Who was she?

She was our queen, our spiritual guide, our wise woman who knew our pain, our shame, our self betrayal, our abandonment.  She would be the perfect choice to carry his message to the world.

To restore her powerful, alchemical, world-changing message, we need to rediscover who she really was? Today, as an obviously masculine religion is explosively reacting in terrorism around the world, one can't help wondering why we are so silent about the other half of who we are as a human race?  All human beings contain within our individual psyche a masculine and feminine principle and yet the masculine has been endorsed, empowered and activated in almost every religion and world government, society and culture on the planet.  We all have both and now we all need to release the power of the authentic feminine - in men and women - to balance the insanity that threatens life on our planet. 

If she carries his message, to receive his message, we need to understand who she was and is.  This is just the beginning of that discussion.  We need to understand what it is in man's ancient hunt of the female that taunts, tempts, teases him still. How powerful is the magic of the fully integrated female? 

The male-dominated world of Rome, followed by the male-dominated world of the Roman Catholic Church, defined and dominated the western world by oppressing along the way the instinctual nature of women. Unchallenged and unbalanced, the masculine principle, in its effort to control, raged across western Europe. It became the beast of Revelation as it set out to homogenize humanity, molding it into an image of itself by killing the spirit of creativity and autonomy in all people, but especially in the female.

The campaign to eliminate the female power in Christ's message began by dismissing her, as mean men often dismiss women, by condemning her sexuality.  Instead, they set as the standard of the divine feminine, a soft, maleable, vulnerable, self sacrificing, submissive woman - a kind of pretty girl standard, a prepubescent female. To be very blunt, the out of control masculine principle has a thing for female pedophelia.  So, again, what kin dof power is there in the authentic feminine principle that frightens the male heirarchy so much.  Clearly, Jesus valued her full womanhood and by leaving her as his messenger, there is something about her he wanted us to realize.

So, who was she?

Ancient legends say she had been given in marriage to a wealthy man to satisfy her worldly father's personal status goals and her mother was equally blind to the beauty of the spirit in her young daughter. On the road to her betrothal, she and her female servant were robbed, beaten and raped and taken away into slavery.  Later, she was sold and was forced to work as a prostitute.  Her heart grew cold and closed.  She felt only loathing and found a way to kill the man who sold her.  She also grew strong and defiant and eventually became a wealthy woman.  Still in her 20's, something stirred in her.  Distant memories of her own deep spiritual self seemed to whisper to her, to call her away.

She packed up her belongings and traveled to a Galilean mountainside where she saw him speaking to a crowd gathered around him.  He was radiant and brilliant.  His voice and his words resonated deeply within her heart.  He looked at her and in that single glance, she knew somehow her life would never be the same.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," he seemed almost to chant.

She felt every word he spoke.

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the peacemakers ... (Matthew 5)

His love of the humble, the poor, the disenfranshied, the marginalized, all those who have been oppressed, depressed, used and abused by a greedy political culture of power and control, that enslaved and used almost everyone, awakened her mind to a new freedom, a new hope for her life and for everyone else who sat there in the sun, listening to him.

"Are we not all whores to this world?" she thought, considering the falseness of those oppressive Roman leaders and her own parents and the others in the higher eschelons of social power.

And so it was remarkable that this itinerant preacher, filled to overflowing with the light of heaven and the holy spirit, would or could love her, a broken hearted, poor in spirit, oppressed, shame-filled woman.

But, he did. She was like those whom he wanted to elevate out of the prejudice and oppression.  She became an ambassador because she was poor and hungered for righteousness and love.  She understood every word he spoke.  She knew more clearly than most what it felt like to be hungry, poor, victimized and then to be restored and healed and filled with the same holy spirit that radiated from him.  It soon radiated from her also. Her selection alone would be his final and lasting message to the world.  He left his ministry in the hands of a woman.

When he knew that his time would be ended by those power brokers of this world, he knew only this woman would be the one he would select to carry forward his message to the world, to the broken, pitifully devalued, precious people of God.  He knew the meaning of this choice, that he would leave the mission to her.  The male disciples couldn't quite understand his message about an inner kingdom.  Some did and most didn't.  But, she did.  She would have to be the one.  

What irony that the Christ would invite such a woman to carry on his ministry and yet how appropriate.  She would typify everything he taught, he believed in.  She, a marginalized woman in every way, would be the conduit of the Christ spirit.  And, so it was that she was chosen.

Her path was challenged by the disciples and then Paul and by the entire male dominated infrastructure of the world in which she lived.  She had to avoid Rome and carried her newborn child into the desert where she was cared for by the angels as her dearly beloved had been.

She knew the Christ spirit would be hunted by the control freaks who felt threatened by the free abandon, uncontrollable life-giving creative power and love of the Christ who filled her.  She longed to share this spirit with others.

Mercifully, she was supported by friends who took her to a safe place, a place where the ancient Goddess had been worshiped, a place that understood, albeit in a primitive way, her value.  She lived out the rest of her days passionately in love with her lord with whom she communed in the spirit.  She taught many the ways of the spirit, guided them into the deeper knowledge of the spirit, guided them into the kingdom within where they, as she, encountered the beloved, the realms of light and love.  She was faithful to her mission and lived to be very old.

Through her the ministry was fulfilled.  Despite her persecution throughout the centuries, now, her spirit has awakened among us, again, like a divine Sleeping Beauty. The time is now when the world needs her spirit.  And, soon, perhaps, her lord will return.  Perhaps.

Above: "Mary Magdalene" from St. Simon Catholic Church in Los Altos, California