Eggs White and Eggs Red and The Philosopher's Stone

Peter has always tended to regard this woman as something of an upstart. That he has done so perhaps might have had to do with a simmering yet unvoiced resentment that she, a mere woman, was clearly so highly regarded by their beloved rabban Yeshua. Poor Peter; impulsive by nature, at times even hot-headed, and driven by a misplaced and oh-so-human jealousy. Eventually, as inevitably they must with him, his emotions rule his actions and he decides to press the issue and challenge Mary of Magdala, Mary the Magdalene.

Seizing the moment, Peter confronts Mary as she happens to be carrying some freshly-collected eggs in a basket. The confronting challenge is as direct as it is simple: to prove her divine worth Mary must change the pure white eggs in her basket in some dramatic and fundamental way. And there before Peter’s astonished gaze all the white eggs instantly turn a deep and vivid ruby red.

There are several variations of this story, which has been used as a charming explanation as to why we have the custom of painting eggs at Easter. We might wonder whether it was Mary’s own spiritual power that caused the miracle, or whether some aspect of the Divine stepped in to cause the change independently of her own will. Perhaps it matters little which of these two alternatives is correct, because the point of the story remains the same: Peter’s doubts about who had a claim to the Divine spirit were dispelled in that moment.

The symbolism in the story is plain enough: white is used to represent the purity of the Lamb, and red is for the Saviour’s blood shed to redeem us all. This is the accepted version – and the accepted familiar symbolism – of Christianity. But is that really all there is to this story? This post might have ended here, but this story, like all stories that have such an apparently simple appeal, contains profound and unexpected depths.

The story, like so many of these stories which embroider upon scriptural settings, appears to be medieval, and it is a medieval alchemist’s study that we need to visit to continue this more mysterious thread of our story further. The creation of that fabled treasure of legend, the Philosophers’ Stone, included three principal stages. The second of these two, known as the whitening or the albedo, was -if the procedure was followed carefully!- succeeded by the triumphant stage known as the reddening or the rubedo, which was the appearance of the blood-red Stone itself. It need come as no surprise to us to learn that this most precious Stone was symbolised by an egg, and the egg itself was said to contain all the elements united.

The white further represented the alchemist’s mystical ‘philosopher's mercury’ -representing the human soul- and the red the ‘philosopher’s sulphur’ -representing the human spirit-, and it is the constant mingling of these two which caused the treasured Stone to emerge. To possess the Stone was no small achievement, as it was said to confer the power of immortality upon its owner. And in the end, is this not the true message of Easter? Redemption offers eternal life, and Easter is nothing if not a story of redemption.

So perhaps this coming Easter if you happen to be at home or elsewhere painting eggs, you might remember that you are not merely remembering Mary’s miracle, but are also creating a replica of the fabled Philosophers’ Stone! 

The Two Gardens

In chapter twenty of John’s gospel we learn that Mary Magdalene, having encountered two angels in the empty sepulchre where Jesus had lain, turns around and sees a figure whom she presumes to be the gardener. From these brief details of scripture we can picture the entire setting: We are told that Mary does not actually enter the sepulchre but merely looks through the entranceway from which the great stone has now been rolled aside. And we also are told that the figure is a gardener: the sepulchre must be set in its own garden, which is what we would expect of a tomb owned by someone as wealthy as Joseph of Arimathea.

The ‘gardener’, as Mary realizes, is the risen Jesus. “Touch me not” Jesus cautions her, for he is in a state between realms, halfway between the physical world and the realm of the spirit. These few brief verses give us no indication as to Mary’s emotions. We are merely told in that moment of recognition that she addresses Jesus as ‘Rabboni’ or Master. But we readily can imagine how Mary must have been overwhelmed with astonished joy!

So here is Mary, poised at the entrance of the tomb, poised between the world of material life and the world of the spirit, and here is Jesus, also poised between those two same realms. They are both in a state of awakening. Through her life’s contact with her spiritual master, this is Mary’s moment: the essential transition between the teachings of the way of the spirit and the actuality of the spirit’s presence and the conquest of death itself. And this also is Jesus’ moment: his farewell appearance both to Mary and a little later to his disciples in his material form before he becomes Spirit forever.

But why would Jesus choose the form of a gardener? Great happenings tend to move in great cycles, and this is visualised by the image of the Ouroboros – the serpent holding its own tail in its mouth. So let us follow that image back to another serpent – or perhaps it is merely the same serpent in another guise.

