Mary Magdalene Revealed

by Meggan Watterson

  The Yoni of the Mountain

  The companion [koinonos] of the Son is Miriam of Magdala. The Teacher loved her more than all the disciples; he often kissed her on the mouth.

  — THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP

  The first man I met in Paris was a tall vagina. His costume went from his shoulders to below his knees, and included some very accurate anatomy. And judging from his bare arms and legs, it seemed to be the only thing he was wearing. He was just sauntering through the Gare du Nord as if in normal attire. The man-vagina was with two other men, so when I tried to take a picture of him, they beckoned for me to come join them. Then one of them offered to take a picture of us. So, that became one of my favorite pictures of my pilgrimage to Mary Magdalene’s cave. Me cracking up in Paris standing next to a man wearing nothing but a full-length vagina.

  I was headed down to Aix-En-Provence from Paris to have dinner with a woman I had never met before. Rose had sent a message to me through Instagram shortly before I got on the Queen Mary. And typically, I don’t reply to these messages. But her profile picture showed a red thread on her left wrist. So I read it. She said that she had moved to the South of France with her daughters for the past year in order to be close to Mary Magdalene, both her cathedral in Saint-Maximin and her cave at Sainte-Baume. She suggested we meet for dinner in Aix, which is the closest city to Saint-Maximin. It felt important that I meet her, but I didn’t know why yet.

  I needed to get from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon to catch a train to Aix in Southern France. I went to stand in the taxi line and an English woman arrived in line behind me. She told me that she was late to catch a train, the only one, headed to Barcelona from Gare de Lyon.

  I suggested we split a cab, and her face lit up. She helped me lift our bags and myself over the gate and out of the line. We got in the cab and started talking. Then my face lit up when she said she was from Devon. I told her about the workshop I was holding in Devon later that month. We hugged at the station after she helped me get my ticket to Aix. I felt drenched in this sense of how magical it can feel to be led from one synchronicity to the next.

  Rose was waiting for me outside of my hotel. And before I could even introduce myself, we started laughing. We had both noticed that we were wearing the exact same Mary Magdalene medallion. She felt immensely familiar to me.

  We walked slowly through the sand-colored buildings and the gorgeous light that seemed to thicken the air. It felt like we were walking through an invisible warm bath, as we wove our way through the maze of narrow streets to a bistro in an alleyway filled with brightly painted shutters and flower boxes. As we waited for the food to arrive, we started sharing what being devoted to Mary Magdalene has taught us.

  There’s scriptural evidence in the Gospel of Philip that Mary was referred to as his companion, or koinonos in Greek. This word can translate as married partner, counterpart, beloved, companion in faith. The fact that Philip goes on to relate that not only is Mary Christ’s koinonos, but that “he loved her more than all the disciples,” and that “he often kissed her on the mouth,” suggests that their partnership was also physical.

  Whether they were ever sexually united or not, for me, is less important than the fact that they were a couple, a duo, partners. That they were meant to be seen together, understood as a whole. That maybe part of Christ’s teachings could only be completed with and through her. What feels most important to me is that we’ve forgotten and willfully buried this aspect of Christ, that he was in love with Mary.

  Rose and I agreed that what this has meant for us spiritually—to have a belief in Mary as singularly significant to Christ that isn’t validated on an institutionalized level—is that we have to validate this belief for ourselves. We’ve had to become fierce about recognizing what’s true for us. And we both felt as though this is something that our devotion to Mary Magdalene has asked of us personally. We’ve needed to learn to believe in ourselves, in our own voice, in what we know is true, even if the world around us does not confirm this truth for us. Cultivating a sense of self-worth seems to be a compulsory part of the spiritual path of Mary Magdalene. Because we cannot believe in ourselves if we don’t remember that we are worthy of that belief.

  It felt good to be in communion with another woman who understands Mary as I do. And to be with someone who has dedicated her life to her in the same way.

  Her red thread kept catching my eye as she lifted her water glass for a drink. We remember her, it seemed to whisper. And now, we’re remembering each other. As if we’re circling back up, coming from out of hiding, out of the wilderness and into the clearing. Now, we can remember her together.

  I had a steady, assembly-line-like flow going of picking up a french fry, dunking it into mayo, and then hauling it into my mouth as we talked. But when Rose suddenly mentioned the Cave of Eggs, a mayo-tipped fry halted abruptly midair. My jaw dropped.

  “The Cave of Eggs?!” I said as both a question and an exclamation. Because at first it didn’t feel real. That it could exist. That my obsession with Mary Magdalene’s connection to the egg could be validated by a secret, mystical cave I had never even heard of before.

  “It’s a place for the initiated,” Rose said. “Not everyone finds it.” Then she showed me a picture of it and I could see why. This cave was clearly the yoni of the mountain. Its entrance was a rock version of a Georgia O’Keefe painting. Pure rose-petal folds of stone lined a dark opening.

  This is why I had come on the pilgrimage. Not to go to the cave the church has created in her honor at Sainte-Baume, as I had thought—the one I had heard about at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer almost 20 years before. I was here to find this secret cave. The Cave of Eggs.

  What I Heard in Mary Magdalene’s Crypt

  The soul replied, saying, “What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died.”

  — MARY 9:27

  The Mary Magdalene basilica in Saint-Maximin in the South of France sits back from a small medieval road built in the center of town. There’s a large square made of smooth, beautiful stone that stretches out before the entrance. When I passed through the doors, I didn’t feel like an intruder or an outsider, as I usually do. It felt like if there was ever a church where I belonged, it would be this basilica where Mary Magdalene is most revered, and most remembered.

  Rose was waiting outside to let me have time alone, to explore the church. She had driven me from Aix to this small village in Saint-Maximin. And then she’d helped translate for me at Le Couvent Royale, a convent turned hotel that’s attached to Mary Magdalene’s church. She explained to the receptionist that I wanted a small room that faced the church courtyard and that I would need a ride to her cave at Sainte-Baume in the morning. Rose’s face was glowing as she said all this. She was so small and powerful. She reminded me of Sarah-La-Kali, the patron saint of the gypsies, Queen of the Outsiders. Her devotion radiated off her skin. Her hand gestures to accompany her eloquent French were quick and graceful, almost hummingbird-like.

  The temperature fell nearly 20 degrees inside the cathedral. It was in the upper 90s outside. This region of France is sunny for the majority of the entire year, and in the summer months, there’s a steady, unrelenting golden light that pours down onto the bright ancient design of Saint-Maximin. The church with its thick stone somehow traps the cooler air, and its protection from the sun comes as sanctuary.

  There was a tall plastic Christ on a pedestal near the entrance to Mary Magdalene’s crypt. It was the kind that didn’t give me the creeps. Christ is pointing gently to his sacred heart blazing in the center of his chest. He’s in a red and gold toga outfit. And his one foot is bare and exposed beneath his robe as if he’s taking a step forward. I watched as an elderly couple approached him. They each kissed their fingertips and then placed their hands lovingly on his foot. It was a gesture I was certain they made very often together, maybe every day.

  Once they moved o
n, I stood so that his downcast gaze met me eye to eye. I had an earache and a slight fever. The three fates had been convinced I got it from all the swimming I did in the ship’s pool. As far as I could remember, I had never had an earache before. I kept assuming it would just go away, but it had gotten worse. I was dabbing some eucalyptus oil around my ears each morning to try to pull out the water. It made me smell bizarre, like a walking throat lozenge. I tried throughout the day plugging my nose and blowing out the pressure trapped there in my ears, but nothing had helped. It still sounded like I was underwater. Or holding my breath.

  I noticed the stigmata in Christ’s foot. This is what the couple must have kissed. I knew then that this life-sized statue was meant to represent the risen Christ. I pressed my fingertips to my lips and touched his lacquered-cement toes. I knew if anyone was watching, they would know instantly that I had never kissed Christ’s foot before.

  I descended into the crypt then, with my eau de Vick’s VapoRub following in a waft behind me. There are several even, polished steps that lead to the entrance. There’s an alabaster statue behind glass of Mary Magdalene reclining with her head tilted back as if hearing something that has overcome or overwhelmed her. Her eyes are closed, as if she’s listening intently within.

  Then there are several uneven stone steps that lead down into the crypt itself, clearly marking a more ancient part of the cathedral. It was even colder in the crypt. As I descended, I noticed that people had etched messages in the wall. The writing was an almost neon-white set against the dark stone. What caught my eye was a large M + C drawn within a heart. Sacred graffiti. I smiled. Then I ducked my head, held the rickety metal railing, and took the final three steps down. I tried to make sense of this odd-looking gate at the back of the crypt. I had to really squint and focus to see what was caged behind it.

  At first I thought it was some sort of scary golden eagle with a skull face. I got as close to it as I could and realized then that the golden wings weren’t from a bird but an angel. There were four golden angels holding up her skull from each corner. And the skull was wrapped in red cloth. I could just see the edges of it framing her skull in red. There was this odd, see-through glass bubble that protected it.

  The skull has been sealed inside this case since 1974. What is scientifically known about the skull is that it’s the skull of a female who most likely lived until about age 50, had dark brown hair, lived in the 1st century, and was not originally from this region of France. There is no scientific way to determine if the skull is Mary’s, but the fact that it has been venerated for hundreds of years as if it is seems to create a power of its own. A truth. She existed, this truth insists. She is a real figure of history and not just a legend. This skull has been paraded around Saint-Maximin every July 22 in honor of Mary Magdalene’s feast day for hundreds of years.

  My eardrum was throbbing from the infection. There was one of those adorable prayer stools right in front of her gold-encased, angel-supported skull. It had red velvet on the cushion for your knees and it creaked a little when I kneeled and placed my elbows on the wooden bar that extends up from the stool so your arms don’t get sore before your prayers are completed.

