The Divine Bride

The return of Mary Magdalene into our consciousness can be understood as a collective necessity to revitalise our connection with Sophia: the intuitive or female way of 'knowing' and 'being' - knowledge which comes from the heart (see my earlier post "Sophia - The Breath of Life"). This 'wave of awareness' is becoming increasingly necessary to make it possible to integrate the presently-dominating male energy with its neglected female complementary Sophia energy. The return of the Magdalene therefore is not so much about the historical Mary Magdalene whose sandaled feet walked beside those of Jesus, but is more about the primal concept of the bride, who is the divine completion of Christ the groom.

Many of us now feel that the time has come to honour this 'holy union', because of our growing awareness that we need both male and female energy, on all levels of existence and of consciousness. We ultimately need a balance - a balancing of both male and female energies - to become whole once more. These are basic cosmic principles. Where only the sun, as a symbol of the male, rules, we find barren desert.

In our times we begin to hear the 'voice of the bride', the sacred aspect of Sophia. We must now also begin to listen by giving her back the role of Divine Completion and Partnership. In Christianity this completion lies enfolded in Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. In India in Shiva and Shakti.
Many such holy couples can be found in ancient religions, and all represent the life-force and the eternal return of Life. Divinity is not just an echo of a painting on a ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. It is everywhere. Each one of us enfolds something holy imbued by the Divine. And so the ultimate holy matrimony is present in every human being who unites him/herself with the spirit of its consciousness.

Close-up of Frieze in the St. Volusien’s Church in Foix, France

In the Heart of Heaven

Are you feeling restful? We usually take this question as meaning that we are being asked if we feel at ease and contented, if our thoughts are peaceful and untroubled. If all is well with us then it is nice to be able to reply in the affirmative. These are the states of wellbeing in our everyday world, but supposing that we alter the question slightly.

Supposing instead the question is: are you at rest within yourself? Now there is a deeper meaning implied: something which hints at a state of rest beyond simply ‘feeling restful’. The key word seems to be ‘within’. This, we sense, is something beyond feeling merely at ease about things. It carries the promise of a deeper world that is somewhere accessible: a peace beyond even ordinary contentment. But do we even have to feel good about things to reach this inner level?

Even when the ocean is a raging storm on the surface and great white-foamed waves are tossing and rolling, we know that deep beneath those waves all is calm in the depths, where the silent blue waters remain indifferent to the fury of the weather above. So perhaps it is possible that in our own lives we can reach this deeper peace, even when the events around us are filling our every thought with stress and confusion. The storm may rage around us, but these still, quiet depths within ourselves are always there and always accessible. But how are we to access them?

In one of the Gnostic texts known as ‘The Paraphrase of Shem’ the creative Light utters the mysterious phrase:

AI EIS AI OU PHAR DOU IA EI OU

This strange phrase seems to be beyond translation: unrecognisable as a known language, perhaps it is intended as a magical incantation. But in spite of this ambiguity we need not wonder about what is being said, because the following passage in the text gives us the intended meaning: ‘I am in great rest’, is what the Light is saying. The text further explains that in this blissful state all impurities are burned away in the presence of this purest of lights, and a state of rest like no other is offered.

Perhaps only in the heart of heaven is such perfect rest attainable, although we still may taste its sweetness, perhaps through the practice of meditation, or maybe we might use our own methods, such as listening to a favourite piece of music, or reading some choice lines of poetry, or being in a particular place where we feel contented and at home, whether in deep woodlands or by the sea’s shore.

Such places, such states, might seem to be a solitary activity, but always they are a dialogue, a communion with the Divine. In such moments, and without words, the Light is speaking to us, reminding us that even when we are by ourselves, even when we are only one, we still remain, and always will be, One.

Painting by Vasily Polenov

The Veiled Goddess

In the west of the Nile Delta in the times of the Pharaohs was a sacred centre called Sais. In the heart of the centre stood a temple, and in the courtyard of this temple stood a statue of the goddess. Engraved upon the statue’s plinth was this mysterious description: “I am all that has been, all that is and all that will be, and no mortal has raised my veil.”

The Greek writer Plutarch, who tells us of this inscription, further tells us that the statue was that of Isis, although the centre is now known to have been dedicated to a more ancient goddess known as Neith. The goddess Neith had associations with weaving and the loom, and this powerful creator goddess was said to have used her loom to weave the world into existence. The power of Neith was therefore not so much that she could create, but that she could create without the need of a god. Neith was complete unto herself.

It was Neith who gave birth to the life-giving sun, Ra the great, who went on to create all things in the world. Ra is so powerful, so glorious, that even now we know that we cannot look directly at his face for too long without risking damage to our eyesight. But what of Neith? The mysterious inscription tells us that no mere human has raised her veil. Is the inscription a warning? Would the sight of the face of this goddess be too overwhelming for us to bear?

This idea is echoed in the Greek myth of Semele, the mortal woman who begged mighty Zeus to reveal his face to her. The god obliged, and Semele was struck dead on the spot. But is this idea what is also intended for Neith? The fact that feminine Neith is a goddess, not a god, seems somehow to alter the picture. In the nineteenth century Neith became a favoured subject for artists who, surrounded by the growing advances of the time in science, interpreted the subject of lifting the veil of Neith as uncovering the secrets of the natural world. In this interpretation, each new discovery of science was lifting the veil of Neith just that little bit farther. It is science that is raising the veil of the goddess! But is it?

Gnosticism, which itself is steeped in such mystic ideas, suggests that there are two different kinds of mysteries: there is the kind of mystery that might not be known to us now, but will in time come to be known. But there is also a more powerful kind of mystery: the kind that by its very nature is mysterious, that always will remain an unknown. The inscription on the statue of Neith clearly tells us that the goddess is eternal, that she is beyond time. She is “all that has been, all that is and all that will be.” These are things that no mortal can know. We cannot know of things which are yet to come. We cannot raise the veil of the future. 

The veil of wise Neith remains lowered. Her features always will be hidden from us, and for that we should be grateful. In refusing to lift her veil the goddess has given us a precious gift. We cannot know what is to come, and so we must learn to live in trust.

Sculpture  Le Souvenir by Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, 1885, detail

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. 

   

The Mystic Marriage

Is all which I now see around me truly the result of my brief presence on Earth? Has all this truly been done in my name? I came among you with a single intent. Not, as you seem to think, to win redemption for all of you for the sin in Eden (how could you imagine such a thing?). There was no Fall in Eden. The Man and the Woman remained unblemished. So how could there be such a thing as universal redemption when there is no such thing as universal sin? No, the only sin is the personal sin of not being true to one’s own self. That is the greatest betrayal, for if we betray ourselves, then we also betray our true Selves.

But you do not need me to redeem you, for I tell you truly that each and every one of you has the spirit to redeem yourself, because each and every one of you is me, and I am each and every one of you. Why have you forgotten this? I will tell you why: you have forgotten this because you have placed me outside of yourselves. In your frenzy to banish bronze idols you have merely replaced them with another idol. And the idol which you have created is a monster, not of bronze, but of ideas, of doctrines and of dogmas which have served only to divide you against yourselves, and therefore from me also. That idol is myself as you have created me. You have so occupied yourselves with building a towering plinth for me to stand on that you have forgotten that if I am standing high above you then we no longer can look each other in the eye.

And this is not the only idol which you have created in my name. You have built another idol to worship: an idol of words. You have transformed something that shone with the light of my being, something bright with radiant change, into something harder than stone. For even stone, which seems unyielding, changes its form over time. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide what is or is not ‘holy’, and yet I say to you now that all which is thought or said or written with a pure heart is holy in my eyes, and whether something is or is not holy to me is not something for you to decide. And yet this is what you have done. I speak with many voices, and yet how many of my voices have lain in the dust of centuries, or which you even have consigned to the flames, because of the choices which you have claimed to make on my behalf, because of your folly in believing that such choices were yours to make?

