Some Notes on Mary Magdalene
SOME NOTES ON MAGDELENE'S FEAST DAY July 22, 2022
Mary Magdalene can be linked back to an archetype of the Primordial Dark Feminine. She was certainly cast in that role by breaking the patrichical norms of her time. Traveling alongside men as an equal rather than a subordinate.
Because she was a powerful apostle, and priestess, the Roman Church cast her out as a whore. Her part of the story was extraordinarily inconvenient for them. And so, they set about using her juxtaposition to the Virgin Mary, to highlight yet another dualism. Women are either Madonna, or Whore. But never both. And so Mary Magdalene became a cautionary tale. A woman who was given Mercy and Acknowledgement only after she submitted to the cult of Christianity.
This feminine split between light and dark, good and bad, is not new. From Inanna & Erishkagel, Isis and Nepthys, Eve and Lilith to Mary and MM, even, Athena, and Medusa; dominator culture has co-opted these figures' stories in an effort to subjugate women. Making a cultural “monster” out of one, while the other holds the qualities of light, and often of cultural purity. Totally sidestepping the mystical meaning of the dark sister.
From birth we’ve been poked and prodded by dominator culture to embody the good girl, the virgin, while our more human desires have been labeled dirty.
The Madonna/ Whore Complex was first identified by Freud in an effort to try and explain why some men were not attracted to their wives, yet had no problem performing with a mistress, or “whore”. But what he was really naming was something far deeper. He was naming the very paradigm women exist inside of.
As internalized misogyny is finally being explored, as we look at the myriad of ways we agree with and uphold dominator culture as women, we are beginning to see where we’ve projected this split onto our own lives. It is impossible to have grown up inside this paradigm and not have internalized the Madonna Whore Split within our own psyche. Remember, Mary Magdalene is the Lady in Red, and the “Scarlet Letter” was mandatory reading in high school. Indoctrination.
I remember as a young women, having sex out of wedlock, yet again. And feeling the sting of internal shame and disgust, as I cried on my bathroom floor begging God to forgive the dirty sinner that I was. Wishing some outside sky daddy God, would wash me clean, and make me pure yet again.
People have a lot of different ways to commune with Mary Magdalene. Some see her as one half of Divine Union. Heiros Gamos. Some see her as the Bride of Christ, or the Feminine Christ, a symbol of the “Way of Love”.
For me, I see her as a radical. Someone who dared to defy patriarchal norms. Who refused to be labeled. Who refused to submit her mind, body, and will, to the prevailing thoughtforms of her day. Who lived her life above and beyond misogyny. When we think about the culture she was embedded in, she was the walking embodiment of feminine liberation.
Through working with her in this way, she can help us integrate or collapse this internalized split within. The “dark sister’s” were always one person. One person, who embodied both the dark and the light. Who held the codes to both the upperworld, and the underworld, the day and the night, life and death.
She is Venus, Keeper of the Rose Lineage, integrated consciousness, embodying paradox, collapsing dualisms, edgewalker, and initiator, guiding us towards deep inner gnosis, so that we can walk as love, real love, mature, refined love.