We are in Eden. Adam the gardener tends his garden: we even refer to this place as the Garden of Eden. And at the centre of this garden is the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, which we know is really the tree of mortality, of the death of the physical body, should its fruit be eaten. Adam and Eve inevitably eat of the fruit and so lose their immortality, and must incarnate into the material world, with death waiting at the end in the hard world beyond the garden’s walls. But the second gardener in the book of John is the mirror of these events in the book of Genesis. Adam the gardener of Eden was in transition from the spiritual to the physical. Jesus the ‘Gardener’ is in transition from the physical to the spiritual.

What now lies before Mary is a task in the world, of living out the ultimate lesson of the spirit which she now has witnessed and learned in that far-off garden by the sepulchre. Her master awaits an even more profound awakening in the realm of the spirit, but for Mary it is the message of the joy of life that conquers death which lies on her lips now.

Stained Glass of Jesus and the Magdalene designed by Edward Burne-Jones

The Anointing

Mary Magdalene has become known to us as the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus. Her action in doing this is traditionally interpreted as a gesture of humility and devotion, but if we look beyond the doctrine, then other more meaningful possibilities open themselves to us. 

The Magdalene was a woman who deeply loved. She loved a man who did not just give love, but who was Love: who inspired her on her way to consciousness, to complete incarnation, and so to become his spiritual equal. She loved Jesus with all her heart and soul, and therefore placed something in his being which made him also complete, so that in him also the male and female could connect in their essence and the Kingdom would be revealed to them both.

And then the great turning point came in both their lives: the baptism in the River Jordan, for it was then that Jesus became Christ: the Anointed One. He felt the forces in him extend themselves beyond his own individuality, and he knew that another life awaited him: a life in which he had to leave the personal self behind to be outshone by something unnameable. With the act of baptism the earthly Jesus of Nazareth was united with the pre-existent Christ: the Logos, or Word, and from that moment Jesus the Christ became the vessel of universal consciousness.

Jesus and Mary remained husband and wife, but no longer in the sense of having any conventional partnership. As difficult as it must have been for the Magdalene, she knew that this was how things were meant to be. Her silent strength grew, for not only did she accept all that was, and was to come: she actively stood by – and beside – her husband. In this earthly life she was the only one who understood in depth what he was truly saying, what the innermost meaning of his words were. She knew it, she felt it, it ran through her with force and warmth.

But what equanimity was demanded of her! She sensed Jesus’ coming death, and her heart was filled with grief. How her soul must have been torn apart, how the ground beneath her must have trembled, when she stood in witness to the horrific death of her beloved. But again she stood up to meet him once more. "Hold me not", he spoke to her. And she understood. There was no need to hold him physically, for she knew that he and she were One.

Transformation is everything, and great suffering offers great transformation. Jesus into Christ. And Mary now into an aspect of Wisdom - Sophia. People came to listen to her, but they did not understand what she was telling them. With sorrow she saw the ways in which the words of her beloved were turned into stone – how the deeply-meaningful teachings of the inner mysteries became distorted by all-too literal interpretations, how groups came into being, and how schisms occurred as each group disagreed about what was meant, and what it was correct to believe. Mary/Sophia, the witness to history, saw how a church was formed.

Mary Magdalene in our time shines forth as a symbol of the lost feminine aspect in a male-dominated society – a society to which the church also belongs. But her gentle force has not been lost, for in the cosmos nothing dies, it is only transformed. The Christ-consciousness, the Buddha-nature, and the Krishna-consciousness are present in each and every one of us, and yearn for discovery. And so also the force of the Magdalene is still tangibly present in our own time, if we allow ourselves to be open to it.

And those ‘more meaningful possibilities’ of Mary’s anointing? This most special woman already knew all that was to come. Her act of anointing was notably not done with water, but with precious oil. Even then, in that house in Bethany, she had begun to prepare the body of her beloved for earthly burial, and the one who anoints is as blessed as the one who is anointed. 

   

Who was Mary Magdalene?

Who was Mary Magdalene? Church tradition tells us that she was the ‘repentant sinner’ who in Luke’s gospel washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, before drying them with her long hair and anointing them with precious ointment from an alabaster jar. This is the way in which Mary has been portrayed countless times in art, but this idea of her is based upon a mistaken assumption by Pope Gregory I in the 6th-century, who seems to have confused Mary, the sister of Martha, with Mary Magdalene – a confusion of names which has turned into a traditional portrayal of Mary Magdalene as ‘the woman with the alabaster jar’.

How is it possible, then, that what seems to be such an obvious misunderstanding about these passages in scripture could last for fourteen long centuries? A story which endures for so long tends to point to greater truths. Can we reach beyond this early pope’s misunderstanding to discover why this image of Mary has had such a powerful hold on the human imagination?

