"For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin."
___The Thunder, Perfect Mind

The Saint:

The Gnostics hailed Mary Magdalen as the companion of Christ, and looked to her above all other apostles. Early Christian writers called her "the Bride of Christ", and "the Apostle to the Apostles." However, her most enduring image is that of a repentant prostitute, a former sinner, who is crying and covering herself in her long, sensual hair. This image combined with her name has given us the word "maudlin." In the development of Christian doctrine, the legend of Mary Magdalen was carefully crafted to discredit Gnostics and to define the role of women in the Church.

The Gospels tell us that Mary Magdalen was chief among the women who followed Jesus and administered to the needs of the disciples. Jesus had cast seven devils out of her. At the crucifixion, she was prominent among a group of women who watched. On the day after the Sabbath, she went to anoint or to observe Christ's body (the Gospels disagree as to whether she was alone or accompanied by two or three other women). Three of the Gospels report that after finding the tomb empty, she becomes the first person to see Jesus after he has risen. Particularly in the Gospel of John, she is the first person to be charged with proclaiming the message of the resurrected Christ.

According to Luke, however, Mary Magdalene returned from the tomb without having met Jesus. After she delivers the news that the tomb is empty to the disciples, Peter decides to investigate. Therefore, in Luke, he becomes the first to witness the resurrection and is charged with proclaiming the message. Peter became the first Pope, and it is on this version of the story that the Papal authority rests.

With three accounts awarding her this recognition, it seems that Mary has a claim to the title of "Christ's chosen messenger." She is the ideal figure to serve as the first Papesse.

Mary Magdalen was accorded far greater importance by the Gnostics than she ever was by the Orthodox Christians who denied her the status of apostle. The Gnostics chose her as their representative. She embodies the individual visionary experience that the Gnostics valued - the experience that was the bases of their claim of Christ's continued presence. In The Gospel of Mary, a Gnostic manuscript attributed to her, it is made clear that she is the beloved of the Saviour and the leader of the apostles. In another Gnostic gospel, The Gospel of Philip, she is referred to as Christ's "koinonos," a Greek word usually translated as "companion," but it more accurately means a consort, or spouse. Mary Magdalene, of all the saints, is truly "the Bride of Christ".*

In all of the Gnostic literature, it is clear that she has received the highest gnosis, or enlightenment. In the Great Questions of Mary, it was claimed that this gnosis was brought on by secret sexual teachings that Christ taught only to her. In The Gospel of Mary, she states that Jesus made her into a man, which would mean that, by purifying her of the evils of the body, he raised her to an androgynous state. Jesus says, In the Pistis Sophia, that Mary will excel all of his disciples, and he equates her with Sophia, the embodiment of divine wisdom.

As discussed in chapter two, the ancients believed that as the incarnating soul descended from heaven toward Earth it passed through the spheres of the seven planets: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn. As these seven bodies circled the Earth, each on its own sphere, they formed a ladder between Heaven and Earth. At each of these spheres, the deity, or angel, of the planet clothed the descending soul with certain virtues and vices that became its body. This is the basis of the natal horoscope in astrology.

The Gnostics thought of the soul as a divine essence that entered the physical world in the form of a body. This belief could take a pessimistic form, in which the body was thought of, as a prison for the soul, or it could take an optimistic form, in which the body was thought of, as the temple of the spirit. The pessimists viewed the contributions of seven planets as a type of pollution. When a person attained gnosis, they believed that these seven influences were cast out. This is the real meaning of the line in St. Mark (16:9) that states that Jesus cast seven devils out of Mary. When we understand the hidden meaning, it attests to Mary's enlightenment, but later commentators misread this line as proof of her sinful condition.

The official church rejected the validity of the inner visions of the Gnostics and the dominance of Mary Magdalen. They even denied the existence of any female apostles. It is likely that this was the motivation for the creation of her image as a reformed prostitute. Grafting her onto three other women in the gospels produced this legend. The first was the unnamed adulteress that Jesus saved from punishment. The second was the also unnamed woman described by Luke as a sinner seeking forgiveness who came to Christ at the Pharisee's house, washed his feat with her tears, dried them with her hair, and then anointed them with ointment. The third woman was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who also anointed Christ's feat with oil, and wiped them with her hair. Origen, the great biblical scholar, used Mary of Bethany as an example of the contemplative life. Thus, the contemplative life was associated with Mary Magdalen as well.

