Although Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the four canonical gospels as the primary witness to the resurrection, and in John’s gospel is sent by Jesus to tell the male disciples what she has seen and been told, thereby becoming the first apostle, this crucial role is already diminished by Luke’s gospel, a man who never knew Jesus, by the emphasis he places on his account of the woman’s witness. Luke 24:9-ll:–“The woman told these things unto the eleven, and all the rest … and they believed them not.”
In Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, Chp.15: 5–8, which is the first account of Christ’s appearance after the resurrection, Mary Magdalene’s meeting with Jesus is entirely omitted.27 Paul took the Goddess out of the Christ story separating, once again, the male and female spirits that the life and teaching of Jesus sought to unite. For Jesus himself, it is said that “His attitude toward women constitutes … a highly original and significant feature of his life and teaching.”28 It is extraordinary that this entire facet of the story goes unattended in historical significance as Christianity proceeds to move forward in time. For the ability to understand why, it is necessary to examine the attitudes and thought processes prevailing at the turn of that millennium.
Returning to Frymer-Kensky who says,
There is no sexual dimension of the divine experience (in the Hebrew). Instead of Gods and Goddesses interrelating with one another, there is only the one God of Israel YHWH, moreover, is predominantly male god conceived of in such quintessentially masculine images as warrior and king. In the earliest biblical poem, the Song of the Sea, God is ‘man of war.’ But these masculine qualities of God are social male-gender characteristics. The monotheist God is not sexually a male. God is asexual, or transsexual, or metasexual … but ‘he’ is never sexed.29
This concept began a drawing back from heterosexual behavior as sanctified by the divine. The Old Testament does not envision sexuality as a gift from God. This is in direct opposition to the gift of sexual union from the Great Goddess to all humankind.
For the Old Testament, “the sexual and the divine realms have nothing to do with one another. Indeed, the Bible is concerned to maintain their separation, to demarcate the sexual and sacred experiences and to interpose space and time between them.”30 Here we begin to see the unbalancing of the human/divine connection through the expression of sexual energy devoted to the sacred, something that until now had been a normal component of worship. The balance between sexuality, the sacred, the divine, and the human community was being destroyed. What is now set in motion will carry long-lasting negative consequences for women.
In what almost sounds like a warning of what is to come, Frymer-Kensky says, “Sexual activity brings people into the realm of experience which is unlike God (of YHWH); conversely, in order to approach (the new male) god, one has to leave the sexual realm.”31 Now we see the stark reality of fundamental differences: With the Goddess, one came to unite with Her and the universe through her sacred sexuality; with YHWH, one needed to absolve oneself from sexual experience in order to admit god. This is to say that any sexual activity brings people into opposition with the male God.
This precept will be antithetical to healthy behavior. It requires healthy human sexual behavior go underground and unhealthy behaviors surface instead. This is a major crossroad for human history of the Western World. Here we see the separation of the sexual and the holy – in order to include oneself in the holy, one must divorce oneself from the sexual. It does not work. It will not work. The only thing this will do is force Western humanity into torture and despair. And, as a result, the repression of normal human sexuality will surface in unending violence against the “forbidden fruit” – women.
There are those who contend that the parable of the story of Jesus is that he came to bring back unification and peace between and among women and men on earth, or at least in his part of earth. He did so by his words, by his miracles, and through his personal behavior. His message was to include, to forgive, to love, to feel, to tolerate, to transcend, possibly through the much older traditions of Outer and Inner Mysteries.
This is almost entirely the message of the ancient Goddess. Did Jesus know that from the start and invite his female followers as a result? Or, did he learn that from Mary of Magdela and her women from the Goddess Temples and then transmit that outward to the masses with just enough changes to make it his own teaching?
One asks many questions in order to find relevant answers on this journey.
What interests greatly is why did Mary of Magdela choose to support this itinerant Jewish preacher? Why did she bring her women along to minister to him? Why did she and those women supply the material goods and financial services necessary for him to teach without any hardship for three years? (Three years is also significant to the story because the number three is the Goddess Trinity number – the three phases of the Moon and the three phases of female process through a lifetime.)
Given the political climate in Israel with the Hebrew laws seeking to repress the rights of women, in whose interest would it be to champion and sponsor this new voice, this rebel? The answer is obvious: It would be in the political interest of all the Goddess people. So perhaps this could be viewed as an effort to stem the tide of violence against the Goddess peoples by conscripting the new Christian/Jewish movement to their benefit. In this context, and as a Priestess of an important, influential Temple at Magdela, perhaps it became the responsibility of Mary Magdalene and her holy women to politically assist and financially support a man who might turn the tide. In the story as it was originally conceived, Jesus had not accepted the Hellenistic misogyny; he had not accepted the Hebraic segregation from womankind; he did not hide his relationship with a Goddess woman of status, and most likely a Priestess. The mainstream community of leaders from which he came found his behavior intolerable. Whether it was their vote that decided his fate or something else entirely is part of the story in which they were found guilty, with centuries of repercussions. But, then what? Jesus is gone. His teaching and his life story reworked, and women have vanished.
The Gnostic Gospels
The Gnostics, as a Christian sect, lived on for quite a while longer. Until some of their Gospels were rediscovered in the Nag Hammadi desert in Dec. 1945, most of their teachings had been lost. In the introduction to the English edition of the library, published in 1978, James M. Robinson notes that “the latest of the Dead Sea Scrolls (first century Judaism) meet in time and space with one of the earliest of the Nag Hammadi texts. Thus the history of Gnosticism, as documented in the Nag Hammadi Library, takes up about where the history of the Essenes (a Jewish sect that had broken with official Judaism and withdrawn to the desert) as documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, breaks off.” Two of the most fascinating tracts are presented here: “Thunder Perfect Mind” and then the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. There are gaps in the wording because small fragments of the documents were lost before translations from Coptic (Egyptian written with Greek letters), could be done.
