The most important thing she teaches him is love – sexual and at the same time deep spiritual love between man and woman. Jesus, however, is from the first presented as a man who makes a difference – one who is there to learn from women and particularly from Mary Magdalene who becomes his teacher. Mary is a strong woman who departs from the norm, presenting herself as courageously renouncing patriarchal Christianity and men who are not familiar with women's mysteries. In Mary Magdalene's own voice, the reader is taken back into Biblical times where women are regarded as chattel and are denied the recognition of their individuality.
I would be much more comfortable to call this intense and blissful state of divine inspiration what it is – inspiration. Having experienced deep moments of divine wisdom myself while writing, I find it important to recognize that the author does shape every story and that it is therefore always subjective. What slightly bothers me is the truth claim that inevitably accompanies it, the idea that the text is not influenced by factors such as the author's world view, emotions, knowledge and previous reading, but that it tells universal truth. Personally, however, I have to admit that I have my problems with the claim of books being channelled. Joan Norton, a psychotherapist in the Jungian tradition, movingly writes in her introduction how the death of her daughter has triggered her own spiritual journey in which she opened to the wisdom of Mary Magdalene. The Mary Magdalene Within is first of all a very personal book, both concerning its genesis and its contents. What, then, does Joan Norton's The Mary Magdalene Within offer to those still fascinated by the enigmatic Mary Magdalene? The bestseller The Da Vinci Code of course relies on all those publications, first and foremost Starbird's. Apart from theoretical texts, numerous novels about Mary Magdalene have been published during the last decades, such as my personal favourite The Moon Under Her Feet by Clysta Kinstler. King, Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Among the numerous texts attempting to shed new light on Mary Magdalene there are, for instance, the successful Woman with the Alabaster Jar and Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile by the Catholic scholar Margaret Starbird, or The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle by Karen L. Both in academic research and in fictional retellings of her story, Mary Magdalene has touched scholars and believers, Goddess people and Christians alike. Sacred whore, priestess, lover of Jesus, key to the divine feminine – the controversial figure of Mary Magdalene has been rediscovered as a central figure for an understanding of Christian wisdom.
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