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Mary Magdalene, another history
(Article by Moacir Sader SJ, March, 2005)
<<translated by Tatiana Fonseca>>
  

Mary Magdalene, from all Biblical characters, is perhaps the most distorted one, hidden by untruths divulged throughout the centuries by Church, Biblical texts and mistaken interpretations. Parallel to the untruths, another history has been told in an underlined way by art throughout two thousands years of Christian history and also by apocryphal texts.  

Recently, the book "The Code of Da Vinci", by Dan Brown, passed through the world, being read by millions of people. In a suspense history, the author includes some truths, which for a long period had been hidden. Dan Brown asks us to observe the picture of Last Supper, of Leonardo Da Vinci, where it is clear that one of the apostles’ images shows females traces, with the same color of Jesus’ clothes and linked to Him by a big M formed by the physical posture of both on the picture, faced to the red color. According to The Code of Da Vinci author’s interpretation, both symbols, the letter M and the red color, would indicate to be Mary Magdalene the character besides Jesus.

Let’s see, following, the Last Supper image, painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, approximately in the year of 1495, in the Church of  Saint Mary Grace, in Milan, where the M shape appears clearly, following the contours of red color in Jesus’ and Mary Magdalene’s clothes.

 

Picture took from “Super Interessante” Magazine - Edition – October/2004

Considering that is the correct interpretation, what did Da Vinci intend with the underlined message? As it is known, Da Vinci belonged to the Priory of Sion, secret society established in Jerusalem in the year of 1099 by King Godofredo of Bouillon, with the purpose of keeping one secret that was kept by his family since Jesus’ period. To help the maintenance and the protection of this secret The Templars Knights Order was created. The secret that it wanted to keep, with all prices to protect, was about Holy Grail. Da Vinci, in an occult way in art, kept the secret but bequeathing to the future its discovery.

The Priory of Sion, also known as Monastery of Sinai, according to some historical researchers, was constituted in a secret society, related to Masonic and Rosicrucian, created to protect the Holy Blood. Beyond Da Vinci, also participated of this secret society historical characters and important writers, such as, Isaac Newton and Victor Hugo.

There is a big chain of researchers, which admit that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and from this marriage could be birth one daughter, who would be the real descent, the real blood, The Holy Grail, and that Mary Magdalene with her daughter, named as Sarah, went to live in France . This would be the big secret, the history version kept for millenniums, or best, history which was judged duly lost from the Council of Niceia, occurred in the year 327 after Christ.

The painter George de la Tour , who lived from 1593 to 1652, painted Mary Magdalene pregnant, as we can see in the reproduction of the following paint:

 

Image took from the book 
Mary Magdalene and The Holy Grail.

With the discovery of the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene, around 1896 in an Egyptian Monastery, an uncontested truth was discovered: Mary Magdalene, much more than what is said in Bible, was, actually, one of Jesus’ disciples, and, according many researchers, the nearest disciple of the Master and His spiritual teachings. These teachings were completely linked to inner spirituality, being the real way for spiritual evolution, as we see in the following passage from the Gospel, according to Mary Magdalene, where Jesus said:

 All the species, all the formations, all the creatures are together, they depend one on each other, and they will separate again in their own origin. Because the essence of the substance only will be separate again in its own essence. The ones who have ears to hear that hear. 

We are all joined, forming the essence of life and with God inside each one of us, therefore the way is to dive into our inner, to find the direction of our evolution, to find the God that inhabits inside us. In the following passage from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, this message of Jesus is limpid and also emphasizing that He did not leave rules, asking only for people took into consideration what He “showed” in His unconditional practice of love.

When the Son of God thus spoke, He greeted all saying: “The peace is with you. I received my peace. You should take care so that nobody moves you from the way, saying: “This way” or “That way”. Because the son of the Man is inside you. Follow Him. The one who looks for Him, will find Him. Now continue, so proclaim the Gospel of Reign. Do not establish other rules, besides the ones that I showed you, and do not institute them as a legislator, otherwise, you will be limited by them”. After he said all that, he left.

According to Thomas, the Gospel discovered in 1945, treated exactly of the same approach found in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. We see this aspect in following passage, chosen of the article published in “Super Interessante” Magazine, in Decembers’ edition of 2004.

The Gospel of Thomas and others apocryphals say to heart about a continent which does not stop growing in our time: eagered for spirituality, but express distrustful of religion.

