Mary Magdalene is the only woman from the bible that I am really into, and as a big fat witch and goddess obsessive I am frankly very surprised that I am into ANY bible characters at all.
Her magic for me is that she’s not really a fleshed out person or character. Her myths (… bible stories, which are myths) are very scanty on the details. There are so many Mary’s in the bible that it’s hard to keep track of which one is which, and the definite facts we have are very few.
She “wrote” her own gospel, which was discovered a century ago and then suppressed… because classic catholic shenanigans. And this gospel paints her as a spiritual adept and equal of Jesus, who receives channeled teaching from him after he died (which some of the other bro disciples are very salty about).
Despite all that she was maligned as a inconsequential prostitute for 1500 years.
Now she’s having a huge revival. She’s so hot right now.
I know many people are raised within the christian myths and then as they grow and find their own path, they find huge healing reconciling their lived spiritual experience with what they grew up with.
Again, not me – I grew up reading Lord of the Rings, not the bible. So no call to incorporate my comforting childhood beliefs with my current witchy hereticisim (I mean, I grew into a priestess which quite a LOTR elf thing to do I guess.).
But the bible side isn’t what interests me: it’s the fact that Magdalene seems to be an almost shapeshifting red priestess holding the demonised sacred nature of the erotic devotional feminine.
Mary Magdalene the Red Priestess
Back in Jesus Times there were definitely priestesses of the goddess walking the streets. Judaism wasn’t the only religion on the block, christianity didn’t exist yet, and Jesus famously was cool with all types of folks – sex workers, bankers, pagans, homeless folks, everyone.
Asherah was the goddess of that land. Her worship was pagan and delicious – parties on hill tops, sacred sex, hanging out in under holy trees – and she was a the modern manifestation of the already ancient Ishtar/Astarte.
She was said to have had many priestesses, holding this red thread of love, life, sex and celebration which I feel for SURE that Magdalene was a part of.
The written accounts of this era talk about sacred prostitution and how immoral and dirty and sexy these goddess-worshipping folk are, how the priestesses would offer themselves to men and even how this practice was so barbaric that it could trick a father into sleeping with his daughter…
…but I take every mention of sacred prostitution with a pinch of salt. Or more a bucket of salt really. Or a dump truck of salt.
You see, if you live in a patriarchal society and want to discredit a women, you tell everyone she is a whore – that’s how they invalidated Magdalene for so long. Same true now as it was then.
And these ancients accounts are only ever written by men-folk who either want to eradicate or make fun of the barbaric cultures that are so much less refined than their own.
So Mary Magdalene the red priestess was a part of this tradition of Asherah priestesses, venerating the goddess of the land, working magic with the tree of life, with the plant spirits of the holy oils and celebrating her sexuality, and she did so with her sisters.
This is what I’m into.
This name of Magdalene as a face for all the faceless priestesses and devotees of the ancient goddess, from Jericho to Babylon to Ur to Memphis. The ones who sat at the windows veiled and adorned, the ones who walked the streets in robes of holy red. The ones who celebrated sex and brought new babies into the world and knew how to make nipple cream and where to get the herbs that would heal a woman after birth.
This name of Magdalene as a catch-all for this spirit of devotion to the Rose Goddesses – the goddesses from the middle east who are associated with the morning and the evening star, from Ishtar to Aphrodite.
This name of Magdalene that means holy devoted unconditional love.
I adore it.
I adore her.
The shapeshifting misty Mary who holds open-hearted soft feminine truth.
That’s why I am so into her.
She is the spirit of the Priestess of Living Love.
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