophy of the Goddess religions that Jesus was in some harmony with. Maybe the genetics of his grandmother Anna the visionary were strong in him.
The name of the tribe Asher means happiness, contentment, fulfillment and affirmation. I'll take that as Jesus' maternal lineage from the earth realm.
                                        Feast Day of the Grandmother!

(My thanks for the research of Barry Dunford in The Vision of Albion, The Key to the Holy Grail)



Click here to order the Magdalene Circle book

Click here to order Magdalene Rosaries

Magdalene: You Can't Hold Her in a Box

Joan Norton — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 17:28:38 GMT

I found a portrait of Mary Magdalene this week hidden in a Google image search for Saint Barbara. Just the same way you find great-great grandmothers with personality and their own individual woman's journey stories hidden in the staid world of the genealogies of men's family names. The portrait is titled "St. Barbara in a Wooded Landscape", painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the early 1500's. It is mentioned in a 1931 issue of The Antiquarian magazine as ,'Lucas Cranach's portrait of a woman represented as the Holy Magdalene', according to its Christie's auction house description. Have a look.

Pearls, chalice in her left hand (of the feminine path),the bread, long free hair, red dress, the brocade of stature, hand on heart and look of inner knowing. It's her.

Through us, she's escaping the confines of mis-naming. The man who painted it was friend to Martin Luther and lent his talents to the Reformation. Maybe the public naming of the portrait was necessary in the political climate, but the real name was known enough to show up centuries later.

Magdalene won't stay mis-named in art and not in religious scripture either. And however a woman wants to claim and feel herself to be the modern expression of the feminine divinity that Mary Magdalene represents is fine. I get nervous when Mary Magdalene starts feeling like the Blessed Mother too much.The one who says don't ask me, ask my son.

The spirit of the feminine portrayed in the symbols of this painting point to the future. The chalice holds the mystery of what is to come and the pearls of great price give a woman the nerve to make it happen. Women who feel the spirit of the Magdalene move inside and become curious about her, often end up with an urge to change things in their immediate surroundings.

Everything in the world needs the spirit of the feminine instinct for connection right now. As I move my fingers one bead to the next on my rosary I'm living that feminine instinct. One prayer to another, one thought to another, I'm sewing my individual world to the greater world and inviting sacred energies to help. Mary Magdalene is a verb, she's the energy of movement and creative action. She's got that look of knowing in her portraits because she does know, and she's quite willing to tell you.

Rosaries and Chaplets

Books

Wedding of Mary Magdalene

Joan Norton — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 14:11:00 GMT

Going towards the wedding and Sacred Union, Magdalene goes towards her own authority. Towards herself as Queen....towards herself as authority over her own lands.

The Virgin-self has receptivity; the Bride and Beloved has authority.

We ally with our own religious stories to know these qualities in ourself. If we reduce Mary Magdalene to First Apostle, she only as authority of the Mind. Her land and body are not espoused.

If a woman does not carry her own sense of embodied authority, she can be treated with disrespect and even cruelty. The loss of the Queen to Jesus' King, the Bride to his Bridegroom, has made it so for women.

To accept the role of First Apostle is to give up once again the authority over one's own land and the embodied wisdom to govern it. So pale in comparison to "The Magdalene" who claims the wedding as her own; who claims the cross and who claims the cave.

The Mary Magdalene Within

The Magdalene Circle Book

Magdalene Rosaries

Margaret Starbird's work

Magdalene and the Red Egg

Joan Norton — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 17:07:00 GMT

I was never satisfied with the Mary Magdalene and the Red Egg story, were you? I knew there was more. That's what we are all doing with and for her right now...finding out the MORE. It might be that the story of Mary Magdalene going to Caesar and using the egg to convince him of Jesus ' resurrection will change and we will be left with the image of a goddess holding a red egg.

Five thousand years before Mary Magdalene's story of "holding the egg", there was a temple in Hungary dedicated to regeneration and personal renewal. Along with circles and spirals, there were red eggs painted on the walls. Mary Magdalene's red egg story steps right into the deep wisdom of matriarchal religious symbols. The Red Egg is her blood, the blood that is the body's nourishing source of all life.

