Christine
my stance today
So, where do I land in all of this? My approach is entirely mystical. My educated mind believes that we cannot know in a provable way what happened to MM and her children (if there were any). Also, my spirituality does not require a "bloodline" to validate the potency of the Grail as a source of blessing poured out for all humanity. I find inspiration from putting myself into *some* of the stories of MM, however I find other stories to be insultingly abusive of her, much like the behavior of some of the original Apostles when she was alive. Therefore I have settled on a "memory" of her that resembles a book of snapshots, glimpses of evocative moments, pregnant with meaning but by no means self-explanatory. I will probably spend the rest of my life contemplating what we do and don't, can and can't, know about her.
This points back to the reason I wrote down that musing "...on the Magdalene": If nothing else, the story of Master Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the very closest that Christianity comes to touching on the Sacred Marriage. This is what I consider the "central revelation" to be gained from our meagre knowledge of Mary Magdalen's life. We have lost most of the pages of her Gospel. We see her image warped and disfigured by the projections of the male Apostles and their followers. She is very nearly lost to us as an individual with thoughts and feelings of her own. But through it all, the fact that Master Jesus had a partner, whom he loved above all the other Apostles, and in whom he saw an awakened spiritual companion and partner on the Path, THIS is what I find compelling about her story.
Along those lines, and without expressing either approval or disapproval.... The work that is causing the most ripples in my pond of late is _The Magdalen Manuscript_ by Judi Sion and Tom Kenyon. You can see from the marketing on that one, that it will widen the wake of the MM legend without being able to add a single new fact or proof to the historical search. One of the Priests in my Order is making it the cornerstone of her ministry, a signal that leads me to believe that in the future we will be seeing "MM tantra" catching fire between spiritually-oriented couples who feel a resonance. (The scholar of Hebrew spirituality, Raphael Patai, in his book _The Jewish Alchemists_, reveals a legend of MM that indeed makes a link to very old stories of a Western Tantra. But the legend is entirely a-historical, as he easily demonstrates.)
This makes me feel that, like the Virgin of Guadalupe (sp?), Mother Mary, Sophia, the Shekhina and every other feminine hypostatic manifestation of the Divine ... well, She appears whenever and wherever and however She wants to! Perhaps the Anthroposophical approach will ultimately be the one that wins out.... Rudolph Steiner used to say that whatever human myths show the great Spirits of Time going through, *that is what happens to that energy entity in fact*! By this he meant, when a body of sacred stories undergoes subtle shifts from generation to generation, eventually mutating from one emphasis to another as human culture evolves, then that's *what is happening to the entity the myth reports about*! Therefore, whether MM actually made it to Marseilles or not ~in fact~, the 'eggrgore' of MM (the great corporate entity bearing her name, which has grown from an actual person into a body of stories, beliefs, and superstitions by 1400) DID indeed "land in a boat on a shore west of town", and in so doing inseminate the northwest coast of the Mediterranean with Divine Feminine energy which has been present for the people ever since.
But, hey, the historians will never buy *that*! <G>
Blessings,
Christine
www.tarotuniversity.org
So, where do I land in all of this? My approach is entirely mystical. My educated mind believes that we cannot know in a provable way what happened to MM and her children (if there were any). Also, my spirituality does not require a "bloodline" to validate the potency of the Grail as a source of blessing poured out for all humanity. I find inspiration from putting myself into *some* of the stories of MM, however I find other stories to be insultingly abusive of her, much like the behavior of some of the original Apostles when she was alive. Therefore I have settled on a "memory" of her that resembles a book of snapshots, glimpses of evocative moments, pregnant with meaning but by no means self-explanatory. I will probably spend the rest of my life contemplating what we do and don't, can and can't, know about her.
This points back to the reason I wrote down that musing "...on the Magdalene": If nothing else, the story of Master Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the very closest that Christianity comes to touching on the Sacred Marriage. This is what I consider the "central revelation" to be gained from our meagre knowledge of Mary Magdalen's life. We have lost most of the pages of her Gospel. We see her image warped and disfigured by the projections of the male Apostles and their followers. She is very nearly lost to us as an individual with thoughts and feelings of her own. But through it all, the fact that Master Jesus had a partner, whom he loved above all the other Apostles, and in whom he saw an awakened spiritual companion and partner on the Path, THIS is what I find compelling about her story.
Along those lines, and without expressing either approval or disapproval.... The work that is causing the most ripples in my pond of late is _The Magdalen Manuscript_ by Judi Sion and Tom Kenyon. You can see from the marketing on that one, that it will widen the wake of the MM legend without being able to add a single new fact or proof to the historical search. One of the Priests in my Order is making it the cornerstone of her ministry, a signal that leads me to believe that in the future we will be seeing "MM tantra" catching fire between spiritually-oriented couples who feel a resonance. (The scholar of Hebrew spirituality, Raphael Patai, in his book _The Jewish Alchemists_, reveals a legend of MM that indeed makes a link to very old stories of a Western Tantra. But the legend is entirely a-historical, as he easily demonstrates.)
This makes me feel that, like the Virgin of Guadalupe (sp?), Mother Mary, Sophia, the Shekhina and every other feminine hypostatic manifestation of the Divine ... well, She appears whenever and wherever and however She wants to! Perhaps the Anthroposophical approach will ultimately be the one that wins out.... Rudolph Steiner used to say that whatever human myths show the great Spirits of Time going through, *that is what happens to that energy entity in fact*! By this he meant, when a body of sacred stories undergoes subtle shifts from generation to generation, eventually mutating from one emphasis to another as human culture evolves, then that's *what is happening to the entity the myth reports about*! Therefore, whether MM actually made it to Marseilles or not ~in fact~, the 'eggrgore' of MM (the great corporate entity bearing her name, which has grown from an actual person into a body of stories, beliefs, and superstitions by 1400) DID indeed "land in a boat on a shore west of town", and in so doing inseminate the northwest coast of the Mediterranean with Divine Feminine energy which has been present for the people ever since.
But, hey, the historians will never buy *that*! <G>
Blessings,
Christine
www.tarotuniversity.org