Look at the footprints I leave behind in the soil. They are the footprints left by a mortal form who wore only simple woven sandals. And yet many of the footprints left by those who deign to place themselves nearer to me have sunk deep into my earth, weighed down by the finery of their wearers. Their footprints are heavier than my own, and I tell you that their weighty apparel, their jewelled rings and resplendent robes, distances them from me more than the pure of heart who must walk barefoot, for such earthly show is a greater barrier to drawing close to me than the simplest garments worn by those who leave footprints as light as my own. The footprints of the meek have trodden where I also have trodden, and their footprints and mine are therefore the same. Lightness is a virtue, and a crown of thorns weighs less than a crown of jewels and gold, both in this world and in the one to come.

But these robes of earthly glory are not all that in my eyes truly weighs down mortal flesh. If the blood of even one individual is shed in my name, I say to you that the death of that single individual is a matter of greater weight to me than my own mortal death, which was no death but a mere revealing of my true nature, as it is for you all. And yet the lives of millions have been offered up in my name. Where is the kingdom of heaven for those who have swung the sword, or caused conversion in my name by fear or by force, or torched the pyre beneath the stake? How can it ever be attained when all which I truly am has become so misshapen?

How could it have come to pass that so many innocent young souls so precious to me have been damaged by those who actually make claim to represent me, but who in truth only represent their own darkness? I, who have entrusted to the Woman the most difficult and the most sacred task of all, and who should only be honoured, now find Her damned by you. Do you seriously imagine that I will return in triumph when so much that has been done in my name has served only to create damage and division, and even a loss of life itself? Only a fool would think that I one day shall return. The pure of heart know that I have never left.

But why did I come to you at all, if not to redeem a sin of your own imaginings? If redemption exists in each and every moment (and it does), then my descent to earth, my entry into this world of coarse matter, must have been for another reason. And it was. Such events move on a stage greater than your imaginings. They arc across all of time and space, and from time to time these events emerge into your world, become momently visible to your histories, and you create messiahs and mythologies: stories and writings which are mere faint echoes of far larger truths.

So why did I come? Why, if not to redeem, did I descend into this flesh? I had been waiting. I had been waiting for my beloved Other Self, waiting for her arrival in the world so that I might join her and so on earth complete the sacred union of soul and spirit. I came, not for all, but only for one. You, my beloved one, who in these greater realities take the form of the clear voice of wisdom, my bride Sophia, were that One. You, who are the Ocean holding all life within your sacred womb. You, who trod the soil in the same place and at the same time as my own brief sojourn. You, who witnessed my mystic death and resurrection. You, who took me as husband at Cana in a marriage that was the earthly echo of our union which already had found place in the luminous Beyond. Mary, I came for you.

Photo: Still from the film Son of God

The Seven Devils of Mary Magdalene

In the short second verse of chapter 8 of Luke’s gospel Mary Magdalene is identified in two ways: she is among the followers of Jesus, and she is the woman out of whom ‘seven devils’ had been cast. What are we to make of this strange verse? The usual conclusion is that Mary was a little insane, perhaps even suffering from fits of hysteria. Interpreted more literally, Jesus is presumed to have ‘cured’ Mary by performing some sort of an exorcism on her. Within the context of what Luke briefly tells us, both of these interpretations seem plausible enough. But to what extent can we be sure that this is what this puzzling verse actually means?

Was Mary perhaps epileptic? Such conditions were then commonly attributed to some form of possession, in which case we are asked to imagine that Jesus presumably alleviated her symptoms. Seen through the eyes of the time, those devils had been ‘cast out’ of her. In the light of our present knowledge of such conditions, this explanation is entirely plausible – but is this really what took place?

Many texts were written and in circulation before Christianity emerged in the recognizable form that we know today. For every book in the Bible there were many others, and before the Bible came into being, all of these texts were on an equal footing with each other. We do not know who wrote these texts, any more than we can be sure who wrote Luke’s gospel and the other three gospels. But if we wish to look for answers to these puzzling passages in scripture, we often enough can find these answers in the books that the early Church Fathers decided to exclude from the books that would come to be included in scripture.

The Gospel of Mary – the only known such text which has been attributed to a woman – contains a remarkable passage in which, following the Ascension, Mary relates to the other disciples certain inner mysteries which Jesus had passed on to her. This passage clearly tells us that Mary was close to Jesus – so close that he entrusted her with mystic knowledge not given to his other disciples. We now would describe her as being indoctrinated by Jesus into the inner mysteries. Whether Jesus did this as a great mystic, as an enlightened being, or as the son of the Divine is a matter for personal belief, and in itself does not affect the nature of this special knowledge given to Mary. But what is this special knowledge?