When she holds the red egg she is the goddess herself, the one who giveth and taketh away life. In this story sequence Mary Magdalene is not showing us her relatedness to the masculine principle.... here she stands in the place of all the Great Goddesses who came before her and held the world egg in their hands. Here she represents the hope of renewal within life, the hope that we can slough off old skins and become MORE of our true selves.

You dye the eggs red using onion skins. Eating them is our act of communion with her. Eating them is our act of communion with the energies of renewal of nature.

Magdalene Circle book

The Mary Magdalene Within

Magdalene Rosaries

The Light Within the Gems

Joan Norton — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:49:00 GMT

When Sally and I started together to consciously invite in the metaphysical energies of Creation in the 90's I saw her acupuncture skill as "letting in Light". Now I see her rosaries the same way.

The gems have Light, they're made of Spirit and Matter in sacred union. Some have specific consciousness for creating effect on heart and mind, but it's not necessary to know such things.

I remember each time I finger the sequence of the seven beads that I am dissolving the vibrational pattern of abuse institutionalized by St. Dominic and his groups of ten beads. Seven is "The Great She", the one who carries the healthy patterns of life within her being.

Once when Sally and I were channeling together on the consciousness of particular health problems, I saw Tibetan wise men standing with her. They're the ones who first understood that the acupuncture needles let in Light.

I simplify my reach to expanded consciousness now with these words "Dear Mary Magdalene, love incarnate, sacred vessel, holy grail. Chosen are you with all women and blessed is your union with Jesus. Dearest bride and beloved of Christ, show us the way of the heart."

You can read more of the story of Margaret Starbird's inspirational Magdalene Rosaries in our book about the inner path of sacred union, 14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine, Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene.

You can see the Heart & Cross Rosary, the Magdalene Rose Amethyst Chaplet, the Gold Roses Magdalene Rosary, the Sea Treasures Rosary, the Celtic Trinity Knot Rosary, the Scarab Rosary Chaplet, the Black and Crystal Rosary and the Silver Heart Magdalene Rosary at Sally's booth at Bonanza.com.

http://www.bonanza.com/booths/SallyNorton

Inner Magi

Joan Norton — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:24:00 GMT

Who were those colorful Druid Magi philosophers visiting the baby Jesus on Epiphany? What is the factor in the Kingdom within you that supports the new Light, the new inspiration, the new part of yourself ? The old king is sick and needs the water of life but he wants to kill it instead, just as the old ways within never want to give up to a new way. King Herod would surely kill the new baby if he knew where it was. The Druid Magi are in tune with the messages and signs of heaven and so they follow the five pointed star, the one which the Goddess directs.

In early writings the words Druid and Magi were used interchangeably. Druids were called Magi, Magi is a Latin language equivalent of Druid. They ranked nearly equal with their kings and had the privilege of wearing six colors on their robes, while Celtic kings and queens wore seven. The Druid philosophers of the sacred world were a one-god culture with varied expressions of divinity, who waited for a messiah as part of their trinity. Their name means Servant of the Truth, "Truth Against the World". They apparently anticipated Jesus and were prepared to accept him as the one waited for. He was a "fuller and more perfect revelation" of their own religion and philosophy. They became the Culdee church of the first century in Ireland and Britain.

They represent a consciousness, an inner attitude that recognizes a revelation from the Mystery world. That recognizes a sacred message in a dream and that recognizes support is needed for the dream to bring about real change. They represent an inner attitude that follows the feminine spirit, for she is the only one who births the new. The old sick king has no relationship to the Feminine at all.

The Druid philosophers were the keepers of the genealogies, the keepers of the sacred memory of the people. They believed in the immortality of the soul as the principal reason for leading a virtuous life. The consciousness within me and within you which will support inspiration and creativity and new paths (the baby) has sacred memory, knows your soul life. It can surely take a lot of strength to support oneself, to stick with it and keep going on the path you know is right for you.

Doorway blessings are part of the symbolism of Epiphany, the initials of the Magi written in chalk above the door along with the date of the year to come. It's a good way to remember to support oneself within with the qualities of steadfast expectation, knowledge of the sacred language of dreams and stars, and always have your holy grail vessel ready to hold new life.

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Good news! Sally has her Magdalene Rosaries back up again on a new website.

http://www.bonanza.com/booths/sallynorton

click here to order The Mary MagdaleneWithin

Sense Memory of the Sacred Feminine at Christmas

Joan Norton — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:05:00 GMT

I know there's a heavenly story about Jesus and who his mother was and who his grandmother was and who his great-grandmother was. I know the metaphysics of their spiritual consciousness is intricate. But I've become preoccupied with thinking about the earthy influence these women would have had on him. Their philosophy of life. Their cooking. Their style of celebrating the festivals.

Even though he was the Messiah from birth, recognized by world astrologers as the one who would embody the perennial wisdom next, he still would have been influenced by family women.I don't think they shut him off in a room for years, only to come out once to try and teach the rabbis. He was influenced by the Sacred Feminine as it was expressed in the women around him. And that's what lasts.

The feminine values are passed down through sense memory. They live in our right brains. If Jesus was taken as a youngster with his great-uncle and protector Joseph of Arimathea away to safety in the Celtic lands of his maternal people, he would have experienced the feminine philosophy of the women there. They had more freedoms than the women in Palestine.

Celtic people ended up as British, Irish, Scottish but they had been all over those areas we think of as the only home of the holy families. Observers in the 1st century reported that Celtic people wore brightly colored, checked woven wool clothes and that they had the universities that people sent their children to for higher learning. Part of the sense memory that Jesus would have had is the fabric of the women he loved. And the ways in which they carried the holy festivals of the year's circle. We call it the smells and touch and sights of Christmas now but in his visiting times Jesus would have experienced it as the Light of Winter festival. The food had aroma, the women wore beautiful cloth, prayers were whispered, poems were heard..... the Sacred Feminine was absorbed.

That's how we women do it now so our spirituality will be absorbed and passed down through the generations.

Sleigh and Reindeer

Joan Norton — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:54:00 GMT

I understand now why the most used symbols of Christmas represent northern Europe more than the desert place we're told the story is from. Christ came also from philosophies and ancient wisdom traditions centered in the far northern isle where many world spiritual teachers came from. Buddhist Mongolian lamas apparently credit a Celt druid philosopher named Sucundra with teaching the Buddha from this same northern source stream of spiritual wisdom. These same Celtic philosopher teachers saw in vision and welcomed the Christ Jesus as the new carrier of the ancient spiritual wisdoms.

The reindeer I see in Macy's Christmas decoration department echo and symbolize the easier reach into spiritual dimensions at this time of year. Northern European shaman put reindeer antlers on their heads in ceremony to express the idea of going into the skyworld and bringing back gifts of the spirit to their community. Like Santa in his sleigh in the sky.

Jesus's maternal DNA placed him in the northern Holy Land where we still get our potent and mysterious Christmas symbols. No wonder Godde speaks in sacred geometric symbol language in the grain fields of Celtic lands. No wonder we can't help ourselves putting fir trees around the Christmas manger.

The reason I don't like snowmen as the new commercialized symbol of Christmas is it deteriorates our spiritual teaching story about reaching to the North Pole with wishes. The North Pole symbolizes the world axis which is the home of high evolutionary spiritual energies....the Godde within. The cold, cold snowman feeds nothing to the soul compared to the sight of the sleigh in the sky.

Symbols are the food of our own dear Western Mystery Traditions, kept alive by our love of them.

Who Lives in Your Christmas Creche?

Joan Norton — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:01:00 GMT

Your Christmas creche tells the story of the maternal bloodline of Christ. Everyone who does their family genealogy knows that we can run into a brick wall when we look for our grandmothers back a few generations. They lose their names and stories easily. Christ's grandmother was Anne, who is said to have fled from her Celtic home in Cornwall to Galilee. There was a lot of trade route travel in those days and her family relative Joseph of Arimathia was familiar with that. He may have been her brother. No wonder it was he who was to protect the pregnant Mary, "called the Magdalene" after Jesus' murder.

I'm putting Anne in my creche where her daughter gives birth. When women give birth we feel blood kinship with all our family's mothers who've gone before us.

Her home area of Cornwall had a worship community which later became a church with her name. The earliest carriers of Christianity were called Culdees and the churches known as Culdee churches. They were there before the roman church. Jesus's grandmother would have had a family spiritual mentor who believed in three truths; to revere the one Diety, to abstain from evil, and to behave valiantly. "The Truth against the world" was their saying about themselves. Surely Jesus spent time with his grandmother.

I am also putting Christ's Great-Grandmother in my Christmas creche. She may not have been alive at the time he was born, but I'm very sure she was there in spirit. She was said to have been born at Mount Carmel, which was a Mystery School of that time. The Mystery Schools were connected on the inner planes and were of constant influence to each other. There were many in Britain, including one in Fortingall on a site of early honoring of the Mother Godde Anaitis. Christ's Great-Grandmother is called Emernetia in her stories.An early Celtic Mother Godde is called Arnamentia. Arnamentia is "She of the Healing Waters".

Here is Christ's Great-Grandmother with her tree and her book of wisdom in a statue from 1515-1530. Emerentia carries a mythic pattern of the Goddess in her story of giving birth to Anne. It was known through vision at the Mystery School at Carmel that her child would be spiritually significant. Emerentia had six lovers with whom nothing was conceived. Seven being the mystical number of cycles and patterns of the Goddess was the one that brought her into harmony with her destiny....and Anne was born.

Today is December 1 and the little creche is ready to be filled with the spirit of women forever bringing forth new life in all ways creative and physical.

References:

Dunford, Barry, Vision of Albion: The Key to the Holy Grail, 2008

Hill, Isabel Elder, Celt, Druid, and Culdee, 1938

Dunstan, Victor, Did the Virgin Mary Live and Die in England ?, 1985

The Emerentia statue is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, "The Virgin and Child, Saint Anne and Saint Emerentia"

Body Alchemy

Joan Norton — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:15:00 GMT

Crying is body alchemy meant to restore the sacred geometry of our individual consciousness. Like rain on land. It's not an accident that Mary Magdalene weeps tears. Margaret Starbird tells us that the Beloved Mother ponders sorrows in her heart but Mary Magdalene cries. When the sacred feminine is moved to tears, things change. There is a physiology to tears that helps move the mind.

Jesus was away from her and the family, trying to talk the intellectual talk with the headstrong. He was told his beloved Lazarus was sick but he didn't come back. He knew the "raising" was at hand. But when he saw his truly beloved Magdalene crying, he groaned in spirit and was troubled. And then the raising happened.

Some authors have talked about Lazarus representing consciousness expansion, expansion of awareness outside of whatever currently "is". For consciousness to expand there needs to be divine light and earthly feeling. A head and a heart. Mary Magdalene's tears specifically move Jesus to make an affect on things.

Jesus needs Mary Magdalene as much as she need him.

Apparently weeping relieves the body of chemicals created by emotional pain. A new awareness of things can happen when tears carry these chemicals away. When they're kept in the body.... when the headstrong point of view stays in charge.....nothing changes. When tears come, consciousness can expand. It's a head and heart story, a story of Sacred Union.

My friend Sandra Pope calls this "the tend and befriend Magdalene", remembering that tend and befriend is the Sacred Feminine's response to a stuck and fearful situation. Instead of "fight or flight" we "tend and befriend". Crying is part of the positive movement of change of consciousness.

Mary Magdalene's tears are different in this piece of story. They are an essential part of creating the movement of things to a good outcome. They are "verb" kind of tears, necessary to move the divine into action and change the situation. For myself, these kind of tears don't feel like anything but heartache when they're happening. It's only in retrospect that I see what they did. Weeping brings on the Mystery of transformation.

Jesus needs Mary Magdalene as much as she needs him.

Click here for more about the "tend and befriend" of the Sacred Feminine

The Call of the Wild

Joan Norton — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:11:00 GMT

The movement of the year now goes towards renewal. But not yet. It passed the high sun point and now goes towards the low light. Something has been accomplished and celebrated and put a little bit to bed. Or just to quiet down. "It's like Christmas," Margaret Starbird said on our last Magdalene Circle show when we were talking excitedly about Mary Magdalene's Feast Day celebrations. It was liberating to me to hear her put it that way, with that magnitude and depth of feeling. Two big celebrations a year of "Godde with us" is better than one.

Who wants to start designing the greeting cards?

There is often an inner lull after a celebration. Sometimes "inner lull" is a nice way to say depression or descent. There's a part of us that feels "it's over"...the good celebration feeling has stopped. The earth energies begin to withdraw from the plants in very, very subtle ways. Barely perceive it. Contemplation is on its way. Good thing we celebrated July 22.

If Mary Magdalene's life stories are truly reflections of the sacred feminine in me and in earth, they will carry the turning of the year's cycle and its natural emotional expressions. We're going towards the "taking stock" time of things, the time of sorting through to save the best and let go of the other. When do I feel that mood in her stories? When do you feel that mood in her stories? Maybe it was in that time in Egypt ....maybe it's in the cave at Saint Baume.

The psychological task at such times is of feeling the feelings and sorting through and waiting for the call of the wild. The call of the wild is whatever will be born of this phase of things...of the half of the year just passed.

Mary the Magdalene is the call of the wild as much as she is devotion to mate and motherhood. What else would you say about a woman who had the nerve to marry the heretic? As representative of such courage, she is that part of ourselves which has the nerve to walk our own path of individuality. Our own unique path with all its intricate variations of being ourselves.

"Sing your secret through us, Lady"

Joan Norton — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:49:00 GMT

Thursday July 22, 2010 is Mary Magdalene's Feast Day. Each year it feels deeper and wider and more important. Churches still within the confusion of knowing she is becoming more of the story but not knowing why, seek out ways to celebrate her. They may hope for the success of the "apostle to the apostles" story so they don't have to change everything. But everything is changing and it will be always for the better if they include her in the love story. As we already have.

On Wednesday night July 21 at 8 p.m. Pacific Time I'm going to be on Rene Barnett's Night Vision online radio show. You may remember Rene as the producer of the Bloodline documentary, which was about excavating for Magdalene relics at Rennes le Chateau in France. We'll talk about mysteries and secrets, including the mysterious ways Mary Magdalene comes into women's dreams and visions. Click here to go to the Night Vision site and listen in. Rene is planning a Bloodline Mystery Tour to France in September, which will be fun to hear about.

Thursday July 22 at 1:30 Rene will be our guest on the monthly Magdalene Circle online radio show. And Margaret Starbird will be in the talk too, which is always the biggest treat. She was in the Bloodline documentary, as you know. Cynthia Jordan and Lerin Winter have been so committed to making the radio Magdalene Show an ongoing part of their Spiritually Speaking shows.... they're great. Cynthia's Mary Magdalene song at the beginning of the show always instantly deepens my feelings. Click here for Spiritually Speaking and the call in phone number.

I have a very beautiful Magdalene Feast Day poem by Canadian poet Penn Kemp to share with you. It's called "Recall".

Recall

by Penn Kemp

Purple spikes rampant now. Cliché bounds
garden gnomes. We drink somewhat musty

ginger tea. Second cups await, red roobos
with mint and lemon balm Ive just plucked.

Magdalene might know this tonic, or others
similar. Her purple turban that paintings so

proudly display as her nearly royal emblem
might bob through the fields as she gathers.

Though she would have servants harvesting,
that fine curved hand not browned by sun.

Her name day conjures presence on waves
of prayer, an iconography of purple and red.

Similars, signature. Like calls to like out
of time. Speaking harmonies. Chords lift.

A decorum wealth bestows, lush richness
suggesting florid abundance, jars of unguent.

She is always depicted wrapped, self-contained

and rapt. Cups of tea cool by her side, steam
rising like plumage, like the coils of her turban.

Twenty-two is the master number in Hebrew,
a vibration that opens time with broad strokes

beyond the moment to more universal scope.
But butterfly bush flowers in her honour now.

Echinacea flourishes, blossom and root, for her
medicinal. Wise woman of herbs, of mystery.

Sing your secret through us, Lady. We are
listening. Then and now. Now and then when

we remember. When your name day reminds.

©Penn Kemp, July 22

First published, http://www.goddess-pages.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=351&Itemid=1#ixzz0u4W79L8D

Thank you very much for enriching our Magdalene Circle, Penn..... so generous.

If you are intrigued with her work and want more of its beauty, here is some of Penn's information and contact sites.

Penn Kemp, Pendas Productions
525 Canterbury Road, London ON N6G 2N5
t519) 434-8555
e: penn@pennkemp.ca

web: www.mytown.ca/pendas/
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/kemp/

So there we have it... Magdalene Feast Day... and how will it be for you? What does She want of you? How does she meet her Beloved in you?

