`She poured perfume on my body to prepare for my burial', but that burial, Christians believe, was unlike any other interment, for Jesus triumphed over death and the tomb to fulfil his destiny as the incarnate deity, the risen sacrificial king. In anointing him she Christened him, and marked him out for his fateful death. The true meaning of the ritual was completely lost on the other disciples, but Jesus tries hard to impress Mary Magdalene's importance on them, saying sternly: `I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.'36
Put simply, then why isn't it? Jesus' prophecy failed dramatically: even the first disciples to hear it were to make sure it never came to pass. What Christ himself wanted clearly counted for nothing in their zeal to create a Church in their own image, or rather in the image of the Gospel that they chose to approve. This would not be the only example of even the first Christians reworking the message of Christ to accord with their own agenda, especially where the Magdalene was concerned.
So far from the anointing being celebrated - there is no Catholic feast day dedicated to this event - the Gospel writers were careful even to obscure the name of the performer of the rite. However, John's Gospel37 makes it clear that the anointing actually took place in the house of Martha, Lazarus and Mary at Bethany and it was the latter who performed the ritual. And while Luke 31 is careful to describe its initiatrix as `an unnamed sinner', he immediately goes on to introduce the Magdalene for the first time, as if the association of ideas was too strong to ignore.
Mary Magdalene may never have earned her living on the Judaean streets as is still so widely believed - despite the fact that the Pope officially recanted this `fact' in 1969, although in a whisper rather than a shout - but she was profoundly associated with quite another kind of `Whoredom'. Spikenard, the ruinously expensive perfume that she used to Christen Jesus, was used extensively in the sacred marriages and other sexual rites of the ancient Oriental systems of Taoism and Tantrism, being especially reserved to anoint the head and feet. As Peter Redgrove acknowledges in his The Black Goddess (1989), in his discussion about Taoism:
It is interesting to compare this with MiddleEastern religious practices, and the image of them which we have inherited. MariIshtar, the Great Whore, anointed her consort Tammuz (with whom Jesus was identified) and thereby made him a Christ. This was in preparation for his descent into the underworld, from which he would return at her bidding. She, or her priestess, was called the Great Whore because this was a sexual rite of horasis, of whole-body orgasm that would take the consort into the visionary knowledgeable continuum. It was a rite of crossing, from which he would return transformed. In the same way Jesus said that Mary Magdalene anointed him for his burial. Only women could perform these rites in the goddess' name, and this is why no men attended his tomb, only Mary Magdalene and her women. A chief symbol of the Magdalene in Christian art was the cruse of holy oil - the external sign of the inner baptism experienced by the Taoist ...'
`Horasis', the sacred whole-body orgasm is mentioned only once in the New Testament, in the Acts of the Apostles, although Redgrove believes it is mistranslated as 'visions',' in a passage in which the writer quotes from the prophet Joel: `In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions . . .'I It would give a remarkably different flavour to Acts if rendered as: `Your young men shall enjoy the sacred sex rite of horasis ...'
In the traditional form of sacred marriage, the hieros gamos, the priestess/queen/goddess also anoints the priest/king/god with oil on the genitals as a preparation for ritual horasis. Behind the male disciples' concern for the wasted money and the plight of the poor, was there another reason for their distaste at this ritual? Clearly the anointing of Jesus' feet - the singling out of the sacrificial king - took place in front of them, but the climax of the ceremony might have been a matter for closed doors (and a great deal of muttered conjecture). The woman with the alabaster jar may have been making a sacred king, but she was also making herself some powerful enemies.
In the most recent translations of the Bible, `Mary Magdalene' is rendered as `Mary called Magdalene', quite a different form of words for example, from `Simon from Cyrene' or `Saul of Tarsus', implying something over and above her place of origin. (Although even if `Magdalene' did refer to her home town, it is unlikely to be the `Magdala' on the shore of Lake Galilee that is usually cited, because according to Josephus it was called Tarichea in her day. However, intriguingly there was a Magdolum just across the border in Egypt, and a Magdala in Ethiopia.)42 `Magdalene' - as in `the Magdalene' - is almost certainly a title, meaning `great lady', possibly originating in the Queen of Sheba's title Magda, accorded to her for her devotion to the Moon goddess.
