Perspective and Possibilities on Mary Magdalene
Weaving a Tapestry of Hope from the Good Within Our Midst
If we move beyond the boundaries of good and bad, we can shift our perspective to new possibilities and the potential for expansion. We want to know who Mary Magdalene is and what she has to teach us about our individual capacity for healing and positive transformation. The Magdalene Thread reimagines Mary Magdalene as the feminine embodiment of heart-based spirituality and extraordinary faith. By gathering and weaving threads of goodness into essays and conversations, we reveal a tapestry of hope to inspire your spiritual sovereignty. Through stories, science, and ancient spiritual wisdom, we seek to redefine the narrative, demystify wholeness, and amplify the truth about Love, as we have not yet known it.
Alicia + Kelly
The Good Within Our Midst
Peter said to him, “Since you have explained everything to us, tell us one other thing. What is the sin of the world?”
The Savior said, “There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called ‘sin.’ That is why the Good came into your midst, coming to the good which belongs to every nature, in order to restore it to its root.”
-The Gospel of Mary
These words from The Gospel of Mary confront us with a timeless debate about our true nature, the purpose of our existence, and the polarities of human experience.
The first and only known gospel written in the name of a woman, the words in this text turn sin upside down, sitting in opposition to Peter’s Church and the doctrine of Judeo-Christianity.
What if sin isn’t what we think it is?
The word itself reveals a truth to us: to “sin” comes from the Greek word hamartia, or the Hebrew word hata, both of which mean “to miss the mark.”
Are we inherently broken sinners in need of external salvation? Or, are we innately good, on a path of embodied learning, with potential for positive transformation?
What happens if we consider a new perspective on an old familiar story? And what does Mary Magdalene have to do with any of it?
Who Is Mary Magdalene?
Answers to the question of who Mary Magdalene was swing from sinner to saint, whore to holy woman, penitent prostitute to leader of the early Christian community. There is no short answer to who she was, which means this centuries-old question demands both attention and deep contemplation.
Since the unearthing of The Gospel of Mary in 1896, scholars and researchers have slowly revolutionized how we view her. New information and the positive light it casts on Mary Magdalene, alongside the Catholic Church’s embrace of her as the “Apostle of Hope,” has led to Mary’s rise in our collective consciousness.
Yet, when you go searching for Mary Magdalene, the plot seems to thicken—at least as an everyday woman:
Where do I even begin?
This question reflects the confusion we feel after taking a step towards Mary, because we are confronted with a cacophony of voices speaking with an equal amount of passion and contradiction about who she was.
Spend enough time following her trail, and you will recognize that the conversation about Mary is fragmented—from the hallowed halls of academia, to mysterious channeled esoteric texts, the question about “where to begin” is followed by:
What is true, and what do I believe?
At The Magdalene Thread, our inclusive approach draws out the goodness in the various opinions on Mary across a multitude of domains. By considering a nuanced and holistic perspective, our intention is to demystify Mary and all she encompasses, allowing her multidimensional nature to mirror and empower our own.
What’s Missing
When we begin to commune with Mary’s story, it becomes clear that she has been hidden in the shadow of tradition and rumor. As we recognize all the ways she has been marginalized, we innately sense that she embodies what is missing.
What’s missing and Mary Magdalene? Why does that sound familiar?
Where does this lead you but straight into the mystery surrounding the Holy Grail. What Mary and the Grail each reflect, at their root, is a deep longing to find and reintegrate all that’s been lost. The story of the Grail, with the fascination it elicits, has an intricate connection to the divine feminine.
The feminine is missing from Western culture and the Christian tradition. The repercussions are clear and present in our daily life, from exterior division in war and politics to the personal crises of mental health and chronic illness.
What does the feminine really represent?
There is no linear answer, as the feminine is the ineffable, ruling the realms of our emotional nature, our intuitive senses, all that is unseen and unknown, and the mystery of creation itself. This is why, as far back as we can tell, the goddess has been associated with nature, as the earth models to us these cycles of life, death, and rebirth.
While progress has been made to consider the feminine archetype, the imbalance is so pervasive that healing demands patience and conscious effort. It is a labyrinth walk to bring the feminine to light in a masculine-dominated world of logic and materialism, let alone integrate it.
The Magdalene Thread recognizes the need to restore balance through a mindful exploration of the divine feminine encompassing both the ancient mythology of the goddess and the story of Mary herself. Across cultures and genres—from history and literature to ideas and symbology, our aim is to facilitate integration and cultivate wholeness.