According to Thomas, considered apocryphal, in this Gospel:

The reign is inside and also outside you. When you get to know yourselves, you will be known and you will understand that you are children of the Father alive. But if you do not know yourself, you will live in poverty and you will be the poverty.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene presents Jesus’ teachings, which were not passed for the other disciples or were not comprehended by them in the Master’s speech. That the reign of God is inner each person and it is necessary to keep yourself in balance in order to not attract illnesses and the physical death. Vision that is completely accepted nowadays by the alternative medicine in all areas. The cure of diseases by alternative medicine has been done through the rearrangement of energetic balance. In the following passages, from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, we can see this spirituality vision in an unmistakable manner:

Peter told Him: “Since you explained everything to us, tell us also: what is the world’s sin?” Jesus said: “There is no sin: you are the ones who create it, when you make things as the adultery, which is called ‘sin’. Because of this, Father God came among you, for each one’s essence, to conduct it to its origin”. Continuing he said: “Because of this, you got sick and died […]. The one, who understands my words, put them in practice. The substance made an incomparable passion, which had its origin in something contrary to Divine Nature. From that on, all the body gets in unbalance. This is the reason for what I say to you: have courage, and if you are discouraged, look for strength from the different nature manifestation. The ones have ears to hear that hear.”

In the Gospels of Mary Magdalene and Philip, it’s clear woman’s valorization, because in both, we can see that Jesus did privileged revelations to Mary Magdalene because she was the one who was in more harmony with the Master’s teachings. But the relation between Jesus and Mary Magdalene was beyond that, as we can read in the Gospel of Philip, in the following passage:

And the Rescuer’s partner is Mary Magdalene. Christ loved her more than all the others disciples and He used to kiss her on mouth frequently. The rest of disciples got offended with this and showed their disapproval. They said to Him: Why you love her more than all of us?

In 1891, one fact raised even more the questions involving Mary Magdalene. During a reform of a church in South of France, in Rennes-le-Châteu, the priest Bérenger Sauniére supposed had found a treasure, as it was known, brought from The Holy Land and kept by the Templars Knights,. This secret would confirm the existence of Jesus’ directs descendents, in other words, the holy blood.

It is known by the apocryphal texts, that after Jesus’ death, the disciples did not wish to see a woman as a leader of the group, and this was happening naturally because of Magdalene’s huge spiritual knowledge. Peter several times contested and had misunderstandings with Magdalene, because he was afraid of she definitely become the group’s leader. From that fight over power related to the Christianity’s leadership and by the fact of a woman contemplates more knowledge than all the others disciples, the prostitute history that all of us unfortunately know was forged.

One of the books that inspire the author of "The Code of Da Vinci" was Mary Magdalene and The Holy Grail, by Margaret Starbird. This book is one of many others that show the relation between The Holy Grail with Mary Magdalene and the descent of Jesus.   Margaret Starbird, wishing to contest other authors about Grail’s heresy, who used to say that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, dived into the European history, the Masonic rituals, the medieval art, the symbolism, the psychology, the mythology and the religion (Jewish and Christian). However, in a surprising way, she finished finding tracks of huge evidence that everything had been truth, occult and kept in many ways, overall in arts. All the evidences made the author to conclude that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were really married and that such marriage happened in a hidden way, because the families of David, children of Jesse (Jesus) and of Jonathan, son of Saul (Mary Magdalene), were being joined. Stargird in the mentioned book, page 24, writes:

The marriage happened at the house of Simon, the leper. Only a few closely friends and their families were invited. It was necessary to keep the marriage in secret in order that Herod Antipas did not discover that one Benjamin’s heiress had joined herself with one son of David’s house in marriage.

From that comes the confusion that always made the disciples while seeing Mary Magdalene treating Jesus, in public, with physical cares, fact that would be unacceptable for a woman from the period, unless she was married and was treating her husband like this.  

Other important argument in favor of Jesus had been married is in the book, "The Code of Da Vinci", page 262:

Because Jesus was Jewish (…) and the social honors of that time, practically prohibited a Jewish man to be single. According to Jewish habits, celibacy was prohibited and the Jewish father’s duty was to find an adequate wife for his son. If Jesus was not married, at least one of the Bible Gospels would have mentioned that and gave some reason for the fact that he had stayed single.

That marriage represented a big dynastic importance, putting in risk the period government, because Jesus’ politics power would inevitably start disturbing. This fact can be deduced by the kind of death that Jesus had, because the crucifixion used to happen for the ones who were rebel, against the government, but mainly because of their dynasty. Thus, Mary Magdalene needed to run away, to not be killed, going to France exiling herself. 

In the book “The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail”, by authors Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, the issue Mary Magdalene and her marriage with Jesus appears in an emphatic way. About the marriage, we quote, the following passage found on page 286:

If Jesus was really married to Magdalene, could such marriage have served for any purpose? In other words, could it have meant anything more than a conventional marriage? Could it have been any kind of dynastic alliance with political repercussions and implications? To summarize, could a stock resulted from that marriage, guarantee the name of “Real Blood”?

Only the marriage between both of them could explain the presence of Magdalene in Jesus’ trips. In the same book, on page 276, we read:

This woman role is simply ambiguous in the four Gospels and it seems to have been deliberately obscured (…). In Palestine of Jesus’ period it would be impossible that an unmarried woman travel by herself. More unthinkable it would be to travel by herself and together with a religious Master and His circle. Several traditions seem to know about this potentially embarrassing fact. In some cases, it was intended that Magdalene had been married to one of the disciples of Jesus. Although if that was the case, her special relation with Jesus and her proximity to Him, would put them both under suspicion if not adultery accusation.