Even the New Testament writers tacitly (and reluctantly) acknowledge the Magdalene's status, almost always naming her first in any list of Jesus' female followers - although they are given short shrift by Luke, who sniffs dismissively `The Twelve were with [Jesus], and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) ...'43 Unlike most of the other women in the Bible - including the Virgin Mary - she is never defined by her relationship with a man. Whereas they tend to be the `mother of the Saviour' or `Joanna, wife of Chuzah',I she is simply `the Magdalene', as if too important, famous and independent to be otherwise. Indeed, there is a distinct sense that if they could have got away with it, the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John's Gospels would have excluded her altogether, so keen are they to marginalize or obscure her when she does appear in the story, despite Jesus' absolute insistence that her role in his anointing be celebrated throughout history.
However, as many people know today - usually excluding Christians, who are deliberately kept in the dark by their own clergy - the New Testament books are not the only Gospels in existence. Before the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the state religion of the tottering Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, there were hundreds of diverse `Gospels', poems, songs and epistles doing the rounds. However, after Constantine's Council of Nicaea in 325 CE45 decided what books would be included in the very new New Testament, the dozens of other candidates were instantly declared anathema, together with anyone foolish enough to claim they had equal claim to be `authentic'. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386 CE) declared dogmatically:
Of the New Testament there are four Gospels only, for the rest have false titles and are harmful ... receive also the Acts of the Twelve Apostles; and in addition to these the seven Catholic Epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude; and as a seal upon them all, and the latest work of the disciples, the fourteen epistles of Paul [now acknowledged to be chronologically the first of these Christian writings]. But let all the rest be put aside in secondary rank. And whatever books are not read in the churches, do not read these even by yourself, as you have already heard me say concerning the Old Testament apocrypha 46
David Tresemer and Laura-Lea Cannon point out how the New Testament came about in their 2002 Introduction to Jean-Yves Leloup's 1997 translation of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene:
... the Council of Nicaea ... decided which texts would become the standards of the Church ... and which would be suppressed. Those not chosen as standard were attacked - sometimes violently - for many years. Indeed, the bishops at the Council of Nicaea who disagreed with Constantine's choices were exiled on the spot 47
One wonders what Cyril and his fellow Church Fathers were so afraid of. A clue may lie in the fact that although the New Testament gospels only reluctantly mention the Magdalene, her role in many of the forbidden books is so major as to be positively stellar. And we know about at least some of these other books because they were hidden from Constantine's vengeful clergy, only to resurface in much more recent times - for example, the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) (thought to have been written in the second century CE) was found in Cairo in the 1850s, while a large cache of lost gospels was found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, including The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Philip. These are routinely dismissed by most modern biblical scholars as being of dubious theological authenticity or worth, which is allegedly the reason that they are never even mentioned from pulpits or in Bible study groups. The fact is, however, that although many of the recovered gospels are fragmentary or incomprehensible, others present a coherent and consistent picture of Jesus and Mary Magdalene that is wholly unacceptable to the churches, and if a fraction of their congregations ever took these gospels seriously enough to read them carefully, grave questions would be asked about the historical authority of the Christian religion.
While the canonical books are resolutely from what might be termed `mainstream' Christianity, or Saint Paul's version, these other works are mostly Gnostic in origin and outlook. The biblical Gospels try almost too hard to sound authentic, piling on detail upon detail of Christ's travel schedule, the people he met and healed, the accusations of his critics, the chronology of his arrest, torture and death. The Gnostic gospels are usually much more concerned with the teachings and the mysteries, with a distinctly transcendent, intuitive feel to them. More significantly perhaps, the biblical texts are very masculine in tone and outlook, while the Gnostics are considerably more feminine - largely because of their reverence for their heroine, Mary Magdalene. Her role becomes clearer:
