 Hello everybody welcome to part 5b on our series on Mary Magdalene where we are actually going through the book Mary Magdalene revealed the the first apostle her feminine gospel and the Christianity we haven't tried yet by Megan Waterson now again as I said last week I had to divide part 5 into two sections because this is a very very long section and the section today is going to be particularly long so I hope that you have the time to sit down and listen to This whole section of course you can hit that pause button if you need to pause and then come back to it later If this is your first time joining us on this channel first of all welcome And second of all I am going to place all the previous episodes in the Mary Magdalene series down in the description box below I would highly suggest that you start with part 1 first today We're going to be starting our reading on the chapter titled how to meditate like Mary Magdalene She said I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him Lord I saw you today in a vision he answered me how wonderful you are for not wavering at seeing me for where the mind is There is the treasure the gospel of Mary chapter 7 verses 1 through 4 Dr. Howe Towsing introduced me more formally to the gospel of Mary as a professor of biblical literature in the and early Christianity at Union He taught a course titled loosening cannon that I took at the same time as McGuckin's course on the hessie chest Towsing's course let me fall deeper in love with Mary's gospel alongside the text that help help Contextualize the discourse that takes place within it the gospel of Thomas and Philip in particular And once again we have read through the gospel of Thomas and the gospel of Philip on his channel before in our deep dive into the missing Books the Bible if you would like to review those Gospels then I will place the playlist down in the description box below the playlist is the dark outposts playlist So you can click over there and see all the books that we've read through that are technically missing from the Bible Years later at a Barnes and Noble I stopped Suddenly shocked to see his name and gold pluttering across a book titled a new New Testament a Bible for the 21st century I grabbed it like a psycho and began rifling through its contents. It blew my mind I morphed into a geek theologian right there in the aisle My mouth was open and everything it combines the scripture That was originally included in the formation of the New Testament with a scripture that was Excluded like the gospel of Mary Magdalene the gospel of Thomas the thunder perfect mind in the acts of Paul and Thakla In the introduction Towson explains that with the traditional New Testament to know what was inside it You must know what is outside of it? And he gives an example of Paul and Thakla that you cannot understand Paul Whose conversion story was included in the traditional Bible without also knowing Thakla Whose conversion story was excluded he describes a fresco dated from approximately 500 AD that's painted on the walls of a cave in Turkey It's of Paul and Thakla and it depicts them teaching together side-by-side Thakla as you know is the fiery Turkish teenager who baptizes herself in the name of Christ wears men's clothing and defies patriarchal structures of the first century that insists she marry and have children Towson explains that what's included in the New Testament about Paul is Incomplete without knowing his relationship to Thakla again the role of women the divine feminine the balance between the divine feminine and the divine masculine Joshua would not have been the Christ without Mary Magdalene They have to balance each other scholars agree based not externally on political correctness, but internally on linguistic differences That the three of the letters attributed to Paul in 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus were written well over a half century After Paul's death They were created in his name But were in fact reactions to his original views on radical equality for everyone in the Christian community Whether they were Jews or Gentiles females or males slaves or born free, which is clearly Expressed in Galatians chapter 3 verses 27 through 28 For all of you who were baptized into union with Christ clothes yourselves with Christ There is neither Judean nor Greek slave nor free male and female for in Christ Jesus you are all one How then did we arrive at the blatant? patriarchal dominance of 1st Timothy chapter 2 verses 11 through 12 a woman must learn Listen in silence with all difference. I do not consent to them becoming teachers or exercising authority over men They ought not to speak By the fourth century when the new testament was being compiled the radical equality of christianity Was tamed as sexist norms were instituted within the church hierarchy To really understand 1st Timothy chapter 2 verses 11 through 12 Towson suggests you have to look both inside and outside the traditional new testament You can't really see what was included and why without also seeing what was excluded Towson organized a committee to very carefully scrutinize which sacred text should be included in a new new testament men and women ordained in secular Scholars and monastics were asked to reach a consensus On which early christian scripture should represent the various strands of christianity that existed in the first several centuries Before the formation of what became the master story the singular narrative of christ captured in the four canonical