Some three centuries before the pope made his erroneous assumption, a manuscript was written that would lay undiscovered in the Egyptian sands before being rediscovered many centuries later in an ancient rubbish dump near the town of Oxyrhynchus – a valuable archaeological site which has also yielded some of the poetry of Sappho. The manuscript is now known as the Gospel of Mary. It offers us a very different picture of Mary Magdalene from the Mary of church tradition: a Mary who is the most loved of Jesus’ disciples, who is the closest to him, and to whom he entrusts the inner mysteries of his teachings. In this rediscovered gospel Mary offers these teachings to the other disciples: instructions about the visions of the mind, the perceptions of the spirit, and the ascent of the soul. 

Intriguingly, we are told that Mary addressed these teachings to her ‘brothers and sisters’, making it clear that other female disciples were present, and were therefore also among this inner circle of followers. Mary tells these things to the disciples after Jesus’ last post-resurrection appearance. The other disciples are feeling alone, afraid and demoralized, but it is Mary who rallies them, who urges them to keep their courage, and who assures them that they are not alone. In this text Mary emerges as a woman of deep spiritual insight, personal courage and dignity. Is there any way in which we might square this very different Mary of the gospel which bears her name with the Mary who holds the ‘alabaster jar’ of church tradition?

The woman is the vessel. She is the bearer of new life, and so is also the bearer of the most treasured and valued mystic secrets. The awe which surrounds the woman as the carrier of the miracle of life has been expressed in figurines carved from mammoth ivory many thousands of years old. To hold these mysteries is to hold a vessel, whether that vessel is expressed in the idea of the womb itself, or in the Holy Grail, or in an alabaster jar whose contents are described as the most precious and costly of all.

Noli Me Tangere

Noli Me Tangere

‘Noli me tangere’, he quietly said

‘Do not touch me.’

But how could I not reach out

for my Dear One?

How could I not long to hold

even the hem of his garment,

gain some measure of substance

for what I had thought was lost to me?

Around us, all was still.

Even the birds had fallen silent

in the still air of that miraculous place

as if in wonder at this marvel.

And I, overcome, reached towards him.

‘Noli me tangere’, he softly said

in caution and in love.

Neither man nor shade,

but part of both these things:

a creature between worlds,

between realms, between kingdoms,

between what has been

and what is still to come.

And I reached out to him.

But ‘noli me tangere’, he said.

And I must stay my hand

And my great longing.

And so I showed him my greatest love

as he intended, and as he already knew.

For what he already knew

was that he would never be lost to me.

And my greatest love, in knowing this,

was to let him go.

   

Painting of Mary Magdalene by Louis Janmot Mirror

The Mothers

The Mothers

They are saying that he is of us all.

If this is true .. and we trust that it is so ..

and he truly is the son

then he also must be our son

and we, his many mothers.

What, then, must we think

when we see him ride between

the waving fronds of palms?

What, then, must we feel

when he passes by us,

almost close enough to touch?

Donkey and colt are enough

to carry him to his destiny.

But we, the mothers

who line these streets

to watch him pass

among the adoring fronds 

do not see a king, triumphant.

We see no crown, no royal robes,

no hem to kiss, no kingly sword. 

We do not see the one

whom those around us

hail as lord.

We, the mothers, only see our son,

and as mothers know these things

we see only the dear son

for whom we soon must mourn.

For the crowd, he leads,

and they will surely follow.

But he himself must follow his own road

And where that road must go

and our grief will be the grief 

only a mother’s heart can know.

Riding the Donkey

Scripture tells us that, just one week before his crucifixion, Jesus rode in triumph into Jerusalem. We also are told that, before this ride of triumph, he was very specific in his instructions to his disciples about the animal that he wished to ride. As we know, it was a donkey. He even told his disciples where they would find the specific donkey that he wished to ride for the purpose. We might ask why such a humble animal was the mount of choice for this moment of supreme acknowledgement and recognition of Jesus’ earthly worth. 

The worldly reason might have been a practical one: a donkey certainly would have been a readily-available animal. And the symbolic reason might seem apparent enough: what more humble animal than a donkey to underscore Jesus’ own humility? What more telling way to demonstrate to the crowd that they might hail him as a king, but that his own trappings of kingship were the very things of their own everyday use? This is as far as explanations usually go. But is it possible to go a little further, to dig a little deeper, to discover that there is more to this tableau of humility and triumph than at first seems apparent?

A carving which was discovered on a pillar in Rome depicts, of all things, a crucified donkey. This rough carving, which dates from the second century, might at first seem mocking: perhaps the equivalent of a political cartoon of its day. But the image points us towards a mystic teaching of Gnosticism, in which the donkey is symbolic of the human ego. And a fitting symbol it is! Like the obstinate and stubborn donkey, the ego can be unruly. We might wish to go in one direction, but the donkey (and the ego) insists on asserting its own will, on telling us that it is the most important thing there is, and its will carries us along with it.

