[Author’s Note: This essay in four parts is my webinar talk given to the Ubiquity University online Chartres Community Meeting ‘Madonna Rising’ August 14th, 2020]
Mary Magdalene or Mary of Bethany Part 4
Eleven years after this, Mary had to leave Palestine suddenly because of the assassination of King Herod-Agrippa, the ruler of Judaea in 44 CE, for which the Nazarenes or followers of Jesus were blamed. It is highly likely that when she embarked for France, she took with her precious texts relating to the teachings that she and Jesus had shared with a close group of disciples, possibly even the text of The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, a Gospel that has only recently come to light.
Mary Magdalene travelled to France with her sister Martha, her brother Lazarus and Mary Salome, Jesus’ sister, who was married to Lazarus. Mary travelled widely in Provence and the Languedoc and taught there for nearly 20 years until her death in 63 CE. Legends about her abound in this region of France and there is a village called Les Labadous near Rennes-le-Chateau in the Languedoc where she is said to have lived. She is also said to have lived for some years in a cave on the Sainte Baume mountain, named after the precious oil she used to anoint Jesus. Her brother Lazarus buried her in a small church called Saint Maximin-La-Sainte-Baume and to this day the Basilica of that name holds her relics, including her skull. These were guarded for many centuries by Cassianite monks who were devoted to her memory.
The troubadours who carried this hidden tradition all over Europe under the cover of the Quest for the Holy Grail, called Mary Magdalene ‘Notre Dame’ and ‘The Grail of the World’. The Knights Templar held Mary Magdalene in the highest honor as the patron of their Order. Until their Order was disbanded in 1314 CE, they secretly guarded the heretical knowledge that she was the consort of Jesus and the mother of his children. They called her ‘Our Lady of Light’ because they saw her as the embodiment of Sophia or the Holy Spirit.
In 2010 The Gospel of the Beloved Companion: The Complete Gospel of Mary Magdalene, was published in France.[1] It has been translated by Jehanne de Quillan from the original Alexandrian Greek into English with a commentary by her. This Gospel is believed to have been brought from Alexandria to the Languedoc in the early to middle part of the first century when Mary herself was in France, possibly by her. It was translated from Greek into Occitan, the language of the Languedoc, in the early part of the twelfth century. Since then it has been passed in a closed community from generation to generation, until the present time. It fills in the vital sections of text that are missing from the version of the Gospel of Mary that is already known to us and that is also in the Nag Hammadi Library. It truly is a momentous document for anyone interested in the teaching of Jesus or Yeshua as he is called in this Gospel, and the relationship between him and the Beloved Companion whom he calls Miryam. He also calls her the Migdalah or the Tower, saying that her tower will stand by his in time to come. It was astonishing for me to find, following everything I have written about the Shekinah and the feminine gender of the Holy Spirit, these words of Yeshua’s: ‘My words are the Way, the Truth and the Life. For my words are given of the Spirit, and no one comes to the Kingdom except through Her Teachings.’ (35:12)
In this Gospel that has been so unexpectedly restored to us, we can at last hear the missing words that Mary spoke to the disciples when they had gathered in her house at Bethany a week after the crucifixion — words that conclude with this vision:
“I felt my soul and all that I could see dissolve and vanish in a brilliant light, in a likeness unto the sun, and in the Light, I beheld a woman of extraordinary beauty, clothed in garments of brilliant white. The figure extended its arms, and I felt my soul drawn into its embrace, and in that moment, I was freed from the world and I realized that the fetter of forgetfulness was temporary. From now on I shall rest through the course of the time of the age in silence. And then, as from a great distance, I heard the voice of my Master tell me, ‘Miryam, whom I have called the Migdala, now you have seen the All, and have known the truth of your self; the truth that is I Am. Now you have become the Completion of Completions. (42:13)
When Mary had told them what Jesus had said to her, Peter said: ‘Did he really speak privately with this woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?’ (43:3) It is evident that the disciples listening to her revelation had no idea of what she was talking about or what her vision meant. Peter and Andrew said they did not believe what she said and their words made her cry. Levi, another disciple, defended her, saying that surely Jesus knew her better than all the others. ‘That is why he loved her more than us.’ And so, baffled and uncomprehending, the men went their separate ways.
I have no doubt, on reading this Gospel, that Mary Magdalene or Miryam, as he called her, was the beloved companion and consort of Yeshua and possibly the only one of the Apostles who truly understood and transmitted his teaching.
Think what it would have meant for the development of western civilization if the union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been celebrated by the Church founded in his name. Had their union been recognized at the inception of Christianity, the emphasis on celibacy as the path to spirituality might never have existed. We might have been spared the disastrous association of sin with sexuality and the misogyny and mistrust of and contempt for women that affects our culture to this day. We would have had a living image of a sacred marriage right at the heart of Christianity. It may not be too late to restore this relationship and undo the harm that has been done by its absence.
Tau Malachi writes in The Gnostic tradition of the Holy Bride: “From the Sophian perspective, the idea of Christ consciousness being revealed exclusively in a male form, apart from the female form, is considered incomplete and goes against the very nature of our experience, for the Life-power is equally in men and women, and Christ consciousness is essentially the same whether embodied in a man or woman”[2]
We need to know that each one of us, male and female, carries the Divine Light within us that is called Christ Consciousness. Jesus and Mary Magdalene had each experienced that Light-Consciousness. Through their union and their love, the sacred marriage was enacted and the First Temple tradition of Love and Wisdom restored. All this is carried in the image of the Black Madonna.
It may be that the Soul of the Cosmos has waited aeons for us to reach the point where more than a handful of individuals could awaken, as Mary Magdalene did, to awareness of the Divine Ground that animates and supports the whole of our existence. This is her message to us. This is the sublime message that is carried in the image of the Black Madonna and in the stones, sculptures and glorious rose windows of Chartres which together manifest the Presence of Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit.
For over sixty years I have treasured these words received by my mother in a channeled message in the 1940’s: “The Divine Mother is the Holy Spirit who presides over the New Age. Inspired by her, women, through their love and understanding, have been given the task of awakening in humanity the compassion and devotion to life taught by Me at the beginning of the Piscean Age. Man, through woman, will realize in himself the sense of his mission on earth and see clearly as in a mirror, the law of the universe.”[3] This is the message of the Two Mary’s of Chartres.
Suggest a picture of the Journey to France (Giotto) and one of the Black Madonna of Chartres. Or any painting you like of Mary Magdalene or Fra Angelico’s Meeting of Jesus and Mary in the Sepulchre Garden.
(End of the Essay)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Anne Baring
[1] Éditions Athara, Foix, France. Available in English from Amazon.
[2] Tau Malachi, St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride, p. xvi
[3] https://www.anne-baring.com/anbar35_messages.html