gospels It's hard to explain that seeing all these conflicting early christian texts bound together and one bible did to me And let me accept the kind of christian i have always been Everything else had felt like a compromise and omission This wholeness of binding together what he said and what she said Of what has been seen and unseen accepted in outcast included in all and calling it all christianity This is to me. What was sacred? This is what made the scripture There's the external and the internal experience of christ the metaphysics of what happens when we prayer meditate This is what mary's gospel reveals to us This is what we have been missing the validation of what we can only meet with and find for within our hearts Without mary's gospel. We miss out on the ancient dialogue. She had with christ about this precise practice Where do we go when we go within? What's there waiting for us? christ says in the gospel of thomas that the kingdom is already spread out upon the earth if we only have spiritual capacity to see it There is a vision we have to acquire or return to that allows us to perceive what's here This is no jesuit priest yanis describes no as a dimension that's often forgotten In the ancient world the no was seen as the finest point of the soul Or as some might say today the angel of the soul This is the dimension that mary's gospel alone directly addresses When christ says for where the mind is there is treasure the word is no And this is the treasure because there is our direct link to the experience of love of god or of the good Right here in the body And the return to love is what frees us from the seven powers that bind us to the ego's reality The concept of the mind in greek includes the heart. It was never separate from it This is the pre discartist. This is before there was an idea that such a division could occur in the body That we could be a mind devoid of heart an episcopal priest wrote in her masterpiece the meaning of mary magdalene explains That the no is the property of the heart not the mind as we understand the mind in the western world The heart according to the near eastern wisdom traditions is an organ of spiritual perception Merging with the no becoming conscious of it within the heart and seeing with its vision This is the goal of the process of inner transformation That the gospel of mary relates christ underwent and that we can all undergo as well She believes the gospel of mary could potentially be proof that mary magdalene was a witness not only to christ's resurrection But to the entire transformation he went through If she had merged with no if she could see the spiritual eye of the heart Which is a vision that allows us to see through death To be a love that exists beyond it that she never left him Not physically or psychically She witnessed the way he freed himself from the bonds of death how he remembered the no and created a spiritual blueprint for us all to follow The gospel of mary magdalene then has preserved in a visionary form through the pure Unfleaching no of mary magdalene the moment when the universal salvation gushed forth from jesus cosmological act of atonement I think this is how we pray how we meditate like mary magdalene When we return to love within us within the heart Quietly discreetly and we don't ask for any reward or external affirmation in exchange for doing the work The return to love is the treasure itself This is why she was so wonderful according to christ He calls her wonderful. I think because of this unique bravery it takes to return to love within you She returned to the no Which is the aspect of the soul that we can be conscious of while living While here in this human body, and I don't think union was a constant state for her I think it's something she became adapt at remembering union is hard one Merging with the no the angel of the soul becoming one This is as gritty as it gets when it comes to spiritual work I think it's a state we can all work at cultivating it happens where no one else can see or validate for us that we're doing the work It's feminine. It's eternal It's direct experience It happens quietly within when instead of reaching from ego. We take a moment and respond differently For example as I moved through the years out of union and out of a marriage raising a son I found that the desire to love was enough A desire to see with the spiritual eyes of the heart was enough to allow for these tiny transformations all throughout the day I couldn't curl forward over my heart all day like the hessie chats Or I just took three intentional breaths whenever I felt one of those seven powers of the ego arise A breath to descend into the heart A second breath to connect to the soul the no and then a third breath to surface and no I'm being led by love I called this soul voice meditation and eventually I would hang out in my heart for hours on end just listening asking questions and receiving answers My beloved crazy nasal gazing hessie chats experience the no as a containing a facility of direct knowing or unmeditated truth This isn't something we need outside sources to confirm are people we love and trust and validate for us This is something that's in our bones or that's how it feels to me It feels like blood memory like something I could possibly learn from anyone or anywhere It's the other side of education It's what we can only become aware of from within The trappist funkin author thomas merton describes the no as a pure diamond blazing with invisible lights of heaven The invisible