In a year that sees the opening of yet another Hollywood movie that depicts Mary Magdalene, I would like to reflect on a bit of a disturbing aspect of what we have seen so far about her and ask the question was Mary Magdalene just a vessel for the Holy Blood?
The Biggest Secret?
The Da Vinci Code book and film were groundbreaking. Their huge popularity showed that the general public has an appetite for moving beyond the church narrative of Mary Magdalene and Jesus to finding out the truth.
Yet you could come away from the film and the novel thinking that the big secret that the church was trying to hide is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children and there was a bloodline of descendants. This was at least a change from Mary Magdalene being associated with prostitution. She was being placed back into her seemingly rightful position as Jesus’ wife and the bearer of his children.
The book was partially based on the blockbuster non-fiction book of the 1980s Holy Blood Holy Grail. Whether either project had intended this, you could be left with an impression of Mary Magdalene as just a vessel. In fact, in The Da Vinci Code, Mary Magdalene is called, ‘the Holy Vessel’. She is likened to the Holy Grail at times – the chalice that held the holy blood. This places her womb as a receptacle for the blood of Jesus, meaning his child, and emphasises that this is why she is important.
This is a progress, I guess, as it has moved Mary Magdalene from the status of sinner to that of wife and mother. And yes, that is something to celebrate, but it could also be seen as hiding other demeaning attitudes which I will discuss. It is also totally at odds with the vision of Mary Magdalene that I witnessed back in 2001.
The status of motherhood in today’s society
Bringing Mary Magdalene’s status up to mother and vessel for a Holy Baby and seeing that as the ultimate elevation does tie in with social attitudes that still prevail that say that no matter what a woman does, her ultimate purpose is to be a mother.
Although motherhood is, of course, a state that is highly important that often goes unrewarded in society, to say that it is the only ‘purpose’ of a woman is an insult to mothers and all women.
This is a highly complex issue and I do not want to go into it fully in this article. Suffice to say that when we honour a woman just because she is the oven that the bun goes into, we do women a disservice. We are saying that the only purpose for someone as a human being is that they can reproduce and take care of another human being.
The Oven for the Bun
I certainly witnessed whilst working on labour wards that women are suddenly given care and attention that they have probably never received before but ultimately it is not about them and who they are but their ability to bring another person into the world which really is out of their conscious control. A woman cannot consciously force herself to conceive as the scores of infertile people in the world can corroborate.
So to say that motherhood is the ultimate purpose for women is to actually honour something that is coming through them, not from their conscious thoughts. We are actually saying that they do not matter as a person, just this process of conception that is not under their conscious control. (The job of raising children is another matter – I am discussing the act of becoming a mother.)
By saying Mary Magdalene is the grail and vessel that receives the Holy Blood we reduce her to being the oven for the bun. It seems to me like yet another taming of a woman to conform to what is expected in the lens of the society that we have now.
If you want any proof of this you only have to look at the reams of press given to the status of Jennifer Aniston’s womb. It seems that no matter what success a woman has, she can only be truly acceptable if she has a child. High Profile women such as Jennifer Aniston and Kylie Minogue who do not have children seem to provoke nervous twitching from many quarters of society.
A lost feminine power
What I saw in my visions of Mary Magdalene in 2001 was a woman like nobody I have ever met because such a woman would not be possible now. She was a learned person but not in the way we would recognise because she had knowledge of a nature that existed before science and spirituality split off from each other – when it was just knowledge of the universe.
The closest we have to this sort of knowledge is what we call sacred geometry but the very fact that we have to add the term ‘sacred’ to it shows just how far removed we are from the unity of knowledge that used to exist. It used to be just knowledge: it didn’t need the ‘sacred’ title.
She also combined the science and spiritual, the male and female and an inner power in a way that women today would find difficult to embody. This is because we have a lot of the sense of feminine power in our society. For many years now, in Western culture, feminine power has been extinguished to the point where most people don’t even know what that is.
So when we see female empowerment in our culture today it is when a woman takes on what has traditionally been a man’s role – fighting for example as seen in the film Kick-Ass.
This is what passes today as female empowerment but it is not necessarily an expression of feminine power. That is a muscle that is so disused in many Western societies that it is just unfamiliar. It is still present in some other societies around the world and you can see it if you witness women elders of tribes being honoured for their wisdom.
This lack of feminine power hurts both men and women – when men are told that being emotional or vulnerable is weak, they end up suppressing their emotions. This could be a factor in the higher suicide rates in young men.
What I saw of Mary Magdalene was that she didn’t just bring her womb to the table but the whole person. She was powerful and learned in her own right. The research I have done and guidance I have been given in the terms of visions has led me to a conclusion as to who she might have been as a historical figure. If you would like to see my full insights on this check out The Magdalene Mystery School.
Was Mary Magdalene a teacher in her own right?
We see glimpses of what I think is the real Mary Magdalene in what is known as The Gnostic Gospels. The Gospel of Phillip and indeed the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, have sections that suggest that Mary Magdalene has special knowledge given to her by Jesus, something that caused protests from the other disciples.
There are also many traditions around the world that say that Mary Magdalene was a teacher – one of the most popular ones is that she ended up in France. Usually, this assumes that she was teaching the information that Jesus had passed on to her and this could well be. But there is a hint in Luke’s gospel that she could have had her own independent life as it says that she was one of a group of women who were funding Jesus’ ministry.
It is an enigmatic passage and speculation about these women being rich widows has been circulating for centuries. But what if she was an independent woman with her own money and her own ideas? I have written elsewhere at how I am shocked at how many women were teachers in the early church. Is this because Mary Magdalene was setting an example?
It is still taboo in our society to think of a woman as independent with her own opinions today. I think this sketch puts this across rather well.
Hence when we think of Mary Magdalene we are still seeing her through our lens which is that ultimately a woman’s purpose is motherhood.
Conclusions and visions for the future
In my visions, Mary Magdalene was both a mother and a person in her own right with her own ideas. Wouldn’t it be radical if we saw Mary Magdalene like this today? Maybe with the shifts in society happening at the moment, we may even start to see all woman in this way: as people in their own right whether married or not, mothers or not. We may, at last, recognise women as more than just vessels for another’s teaching or bloodline and see Mary Magdalene in a new light.
Images: Giphy, Public Domain, Youtube embedded
