Musings on the Magdalene

a nine part series in honor of her feast day on July 22

I began this “novena” a nine-day devotional period on July 14th. I am posting daily on Facebook and Instagram and will post every three days here on Substack for those who are interested.

Day One: July 14 Bastille Day

When I decided to write about the Magdelene for nine days, I didn’t realize that if I ended on her traditional Feast Day of the 22nd I would have to begin on July 14th, Bastille Day, which is a little bit like our July 4th, a celebration of liberation from monarchy and autocratic rule.

Legend has it that Mary Magdalene ended up living in France (or Gaul) after fleeing Palestine and Alexandria—and there has always been a tradition of devotion to her in that land.

They great symbol of the French revolution is actually a figure very close to the Magdalene in ways I will explore—Maryanne, the bare breasted, triumphant figure we know in this country as Lady Liberty. She emerges during the upheavals against religious authority as a kind of counterpoint to the Madonna, and to the pious figure of Joan of Arc. Maryanne is the whore contrasted with the submissive virgin, proudly proclaiming liberty, equality and brotherhood.

[art: Lady Liberty by Eugene Delacroix]

And yet in the Middle Ages the Madonnas were always depicted like Maryanne, bare breasted and powerful, and the greatest battle Joan every fought was not for her king but against the church. She, too, was a liberator.

[art: Madonna by Jean Fouquet]

Magdalene and Madonna. Whore and Virgin.

What if they are all just the same incarnational expression of the Great Mother herself?

Let us begin with our first reading from the gnostic text Thunder, Perfect Mind which is the voice of the Magdalene expressing the complexity and fullness of all that she is.

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one

and many are her sons.

I am she whose wedding is great,

and I have not taken a husband.

Day Two: Beyond the Singularity

The opposite of god is not goddess but everything. We cannot untie the patriarchal knot simply but changing prounouns. We have to recover an entirely different way of being in the world.

One of the worst indoctrinations of monotheism has been replacing the generous cycles of life, birth and death and rebirth, with the merciless finalities of linear time where we only have one life to get it right and one god to help us or judge us.

But our ancestors, even in the time of Jesus, still knew that every soul comes back. Was Jesus Elijah or Moses returned they wonder in the gospels? Or was he also Dionysus and Shiva and Osiris returned? Certainly these texts often allude to these earlier incarnations, whether it is changing water into wine or being recognized as the gardener. Jesus is not a singularity...he is one incarnation in the long story of a very complicated soul...but always Lord of the Dead, God of Wine and life.

Similarly with Mary Magdalene. She is not "just" the Magdalene. She is also Kali, Isis, Athena, Inanna and great mothers back into the depths of human becoming. She is often depicted like Mary the Egyptian and Akkamadevi, wearing nothing but her hair, perhaps because she WAS Mary the Egyptian and Akkamadevi in other incarnations.

[Akhamadevi]

The great dangerous heresy of the Cathars was their belief not just in reincarnation but that Mary and Jesus are always being reborn in every generation. They are always among us.

The problem I have with a lot of the fetishizitation of the Magdalene is some folks become very exclusive with her, as if her story is the only story, this incarnation is the only incarnation. Not just one stitch in a very long, very complicated embroidery in which we are all entangled with each other.

I have often thought that in going to France after the genocide of her people by the Romans, the Magdalene was actually re-enacting a much older pilgrimage and trying to find her way back to an older, perhaps more healing and whole, story. After all, she is said to have gone and lived in a cave like our hunter-gatherer ancestors. And like them she follows a path that our human ancestors have traveled for hundreds of thousands of years.

One of the enduring mysteries for me is how the 20,000 year period before the advent of agriculture (and the attendant miseries of empire) is known as The Magdalenian Period. This was a rich period in which we had all the joys of culture--art and music, storytelling and song--and none of the abjections and horrors of civilization. Twenty thousand years of love and joy. When we were in France, my husband and I "happened" upon (as we write about in our book The Way of the Rose) the Site Madeline, which gave its name to that period. On a bend of the Vezer river in the Dordogne was found the body of a woman and a child from this period with various artifacts. On the cliff above the archaeological dig was a medieval church dedicated to Mary Magdalene.

Time is not linear; it is folded over itself like origami. One place is also another place. One time is also another time. Jesus is Osiris is Dionysus is Dionysus returned is Shiva by another name. Mary Magdalene goes to France to remind us how old not just her story is but how old all of our stories are.

To embrace the Magdalene is to embrace the long story of our souls again where we all returning to this world again and again.

Day Three: The Feast Day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Mount Carmel has known hundreds of thousands of years of human habitation and was once known as "the garden of God" although the divine figure most associated with the mountain is the Lady, whose feast day it is today.

Oh most beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendor of heaven, blessed mother of all life, oh star of the sea, help me and show me herein you are my mother.

the vine grows into a flower that turns into a star in this old hymn of praise to her

Which brings me to the Magdalene.

That title is most probably a nickname given to her by Yeshuah himself. It does not refer to a place known for prostitution, as later asserted by misogynistic church fathers. The Romans loved to make maps and there is no such place found until many centuries after their occupation. Jesus gave everyone playful nicknames: The Rock, the Thunder Brothers. The Tower.

For that is what Magdalene means. The Tower.

What does it mean to call her The Tower? Sometimes she is even depicted holding a small tower in her hands.

Think of that vine climbing up to the stars. Think of the Milky Way above us. Think of the DNA spiraling through our cells. Think too of the layers of life, strata upon strata, dug through at Mt. Carmel. Each few inches an epoch of human history. Every step we take we are standing upon the time, the tower of the dead, of the world.

To call Miriam The Tower is to Call her...everything. All Life. All that is below and all that is above. She contains multitudes. She contains it all. She is Queen of Heaven and Earth.

[art: Megan Wagner]

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Thank you for joining me on this journey! If you are interested in more of my musings on the wisdom of the ancestral mothers, do check out my upcoming course Mothers of Magic where we will explore the healing wisdom of the matri-sphere. Imagine a world where every entity — from the trees and rivers to the stars in the sky to the random person you pass on the street — was once your mother, and you were once theirs. Learn more at https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/tmoyPF/a25018/

Early registrants will receive bonus videos that include my conversation with Sophie Strand, author of The Madonna Secret, on telling the stories of the lost women of the gospels.

Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and the forthcoming Mothers of Magic: Recovering the Love at the Heart of the World. With her husband Clark Strand she is the co-founder of The Way of the Rose and the co-author of the book of the same name.