| magdalene.org | Article: "On the Need for Fellowship Within The Mary Magdalene Movement" by Lesa Bellevie

Note: This piece is the transcript of a talk delivered on July 23, 2005 at a Mary Magdalene feast day celebration held in Seattle, WA, sponsored by The Gnostic Society of Seattle.

I'm very excited to be standing here with you today as we honor Mary Magdalene, "the woman who knew the All." I had to cancel my other feast day appearances because I could not travel due to poor health, but when I was told about this gathering, it sounded a little like coming home. When you find yourself in-between worlds as it sometimes seems when you are struggling with an illness, there is a very strong draw at times for community and fellowship with people who hold the same spiritual values as you. In my case, this means people who understand the impulse toward gnosis, and most importantly, those who feel that Mary Magdalene plays an important role in the journey of the soul.

It took me awhile to decide what the theme for my talk would be. My first inclination was to talk about how many of the people who are drawn to Mary Magdalene experience vivid, life-altering dreams about her. Or about the mystical idea that the power of Mary Magdalene's love for Jesus is what brought him back to life, that her love was what made the resurrection possible. Another idea was that I would talk about Mary Magdalene's role as a psychopomp, a guide of souls, teaching us about the mysteries of death and resurrection. Or maybe even about how Mary Magdalene can be used as a Cabalistic symbol.

Each of those ideas was eventually dismissed as too arcane, or too dark, or too serious. Today is a celebration, a festive event. We're taking part in a tradition that dates back to the 8th century -- that's about twelve hundred consecutive years in which Mary Magdalene has been remembered. Twelve hundred years!

In Anguiano, Spain this weekend, men from about 8 families have dressed in brightly colored clothing and perched atop stilts to do a precarious dance, spinning on meter-high stilts, carrying Mary Magdalene's icon from its home in the main church down a hill to a special altar where it remains for the duration of her festival.

In northern Spain, parades are taking place in Mary Magdalene's honor, and effigies of her are carried aloft for all to see. Great brotherhoods, or confradia, are formed around the care of these effigies, which they treat with respect and honor, and the men who carry her through the streets are proud to do so.

In a little town in Provence, France, called St. Maxmin-la-Ste. Baume, Mary Magdalene's skull is taken out of her basilica and marched through the streets to much fanfare. Villagers dress in period costumes, and there is music and festivities throughout the day.

In some towns in Italy, very large festivals are taking place, with music, food vendors, arts and crafts booths, theatrical performances, and after dark, fireworks.

Here in the U.S., we are only now rediscovering this ancient tradition of honoring Mary Magdalene this week, and many of us are honoring her in non-traditional ways. This was the inspiration that led me to the theme for my talk on which I finally landed. My theme, then, is the Mary Magdalene movement itself, and in particular, building community and fellowship.

A couple of years ago, Matthew Fox, that great thinker on Western culture, Christianity, and spirituality, identified what was happening in regards to Mary Magdalene as a "movement," a social phenomenon. To my knowledge, he was the first to do so, and although it wasn't really visible to most of the world at the time, the publication of Dan Brown's book, The Da Vinci Code, shed a bright light on what had already been happening for a decade. All of a sudden, everyone was talking about Mary Magdalene, asking questions about who she really was and what her relationship with Jesus might have been.

A journalist recently asked me what I think is the most relevant question about all of this: "Why Mary Magdalene, and why now?"

Well, the answer is about as complicated as Mary Magdalene herself. There are so many influences in the 20th century that sort of congealed in the 1980's and 90's in the form of a growing interest in Mary Magdalene. I'm not going to go into all of those influences, but as I see it, there are two major events that we can see as pivotal in the creation of a Mary Magdalene "movement."

First, as most of us here know, the Nag Hammadi Library, the treasure trove of Gnostic texts, was discovered in Egypt in 1945. But they were written in Coptic, so most people couldn't read them. It wasn't until 1977 that they were published in English by James Robinson. At that point, the world became aware of these texts and Mary Magdalene's importance in early Christianity. It was also the first look that many people had at the Gospel of Mary, the one and only gospel actually named for a woman. It was crucial that this gospel was named not for Salome, nor Johanna, but for a Mary whom most scholars believe was the Magdalene. Elaine Pagels went on to publish her book, The Gnostic Gospels, of course, which brought the Nag Hammadi Library into public awareness.

The second event that contributed to the existence of a Magdalene movement was the 1982 publication of Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh's book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail. You're probably already aware of it; it was a breathless adventure by the authors to investigate a mystery in the little French town of Rennes-le-Chateau that ended with their conclusion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been a couple, they had conceived a child, and Mary Magdalene carried that child into Gaul, making her, literally, the Holy Grail. Much of the book has been debunked today, such as the existence of the Priory of Sion, but it inspired an entirely new genre of non-fiction based around the notion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married. Margaret Starbird's book, The Woman With The Alabaster Jar took these ideas in a new direction, namely that Mary Magdalene was really the representative of the Goddess in Christianity.