In this text, we are told that under Jesus’ instruction Mary ascended through various levels or ‘powers’. She describes encountering the power which has “…seven forms. The first form is darkness; the second is desire; the third is ignorance; the fourth is zeal for death; the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh; the sixth is the foolish wisdom of the flesh; the seventh is the wisdom of the wrathful person. These are the seven powers of Wrath.” Jesus’ action towards Mary can now be seen for what it truly is: not some trivial and all-too-literal exorcism, but an indoctrination into the inner mysteries, which Mary in her turn masters.

We know that the writer of Luke drew upon older texts for some of his material, and the ‘seven devils’ episode would seem to be a scrambled version of these older mysteries whose true meaning was lost on that writer, remembering that the Gospel of Mary would itself have been copied from older texts. So the Gospel of Mary offers us a Mary who is indeed a wise and profound teacher, and even the closest to Jesus and the most deserving of his disciples.

We already have come a long way from the Mary of Luke’s gospel out of whom ‘seven devils’ were cast. We can now see her as the Mary who, uniquely among the disciples, managed to master these inner mysteries, not so much of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the inner Self: which in the end is perhaps the same thing. Today, July 22nd, is traditionally the day of Mary Magdalene, and what better way to celebrate this day than to shed these outdated misconceptions about her and to see her for who she truly must have been: an enlightened soul who truly was 'the disciple whom Jesus loved’.

Bass relief beneath the altar, Church of St Mary Magdalene, Rennes-le-Château, France

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.

The Mystic Marriage

Is all which I now see around me truly the result of my brief presence on Earth? Has all this truly been done in my name? I came among you with a single intent. Not, as you seem to think, to win redemption for all of you for the sin in Eden (how could you imagine such a thing?). There was no Fall in Eden. The Man and the Woman remained unblemished. So how could there be such a thing as universal redemption when there is no such thing as universal sin? No, the only sin is the personal sin of not being true to one’s own self. That is the greatest betrayal, for if we betray ourselves, then we also betray our true Selves.

But you do not need me to redeem you, for I tell you truly that each and every one of you has the spirit to redeem yourself, because each and every one of you is me, and I am each and every one of you. Why have you forgotten this? I will tell you why: you have forgotten this because you have placed me outside of yourselves. In your frenzy to banish bronze idols you have merely replaced them with another idol. And the idol which you have created is a monster, not of bronze, but of ideas. That idol is myself as you have created me. You have so occupied yourselves with building a towering plinth for me to stand on that you have forgotten that if I am standing high above you then we no longer can look each other in the eye.

And this is not the only idol which you have created in my name. You have built another idol to worship: an idol of words. You have transformed something that shone with the light of my being, something bright with radiant change, into something harder than stone. For even stone, which seems unyielding, changes its form over time. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide what is or is not ‘holy’, and yet I say to you now that all which is thought or said or written with a pure heart is holy in my eyes, and whether something is or is not holy to me is not something for you to decide. And yet this is what you have done. I speak with many voices, and yet how many of my voices have lain in the dust of centuries because of the choices which you have claimed to make on my behalf, because of your folly in believing that such choices were yours to make?

Look at my feet, and see how they are shod. Look at the footprints I leave behind in the soil. They are the footprints left by a mortal form who wore only simple woven sandals. And yet many of the footprints left by those who deign to place themselves nearer to me have sunk deep into my earth, weighed down by the finery of their wearers. Their footprints are heavier than my own, and I tell you that their weighty apparel, their jewelled rings and resplendent robes, distances them from me more than the pure of heart who must walk barefoot, for such earthly show is a greater barrier to drawing close to me than the simplest garments worn by those who leave footprints as light as my own. The footprints of the meek and my own are no different. Their footprints have trodden where I also have trodden, and therefore are the same. Lightness is a virtue, and a crown of thorns weighs less than a crown of jewels and gold, both in this world and in the one to come.

But these robes of earthly glory are not all that in my eyes truly weighs down mortal flesh. If the blood of even one individual is shed in my name, I say to you that the death of that one person is a matter of greater weight to me than my own mortal death, which was no death but a mere revealing of my true nature, as it is for you all. And yet the lives of millions have been offered up in my name. Where is the kingdom of heaven for those who have swung the sword, or caused conversion in my name by fear or by force, or torched the pyre beneath the stake? How can it ever be attained when all which I truly am has become so misshapen?

How could it have come to pass that so many innocent young souls so precious to me have been damaged by those who actually make claim to represent me, but who in truth only represent their own darkness? I, who have entrusted to the Woman the most difficult and the most sacred task of all, and who should only be honoured, now find Her damned by you. Do you seriously imagine that I will return in triumph when so much that has been done in my name has served only to create damage and division, and even a loss of life itself? Only a fool would think that I one day shall return. The pure of heart know that I have never left.

But why did I come to you at all, if not to redeem a sin of your own imaginings? If redemption exists in each and every moment (and it does), then my descent to earth, my entry into this world of coarse matter, must have been for another reason. And it was. Such events move on a stage greater than your imaginings. They arc across all of time and space, and from time to time these events emerge into your world, become momently visible to your histories, and you create messiahs and mythologies: stories and writings which are mere faint echoes of far larger truths.

So why did I come? Why, if not to redeem, did I descend into this flesh? I had been waiting. I had been waiting for my beloved Other Self, waiting for her arrival in the world so that I might join her and so on earth complete the sacred union of soul and spirit. I came, not for all, but only for one. You, my beloved one, who in these greater realities take the form of the clear voice of wisdom, my bride Sophia, were that One. You, who are the Ocean holding all life within your sacred womb. You, who trod the soil in the same place and at the same time as my own brief sojourn. You, who witnessed my mystic death and resurrection. You, who took me as husband at Cana in a marriage that was the earthly echo of our union which already had found place in the luminous Beyond. Mary, I came for you.

Stained Glass Jesus and Mary Magdalene - Glastonbury

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

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

Sophia's Mirror

The planet we call home is a mirror. This is literally true, as the waters which cover so much of our world reflect the sky above them. The sea appears soft and grey or azure blue, depending on where we are and what the weather is doing. The waves reflect the sky. Last Sunday I stood on the shore and took the photo of the sea that is the background of my new blog header. The sea was glass-calm, and the weather was very still, and a little misty. Such absolute tranquillity invites reflection: a moving beyond the horizon-spanning surface which lies before us as we stand on the shore. 

For me, to stand on that particular shore was something of a personal fulfilment: a promise kept to myself to greet the sea once more after many years of personal trials. I stood there in silence, feeling the crunch of wet sand underfoot, breathing in the salt air on that perfect October afternoon, listening to the soft wash and sigh of the incoming waves – the tallest barely more than ankle-high. The simplest experiences can offer consolation, even a sense of redemption, of being given a new reason to have inner faith when faith has been something that we hardly dare to feel any more.

Having such inner faith can give a sense of peace, a deep sense that things are unfolding as they should, that all is as it is because that is the way it needs to be. Even just a simple trust in what might be round the corner for us can be a silent wish. But even this silence can be full of fierce longing. We plant its flag on some shore known or unknown, and the mere presence of that flag proclaims: ‘I am here – this is where I choose to stand’. And where we stand is a place which mirrors our deeply-felt inner trust, and all is reflected in its depths. But when we gaze into this mirror of trust, is it always our own face that we see? 

The Ancient World called her Sophia – Wisdom. She is the creative force behind all things, and a line from a text written in her name promises that she will come to those who reflect on her. That line was written over a thousand years ago, and the fragile text which contains it, known as Thunder, Perfect Mind, was lost for sixteen long centuries, buried in a jar in the Egyptian sands before being unearthed by chance. It is as if some things are just not meant to be lost. That text, which contains some of the most fiercely beautiful lines I know, was adrift on another ocean – the ocean of time – before at last being washed up on our own shore.