light of heaven This is what I think christ means when he says in the gospel of thomas That the kingdom is already here spread out all over the earth if we only have eyes to see it This brings us to the next section called the red egg Have you already found the beginning then that you seek for the end for where the beginning is the end will be Blessed is the one who stands at the beginning the one will know the end and will not taste death the gospel of thomas I shot up in bed with one of those gasp a sharp intake of air like I had been held underwater for too long It felt like three in the morning. Everything was silent in that inter-size type way suspended between night and day I can't even imagine how hysterical my face must have looked shocked had my eyebrows cleared up to my hairline My face was buckling under the strain of trying to comprehend what I was feeling I probably looked like an astronaut undergoing a high g4 centrifuge training I sat there in the dark wide-eyed beside my sleeping fiance trying to figure out what I had felt and why I was terrified by it It was the holiest moment. I had ever experienced I knew several things all at once. I was pregnant I was having a boy And he would be solid big-boned He would be a real concrete presence He felt like something that just a second before had been a furial and otherworldly I was now a fixed being tethered to me for all eternity And I used the word eternally intentionally here because I felt like I knew it. I understood it And this is what scared the hell out of me. I think the idea of it has always comforted me Oh, how nice we live on forever But the actual breath of it the glimpse I felt during my son's conception just utterly freaked me out We never end This is what I was repeating as I started crying trying to digest and comprehend everything I knew then We don't have an ending What I knew about eternity didn't come from my mind. My body was telling me we never end and I sat there Like that crying because I was totally because I was so terrified and so insanely happy I never heard of conscious conception that it was a thing like conversion stories or near-death experience I didn't know this genre existed that other women also were aware of the moment they conceived I sat there feeling alone like like I was a freak Which is like a home base for every woman I've ever known new experience equals. I'm a freak. It's the go-to conclusion This is also before the expression zero fucks given came into common usage But this is what began to descend on me I began to give absolutely zero fucks about how I would ever explain this to anyone I felt this righteous need to just validated myself This happened and this scared the shit out of me and this was the holiest moments. I'd ever know Yes, utter paradox. And yes, no apologies And maybe think of how our concept of god would be so different if all along for the time of for the time of Venus van Welderdorf period of prehistory roughly 30 000 bce to right now We never swung around and done the 180 from worshiping the goddess to just worshiping a god Think of the sermons the rituals the ceremonies think of how much they would change if we were equally hearing from both sexes About what it's like to find the god in the body the liturgy and the laws would shift dramatically I think because for me the experience was like the universe huffed on me I felt like for one instance or maybe an eternity I really got how massively beyond my comprehension this human being is that's it I was humbled senseless. I have zero clue about anything ultimate or how it works Or why I got to be the mother of this particular son This one that I recognized the second I saw him as if his face had always been missed as if I always did the shape of it As if he existed in me all along Laid redman and when the women were drummers explains all the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her own race When she is a form of old fetus in the womb of her mother This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother Each of us spent five months in our grandmother's womb In robert lent's icon mary magdalene is pointing with one hand at the egg held in her other hand She's staring straight at the viewer with a gaze to me that translate as something like everything comes from within And there's an insistence or maybe an An exasperation almost how can you not see this? It struck me the first time I saw her icon the egg is the most feminine object or symbol of creation In modern cosmology, it is believed that 13 billion years ago The entire mass of the universe was compressed into a gravitational singularity the so-called cosmic egg And from the singularity the universe has expanded ever since to its current state and continues at the moment You're reading this to expand further still The look on mary's face in lent's iconograph suggests she understands a secret. We're still trying to work out She's trying to point us to it literally to help us realize and remember it that all life comes from within Or as young realizes in the red book. I am the egg that surrounds and nurtures the seed of the god and me I've had this icon of mary magdalene pointing at the egg with me for almost two decades now It's the first object I find in a duck for every time I move It's the same icon. Dr. Karen king put on the cover of her translation of mary's gospel According to the eastern orthodox church mary magdalene is associated with easter because christ resurrected to her first I'll return to this again later this easter moment and why love is what brings us back to life But after hearing this seminary about mary that she really is the whole reason easter happens I found it so curious that we associated easter egg with a rabbit rather than mary The dramatic tradition of the easter bunny dates back to the 18th century with the german anglican immigrants and a myth About an austere haste who gave gifts of candy and color eggs to good children Sort of like a tiny harry santa claus the orthodox church used to have a tradition of fasting from eggs during lent So the colored hard-fold eggs were used as a way to celebrate breaking the fast on eastern morning I didn't know that that's interesting There's a more ancient legend though that associates the egg with easter The eastern orthodox tradition holds that after the resurrection mary magdalene traveled to rome where she was admitted to the court of tiberius caesar because of her high social standing She told the court the story of her love for christ and how poorly justice was served under paunch's pilot during christ's trial She told caesar that christ had risen and to help explain his resurrection Supposedly she took an egg from off the feast laid out before them Interestingly enough so again We believe that the roman empire possibly didn't actually exist that they any of the remains of the roman empire were actually atlantis And we've actually found out a little bit about paunch's pilot Who did not order christ to be executed because at this point i'm beginning to believe he never was executed That that was just a story added in to have us worship um their ceremonies of sacrifice of the humankind and drinking blood and all that kind of stuff And we are now coming to find in our research. There's a possibility that paunch's pilot was actually mary magdalene's father And he was not a roman ruler But an egyptian ruler from the tallame line And so the only thing i really agree with here was her high social standing. Yes, mary magdalene came from very very high social standing Through both her mother and her father. We're still doing more we just meet We're still doing more research into her mother, but both her parents were Very powerful people If i could magically if i could magically pick to be present at any moment in history, this would be it I would be sitting there held wrapped with attention to every word mary gave during her first sermon I've imagined what she might have said so many times I've imagined how it would correct for us this ancient misunderstanding we have about the body and about the soul It varies but sometimes there's this loud threat of exasperation as if she's been pointing at an egg after all these years after millennia And we still have zero clue But it goes something like this an egg like a seed Contains the end at the beginning The seed already has a bloom held within it the egg holds safely inside whatever new life Its precariously fragile shell is meant to protect and if that new life is going to emerge it has to come from within You can't break a shell and still expect a little beak to one day peck its way out into the world You have to let that tiny creature with wings within the shell arrive at the day of its own birth You have to remain in this trusting quiet Unknowing as every mother or artist knows and let that life declare its existence not when your ego says it's time But when the new life says it's ready A body like an egg contains a soul In the beginning there's the dark there's the womb and the only light is the soul this new life that awaits to emerge from within The soul is the beginning and also the end Birth isn't to happen before we die ideally many times, but we have to die to the ego to let it The more the soul rises resurrects in this life The more love is present here inside us Meaning the soul is all we are when we come into this life And it's all that will be when we leave it if you can stand there at the beginning Then you will know the end which is a love that only ever expands Then according to the legend Caesar was like ha. Yeah, right A person can no more resurrect than that egg in your hand turned red The egg immediately turned red. The next section is called the body never lies What you say you say in a body You can say nothing outside this body. You must awaken while in this body for everything exists in it Resurrect in this life the gospel of Philip There came a point when words were no longer useful I sank into the clear cut knowing of what needed to be done every move I made was intentional unequivocal And that's certainly that blazing truth spoke for itself I began to experience how much less I can do for the rest of my life if I choose The body never lies Letting go of the need to explain myself with words or saying why I needed to do something or when was the most powerful I have ever been For example when the midwives wheeled over a huge ass four-leaf mirror The kind you check your outfit in before going out and started positioning it so I could see my son's head emerging All I needed to do was allow it to not exist I didn't need to get angry to tell them to get that thing out of my face or my fanny rather I just continued doing what I had been doing which was everything. I already knew I needed to do in order to get my son safely into this world My inside was my outside. I was nothing more or less than who I am I didn't need to explain to them that seeing his image outside of me was a distraction It took me away from the awareness. I already had from within The image of