21/07/2025
Happy Mary Magdalene’s Feast Day (July 22nd)
“Did you know that there were four towns named Magdala during the time of our early Christian story?
And that the one now mistakenly identified by tour guides as Mary Magdalene’s hometown was in those days called by an entirely different Greek name, Taricheae?
No one would have called her “Mary of Magdala” because her home didn’t have that name during her time, nor were women in the Gospels identified by place names.
There is no proof at all that the word Magdalene was derived from a town called Magdala.
Magdalene is more likely her title, a title of honor indicating her royal stature, her place as “Watchtower” or “Stronghold of the Flock” and Sacred Partner to Jesus, the “Good Shepherd.”
Reaching back through to early times for facts about Mary Magdalene is reaching back into times of dark consciousness for women, a time when wives were commonly not even named in documents.
No wonder researchers make errors and assumptions about Mary Magdalene. But some things can’t lie.
Of the eight lists of women in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene comes first in all but one. It’s as if she is the First Lady.
There was no Mary of Magdala but there was a woman whom people seemed to recognize as the Bride prophesized by the Old Testament, who was honored in the very popular Song of Songs.
People of those times knew that a messiah wouldn’t come without a “co-messiah” wife. She was the one who would return from exile and cause the land and life to be fertile again. She was the deeply honored Divine Feminine embodied in a woman living an earthly life.
People recognized her as “the Magnificent” and “the Great,” both titles that had always belonged to the feminine half of God.
Certainly the root word of the title Magdalene comes from mag, an ancient word for Mother God. She is the only person in the New Testament besides Jesus to have a title of such stature.
When stories circulated about the anointing of Jesus, the sacred marriage on the Mount of Olives, it was most likely recognized that the Bride had returned to claim her Sacred Masculine partner, Jesus.
We all know by now that the label of “prostitute” was falsely placed on Mary Magdalene by the church fathers in their efforts to consolidate their power and their story during the first few hundred years of Christianity.
Even the modern church has officially corrected the “prostitute” story, but it has not put any effort into restoring her stature. That has been left to the women of today who intuitively recognize the presence of the Sacred Feminine, come to heal the wasteland.
Now we have the eyes to see that Jesus was not alone, was not a celibate lone male god. He was in sacred partnership with a soul of magnificence and he was in physical partnership with a woman of great heart, Mary called the Magdalene.
- Margaret Starbird
The Mary Magdalene Study Circle- three month journey will be taking place once more starting 14th September.