Written by an unknown hand, the clear voice of Sophia in that text reaches out to us once more across the centuries. Such endurance against all the odds provides its own powerful message of faith, for faith as well is not meant to be lost, however long it might remain buried. Now once more we can gaze into Sophia’s mirror and, if we choose to and if we are open to her spirit, it is her face that we will see there as well as our own.       

An Alchemical Wedding

They are portrayed standing opposite each other with their hands touching: a crowned king and a queen. He is the gold of the sun, she is the silver of the moon. Blessed by a descending dove from starry heaven, they solemnly cross flowering emblems: sceptres of their royal status. As with the two dots or seeds contained within the familiar yin-yang symbol, each emblem is the colour of its opposite: the king holds a silver emblem, the queen a red. Red king, white queen: they are a familiar couple in ancient books of alchemy, symbolising the intermingling of red sulphur with white mercury.

But there is more to these regal two than a mixing of metals, and their symbolism is more ancient and more layered than the 17th-century books in which they can be found. They speak of an ancient truth: the truth of the essential partnership between the soul and the spirit, and the interdependence of the two. Just how powerfully this union speaks to us can be glimpsed in tales of the love between Tristan and Isolde, or between Tamino’s pure love for Pamina in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. We even can read about this couple in the Book of Genesis, albeit in a safely disguised form. Eve (the spirit) in her wisdom prompts Adam (the soul) to fall into Time, and so experience all the joys and pain of an earthly existence, and ultimately to face his own mortality, and a return to the realm of pure spirit.

The soul must know these things in order for its existence to become enriched, both by its earthly experiences and by the ultimate realisation that these experiences are only a transient state between the realms where its true nature is revealed. The soul needs the wisdom and guidance of the spirit to help it navigate its way through these realms, but the spirit also needs the soul. It is the soul’s questing, its daring and thirst for experience and new adventure, that makes it the perfect partner for the guiding light of the spirit.

If we are very fortunate, our own relationships in our life can reflect this Alchemical Wedding. We feel it when we feel that we have found our ‘other selves’ in our partners – and we have the experience, not of our partners being exactly like us, but of being different from us, but with those differences complementing our own. And perhaps the more perfectly this happens, the more it approaches the archetype of the Red King and the White Queen. The dove descends to bless us, and smiles upon that rare marvel: a match which, literally, is made in heaven!

Dazzling Darkness

The author Ursula Le Guin describes how she was once given a box by her young daughter. Without opening it, she asked her daughter what the box contained. ‘Darkness’, was the secretive reply! 

If we think of God in terms of either light or darkness, then we are almost sure to think of God as light. But to the Gnostics, God was described by the term ‘Dazzling Darkness’. To us the term seems self-contradictory, for surely it is light which is ‘dazzling’? This description of the Gnostics seems to function partly in the same way as a Zen koan – a contradictory statement the contemplation of which pushes us towards new enlightened realities. ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ is perhaps the best-known koan.

For the Gnostics, God is not the Christian creator god - the ‘God the father’. God is beyond this, something truly immeasurable, unknowable. If we even describe what God is, then what God ‘is’, is already changed by our attempts at some sort of a description. To describe this unknowable form of God, this ‘God which is beyond’, we perhaps need one word only. That word is ‘potential’. Think of darkness. Like the box which Ursula Le Guin’s daughter presented to her, we cannot see what it might contain. It might contain anything – and everything. We can neither describe nor limit what we cannot see, what we cannot know. Now we can understand the way in which God can be described as ‘Darkness’.

But why is darkness - of all things! - ‘dazzling’? ‘Dazzling’ describes the limitless potential which the darkness of God contains. To the mystics, this ‘holy dark’ was truly perceived as dazzling: something scintillating with rich creative possibilities. The mystics witnessed this glittering darkness in their contemplations (we would use the term ‘meditations’). God is indeed a ‘dazzling darkness’ out of which all else flows. Our inability to imagine what that darkness is, and what it contains, says something about our own limitations. But we ourselves emerged from that darkness.   

Glass perfume bottle 'Dans la Nuit' by René Jules Lalique

The Sanctuary of Emptiness

We tend to think of a sanctuary as being a place. Even when we talk of our own inner sanctuary, it is still thought of as being a place inside ourselves. But what if we as women find ourselves with no other refuge than emptiness? What if we feel that emptiness is all which we have left? But there is nowhere that is not in some way a sanctuary – even emptiness. And finding the courage to take refuge in this emptiness can become the greatest bond of solidarity between women.