Nag Hammadi Library
Translator George W. MacRae says that Thunder Perfect Mind is a revelation discourse delivered by a female revealer in the first person. In terms of religious tradition, it is difficult to classify. MacRae states that it presents no distinctively Jewish, Christian or Gnostic themes, nor does it seem to presuppose a particular Gnostic myth. He continues: Antithesis and paradox may be used to proclaim the absolute transcendence of the revealer, whose greatness is incomprehensible and whose being is unfathomable. (This is perhaps one of the very few and fragmentary documents of the revelations of the Goddess culture put into written form in order to survive the destruction of the time-honored oral traditions when the Goddess people were in danger of being eradicated.) Annotations have been left out, and missing words are indicated by empty spaces.
THE THUNDER, PERFECT MIND
VI 13, 1–21, 32
The Thunder, Perfect Mind I was sent forth from the power,
and I have come to those who r
eflect upon me,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you (pl.) who reflect upon me,
and you hearers hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not banish me from your sight.
And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your Guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
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.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in due time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.
Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and you hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.
You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,
and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me.
You who know me, be ignorant of me,
and those who have not known me, let them know me.
For I am knowledge and ignorance
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace
Give heed to me.
I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.
Give heed to my poverty and my wealth.
Do not be arrogant to me when I am cast out upon the earth,
and you will find me in those that are to come.
And do not look upon me when I cast out among those who
are disgraced and in the least places,
nor laugh at me.
And do not cast me out among those who are slain in violence,
But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
Be on your guard!
Do not hate my obedience
and do not love my self-control.
In my weakness, do not forsake me,
and do not be afraid of my power.
For why do you despise my fear
and curse my pride?
But I am she who exists in all fears.
and strength in trembling.
I am she who is weak.
and I am well in a pleasant place.
I am senseless and I am wise.
Why have you hated me in your counsels?
For I shall be silent among those who are silent,
and I shall appear and speak.
Why then have you hated me, you Greeks?
because I am a barbarian among the barbarians?
For I am the knowledge of the Greeks
and the knowledge of the barbarians.
I am judgment of the Greeks and of the barbarians.
I am the one whose image is great in Egypt
and the one who has no image among the barbarians.
and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one who whom they call Life,
and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
I am the one whom you have pursued,
and I am the one whom you have scattered,
and you have gathered me together,
I am the one before whom you have been ashamed,
and you have been shameless to me.
I am she who whose festivals are many.
I, I am godless,
and I am the one whose God is great.
I am the one whom you have reflected upon,
and you have scorned me.
I am unlearned,
and they learn from me.
I am the one whom you have despised,
and you reflect upon me.
I am the one whom you have hidden from,
and you appear to me.
But whenever you hide yourselves,
I myself will hide from you.
Those who have … to it … senselessly.…
Take me … understanding from grief,
and take me to yourselves from understanding and grief.
And take me to yourselves from places that are ugly and in
ruin,
and rob from those which are good even though in ugliness.
Out of shame, take me to yourselves shamelessly;
and out of shamelessness and shame, upbraid my members
In yourselves.
And come forward to me, you who know me
and you who know my members,
and establish the great ones among the small first creatures.
Come forward to childhood,
and do not despise it because it is small and it is little.
And do not turn away greatnesses in some parts from the
smallnesses,
for the smallnesses are known from the greatnesses.
Why do you curse me and honor me?
You have wounded and you have had mercy.
Do not separate me from the first ones whom you have known.
And do not cast anyone out nor turn anyone away
… turn you away and … know him not.
… him.
What is mine.…
I know the first ones and those after them know me.
But I am the mind of … and the rest of.…
I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of the gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.
I am the one who is honored, and who is praise,
and who is despised scornfully.
I am peace,
and war has come because of me.
And I am an alien and a citizen.
I am the substance and the one who has no substance.
Those who are without association with me are ignorant of
me,
and those who are in my substance are the ones who know
me.
Those who are close to me have been ignorant of me,
and those who are far away from me are the ones who have
known me.
On the day when I am close to you,
you are far away from me,
and on the day when I am far away from you,
I am close to you.
I am.… within.
I am … of the natures.
I am … of the creation of the spirits.
… request of the souls.
; I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am the union and the dissolution.
I am the abiding and I am the dissolving.
I am the one below,
and they come up to me.
I am the judgment and the acquittal.
I, I am sinless,
and the root of sin derives from me.
I am lust in outward appearance,
and interior self-control exists within me.
I am the hearing which is attainable to everyone
and the speech which cannot be grasped.
I am a mute who does not speak,
and great is my multitude of words.
Hear me in gentleness, and learn of me in roughness.
I am she who cries out.
and I am cast forth upon the face of the earth.
I prepare the bread and my mind within.
I am the knowledge of my name.
I am the one who cries out.
and I listen.
I appear and … walk in … seal of my.…
I am … the defense.…
I am the one who is called Truth,
and iniquity.…
You honor me … and you whisper against me.
… victorious over them.
Judge them before they give judgment against you,
because the judge and partiality exist in you.
If you are condemned by this one, who will acquit you?
For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you,
you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.
Hear me, you hearers,
and learn of my words, you who know me.
I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;
I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound
and the sound of the name.
I am the sign of the letter
and the designation of the division.
And I.…
… light.…
… hearers … to you
… the great power.
And … will not move the name.
… to the one who created me.
and I will speak his name.
Look then at his words
and all the writings which have been completed.
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