Wholeness
Wholeness is perhaps as misunderstood as Mary Magdalene, and as elusive as the Grail.
What is wholeness?
Wholeness is mistaken for a stagnant state, conflated with the perfection we falsely believe is attained through a straightforward trajectory of growth external to ourselves. We chase rainbows on the horizon, yet being whole requires a delicate dance between determination and surrender as we navigate life and its variety of unpredictable experiences, seeking opportunities for learning and growth.
Introspection has been an alluring spiritual path across cultural traditions that challenges the individual to enter a place where there is no formula or measurement for success. Mary Magdalene’s teachings reorient us within while holding the intention to know thyself and recognize the goodness in our own nature, which is eternally a reflection of the good within our midst.
The reality is that we are not linear: the cyclical nature of our being is reflected by the seasons of change and the eternal process of life-death-rebirth. All that feels messy, complex, and even broken is a resistance to the natural form of life and of our true essence, which unfolds in a spiral.
What if there is nothing wrong with us?
Even if our modern existence insists we are wrong, the failure we feel is not personal, but structural. We are left little room for an authentic process of becoming. Transformation requires patience, humility, and a willingness to experience, honor, and accept all that we feel and are.
This comes from turning inward, to what The Gospel of Mary calls the “nous,” and kindles a deep intuitive knowing. While many translate “nous” as “the mind”—aligning with left-brained masculine qualities—a more accurate interpretation of nous draws upon the right-brained feminine qualities which are harder to define, but described as “the space between” or “the eye of the heart.”
What if we’re looking from the mind, when the treasure is in the heart?
The Magdalene Thread shares a kaleidoscopic, holistic view of Mary Magdalene to hold a higher level of understanding of who she was, what she meant, and all that she mirrors to us about wholeness. With a shift in perspective and new possibilities around Mary, our hope is to inspire a way of spiritual sovereignty.
A Tapestry of Hope
Most don’t pause to realize how extraordinary it is that a woman, let alone a leader, rumored to be an equal teacher and even a married partner to Jesus Christ was not harmed or martyred for her steadfast faith. Equally miraculous is the resilience of her memory—for while her reputation was intentionally destroyed and her worthiness dismissed, she has withstood all of it—remaining “The Tower,” indicated by her moniker, “Magdalene.”
Holding this higher perspective reveals an abundance of possibilities for Mary, and what she might mean to us in our modern world.
The Magdalene thread traces unseen connections across time and space to uncover a treasure of truth, magic and miracles that illuminate our inherent goodness. By gathering these threads, and weaving them with love, we reveal a tapestry of hope to inspire your spiritual sovereignty.
A tapestry begins with color, shape, and texture meeting each other in surprising ways, and the pattern becomes a story, open to symbolic and personal interpretation.
To begin a tapestry, warp threads are established first and held stationary—in a vertical pattern on the loom, their intention is to be resilient and hold the foundation. Our warp threads are research, logic, critical insights, and a history-based lens. Weft threads are variable in nature and in their different sizes, weights, and colors, they create the pattern in the fabric. Our weft threads are intuition, synchronicity, and moments of wonder and awe.
What happens when we choose to transcend the duality of our wholeness and recognize the power that exists in unconditional Love?
Every source has a filter on the truth, influencing our perspective, new possibilities, and the momentum they might create. At The Magdalene Thread, we believe that fear is an illusion–there is only love, and we meet you here to reimagine Mary Magdalene as the feminine embodiment of heart-based spirituality and extraordinary faith.
xx,
Sources
Shared roughly in order of inspiration:
All quotes from The Gospel of Mary are from A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts
Pope Francis I on Mary as the Apostle of Hope.
Karen King, a Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University was the first to bring her gospel mainstream in The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
Cynthia Bourgealt brings the perspective of a modern Episcopal priest in The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity.
Holy Blood Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln layers the complex puzzle pieces across history, symbology and legend that inspired an uprising of new theories on Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ - this is Dan Brown’s source material for The Davinci Code.
Margaret Starbird’s avant-garde hypotheses on Mary Magdalene and the connection to the sacred feminine across multiple books, beginning with The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail.
Jean Yves Leloup’s is a French theologian, writer, and translator of Greek and Coptic texts brings a deeply contemplative and poetic voice to his translation of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Susan Haskins book Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor covers 2,000 years of Mary in art, literature, and history to give a cultural understanding who Mary was and all she encompasses.
Joan E. Taylor and Elizabeth Schrader Polczer thoroughly outline the case for the true meaning of “Magdalene” in their journal article The Meaning of Mary Magdalene.