From the second century on, a growing asceticism had steadily gained ground in the Church. There was a strong focus on celibacy, and the image of Mary Magdalen as an ascetic, repentant whore served this purpose. By the sixth century, this legend was firm. It was said that Mary, with Martha and Lazarus, traveled to Provence where she became an evangelist. Later, she retired to a cave where she lived in solitude meditating on her sins. It was claimed that through her great sorrow and repentance she regained her virginity. For women virginity was considered the most important requirement for sainthood, and Mary's accomplishment made her a major role model for woman aspiring to the ideal Christian life. In the Middle Ages, her visionary talents were emphasized, and she became the model and inspiration for all female mystics.

Mary Magdalen is the patron of repentant sinners and the contemplative life. Her feast day is July 22.

The Tarot Card:

The Papesse is one of most controversial cards in the Tarot. It traditionally depicts a woman in a triple Papal tiara sitting on a throne. In her lap, she holds a book closed in the hand-painted Milanese decks and open in the later French decks. A 16th century deck from Lyon awards her one of the Pope's keys. Her purpose in the deck is to serve as a female counter part or balance to the Pope card. This need for masculine and feminine balance is a major aspect of alchemical and Hermetic philosophy, and exemplifies the Hermetic message that underlies the Tarot. In addition, these early personages in the sequence of Trumps are under the domination of Love, the sixth card; therefore, it is natural that they are paired. The Catholic Church does not ordain women as priests and blocks them from higher offices as well. Only within the convent could a woman attain power by becoming an abbess. From the 7th to the 13th centuries, ecclesiastical and teachings orders of nuns flourished. This came to an end in 1545 when the Council of Trent disbanded them in favor of orders that did not educate women. However, they could not eradicate a persistent, popular legend that developed in the 9th century about an educated woman who, disguised as a man, rose through the clergy and then became Pope. Her name, Pope Joan, was sometimes associated with the Papesse card, and, although some modern scholars disagree, there is evidence that her legend is based on actual events.

In the thirteenth century, Gugliema of Bohemia, a Gnostic mystic, predicted that in the year 1300 a woman would become Pope, and initiate a new purified Christianity. Her prediction may have been influenced by the mystical vision of the Cistercian monk, Joachim, who foretold of a coming new age, an age of the Holy Ghost, in contrast to the age of the Son initiated by Christ. Gugliema's followers believed that she was the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, and, although she died in 1281, that she would return in 1300 to crown the first Papesse. In 1300, the sect elected Sister Manfreda as the first Papesse, and many wealthy Lombard families donated costly vessels for her mass. However, the sect was exterminated by the inquisition, and Papesse Manfreda was burned at the stake. It is interesting that Papesse Manfreda was a relative of Bianca Visconti Sforza, the noble, who commissioned the painting of one of the oldest existing Tarot decks.

In Renaissance art, the figure of a woman with a triple tiara is sometimes used as an allegorical figure representing the papacy as something separate from the pope. An orthodox interpretation of this card may be that it represents the wife of the Pope as being his own office. However, that is not in keeping with the nature of this first act of the trumps, which depicts the triumph of Cupid. In The Dream of Poliphilo, a mystical fiction written in 1467 and noted for its beautiful dream-like illustrations, we can find the figure of a woman who like the Papesse is sitting on a throne and wearing a triple layered crown and a long robe. Here she represents the priestess of Venus and can be seen counseling the Poliphilo and his love, Polia.

Tarot Wisdom:

On the card, Mary Magdalen stands in front of Christ's empty tomb after witnessing his resurrection. She is framed in the portal as the guardian of mystery. On the pilasters can be seen the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and omega. Together these form a symbol for Christ as the beginning and the end, the one whose death is the beginning of life, who is beyond the opposites, and one with the infinite. Mary, as his female counterpart, also embodies this mystery.

This card represents inner, esoteric religious experience, or mystery. A true mystery is something that the more we learn about it the more we know that we can not know it. We understand mystery when we accept that we can not know it. The development of a fetus in the womb is such a mystery, and that is why a woman best symbolizes it.

On a more mundane level, Mary Magdalen stands for intuition, knowledge that is hidden, or knowledge that can not be expressed in words.

*Footnote: the information in this section is derived from Haskins, Susan; Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor; New York: Harcourt Brace & Co.; 1993.