It is correct that Magdalene shows herself with special importance in Jesus history, in Christianity history, as we can see in the same book, page 277:  

… it is obvious that Magdalene, in the end of Jesus’ career, had been a character with enormous importance. In the three synoptic Gospels, her name appears in a considerable way on the list of women who followed Jesus (…). She is the first witness of the empty tomb after the crucifixion. To reveal the resurrection, Jesus chose Magdalene among all His others worshippers.

If in one hand, the male disciples stayed hidden, with fear, on Jesus’ crucifixion, Mary Magdalene stayed present, watching, suffering, all the time, as mentioned on the Gospels of Mathews, Landmark and John.     

The authors of “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”, make an important commentary about the valid of the apocryphal Gospels, in the following chosen passages (page 323), they denominated them of Gnostics:

According to Nag Hammadi manuscripts, the possibility of a holy blood descent from Jesus seemed more reasonable for us. Some of the named Gnostic Gospels were potentially as true and authentic as the books from the New Testament. As a result, the facts that they testify, implicitly or explicitly - one substitute on cross, a dispute between Peter and Magdalene, a marriage between Magdalene and Jesus, the birth of “a son of the Son of the man” – could be not rejected, the most controversial they were. We were dealing with history, and not with theology. And the history, in Jesus’ period, was not less complex, with many faces and oriented for the pragmatism than it is today.

The special relation between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is undeniable. Nowadays, it is not possible to talk about Magdalene as a prostitute anymore. In the sixth century, the Pope, removed the title of penitent improperly given to Mary Magdalene, but this is too little to rescue the big importance of Magdalene in the Christianity advent. Besides the improperly title of prostitute, they  tried to destroy the Gospel of Magdalene, because on it there was the important teaching of Jesus that the way is not to follow this or that way, this or that religion, but in the inner looking for, in the inner evolution to God’s way that inhabits inside all of us. More than improperly labeled Magdalene, they hid the real Christianity, the one practiced by Jesus, who did not create any religion or did not proclaim or lived in churches, but he practiced, truly, the purest love, the most beautiful spirituality and as His own words: “Do not establish other rules, besides the ones I showed you, and do not institute them as a legislator, otherwise, you will be limit by them.”

If there is no decisive testimony that Mary Magdalene was married with Jesus, it is correct that both of them were connected by a special love, rarely spiritual. Throughout the canalized information, we know that Jesus and Mary Magdalene are twin souls, and in Palestine , they incarnated to live and help at the same time in the Christianity implantation. In the book “A Gruta Do Sol” (The Sun’s Grotto), by Marisa Varela, who was helped by Light Masters, the spiritual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene appears translucent. In one of the Sixth Ray festivities, both of them could be seen together, in the following passages: (pages 144/145).

Finally… the special presence, which many rumors and speculations were made: Joshua (Jesus) who was with his pretty woman, with long curly hair and light eyes. His twin ray, certainly. Murmuring, someone behind me quickly identified her: - Mary Magdalene (…) He made a gesture with his hands, greeting the public, after he sat down besides Mary Magdalene, occupying the central chair that was destined to Him (…) The host (…) thanked the presence of everybody who was there, giving the prestige to the solemnity and especially to the Master Jesus and His wife Mary Magdalene, the honors invited. 

Whatever the past man, the church and the religion had been hidden about Mary Magdalene’s character, her importance to the implantation of Christianity was extremely vital, she came to help Jesus and her relation with the Master of the Masters is naturally known in the spiritual spheres. Here on  Earth, the past artists conserved, hid,  (showing) the true and in the time that we live, in the dawn of The New Age, the true opens itself, it spreads out its fan, leaving in bottled letters the undeniable truth. It is not only a question of having eyes to see, it treats about the uncontestable evidences that the truth is coming to every body, even if we want or not.      

 Researched and cited Books and Magazines:

1)      BROWN, Dan: The Code of Da Vinci. Sextante Publisher, Rio de Janeiro, 2004.

2)      STARBIRD, Margaret: Mary Magdalene and The Holy Grail. Sextante Publisher, Rio de Janeiro, 2004.

3)      BAIGENT, Michael; LEIGH, Richard; LINCOLN, Henry. The Holy Grail and the Holy Blood. 2^nd edition. New Border Publisher, Rio de Janeiro , 1993;

4)      VARELA, Marisa. A Gruta do Sol. 8th edition. Missão Orion Publisher, Rio de Janeiro, 1996;

5)      Super Interessante Magazine: The Code of Da Vinci. 205th edition. October, 2004;

6)      Super Interessante Magazine: Prohibited Jesus. 207th edition. December, 2004;

7)      Gospels Apocryphals according Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Philip.