The Kiss

Joan Norton — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:52:00 GMT

I can't get the kiss out of my mind.We talked about it on the Magdalene Circle online radio show yesterday. Yes, "Mary Magdalene was the companion of the Savior and he kissed her often" and we have rightly taken that as one of the ways to know she is the Bride....but why does the kiss stay with me? It's a piece of fate, a moment of knowing that the fate-Goddess was present. It's a moment of initiation into a deeper story, a moment when fate is sealed.

A moment when fate is sealed, a moment when life-threads are knotted together. It's a moment that says, "Now the story begins between us."

Think of how it is in your dream life when a kiss happens. The story of inner marriages, inner fate, inner kissing, inner initiations is the story of one's own personal spiritual quest to know soul and Godde. The kiss is part of the lore of the quest for the Holy Grail, the great Mystery Tradition of the western world. We go along a path of continual encounter with inner patterns of response to life that bring satisfaction or unhappiness. Dreams reflect the story all the way along, helping us to know the details of why an attitude works or doesn't work. It's often pictured in terms of relationship with the opposite gender. If I dream I want to kiss a man whose character and qualities I really like, it's a moment of harmony with my own soul growth because those qualities are ones I want to have within myself. A dream kiss starts a story of personal inner development. It says "now I will grow with this new and unknown part of myself and know it as me."

The Age that began with "Those Two" was and is meant to be one where we know more fully the inner dimensions of ourselves as Godde. Jesus brought it to the streets with his refusal to be king of the hill. The kiss was declaration of full intent to listen to women's wisdom.

The kiss is a moment of saying "I accept Fate" and "I allow Soul".

Click Here to go to Magdalene Circle online radio show

She Just Stepped Off the Boat

Joan Norton — Fri, 28 May 2010 11:41:00 GMT

I wonder how old she was when she stepped off the boat in France. Mother of a pre-teen girl. Sister, daughter-in-law. Widow. Woman in danger. She was suppose to feel hopeful I'm sure, arriving in the new world. Brand new life ahead, brand new people to know, brand new feelings of safety.

I don't think she knew she was a spiritual heroine or had a future as the Queen of Heaven next to her Beloved. I'm pretty sure she was more like you and me within our own spiritual life stories. She had to cope with the grief of lost love and find the corner of her heart that would live forward. I wonder what it was that led her forward. It wasn't a need to build a church, I'm pretty sure of that. She may have talked and shared with people the "inside story" of the new teachings that Godde is everywhere inside and out and the Kings are no better than anyone else, but I don't think she was making a rulebook.about it. After all, she'd lived with the one who chased the moneychangers out of their greed temple, a place of rigid rules about their God.

She is the one who shows us with her story that we can go on into a new world, a new way of things. Maybe the turbulence was behind her now and it was a time of equilibrium and restoration. She had the remembrance of Sacred Union in the flesh with the Beloved of her heart, no one could change that. She stepped off the boat into a time of sharing who she was and what she knew and what Jesus was like. And what his stories were meant to tell about connectedness between all things. And that she was his bodylife sacred wife and mother of his child. People would make of it what they would. And undergo oppression of their love story over and over again.

"Arrival" is a part of the seasonal journey of the year as well. It has a Beltane feeling of coming out of a tricky time when things could have gone wrong in the harsh winter. Now there can be fullness in the land. Soon we'll celebrate the fullness with Magdalene's Feast Day, the day of feeling the bounty that comes with having a Queen of Earth and flesh, one who bravely loves.

But for now there's just the gratitude of the arrival, one more time.

Journey in a Boat with No Oars

Joan Norton — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:14:00 GMT

The Magdalene Mysteries "Journey in A Boat with no Oars" is an archetypal theme that is told in story in many other religions as well as ours. It's a universal truth that life gives us times when we have no idea what is going to happen next and we don't have a map. Or a rudder or an oar. That's the part of Mary Magdalene's story that we honor this month because we know that she and her family arrived in their new land on May 24. We keep celebrating it there every year.

Drifting has to be a part of this story of passage from "the known" to "the unknown". The gentle routines of the Mother always structure the day and night...and thank you for that. It might have been that that's all they could predict, that day would turn into night. How grateful they must have felt when they landed first at the island of the temple of the Goddess Cybele. We're always held in those arms. The landing is a momentous occasion spiritually, emotionally, psychologically; and with the most practical importance. What greets us first? Who is there?

