Episode Details

Today we’re diving into the real Mary Magdalene story. Not the repentant sinner you heard about in Sunday school, but Mary the priestess, the apostle, the mystic, and spiritual teacher who some early Christians, aka Gnostics, saw as Jesus’s equal partner in transmitting sacred wisdom.

A Divine Tale

This is a tale about divine feminine energy, suppressed teachings, and why understanding Mary’s true role might change how you see spiritual authority altogether.

So buckle up, because we’re about to uncover one of history’s greatest cover-ups.

I’ve been fascinated with the Mary Magdelene story for decades. When I first got wind of the idea that she was far more than a prostitute, I was completely hooked to learn more of her story.

Over 20 years ago I read the book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird and absolutely loved it. She traced evidence about Mary Magdelene through history, in particular relying on art. While this may sound boring, it was actually super intriguing for me.

Years later in 2003, Dan Brown’s book The DaVinci Code was published. If you read the book or saw the movie, you know the story line is about how Jesus and Mary Magdelene had a child which is all about the blood line. Mary escaped to southern France, which I’ll talk more about in a few minutes.

The Official Mary Magdalene

Here’s what we know from the heavily edited and multiple-times translated biblical texts that made it into the official canon or what they call the Bible today:

• Mary Magdalene shows up in all four gospels.
• She’s there at the crucifixion when most of the male disciples had fled.
• She’s there at the burial.
• She’s the very first person to witness Jesus after the resurrection.

In a culture where women’s testimony wasn’t valid in court, Jesus chose a woman to be the first witness to the most important event in Christian history. The others didn’t believe her, yet the early church called her Apostola Apostolorum—the Apostle to the Apostles.

So how did she go from this central role to being remembered as a “fallen” woman?

The Great Silencing

In 591 CE, Pope Gregory the Great gave a sermon declaring that Mary Magdalene, the unnamed sinful woman who anointed Jesus’s feet, and Mary of Bethany were all the same person. That one statement recast the Apostle to the Apostles as a repentant prostitute—a label that lasted more than 1,400 years.

Modern scholarship shows these were three different women. In 1969, the Catholic Church quietly corrected the record in its revised liturgical calendar, but that’s not somethin