The very fabric of our physical being – our DNA – is passed predominantly through the female mitochondrial DNA from one generation to the next. And yet in so-called developed societies it is the male side which is the recognised lineage. Australian Aboriginal society recognises its lineage from mother to daughter. Did these wise people instinctively know something which Western culture has suppressed for the sake of preserving male dominance?

So much of Western thinking has been deeply influenced by religious standards found in the so-called ‘religions of the Book’, taken to be Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All three of these religions are male-dominant, even to the extent of erasing any traces of female deities from their scriptures. Judaism grew out of beliefs which had both male and female creative deities, with female deities such as Ashtoreth sharing creative powers. But a reading of the Old Testament will now only reveal vague glimpses of this goddess. All direct references to her have been deleted by subsequent male hands. And in spite of a contemporary shift to explain the deity as being gender-neutral, God is still very much ‘God the Father’.

Where is Ashtoreth? Where is Sophia? Where is Shekinah? The shift to monotheism has only succeeded in deifying a supreme being who is unmistakably male. But Jesus himself sought to break the mould of his day by including women among his disciples. Salome and Martha were among his circle – and Mary Magdalene occupied a principal place at his side.

But the spirit endures, and the Spirit is female. It was Eve in her wisdom who caused Adam to fall. For how can the soul progress without knowing life and death? How can the soul gain ground without experiencing a human life, with all its joys and its pain? A blissful existence in Eden had little to offer the soul, and Eve knew it, even if Adam did not. And yet for millennia it is Eve who has shouldered the blame for the expulsion from Eden. In the eyes of male thinking, it is the woman who prompted the fall into sin. But it is the spirit – Eve – who showed the soul – Adam – the way to progress. 

And it is that progress which now needs to be heeded. All things serve their purpose, and the suppression of millennia is one side of the coin which is now beginning to show its other face. “Look” says the Spirit, “the new world has arrived. The landscape is changing around you.” And it is changing because women took refuge in their emptiness: in the last place which had been left to them.  Because in the end soul needs spirit, and spirit needs soul, and this is the true marriage, the sacred union.   

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!

Earth and Sky

We tend to think that the Earth has always been regarded as Feminine. Mother Earth, nurturing and stable. But has this always been so?

In the wall paintings of Ancient Egypt we find depictions of the Sky goddess Nut bending the arch of her star-covered body over her consort Geb, who is the earth below. But as times and attitudes changed to become more patriarchal, the sky mother and the earth father changed places, just as the moon became feminine and the sun became masculine – all part of the process of re-assigning the 'superior' and 'spiritual' elements to the masculine and the 'inferior' and 'material' to the feminine.

But is Mother Earth a real concept or a patriarchal one?

Venus of Willendorf

In the earliest times there seems to have been a strong emphasis on feminine deities. Apart from male shaman figures painted on the walls of caves, prehistoric carved male figures are exceptional, with only one or two rare examples being known. Far more common from these distant times are carved female figures – the so-called ‘venuses’ – which powerfully suggest a reverence for the creative role of women and the fruits of the earth. Masculine gods were apparently introduced slowly, first as consorts and subjects of the All-Mother, then as equal partners, then later as superior partners, and finally, in the current monotheistic ‘religions of the book’, the feminine deity has been willfully banished altogether from patriarchal theology.

Now there are many signs that the goddess is returning. Kwan Yin, Tara, Gaia, White Buffalo Calf Woman... in all her aspects the goddess is the bearer of a principle beyond herself. What is this principle that is so unique to the goddess? Perhaps it is compassion. 

But what does this quality of compassion truly mean? Not all women are wise, but  ‘wisdom' is a feminine attribute. She lives as a quality in men and women who search for her. She is prepared to transform any human mind into wise certainty - if you ask her, if you love her, if you search for her. In ancient Egypt she was named Isis; the Ancient Greeks and early Christian Gnostics knew her as Sophia, and she appeared in human form as Mary, the Magdalene. She pours herself into every soul that goes through the catharsis, the purification. Every refining, however small, yields wisdom - the wisdom of a woman.

