In the wake of Dan Brown’s bestseller, some people insisted that it was pure fiction, while others asked, “What remains when the fiction is stripped away from The Da Vinci Code.” What remains, I believe, is the belief of the earliest Christians that Jesus embodied the Sacred Bridegroom from the ancient mythologies and that Mary Magdalene was his spouse. This belief appears at the core of the Gospels and was later embellished by authors of the Gnostic texts discovered in Egypt, texts that unabashedly proclaim Mary Magdalene as beloved disciple and intimate companion, even “consort,” of Jesus.

My personal conviction that Jesus was married and that he and his wife modeled the hieros gamos (literally, “sacred marriage”) as the “archetypal divine couple” rests on the Passion narrative in the canonical Gospels, beginning with the anointing of Jesus by a woman, an event followed by his torture, death, and resurrection. This powerful sequence closely paralleled in numerous ancient mythologies and liturgies of pagan “bridegroom gods” similarly sacrificed and resurrected at the vernal equinox.

As Jesus was reclining at the banquet table in the town of Bethany, a woman carrying an alabaster jar of precious ointment approached him. She broke the jar open and anointed Jesus with its contents, precious unguent of nard. Then, as her tears fell on his feet, she dried them with her hair. This passionate story was so poignant that it survived for a generation in oral tradition and is one of only four stories included in all four canonical Gospels.

What was it about the story of this anointing by a woman that was so powerful, so unforgettable? Jesus himself proclaimed that wherever this story was told, it would be told “in memory of her.” And yet, most people do not even remember her name!

Over the years, the unnamed woman became identified with Mary Magdalene and was branded a prostitute, a slander derived from the association of the anointing with pagan rites of the sacred King. Later legends tell of the journey of the “Bride in Exile,” another familiar archetype from ancient mythologies and Micah 4: 8-10. Mary Magdalene brings the Holy Grail to the shores of Gaul, arriving in about 42 A.D. with her friends and family in a boat with no oars, fleeing persecution in Judea. With them is a pre-adolescent child, between the ages of nine and twelve whose name Sarah means “Princess” in Hebrew, yet legend declares that she is a servant. Was she, like Cinderella, really a princess from a faraway land? This legend lies at the core of the bloodline heresy that cannot be proven with facts, but echoes poignantly throughout medieval European folklore and art—the myth that a royal child descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene survived. The “lost princess” belongs in the realm of mythology, a story too dangerous to be told as fact, but one that contrives to confirm the marriage of the “Christ-couple” at the heart of the Christian mythology.

The “sacred union,” tragically lost in the cradle of Christianity, was to have been our birthright in the Western world.  In reclaiming this union of the “Archetypal Bride and Bridegroom,” we bring waters of Spirit and Truth to heal the wasteland.  Margaret Starbird Copyright 2005  All rights reserved

Listen to the interview with Kala and Margaret Starbird as they discuss her new book, 14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine, The DaVinci Code, the Divine Feminine, and Angels and Demons on The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show here: http://exploreyourspirit.com/Media/shows1.shtml#STARBIRD

More about Margaret Starbird….

Margaret Starbird holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Maryland and did graduate study Christian Albrechts Universität in Kiel, Germany, and at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN. A “cradle” Roman Catholic, Starbird taught Scripture classes for adults and CCD for many years and currently presents lectures and retreats centered on the Sacred Feminine in Christianity. She has been interviewed for numerous TV documentaries both in the USA and in Britain and is the author of several widely acclaimed books about the  Sacred Feminine in Christian tradition: The Woman with the Alabaster Jar (1993), and The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine (1998), both cited by Dan Brown as significant sources in his best-selling thriller The Da Vinci Code.  Her newest book, Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile, was published in 2005. Her other titles include Magdalene’s Lost Legacy and The Feminine Face of Christianity, both published in 2003, and a forthcoming book co-authored with a Jungian therapist, Joan Norton:  14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine. Starbird and her husband of forty years have five grown children and reside in Washington State.  More info at: www.margaretstarbird.net