At last weekend's workshop in Ashland, Oregon I led the group in the guided journey of this story, which is the one of Chapter 12 in the Magdalene Circle book.. I leave a good piece of time at the end of reading the meditation so that everyone has their own personal inner experience of "who's there" when the sea voyage ends. Who's there for the beginning of the new part of your story? Your own soul has come across the great water in great peril; and now someone is there for you. Who is it?

Many people in the workshop shared their inner experiences about this and I was not surprised that the experiences were so tender. We are always so deeply touched at knowing we are not alone, that the Mystery lives within us and always provides.

Of course it's different in each person's individual story, what one person perceives as "the companion I need right now" will not be the next person's. The important part is feeling the strength of the mysterious continuation of your soul's story as you arrive at the shore of the next chapter. It seems as though the guided meditation about Magdalene's journey cuts through the mind's constant "figuring it out" and gives an image of the heart's personal Way for us. People were so startled at who was there on the other shore. But that's how it always is with the inner journey, don't you think? For myself, I've never "figured it out". The only thing that works is allowing my Inner Mystery to bring me the next piece of my story.

The Brave Ones in the Boat

Click here to order the Magdalene Circle book

Are You a Galilean?

Joan Norton — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:59:00 GMT

If you are one of the 34.5 million Americans who claim Irish DNA, we have an important show for you on the April 22 Magdalene Circle. Author Barry Dunford will tell us how the placename "Galilee" is related to the people called the Gael, Celtic people. I'm going to ask Barry to give us the lore that comes down through history in the placenames of the British Isles about Jesus' family connections in Wales, England and Scotland.Naming places was the first way to record history. Jesus' name in Arabic was Issa, with Iosa as the Gaelic version. It makes sense that Jesus visited the Mystery Schools in the British Isles as we know he visited the mystery schools in other religious traditions, but it may have been more of a "home visit". Barry will share with us the many, many connections with the name Issa/Iosa/Essa in "the Holy Land of Britain". His book is Vision of Albion : The Key to the Holy Grail and you can have a sneak preview on his website at http://www.sacredconnections.co.uk/.The bloodline is a maternal bloodline and there's a lot more to know about Anna, Jesus' grandmother.

The Magdalene Circle show is providing a good place for us to feel comfortable talking the women's spirituality talk of christianity.( I feel like its mine if I don't capitalize it) It's us women talking the talk that's going to change things. On May 1 Margaret Starbird and I are giving a talk in Ashland, Oregon at the Hidden Springs Wellness Center and I'm going to demonstrate how the Magdalene Circles work. We take a bit of Magdalene story, such as "Journey in the Boat with No Oars", and talk about experiences of our own life which feel like that part of Mary Magdalene's life. And we have a meditation to bring in our own soul's imagery. And we share our experiences.That's how we connect our individual life to the spiritual journey of Sacred Union. That's how we carry the evolution/revolution forward. http://spirituallyspeaking.webs.com/ Click "Magdalene Circles"

Every once in a while I have a dream that places me out in space looking at the Earth and telling me something. This time I saw a scorecard, a chart of all the various areas of Earth being worked on to heal it. The healing was happening not by geography or by governments but by "projects". It's us lending our eager hearts to healing , each in our own pet projects, that makes the difference.

Here's the mitochondrial DNA crop circle at Crooked Soley to remind us that the spiritual projects we're in are BIG.

Mary Magdalene, Love Incarnate, Show Us the Way of the Heart.

Who Do You Anoint this Week?

Joan Norton — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:20:00 GMT

What do you anoint this week? Shall we celebrate that we are women and our spiritual job is to anoint? It was said that three drops from the goddess set a man on his quest for his own destiny, his own individual spiritual sovereignty inside himself. Perhaps to carry back something of Goodness for his community. The beginning of the story of Easter Week is the anointing by Mary the Magdalene of Jesus the Christ. We are each both.

Imagine what she knew of him. Imagine if we have the standard for ourselves that we be treated with the respect he treated her. "when this story is told, it will be told in memorial of her...". He knew to place himself in receptivity to her and to Her.

What anointing of the three drops do we women give right now? Surely to the ones who place themselves in receptivity to sacred union between all things, which is the central value of the Sacred Feminine.

Karen Tate asked me on her radio show last week what women get when they take up the mantle of Mary Magdalene and I said something like "self respect and the insistence that we be treated well". If you realize that you were the one who was chosen to anoint, to choose, to bless, the hero in the story......well, you'd appreciate yourself. And you'd insist that every man to do the same.