  In Mary 9:27, the soul ultimately triumphs. After confronting these seven powers of the ego, the soul is free. “Ignorance has died,” the soul tells us. The illusions of the ego that bind the soul are slain. Desires and illusions come to an end. But what’s left is what endures, and this is love. This is how I interpret Mary 9:27. Love wins.

  As I took a deep breath and began to meditate, all I could hear was this rushing fury of the blood coursing through my heart. My ear infection was creating an earplug effect. The lumbering, clamoring pump of my heart was insanely loud. It was distracting. All I could think about then was how hard it works, always. It’s this one constant. Without me even realizing it. It’s the one most important sound that keeps me here.

  Then in the silence of this inner clamor, I suddenly heard, “To walk with me is to walk as me.”

  Any and all projections were immediately powered down, like a movie projector coming to the end of the film reel. Veneration becomes a very different thing when you’re honoring another at eye level. The message to me meant that if Mary Magdalene owned all of her power, she wouldn’t want me to give away any of mine.

  There can never be a spiritual authority outside of me that is greater than this voice I hear within, this voice of my own uncaged heart.

  THE FIFTH POWER: ENSLAVEMENT TO THE PHYSICAL BODY

  The Princess of Mercy

  For centuries, Quan Yin, the Buddhist deity of compassion, was depicted in iconography as male. But then, at some point in the 7th or 8th century, Quan Yin morphed into a female. And it is believed that “he” became a “she” because of the extraordinary mercy of a princess named Miao Shan.

  Miao’s dad, the king, was the worst possible man. The kind of man, as his role in the story demands, that it’s very difficult to ever want to forgive. He tried to marry off the beautiful and brilliant Miao to an equally horrible, wealthy man three times her age, who lusted after her and wanted her as his prize. And the king wanted to secure more wealth and power for himself through the marriage. So when Miao refused, he banished her to a remote island off the coast of China to live in a monastery.

  Miao embraced her banishment. Yes, the island was barren, the nuns were starving, and they were all isolated from the rest of humankind. But, for little Miao, it meant she was free. And all she knew and tasted was the magic of getting to be her radiant, loving self every day.

  She didn’t see barren earth all around her, but a field of potential. She taught the nuns to garden and plant. And within several years, rumors were beginning to reach the mainland about the succulent vegetables and verdant gardens with beautiful blooms that had turned Miao’s island into an actual paradise.

  When the king found out that Miao was thriving, that his punishment in a sense had rewarded her, he ordered his guards to travel to the island and burn down the monastery, along with all the food and flowers Miao had helped grow.

  Supposedly, just as the monastery caught fire, Miao made it rain, shaman-style, by pricking the tip of her tongue with a hairpin. A torrential rainfall began and quickly put out the raging fire.

  This, of course, only made the king more furious. He then sent his executioner to kill Miao Shan for being such a disobedient daughter.

  Are you in love with her yet?

  I am.

  The king’s executioner was having a tough time, as he found it difficult to cut off Miao’s head. Every form of sword he used, no matter how mighty or sharp, would shatter the instant it touched the skin on Miao’s lovely neck. In some versions of her legend, he gives up, and she is spirited away by a glorious, glowing white she-tiger. In other versions, he finally succeeds and, before her last breath, Miao has already forgiven him. And the depth of the mercy he experiences from her forces him to his knees. And so, her executioner becomes her first devotee. Either way, Miao’s next stop is hell.

  She is spirited away to Yama, ruler of the underworld, and she immediately senses all the people suffering around her. She hears their screams, their urgent cries for help. And because she remains true to who she is, no matter where she is or what anyone has done to her, Miao responds to them with love. And just by turning toward them, listening to them, acknowledging their pain, she witnesses them where they are. This frees them. And so, one by one, Miao liberates each soul and slowly turns hell into heaven.

  Freeing souls from hell, however, is bad business for Yama. He knows that unless he wants to oversee an empty realm filled with flowers and souls in full bloom, he needs to kick Miao out. So he sends her back to life, with a gift: the peach of longevity.

  She lives in a cave, at this point in her story, as so many female saints seem to love to do at some time in the trajectory of their lives, and she emits an otherworldly fragrance of the most beautiful flowers in bloom. The cave is on the island of Putuo Shan, and she
lives here meditating every day for many years, in peace. She becomes well known as a healer, as someone who gives the medicine that only mercy can—an energy that doesn’t seek to fix or change, that never judges or shames, but rather just sees, accepts, and remains. A compassion that changes everything just by mirroring back to the one who is suffering that at last their voice has been heard.

  News reaches Miao that the king is deathly ill. And that the only way for the king to live is to receive the eyes and the arms of a person who no longer experiences anger. Miao immediately gives her eyes and her arms in order to save the king, her father.

  I know.

  Really, I seethed, sacrifice?! Martyrdom. This is the last message we could ever need. Self-harm, and self-sacrifice, has nothing to do with true love. I pounded against this story for a while. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the ending.

  But I had fallen in love with Miao.

  So I kept going.

  And I remembered, as I forget so easily, that the king is not a man separate from me. I am the king as much as I am Miao. All of these characters, all of the characters of every story, exist within me, within us all.