Putting the ego in its place, triumphing over its illusory dominance, is a striving common to various beliefs. In Zen Buddhism it is symbolised by the bull, which in its temperament is seen as being much like the wilful donkey. To ride the bull is therefore the embodiment of subjugating the pompous ego, of achieving a necessary detachment from the forest of illusions which clamour for our attention and insist to us that they are real.

But riding the bull, riding the donkey, is not the final phase of the process. In these mystic teachings we are told that only with the complete defeat of the ego will true transcendence find place. The bull will itself be seen as an illusion and will dissolve and vanish. The donkey will be sacrificed on the cross of worldly pretence - and the man as well. For the supreme triumph is not the ride, but the moment of ultimate transcendence that will surely follow.

Painting Christ's Entry into Jerusalem by Hippolyte Flandrin, 1842

Cherokee basketweave cross by Baskauta

The passage in scripture can be found in Matthew 21:1-7

Mary Magdalene

These days

the handful of silent stars

to which she projects herself

is more than enough.

There was a time

when she aimed for the sun

and love set all alight.

But now her sun is the pain 

that goes on beating down.

Her heart finds no shade

and all is night.

Only for the pale and distant stars

does she now cast a shadow

but even her star-cast shadow mourns:

the sun stops the perfect completion

for which she yearns

here in this place

beneath the silent stars.

But here…

where sky and sea

and stars and alien shore

enfold her in their sanctuary

and winds of grace

dry up the muddy pools once more…

Here…

where passing clouds

shut out the face of night

her tearful footprints

mirror boundless light.

Imagined portrait of Mary Magdalene painted by David Bergen.

Resurrection

Birth, life, death and resurrection. These are the eternal themes which are reflected in the great myths. A hero is born miraculously – perhaps from the union of a god with a mortal woman. That hero lives his life, performs his heroic deeds, dies a noble and dramatic death, after which he is resurrected as an immortal constellation among the stars.

In nature as well these epic themes are played out in the cycle of the seasons, as we – and our remote ancestors who were crucially attuned to these things – witness each year with the awakening of new life in the spring after its seasonal death in the cold soil of winter. Even in those desert places which have no temperate seasons, the dried husks of seeds can lie dormant in the hard sun-baked ground, sometimes for years, before an infrequent downpour awakens them to sudden life, and the desert blooms like a garden.

The act of resurrection is like a truth that is encoded into the matrix of life, and we respond to that truth when we encounter it in stories. For the Christian Gnostics, the events of the Biblical resurrection were not so much intended to be read as simple history, but as events which mirrored these great truths, which provided a kind of teaching aid to remind them of these profound lessons of life. And these lessons carried a deeper meaning than mere rebirth. Resurrection involves redemption: redemption of the inner self, a shedding of those things which might hinder the process of true spiritual resurrection. These could be a breaking through the ego which tricks us into thinking that our mortal selves are the only reality, or even just the letting-go of those ideas that prevent us from seeing such things in a clearer light.

The letting-go of all these things, of all preconceptions of what make our ‘reality’, is the path of resurrection. But to tread that path involves a process of inner ‘dying’ – not physical dying, but the death of those things which might be holding us back from reaching our true fulfilment as beings intimately connected with, and part of, the greater Mystery.
  
It is no coincidence that the Christian Easter takes place at the time of the year that originally was reserved for the celebration of this process in pre-Christian times, for Christianity layered itself on top of these old festivals, just as churches were often built upon the demolished foundations of pagan temples and other pre-Christian sacred sites. This as well gives an added potency to the Christian story, and the events of the Christian Easter, which unfold upon the greater stage of mythic drama which lies beyond the stage of historical narrative. Easter is the time of resurrection, and a person who takes part in that resurrection during his life, has conquered death.

This is the crown of the Christian Initiation Mystery. He who resurrects in a gnostic sense, has it in his power to work through joy, and to take part in the divine plan of creation. It is a grand perspective, and one which we can let ourselves be inspired by – and not only at Easter!

The Carpenters

The Carpenters

Ours is a work of wood.

It’s what we do, you see:

shaping, planing,

one piece to the other,

length by length

and beam by heavy beam,

cut from the cedar tree.

Adze, plane, auger and saw

chest for a dowry, lintel for a door.

There’s two of us

here in this workshop

scuffing through shavings,

with orders stacking up

and another just come round:

three more beams needed -

only the cross-beams, of course.