The Wedding Feast at Cana (with Mary Magdalene)

Painting by Gerard David (1503) Poem by Katerina Fretwell

Hail, young Mary, sidelined between

Jesus and his mother, their haloes'

gold spikes bore into your eyes

as you peep at your espoused.

Crimson bodice and hair

signify your royal lineage,

but where is your golden

aureole as half the Christos?

Mission mates, you and Yeshu

cherish the hagios gamos-

your conjoined blood & body,

the clandestine Eucharist.

Prey to a messiah complex,

Constantine crowned himself

first Holy Roman Emperor,

lording it over Jesus, forcing your

flight, gravid & grave, to Provence.

15 centuries later, Gerard David

painted your secret lineage-

enduring despite pomp and papacy.

It's your crown.

*thank you to Rev. John Beverley Butcher for allowing me to use the Jesus and Mary Magdalene icon above, which is available from Trinity Stores.com.

Community News and Pretty Pictures

Joan Norton — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:33:00 GMT

We're all in the circle together........

Cynthia Jordan's song "Mary Magdalene" is going to be a part of Margaret Starbird's "Miracle Play" on March 20 in the Seattle area. Cynthia chooses the music for our monthly online Magdalene Circle, often using her own beautiful compositions. Her Magdalene song stays in my head a long time after I hear it at the beginning of each Circle. Did you hear Margaret on the February 22, 2010 show describing her play? She said it's going to be videotaped and available so other churches and groups can use it. I think we're in the "post-book" era of the return of Mary Magdalene and we're going to be seeing a lot more paintings, poetry, plays, and music dedicated to the story of Sacred Union. She told us that she'd modeled her play's style on the simple passion plays performed on the steps of cathedrals in medieval times.

Katerina Fretwell's poetry about Mary Magdalene is sweeping and intense and sometimes heart-piercing. She's going to read some more of it on Karen Tate's online radio show March 24, 2010 when I'm on it. Karen's "Voices of the Sacred Feminine" continues to be a fantastic discussion forum for goddess spirituality and the expanding consciousness "movement". Karen is currently teaching the "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven" curriculum at the Goddess Temple of Orange County and I'm going to co-teach the Mary Magdalene section with her in June. I'm grateful for the opportunity to do a little bit to get beyond the "best little apostle in the world" story.

Another online radio show coming up is with with Kala Ambrose in North Carolina. We had a great conversation that will be on air soon, I'll let you know. There were some similarities in my talk with Kala and many other Catholic raised women I'm meeting these days. I keep hearing something like this, "I knew something was wrong with the story when I was little". Kala said she'd really given her priest a talking-to because of what she knew intuitively about Jesus. Other women tell me they wouldn't have even tried to talk to the priest, they just "knew" the spiritual story they were told was wrong. I say this all the time but I'll say it again.... I love these stories because it's so clear that our feminine spirit has the instincts about Sacred Union and the love story that's at the center of our spiritual life. There's a love story at the very center of the "Great Mysteries" of western civilization. Too grand a way to say it? I don't think so.

The Magdalene Rosary and the 14 highlights of Mary Magdalene's life that Margaret Starbird identified continues to grow in my creative life as I work a bit on writing commentary about each prayer. The rosaries and chaplets themselves are getting prettier and prettier. The ones Sally is making now are each unique with different symbols on them, some Celtic and some really beautiful little portraits of Magdalene and other women. Sally is a forward-movement-always Aquarian soul and I should have know she wouldn't be content with making the same design over and over. Those of us who have the original rosaries with garnet gemstones now have collection pieces.

I met a nice young woman named Marcia Frescura this weekend at a workshop in north San Diego county. Marcia has a Magdalene Circle and told me she is liking the flexibility of doing the book's readings and meditations in different and new ways. I'm so happy that the book is used as a template, not a rule book. She also has more than one rosary..... now I don't feel too guilty. Kala Ambrose told me she has a collection of old and beautiful rosaries, and she is very interested in the new way our community is using rosaries. She wants to write about the Magdalene Rosaries in her column in the online Examiner where she can show pictures too.

Write in and let me know about "Magdalene things" that you know about, okay? Thanks.... Christ Consciousness is not fully useful until it's in Sacred Union.