But what is compassion in its essence? And how do we find the balance between strength and vulnerability? Being compassionate requires an active step. We 'see' the other, we are moved by that other and we act accordingly. Or do we? Karen Armstrong writes in her latest book 'Twelve steps to a compassionate life': "This is a struggle for a lifetime, because there are aspects in it that militate against compassion. For example, it's hard to love your enemies. We are driven by our legacy from our reptilian ancestors. It makes us put ourselves first, become angry, (and) when we feel threatened in any way, we lash out violently."

But an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

So we must look to our collective history, and within ourselves. In my post about the yin-yang (Symbols and the Tao), I mention that each opposite contains the seed – the potential – to become the other. The earth and the sky have at different times been thought of as either feminine or masculine, and if we identify with both, we as well can feel compassion for both the masculine and the feminine, so that neither dominates the other, and both exist in compassionate harmony with each other.

Star of the Sea

Stella Maris – Star of the Sea. This mystical title given to the Virgin Mary portrays her as standing like a beacon miraculously among the waves on the curling sea foam, and is believed to date as far back as the 9th-century. But to discover the true origins of this image we need to broaden the search – and our own horizons – towards more ancient seas, and to remember that the Goddess has many faces.   

The Goddess endures. She is more powerful than any attempts to confine her to any one doctrine, and she changes both her form and her name as she adapts to circumstances. She has been elevated to become the principal icon of the Catholic Church, for the Church is itself the unwitting servant of the Goddess. To see her in another form we need look no further than that familiar icon, not of religion, but of art: Botticelli’s famous Birth of Venus. Emerging gracefully from the sea foam, Venus is herself the Roman version of the Ancient Greek Aphrodite, who is always associated with the sea which gave her birth. 

So our quest after the Star has already brought us to Ancient Greece. Can we journey back even further? The Babylonian goddess Ishtar is also linked to a star – or at least, what the Ancients thought of as a star, but which we know to be a planet, a ‘wandering star’. Ishtar was absorbed into Greek culture as Astarte, who in turn became Aphrodite/Venus. The morning and the evening star are both the planet Venus, and the ancients saw Ishtar as being graced with both a five-pointed and an eight-pointed star. The five-pointed star is now familiar to us as the pentagram, but where does the eight-pointed star come from? The Babylonians observed the heavens meticulously, and they must have noted that the planet Venus seems to follow a path through the heavens that traces out a five-pointed pathway – over exactly an eight-year period. So Ishtar has her star. But what of the sea?  

The old Testament’s Book of Jeremiah mentions a goddess described as the Queen of Heaven – the goddess Asherah, who in ancient times was known as the ‘Lady of the sea’, or ‘She who treads on the sea’. Asherah was the consort of Yahweh, in the time before Judaism became monotheistic in its beliefs, and although the attempts to obliterate the goddess from scripture were largely successful, we can still catch glimpses of her in Jeremiah’s phrase – and also in the opening words of Genesis, which in the original Hebrew literally read: “In the beginning the gods created the heavens and the earth.” 

At the beginnings of civilization Mesopotamian clay tablets record the appearance of a brightly-shining light in the heavens – what we now know to be a supernova, an exploding star. Apparently this light was so bright that it was visible during the hours of daylight. And it made its sudden and dramatic appearance low down on the eastern horizon, which is where it stayed. To the dwellers overlooking what is now the Persian Gulf it would have appeared as if this star was emerging from the sea, and these ancient cultures do feature deities which came out of the sea. Even in Ancient Egypt, the title given to Horus, the child of Isis and Osiris, was ‘Horus-on-the-Horizon’. This spectacular heavenly event apparently had a great impact on human awareness, and much in the way of culture and learning began at that time, almost as if this stellar appearance had triggered something in the human imagination.

Stella Maris – Star of the Sea. This icon of both the church, of art, and of human culture takes us right back to the very dawn of civilization, and continues to surface in whatever form the Goddess finds appropriate to communicate with us. And what of Mary? Her true  origins are in her very name, for Mary is derived from ‘Mare’, meaning ‘The Sea’.