So the two main events in the late 20th century were: The Nag Hammadi Library in English, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. It is important to call these two things out because in the movement today, there are two main branches: the branch that honors Mary Magdalene as the primary apostle based in a large part on her role in the Gnostic texts, and the branch that honors Mary Magdalene as the Holy Grail in some capacity. There are almost as many variations within these branches as there are adherents, but those are the broadest categories.

Now, these might seem like an academic exercise to you, but it really isn't, and here's why. Each branch is aware of the other, and there is, unfortunately, a rift growing between them. The apostle branch is critical of the lack of credible scholarship by the Holy Grail branch, and the Holy Grail branch is critical of the lack of true spirituality in the apostle branch. Both sides have some excellent critcisims of the other, but here's an idea: maybe both sides should look at the other as a blessing. Where twenty years ago hardly anyone said anything of Mary Magdalene save that she was a redeemed whore, today, she is being honored in brilliant ways, such as this gathering today.

Finding a community in which you feel welcome is an important part of the human experience. Sometimes it's difficult to find a group of people who share your values and beliefs, but thanks to the Internet, a community of potential friends is often only a mouse-click away. And so it has happened that in the last decade a community of people has gathered around the figure of Mary Magdalene. The reasons why and how this could have happened are complicated but it wasn't exactly spontaneous. As I've pointed out, it's definitely possible to track the events and influences that led us to this place in our culture. What is spontaneous is the genuine spirit of fellowship and joy that follows when two or more people find that they have this most fascinating and complicated woman in common.

When I first put Magdalene.org online in 1998, I thought I was the only person who was interested in Mary Magdalene, but soon I got email after email from people who said the same thing. I have to tell you that today, there are almost 700 people subscribed to the Magdalene.org email list, and there are many other online communities sprouting up to discuss any number of unique ideas about her. Magdalene.org itself is receiving about 45,000 visitors every month; that's about a half a million people every year who are expressing an interest in Mary Magdalene. And these are only the people with Internet access; there are many, many more who are forming home-based and church groups to talk about Mary Magdalene. But that's now. Back in the late 90's, online and offline, we were a relatively small movement until Dan Brown published The Da Vinci Code. Then the whole world recognized something that had already been quietly growing.

Mary Magdalene, after whispering to a few of us through the years, apparently saw fit to grab a megaphone. And no matter what you think of The Da Vinci Code, it is thanks to Dan Brown that so many people are now listening.

So, if we cup our hands to our ears, what is it that Mary Magdalene saying?

I think if I was to ask each person here today that question, the answer would be different. Sometimes only slightly different from the person next to you, and sometimes wildly different. And to me, that is the beauty of Mary Magdalene. Even though scholarship on who she might have been has really exploded in the last twenty years, she is now every bit as complex, fascinating, and mysterious as she ever was, perhaps even moreso.

In the earliest years of Christianity, there was a lot of confusion about who Mary Magdalene was. Was she Mary of Bethany? Was she the anonymous sinner woman in Luke? Was she the woman caught in adultery? Depending on when and where you lived, you might have been taught that she was any of these other women, or that she was none of them. Interpretations of who she was were made on a case by case basis until the sixth century, and the situation today is amazingly similar.

Who is Mary Magdalene?

Maybe she is who you want her to be, who you need her to be.

Apparently, there are a great number of people who need her to be the lost Bride of Christ, the face of the feminine divine in Christianity. But there are also a great number of people who need her to be the primary apostle and early leader of the Christian movement. And there are still a great many people who need her to be the penitent sinner of the Gospels. Many feel that these visions of her are contradictory, but really, I think that trying to resolve things that appear contradictory is part of the mystery of gnosis.

Thunder, Perfect Mind says,

Here one of the greatest Gnostic texts and most haunting pieces of poetry reminds us that the divine can't be put into neat little boxes. We can't take figures with the power and complexity of Mary Magdalene and tell them what they can and cannot be. It is up to her, really, to tell us who she is, and it is up to us to listen with our hearts and our minds.

In a culture that doesn't really value Mary Magdalene much at all, perhaps it should be enough to find brotherhood and sisterhood with anyone who honors Mary Magdalene, no matter what their vision. Perhaps we should say, "Namaste," I bow to the divine within you. I bow to your calling by the Magdalene. I admire your courage and beauty and devotion.

Community and fellowship doesn't always mean precise agreement. It isn't easy to accept views divergent from our own, but in the spirit of wisdom and gnosis, perhaps we should acknowledge all others who respond to the movement of the spirit of Mary Magdalene among us. There are so many others who join us in honoring Mary Magdalene this weekend, worldwide. I hope everyone here will raise a glass to them, and to each other, sometime today. Mary Magdalene belongs to all of us, and we to her.

I'll close with another passage from Thunder, Perfect Mind: