March 17, 2008 04:14 pm

Starbird believes people should 'enjoy the journey, take the message'

By BETTY SMITH
Press special writer

Only by restoring the sacred feminine to her traditional role in the divine, can people achieve the healing and togetherness so needed today.
That was the message author Margaret Starbird brought this weekend to Sancta Sophia Seminary at Sparrow Hawk Village.
Starbird’s best-known works include “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar,” “The Goddess in the Gospels,” “Magdalene’s Lost Legacy,” and “Mary Magdalene: Bride in Exile.” Her work was cited by Dan Brown in his best-selling “The DaVinci Code.”
Through decades of research, she came to believe Mary Magdalene was the physical as well as spiritual bride of Christ – a role first suppressed because of the danger posed by the Romans, then virtually obliterated by Roman Catholic Church authorities during the centuries.
But a hidden church, a “church of love,” persisted, depicting Mary Magdalene’s role through a series of art works and beliefs passed on discreetly, a message considered heretical and also dangerous.
“You’re wondering what a nice Catholic girl like me is doing here,” she said after opening her lecture Friday evening reading a passage by Khalil Gibran, depicting the first meeting between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. “This is a journey I never intended to take.”
She was, perhaps, an unlikely candidate for such an odyssey. When it began, she was a staunch lifelong Catholic, the mother of five, a choir singer and teacher in the church, the wife, daughter and granddaughter of military men.
“It was a rather regimented life,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I had been indoctrinated.”
When she was first handed a copy of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” in 1983, she refused to read it, saying she was appalled by the idea that Jesus perhaps had not been celibate as commonly believed, but married to Mary Magdalene and even the father of a child.
Two years later, she read, “In God’s Name,” a book detailing the death of a high-ranking priest amid financial misdoings in the Vatican. She learned that Pope John Paul II, who led the church only just more than a month before his death in 1978, was found dead on the day he planned to reveal money laundering in the Vatican bank. Some believed he was murdered to suppress this information. This revelation shook her to the core.
“My hair positively caught fire,” she said.
She returned to “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.”
“I thought nothing could disturb me more [than ‘In God’s Name], and I was totally wrong,” she said. ”I was even more upset. I thought the thought that Jesus was married couldn’t be true.”
She described a series of events, expanded upon in “The Goddess in the Gospels,” surrounding the prayer group she joined when she and her husband moved to West Point. The group often sought counsel by opening passages of the Bible and reading the verses they found within.
For some time, her concerns about the plausibility of the Mary Magdalene question, as presented in “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” remained a “closet thing” for her. She shared her thoughts with a friend, who was equally unready to accept the theory.
At one point, she was considering burning her copy of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.” She opened her Bible and discovered a verse in the book of Kings: “Restore my wife, who is espoused to me.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was horrified, I was scared,” she said. “This had to be reconciled. I couldn’t just walk away from it. I had to go out and do something.”
She thought what she had learned so far meant that there must be “a design flaw in Christianity from the beginning” by the suppression of the lost bride.
Starbird sought the answers to these questions:
• Could Jesus have been so human as to have been married?
• If so, then to whom?
• How could we not have known about this woman?
She began her theological studies at divinity school after moving to Nashville. Seeking a topic for a paper she had to write on the gospels, she opened her Bible again. She opened to the book of Mark, the story about a woman with an alabaster jar anointing Jesus with precious perfume. Such was the genesis of her first book.
Starbird has continued her studies and research, gaining renown over the years. She has a master of arts from the University of Maryland, and has done graduate study in European history and comparative literature. She has studied at Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, where she was a Fulbright fellow, and at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn. She has traveled extensively and taught numerous classes in scripture study and spirituality, according to biographical information in her books.
She said the story about the woman anointing Jesus is one of only four or five stories included in all four gospels. The story of the last supper, or Eucharist, is not even mentioned in all four.
“Does that give you an idea of the importance of the anointing scene?” she said. “As I studied this I realized this must have been an important day, this anointing of Jesus by this woman.”
The stories do vary.
“Her name is not mentioned in Mark, and Matthew copies Mark,” she said.
Luke, a follower of Paul (who has been well-known for some of his statements regarding the role of women), moves the scene of the anointing from Bethany, and describes the woman as a sinner. John, the last of the four gospel authors, names her as Mary, sister of Lazarus of Bethany. The anointing in John took place shortly before the crucifixion, and in the text Jesus anticipated his impending death.
Starbird said Messiah means “anointed one,” and this is the only time there is any reference to someone anointing Jesus. Her books mention previous anointments of Jewish kings by priests.
She said anointing by the bride followed an ancient pagan rite, common to many cultures, of the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage. This traditionally took place around the spring equinox. She pointed out the traditional association of Easter (a name also derived from that of ancient goddesses such as Astarte) with that equinox. This year there is a convergence of Good Friday with the vernal equinox (the pagan Ostara) and the full moon.
“Anointing is a euphemism for the marriage act,” she said.
According to tradition, the sacred marriage was to make the land fertile. The crops and herds would flourish, as would couples who followed the lead of the royal duo.
“This is an ancient archetype. It plays out in every folk tale and fairy tale,” Starbird said.
But the archetype also calls for the execution or death of the male half of the divine couple. In some instances, such as that of Tammuz, husband of Ishtar, he is resurrected.
“It is the never-ending story of the eternal return of the life source,” she said.
Starbird said if Jesus had not been married, this probably would have been mentioned because marriage was considered the norm and an obligation for a Jewish male in that era.
On Friday and Saturday, Starbird presented numerous examples of art work that illustrate the hidden tradition of the bond between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. She explained how the story also was illustrated through old tarot cards, through gematria (the association of names with numbers), unicorn and grail legends, and water marks on early paper.
People who grew up reading King Arthur and similar literature know the tale of the holy grail, but believed that it referred to the chalice used at the last supper.
Starbird and those who have done similar research believe the holy grail, the vessel containing the blood of Christ, was Mary Magdalene herself. The old European tradition, suppressed before and during the Inquisition, was that she and her daughter escaped to southern France, accompanied by Joseph of Arimethea and Lazarus.
The earliest artifact Starbird presented was a fragment of a rug, dating to the second century, depicting large and small women’s faces (Magdalene and her daughter) along with two men in boats. A portrait of Jesus is in the center.
“A lot of people knew these stories, but they didn’t know they were connected and the missing link was Mary Magdalene,” she said. “What is real is sacred union. It’s about life.”
In some of the paintings Mary Magdalene is presented as pregnant, or, in the case of a Botticelli portrait, wearing a veil associated with motherhood.
Her clothing often followed descriptions of the bride’s wedding gown or was colored green, representing fertility. Many of the paintings contain windows with diamond-shaped panes forming the letter X, or with X-shaped adornments on the garments.
“The letter X is actually a symbol for the alternative church,” Starbird said. “These kinds of things are hidden in the medieval paintings and we don’t even know that they’re there.”
Perhaps the most familiar painting, and the most controversial, she used in her illustrations was Leonardo DaVinci’s “The Last Supper.” The restored version of the painting shows the image of a chalice, associated with the feminine and the grail, on a wall at the left.
Starbird measured a direct line from the chalice through the figure to the left of Jesus (a feminine one that could represent Mary Magdalene) through the left hand of Jesus (the feminine side) to a knot in the tablecloth on the lower right, a symbol of Mary Magdalene.
She said Jesus came to embody sacred humanity, total humanity. Mary Magdalene is frequently portrayed crying, one of her symbols. Starbird said Magdalene, and the sacred feminine, represents an attempt to make things whole, to pick up the pieces and put them together, rather than to divide.
“How much of this is mythology and how much of it is fact?” she said. “We will never know.
“Enjoy the journey. Take the message.”