the mirror provided was awareness once removed. I already had direct awareness I could see him but with a sense the heart's capacity of a far broader and more precise sight than the eyes will ever provide for us I could sense that something was wrong that his position was making it difficult for him to descend I knew in a way I couldn't translate that he was healthy and strong and that he would make it through this and that I would Birth him and not need the c-section. They had alerted the surgeon. I was heading towards I never said a word though. I never said anything except the passionate repetition of one name And this is the part of my birth story. It has taken years and this book to reconcile Because the body never lies 48 hours earlier. I had been born that I was going to need to be induced the next morning So my husband and I walked the full length of Manhattan We ate an amazing meal had some red wine And some impressive sex impressive because of my size That night I stood up from the couch in my little black maternity dress and my water broke It wasn't biblical, but it felt like a triumph I started to strut around the apartment. They can't induce me now with my tiny flood came a breath clenching contractions When I arrived at the hospital. I was already at three and a half centimeters dilated I come from a long line of natural child birthing women I siphoned my confidence from this fact and I trusted I would be counted among them I went into the hospital shower and stood with my hands braced against the wall to support me as each new and more Painful contraction wracked my body The hot water pounded against the center of my back and slid over my sacrum soothing me when the painful contractions receded I used the word pain, but this isn't accurate at all Pain doesn't begin to describe what would happen in intervals to my entire being here. I have it now It felt as if slowly and with great success. I was being deboned It felt as if my pelvis was being pushed in increments down through my body for the pressure of each contraction I labored that way for most of the night Before dawn I moved back to bed for the midwife to check on me I knew from a look on her face as her gloved hand gently Investigated that she wasn't finding what she had hoped I could read her as if her thoughts were written on a cue card out in front of her. It was not good news She said that I actually gone down a centimeter I was now only at two and a half centimeters dilated up until this point I had began managing the deboning with breath work and the hot water and sheer undiluted resolve And it all felt worth it because it was productive But exhaustion and dread began to set in after I realized I had labored for all that time And it actually managed to close myself back up again I had managed to labor in the wrong direction As I remember it now I went straight into the unimaginable pain It was worse than being deboned It felt as if all along without me realizing it or any doctors seeing it on an x-ray or a sonogram machine My pelvis was actually made of thick translucent glass And my son's small but hard bowling ball of the head had gotten itself wedged into this miraculous glass Pelvis in a way where instead of managing through it or finding a way to shift and turn so he could fit His skull had actually shattered it My pelvis shattered into shreds of glass and with each next contraction the countless shards pierced me from the inside out I can't really say that I said his name the first time I heard myself say it I didn't even realize it was me calling out for him This was the point where the words no longer served a purpose This was the point where I crossed the threshold. I knew I could never come back from Within each new wave of shards of glass embedding themselves deeper into my body I only said his name again and again Jesus Christ And I didn't know until the pain embodied me so fully that this existed That he was the truth that lived within me beyond the words and reason The only truth real enough to match the intensity of the pain As if the pain was a flamethrower and with each new contraction it consumed everything within me that wasn't real Until all that remained was this stowaway love that had always been there A love that I had fought against a love that I had denied A love that I built an iron wall around my heart to keep me safe from a love I never needed to find a love that has been with me my entire life from the inside out And I never needed to ask for an epidural It was communicated so clearly through the state that I had endured I remember the nod I gave my husband. It was a nod It was a nod so telling he just immediately set out to find the doctor She was a vision as she entered the room She was at least six months pregnant, maybe seven. This felt like a blessing Her head scarf was as white as her white medical coat I was still calling his name as if it was the only elixir for managing the pain So she followed suit and began to repeat Allah With each next contraction until I could hold still for no longer enough for her to insert that horrifyingly long needle into my spine We locked eyes as the medication began to reach my shattered glass pelvis and coated with numbness Which felt like warm honey. We locked eyes and said nothing It said everything we could ever need to communicate because everything in that moment was human And everything was holy The next section was mary magdalene was not a prostitute I said to him so now lord does a person who sees a vision see it with a soul or with a spirit The savior answered a person does not see with the soul or the spirit rather the mind Which exists between these two sees the vision and that is what? The gospel of mary chapter seven verses five through seven I remember how what the fuck I felt when I first saw this passage from the chapter seven and mary's gospel gets caught off right in the clincher All three copies of mary's gospel have the same answer torn from it We can only imagine what christ was about to tell mary the gospel won't start up again until four pages later And it also resumes mid-sentence as if we passed out just before christ was going to tell us how we perceive a vision from within And then we wake up again while mary's telling us about the powers that keep the soul bound There's so much. We don't know There's so much. I don't know I've been studying mary magdalene for two decades as a scholar as a theologian And as a devout seeker compelled by a force I can't name or entirely understand to know who she really was and to interpret the significance of her gospel And the effort has humbled me There is so much that remains a mystery. This is why I love humility Whenever I let it sweep over me. It's like changing into flats after realizing I have been in high heels for too long There's so much that we don't have empirical truth to rest on what speaking about her or who she was Though there is however one thing we know for certain mary magdalene was not a prostitute And this is not a commentary about prostitution I often get a wave of defense when I've written or spoken about this before But this is not about sex workers and the sacredness of the body Though I appreciate that mary magdalene had been a patroness Of those who had felt shamed by our culture in relation to the body for centuries And I think there is a beauty in the story that she was a prostitute There's a beauty in the story of a woman who loved much and was forgiven much It's a story of the senator turned saint and who can't identify with that. It's a good story It's just not mary magdalene's story It's simply not true Maybe there's so much we can't verify so much of the evidence the scripture that would attest to the truth of who she was Has been tampered with burned edited or destroyed The most damaging of what is the capacity of our own imagination to even conceive of the idea that she may have been the most significant figure in christ's life Because of the two millennia of homilies and sermons and interpretations of her as a prostitute Rather than one of the first apostles in the early form of the church But her status as a prostitute is verifiable and it's not true So what happened How did mary magdalene become the penitent prostitute if christian theologians in the lat west were going to establish an Exclusionary male church Then the central figure to christ's story mary magdalene Painted to be retold Starting in the fourth century with the formation of the traditional bible all the gospels that confirmed mary's spiritual authority And unique relationship with christ were excluded from the canon and deemed heretical Like the gospel of mary the gospel of philip the gospel of thomas And the scriptures that confirmed and validated women's leadership in the earliest forms of christianity like the acts of polythecla were also excluded Over the centuries christ became less and less human He was depicted as a chaste onistic purely divine and mary magdalene went Underwent the inverse transformation She became more and more human More sinful until the sixth century when pope gregarie sealed the deal on her depiction In his interpretation of christ's healing Mary by freeing her of seven demons Pope gregarie conflated mary magdalene as both the unnamed sinner and luke seven who anointed christ feet And the mary of luke eight and the bark 16 who was freed of all of her demons by christ And then he interpreted these passages as confirming mary's sinfulness had something to do with her sexuality Seven demons translated to him as a prostitute no question As sythia borgo explains the shadow side of christianity's Notoriously undoubted with issues around human sexuality and feminine get projected directly onto her Pope gregarie's homily 33 set the precedent that the faithful should hold mary as a penitent whore This interpretation of mary had a very clear agenda Reinforced the view that women were seen primarily in terms of their sexuality and not their spiritual nature Dr. Cary King explains that his fiction of mary magdalene as the whore created by the church solved two problems at once It undermined did both the teachings associated with mary and wim's capacity to take the leadership's roles With this interpretation of mary as the penitent prostitute as king laminates her radical heritage has been tamed and erased Finally in 1969 which if we do the math is a math thousand one thousand three hundred seventy eight years after After gregarie's fusion of mary magdalene and the unnamed center as proof of her prostitution The church officially corrected his mistake or to be clear his misogamy And this admission came 450 years after religious scholars had rejected it as fiction as just flat out historically inaccurate However, the image of the interpretation of mary magdalene as the penitent prostitute continues to be preached It is remained in the place behind the pulpit and deep set in the popular imagination July 22nd is mary magdalene's feast day in the catholic tradition I'm writing this chapter on july 22nd 2018 She was recently rehabilitated from the penitent prostitute to the apostle to the apostles by pope francis Although it's important to make clear. She's still not considered an apostle herself Let alone the first So we've established what religious historians and now even the pope knows she was not mary magdalene was not a prostitute What then do we know about her that isn't fiction? Let's start with this the historical figure mary magdalene was a prominent jewish woman a benefactress of jewish ministry a visionary and a leading apostle in the earliest christian christian movement Her status as the apostle to the apostle comes from the secret teachings or transmission that she received christ according to her gospel Actually, uh, she's wrong there mary magdalene was not jewish. She was greek She was not jewish. She was greek Actually yashua wasn't even jewish. So I know that's going to ruffle some feathers, but the truth will set you free mary magdalene was a greek descent She was not jewish Her epithet magdalene comes from the fact that she was born in the town magdala Located in prestate israel on the west shore of the sea of gallilee just north of the city of tiberias And although mary magdalene is often depicted as having red hair And colvir white skin as it from ireland. It's more hysterically accurate To depict her as is from ancient israel. No, no, no, no, no, that's incorrect. She was not from magdala again the Downfall of the matrix of religion. It's going to be really hard for people She was not from magdala and she was actually blonde hair blue-eyed. All right, so she was she was greek Okay, um, she was not from magdala and she was not jewish and she came from a very very very powerful greek family directly through the tolamé line of Egypt So that's not true Megan waterson. That's not true All right, according to the conical conical gospels, mary magdalene was Present at the crucifixion. She was there at the burial and she was there alone at the empty tune And she is the first to witness the resurrection. Let me say that again Mary magdalene was the one price resurrection to In the gospel john price gives mary magdalene special instructions and commissions her to be the one to announce the good news Her she is the one he chooses once again. I'm starting to believe he was never actually crucified I think the resurrection story has Very different meaning in the original Teachings is more the resurrection of the soul within the death of the ego versus an actual Luciferian satanic ritual, which was his crucifixion was actually satanic And I think that story was added in later in at the council of nicaea to trick people into worshiping Mithra the story of mithra Not the story of yashua and magdalene The word apostle comes from the great word Apostle us meaning the one who was sent mary status as the apostle to the apostle also comes from this moment when mary is the one Who is sent by christ to tell the other disciples that he has been resurrected Without her capacity to receive this vision of the christ from within her to see that he has risen the other Disciples would not have become apostles themselves Mary magdalene is one of the main speakers in several first second century texts according to the dialogues of christ with his disciples After the resurrection Like the sophia of jesus christ from the second century Where mary is one of the seven women and 12 men who gathered to hear christ as after the resurrection Also, the third century text the pistas sophia where mary is Permanent among the disciples because as christ explains in it You are she whose heart is more directed to the kingdom of heaven than all of your brothers And in the gospel of philip whose cockpit version dates to 250 ad and whose greek version dates further back to 150 ad mary is named as the companion of christ The word in greek is canosis It translates as companion partner or consort Logan 55 the gospel of philip reads the companion of the sun is mariam of magdala The teacher loved her more than all the disciples. He often kissed her on the mouth The gospel of mary confirms that mary had gone through a process that allowed her to see christ from within her She could receive a vision of him And the fact that mary can see christ according to her gospel Is the proof that she has become a child of true humanity Fully human and fully divine That process involves going through the seven powers of the ego Which is how i interpret the seven demon in order to unbind her soul Or in order to remember that she is also a soul And not just this mortal stressed out perpetually threatened ego That will die with the body and death before christ gets cut off by whoever found his full response to mary's question to Incendiary for us to know he tells her that a person sees a vision with the mind Which is between the soul and the spirit And we know at this point that the greek word for mind is no Is actually the highest aspect of the soul the soul's angel The aspect of the soul we could perceive while embodied This is what the hessie cast experienced as existing within the heart that treasure house inside of us The no is like the microphone or the movie projector within the heart that translates the ancient and amazing truths Our own soul wants to say to us while we're here living and can still use this tremendous opportunity Of being an embodied soul to evolve Rumi suggests that everyone sees the unseen and proportion to the clarity of their hearts This is what i think mary magdalene achieved through this process. Her gospel relates I think mary had clarity of heart And this is how and why she could perceive christ So why now after two millennia of being misunderstood? Her spiritual authority her ministry and her gospel being buried and silenced. Why is she now rising in stature? Why are we suddenly curious about this woman who has stood in plain daylight as the central figure in christ life? If you ask me this first, I would tell you that the truth is of phoenix and can never be buried Truth will always emerge from the ashes and find its way to the surface of our consciousness Next I will tell you that I think we are finally ready for her teachings For the other half of the story that began not with christ birth, but with his resurrection The story of a potential we all possess while we're human To be the bridge between heaven and earth The story of a woman who was beloved to christ not because she followed him Or worshiped him like an idol or being far greater than she could ever be but rather because she followed his example And became the love that he was also And I would tell you that this love she became is what our world needs most desperately It's a love that renders all things sacred from animals to the angels From the poorest to the most powerful It's a love that sees the inherent worth in all living things Mary Magdalene is the embodiment of love that reaches where it has never before Mary Magdalene is most associated with Easter with the resurrection because she was the one there at the tomb The one who waited in the dark passed his death in absence She was the one he resurrected to She was the first to see him And she only recognized it was him when he called her by name But let's back up I think it's significant to realize that she didn't just happen to be there in the right place at the right time There's a prominence inherent in the fact that she was the one to be there to see him first There's a love we've overlooked for so long The human love between two people As a love that never ends And I think it's time we recognized it I've always wondered how the story of the resurrection would shift fundamentally If we realized that it was also a story about a love we all possess That when we can let love reach where it has never been before out past the ego's idea of self Then we quite literally come back to life We die and resurrect Hopefully several times at least before we pass away into whatever's next for us In chapter 20 of the gospel of john titled the risen life from a new new testament Mary is weeping for the loss of christ's body outside the empty tune when she sees two angels clothed in white Standing there where the body of christ had been I've always loved this for two reasons First that she could see angels at all But second and more significantly that when she's at her most human Sobbing and feeling separate from christ when she's at her most broken and vulnerable This is when she can perceive the angels And they ask her why are you weeping? They ask from their position of already knowing that she could never be separate from christ And that he is in fact already standing behind her She lets them know that she's crying because she misses his physical form She loved him entirely body and soul And then she turns and christ asked her the exact same question the angels asked her Why are you weeping? But she doesn't know yet. This is the presence she sees before her. She thinks he's the gardener And shows she repeats her need to tend to his actual flesh to find his human form and care after it This is when he calls out to her Mary And hearing her name and his voice she knows again that christ is with her And that he had in fact never left I've always imagined that although physically She was at the tomb in the garden of a cemetery. She met with christ in a place that's far less literal And far more difficult to describe I've imagined that this meeting she has with him takes place not because Of sight but because of vision I think she could perceive him with a spiritual aptitude that exists only in the heart It's a re-education to see mary magdalene as an apostle as a beloved disciple of christ considered worthy enough to want to return to first Worthy enough to want to have her as his witness to come to her in the dark beyond death Because he knew she was the one who could see him with her heart It's a re-education to think that christ needed mary's love in order to resurrect in order to be witnessed Just as the angels need to know how worthy we are to perceive them I love imagining that his ministry and hers are still Inextricably linked that his purpose was fulfilled because she was there to meet him And that he was only able to bridge heaven and earth because of a human love between them A love to imagine that we might still have a love story to an earth A love that has been age after age making its way to the surface of our consciousness A love we are finally ready for A love that is as human as it is divine And friends, I think we're actually going to stop it there We're going to end up doing three parts of part five So next week we'll start with No one was there to witness the witness In our part five C In my opinion, one of the most beautiful aspects of this book truly is the love between the madeline and the christ The love that went beyond the physical realm but into the quantum into all the dimensions And I do believe going into this new age of aquarius We all are experiencing that deep profound love that as megan waterson writes is fully human and fully divine