The long uprights

wedged, thrust deep into the ground

stand waiting up there on the hill

and we wonder:

this time, who’ll ride the thunder?

Maybe three rebels,

their shouts of sedition unheeded

or they could be three robbers,

bound for heaven or hell - 

or neither of these, who’s to tell?
As if confirmation was needed.

They say some prophet on a donkey

who was greeted like a king

rode by a week ago or more.

But prophet or king,

he’ll wear our wood on his back

and that’s for sure -

bent with the weight of earthly folly

and there’s no lack

of that  - not yesterday

or any time before.

So we’ll shape this tree for a king

and we’ll shape it good

and he’ll carry it up that shadowed hill

and he’ll feel the rub of our wood

and he’ll know its tender mercies

and they’ll be both his and ours

but he’ll feel the weight of our wood no more

as it carries him to the stars. 

Painting: artist untraced

Rachel, a Woman Disciple

Rachel, a Woman Disciple
on Jesus, the Vision and the Man

I often wonder whether Jesus was a man of flesh and blood like ourselves, or a thought without a body, in the mind, or an idea that visits the vision of man.
Often it seems to me that he was but a dream dreamed by countless men and women at the same time in a sleep deeper than sleep and a dawn more serene than all dawns.

And it seems that in relating the dream, the one to the other, we began to deem it a reality that had indeed come to pass; and in giving it body of our fancy and a voice of our longing we made it a substance of our own substance.

But in truth he was not a dream. We knew him for three years and beheld him with open eyes in the high tide of noon. We touched his hands, and followed him from one place to another. We heard his discourses and witnessed his deeds. Think you that we were a thought seeking after more thought, or a dream in the region of dreams?

Great events always seem alien to our daily lives, though their nature may be rooted in our nature. But though they appear sudden in their coming and sudden in their passing, their true span is for years and for generations.

Jesus of Nazareth was himself the Great Event. That man whose father and mother and brothers we know, was himself a miracle wrought in Judea. Yea, all his own miracles, if placed at his feet, would not rise to the height of his ankles. And all the rivers of all the years shall not carry away our remembrance of him.

He was a mountain burning in the night, yet he was a soft glow beyond the hills. He was a tempest in the sky, yet he was a murmur in the mist of daybreak. He was a torrent pouring from the heights to the plains to destroy all things in his path. And he was like the laughter of children.

Every year I had waited for spring to visit this valley. I had waited for the lilies and the cyclamen, and then every year my soul had been saddened within me; for ever I longed to rejoice with the spring, yet I could not.

But when Jesus came to my seasons he was indeed a spring, and in him was the promise of all the years to come. He filled my heart with joy; and like the violets I grew, a shy thing, in the light of his coming. And now the changing seasons of worlds not yet ours shall not erase his loveliness from this, our world.

Nay, Jesus was not a phantom, nor a conception of the poets. He was man like yourself and myself. But only to sight and touch and hearing; in all other ways he was unlike us.

He was a man of joy; and it was upon the path of joy that he met the sorrows of all men. And it was from the high roofs of his sorrows that he beheld the joy of all men.

He saw visions that we did not see, and heard voices that we did not hear; and he spoke as if to invisible multitudes, and ofttimes he spoke through us to races yet unborn.

And Jesus was often alone. He was among us yet not one with us. He was upon earth, yet he was of the sky. And only in our aloneness may we visit the land of his aloneness.

He loved us with tender love. His heart was a winepress. You and I could approach with a cup and drink therefrom.

One thing I used to understand in Jesus: he would make merry with his listeners; he would tell jests and use plays upon words, and laugh with all the fullness of his heart, even when there were distances in his eyes and sadness in his voice. But I understand now.

I often think of the earth as a woman heavy with her first child. When Jesus was born, he was the first child. And when he died, he was the first man to die.

For did it not appear to you that the earth was stilled on that dark Friday, and the heavens were at war with the heavens? And felt you not when his face disappeared from our sight as if we were naught but memories in the mist?

Kahlil Gibran - from Jesus, the Son of Man, 1928

Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

The Turning Field of Stars

Deep in myself,

too deep for me to reach

is the earth

I am that earth.

The heavens wait for my arrival

I am those heavens

which stretch down to receive me.

I am a pilgrim

travelling this wheel of stars

seeking a new heaven

and a new earth

I am those stars

that watched and saw

how the old heaven and the old earth

had passed away.

And so among the turning field of stars

I tread the underworld above

to free myself from these cycles

of dialectic powers:

these eons with their traps,

temptations of thought 

before I'll find that light

which leads me through the refining fire

to my transfiguration

and the resurrecting of the inner God.

Painting by Briton Riviere