Why Mary Magdalene is Popular with Spiritual Women
The rise of the feminine movement and sacred sex
Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute.
She became a prostitute around 500 years after her death. In 591 A.D., Pope Gregory proclaimed her a “sinful woman,” a euphemism for either a sex worker or a promiscuous woman. It was not until 1969 that the Catholic Church corrected its “mistaken” identity: Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute.
But, as any woman who has ever been slut-shamed knows, the stigma persists.
Mary Magdalene reclaimed by the feminine movement
Despite being baptized twice, I was not raised Christian—apart from celebrating Christmas and Easter. I remember being surprised to learn that Jesus was Jewish when I was young. I don’t remember when I first heard that Mary Magdalene wasn’t a prostitute. But I’m sure I found it more reason to find Christianity a hypocritical and oppressive institution.
Although I proclaimed myself an atheist in my twenties, I was always a spiritual seeker. In my thirties, my seeking took me to greater depths during a serious illness and my spirituality shifted from an intellectual pursuit to a life-saving one. This is when I came across a growing movement dedicated to “the Feminine.”
I have written about my journey with getting in touch with my feminine energy but all you have to do is search the hashtag #divinefeminine on Instagram to view 4.3 million posts to get the gist. And the gist is this. Women in the personal development space are exploring their feminine energy. Often, practices center around the embodiment of this energy as distinct from masculine energy. There is a spiritual dimension as well such as a resurgence of ancient goddesses, such as Kali or Isis, as powerful archetypes of the divine feminine.
Some women in these spaces have left feminism while others identify as feminists. Or somewhere in between. However in this Feminine Movement, as I’m calling it, there is an examination of upholding toxic models of masculinity as “empowering” for women.
For example, the “boss babe” trend has been reevaluated as an unhealthy template for women to mimic masculine business models (such as encouraging competition over community, burnout, etc.) with consequences on women’s health. Moreover, and I may just be speaking for myself, not all women are looking to infantilize themselves in millennial pink or refer to themselves as babes (aka babies).
Enter Mary Magdalene, a grown woman associated with the color red.
Mary Magdalene is a historical woman, who was neither a virgin nor a whore. In her gospel, Jesus gives her secret teachings because she is spiritually advanced enough for them, unlike the male apostles.
Mary Magdalene has become an inspirational figure to modern-day spiritual women because, for one, she is a tad more relatable than a mythical goddess. She was human, probably had sex, and was a woman of independent means (though not related to sex work).
Another reason Mary Magdalene is popular is for her spiritual authority. Relatively recent discoveries of her gospel and other early-Christian scriptures that didn’t make it into the Bible’s final cut, reveal that she had a position of spiritual leadership and influence within the early Christ movement.
This leadership appeals to women who resonate with the feminine energy yet aren’t interested in relinquishing the rights that feminism has bestowed upon them. So many spiritual authorities and gurus have been men, and sexually abusive. Mary Magdalene is a model of a new kind of spiritual leadership, a feminine one, that we rarely see. Not for millennia.
Mary Magdalene reclaimed by the feminist movement
Mary Magdalene was first reclaimed by feminist theologians and academics starting in the 1980s. Examination of her gospel, The Gospel of Mary, which lay buried for more than fifteen hundred years, reveals Mary Magdalene as a powerful teacher and preferred disciple of Jesus.
In the eighties, feminist writers were also excavating widespread, prehistoric goddess worship that male archeologists in the previous century had diminished as “fertility cults.” Thousands of years ago, humans worshiped the feminine, not the masculine. The Goddess, not God. Women’s power was connected to childbirth. Men consulted oracles and priestesses. Their roles were different from men’s but respected. It wasn’t about one gender dominating the other (patriarchy or matriarchy). Understanding our pre-history, before the written word, I believe, is important to position Mary Magdalene not as an outlier but as an echo of the lost millennia when women’s wisdom was venerated.
In the mid-twentieth century, the discovery of three early Christian texts— the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Mary—show that Magdalene was an important player in the early Christ movement and had a preferential relationship with Jesus, including understanding his teachings better than the other apostles and receiving secret teachings from him. In her gospel, which takes place after the crucifixion, the apostle Peter asks Mary:
“Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than all other women. Tell us the words of the Savior that you remember, the things which you know that we don’t because we haven’t heard them.”
Mary responded, “I will teach you about what is hidden from you.”
(Gospel of Mary 6:1–4)
The Gospel of Mary and these first-generation gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible have been relegated as “gnostic” by historians. To be clear, there was no such thing as “Gnostics” in the first centuries of Christianity. There were only dispersed communities of men and women (including slaves) practicing Christ's teaching in secret, without hierarchy. That is until the Nicene Creed under the Roman emperor Constantine institutionalized Christianity from a movement into a religion in the early fourth century.
In a series of councils of all male bishops, over the next few hundred years, women were barred from spiritual authority. Scriptures that circulated in those early Christ communities were destroyed, especially those that spoke of Mary Magdalene as Christ’s companion and of women’s equal authority. Celibacy was championed, including the creation of a virgin Mary (the mother of Christ). And Mary Magdalene became a whore.
Mary Magdalene reclaimed by ex-Christians (& Christians)
I’ve never read the Bible, so I’ve relied on the works of Christian scholars to learn about how Mary Magdalene shows up in it. She plays a significant role as:
- witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion and being present at his burial
- the first to discover his empty tomb and the first to witness/interact with the risen Jesus (earning her the title “Apostle to the Apostles”)
- probably was the unnamed woman who anointed Jesus shortly before his crucifixion from an alabaster jar of spikenard (Christ comes from the Greek Christos, meaning the anointed one)
With the addition of her role as a teacher of Christ’s message, women who have left the Church are being drawn back by Mary Magdalene. Her corrected identity from a prostitute to a spiritual authority has created a fertile ground of healing for women who left the Christianity of their upbringing due to its abuses and intolerance (sexism, homophobia, racism, and pedophilia) and created an entry point back into Christianity. But it is a Christianity without church or dogma, which is, in essence, Christianity in its original form.
In asking women about their interest in Magdalene, one 33-year-old woman told me:
I was raised Catholic, got very far away from the church, and then I started having visions of Jesus a few years ago and was prompted to reevaluate my relationship with God. I really believe she [Magdalene] is a crucial part of the story, but she’s been vilified by the church. The only thing I remember learning about her in school was that she was a prostitute.
Even in the twenty-first century, girls are still being taught her false identity. Why?
Is it a coverup that she was really Jesus’ wife? This question, triggered by the mainstream book and movie The Da Vinci Code, has let loose modern-day imaginations and academic inquiry.
Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene married?
Mary Magdalene’s possible romantic relationship or marriage with Jesus has scant but potent evidence in an early Christian gospel, written in the third century. It was hidden in the fourth century in a jar in the Egyptian desert, along with Mary’s gospel, and discovered by a local farmer in 1945.
This is the Gospel of Philip with its lightning-rod line: “Maria the Magdalene — she is the one Savior loved more than all the disciples and he used to kiss her on her mouth often.” (GPhil 63)
Except that the word mouth, and other words in the damaged section, are missing.
In Philips’ gospel, Mary Magdalene is also referred to as Jesus’ koinōnos, an ancient Greek word for companion or mate. In the Bible, koinōnos is used to refer to a spouse but also a companion in faith. As mentioned earlier, in the Gospel of Mary, the apostle Peter admits Jesus loved Magdalene more than all the other women. (GMary 6:1)
Much of the Gospel of Philip is about a sacred marriage rite that seemingly involves a transformative sexual union in which two become one. This may sound familiar to anyone knowledgeable about tantric or yogic sex, used to achieve states of spiritual enlightenment in some Eastern traditions.
From these texts, we don’t know for sure whether Jesus and Mary were spiritual partners or sexual partners, or both. The reconceptualized Jesus-Mary relationship is not one of teacher-student but an equal partnership of two powerful teachers, though perhaps with different roles. In modern parlance, “spiritual partnership” is accompanied by conscious sex where the body is honored and sex is used for sacred union between committed partners, a vehicle to become closer to the divine/God, or for healing.
The reverence for Mary Magdalene among heterosexual spiritual women is often rooted in the desire for a sacred-sexual partnership with a masculine man. While these women are working on embodying the divine feminine, there are men also doing the work (often called “men’s work”) to embody the divine masculine to become “conscious men.” Masculinity, in its healthy expressions, is not viewed as negative or toxic. Jesus would be an example of the ultimate conscious man.
When I’ve looked into channeled texts of Mary Magdalene, and when I spoke with a friend who channels her, she appears to be a figure to help women heal sexual trauma. This connection grew stronger the deeper I dove into today’s Magdalene culture, which includes spiritual orders of women dedicated to her wisdom, mystery schools, priestess training programs, and lots of rose iconography. Plus, self-initiated pilgrimages to the south of France, to her cave, where many believe she spent her final years after fleeing Roman persecution.
There is also a connection to the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis. Interestingly, Mary’s gospel — the three copies or fragments of it — were all discovered in Egypt. The cult of Isis was active in the Roman world when Mary Magdalene was alive and lived in Roman Judea. Isis is associated with sex magic, her consort is the god Osiris, and there’s his resurrection story where she brings him back to life and gets pregnant. I read one fictional account of Jesus’ resurrection where it is Mary Magdalene who brings Jesus, her beloved, back to life through her skills as a trained priestess of Isis. In Magdalene mythology, Jesus and Mary have a child named Sarah.
Sex is one association that Mary Magdalene does not escape from across time: whether she was a penitent prostitute, engaged in tantric sex with Jesus, or is supporting women heal sexual trauma in the present day.
What is the message of The Gospel of Mary?
But when you actually go to the text of her gospel, it’s not what you’d expect. It’s not sexy. Translated from Coptic (there are also two fragments existing in Greek), it’s challenging to understand. Plus, there are words and multiple pages missing. Mary’s gospel is dated to the second century and its authorship is unknown.
To understand it better, I joined Zoom sermons with Harvard-trained, feminist theologian Meggan Watterson. Through these monthly teachings, I learned what Jesus meant when he tells his disciples in Mary’s gospel “For the child of true Humanity exists within you.” (GMary 4:5)
According to Watterson, being a true human being (which is rooted in the Greek word anthropos) is about being both truly human and truly divine. It’s a both/and. Not an either/or. There doesn’t have to be a choice between the flesh and the soul, between carnal desire and purification. The human parts aren’t less than our spiritual parts. Watterson writes: “This is what Mary became, and it’s why she was so beloved to Jesus. She didn’t seek to follow him; she sought instead to become her true self.” (The Divine Feminine Oracle, p.3)
Mary Magdalene’s message is about returning to our true nature. She gives us permission to live and love fully as humans while finding our own guidance inside, within our hearts, to unite with our souls. In other words, to become our soul incarnate.
The word God is never mentioned in Mary’s gospel but the Good is. And Jesus tells Peter, “There is no such thing as sin.” (GMary 3:3) In this context, a union between Mary and Jesus doesn’t feel sacrilegious. It feels sacred.
Her remembrance comes alive in us
A few months ago, I was visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York City on a self-created tour of the sacred feminine. I started in the antiquities wing with a 6,000-year-old statue of the Goddess—called a “marble female figure” by the placard—from ancient Greece.
As I moved from room to room, goddess to goddess, I felt a sense of calm descend even amid the busy galleries. I watched a field trip of teenage boys, wearing black shirts with white clerical collars, gather around a bare-breasted statue of Aphrodite.
When it was time to find food and a bathroom, I dashed through medieval art only to be pulled to a halt by a statue in the darkened wing. I stood there at first not knowing the identity of this holy woman.
I read the placard. I was surprised to find this image of Magdalene not penitent or bearing her breast in sorrow but—to project a modern word onto her—empowered.
Standing before her in the dimly lit gallery, I silently revealed my heart. I was waiting, uncertain, for a longtime crush with a rose tattooed on his forearm to DM me back. I was aching for a partner. Then, I received a powerful transmission of peace and centeredness. It was a gift to bring to men, my alabaster jar, and I carried it with me the rest of the day.
And sometimes, when the remembrance comes, I embody her assured peace into the world.
Recommended reading:
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Karen L. King
Mary Magdalene Revealed, Meggan Watterson
The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, Cynthia Bourgeault
The Magdalen Manuscript, Tom Kenyon and Judi Sion
Rituals in Sacred Stone, Wencke Johanne Braathen
Recommended viewing:
Mary Magdalene: Jesus and his Early Followers (Biography documentary)
Mary Magdalene (movie, 2018, dir. Garth Davis)
