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St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride

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Much attention has been focused on Mary Magdalene in recent years, but what do we really know and understand about the woman who has been labelled a whore?
In his latest book, `St Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride,' Tau Malachi reveals her as the soul mate of Jesus. She is his closest disciple, wife and consort, co-equal and co-enlightened with him and the co-preacher of the Gospel.
The author draws a picture of a man and woman full of grace and beauty. Mary is elegant and Jesus is playful. Together, they are one soul united, destined to change the people of the world and their beliefs about spiritual truths.
The book contains a glossary at the back and notes at the end of each chapter, so unfamiliar terms and concepts are clearly defined and easy to locate. A suggested reading list is also included for those who want to learn more about Gnosticism and Mary Magdalene. This practical aspect of the book enhances the spiritual and mystical revelations about the Holy Bride and her wisdom sayings.
These profound words, included as a gospel of 250 verses, are not to be perused lightly. I found myself returning to them, reflecting on each individually and marvelling at the whole. I have a feeling this book will not sit on a shelf and be ignored. I will find moments in my life where I will want to connect with Mary and I will turn to her words for comfort and strength. There is a sense of truth and divine knowledge within this book that come from a loftier soul than my own.
And yet Mary's humanity is clearly evident. Malachi strikes a balance between the dejected woman and the enlightened spirit in his portrayal of her. He tells us that many of the miracles attributed to Jesus in traditional Christian denominations were also performed by Mary. She healed the sick, helped the blind see, resurrected the dead, restored water to a dry well and achieved many more wonders. She preached the same message and received a mere fraction of the glory and the credit of her partner, but she would not want to be glorified and worshipped. Her concern would be that people have not received the whole truth and that women are still being berated and rejected. She would want us to use her experience as an example for how we should conduct our lives. Through our connection to her we can come closer to our own Christhood and realize our full potential as enlightened, spiritual beings.
Malachi also offers a method of meditation, which will help people seek a vision of her image and commune with her. He suggests creating a shrine to the Holy Bride in your home and connecting with her through music, song and dance or by joining a circle of women. Men are also welcome to join the circle, where personal stories as well as those of Mary are shared. A Feast of the Holy Bride is also held every year on May 1.
Having read `St. Mary Magdalene,' I feel I have come closer to knowing her and the important role she can play in our lives if we let her in.

What an extrodinary work!
I can safely say that this book changed my life.
I have read books before that speak of Mary Magdalene as a deciple of Jesus, his wife and even sometimes as the apostle to the apostles, but never before have I read a book who speaks of her as fully co-equal with him, fully and equaly an example of enlightened womanhood in all its fullness and glory, this book speaks of St. Mary Magdalene as messiah as much as Jesus was Messiah. It is more than that as well, it is a story of enlightenend humanhood. This book, with its playful legends from an oral tradition of Sophian Gnosticism, delights the heart and enriches the spirit, it paints a perfect picture of the mysterious dance of the Bride, St. Mary Magdalene.

Here for first time in print, is a Wisdom Treasuy of sacred teachings and oral tradition of St. Mary Magdalene. This wonderful text offers the reader a vehicle for a creative journey into the Gnostic experience of the Holy Bride, very similiar to guided meditations. As a reader you are invited into the life story/cycle of the Holy Bride and into Her journey and sacred quest, which ultimately is one's own. The value it speaks to the coequality of women and the need for the Divine Feminine is unequivocal in our present times. I highly recommend this book.

I've read a lot on Magdalene, but this book goes where I hoped all the others would. Finally, a vision of Magdalene that presents her as co-equal in every way to Jesus! The stories are breathtaking, the 250 sayings are profound and take the gospels to a whole new level. It's about time we started re-thinking our spirituality through the lens of our twentieth century minds!

This book not only re-envisions Jesus' message, it re-envisions our current world paradigms and asks us some serious questions about where we are going to go next with our spirituality. I think it has become crystal clear to most of us that going back into the patriarchal mindset isn't the right answer, nor is going forward by cutting our roots out from under us. This book re-envisions by being well-rooted in the tradition of Jesus and his message, but at the same time re-envisions and calls us to question our current paradygms. This book is what I was waiting for.

I received my copy of St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride by Tau Malachi a few days ago and already finished it. It is a master work that ties together the legends of St. Mary in a beautiful way. There are so many unanswered questions in the New Testament about Mary, her relationship with Jesus, and her place in history. This book answers all of these questions and more by bringing Gnostic Legend into a cohesive story of her life.

The Secret Gospel of Mary (also included in the book) will remind many of The Gospel of St. Thomas, but from a decidedly feminine perspective. The verses attributed to St. Mary are beautiful, awe inspiring and wonderful for study and meditation.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in Gnosticism, St. Mary Magdalene, The Da Vinci Code, or Spirituality in any of its forms.

Blessings,
Mark Williams

Gnostic tradition has acquired a whole devotional dimension thanks to Tau Malachi's groundbreaking English (and forthcoming Spanish!) works. "St. Mary Magdalene: Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride" will likely be his most provocative work yet. Cheers for daring to publish these radical legends! Drawing from the wealth of his Sophian Gnostic spiritual upbringing from boyhood, the oral legends recorded here for the first time ever will draw out passionate discussion; orthodox Christians who find the "Da Vinci Code" novel (and film) mania frustrating will be pushed over the edge by these detailed legends of her Christhood while the more progressive--especially women---will find here a wisdom treasury of lore somehow familiar and long-intuited. However controversial this little book will get, I'm completely thrilled by any discussion of St. Mary Magdalene. Reading these legends, I cannot help but be reminded of her enlightened "colleague" of Tibet--Lady Yeshe Tsogyal! His voice of the Sophian Tradition I deeply appreciate: with each work, it gets that much more rich, complex and above all healing for Western people. Those open to a mature Christianity of God the Son and God the Daughter will find here jewels beyond pricing.

Tau Malachi brings St. Mary Magdalene to vivid life in this book, which contains teachings of his Sophian Gnostic lineage that have previously only been transmitted orally. Although I've read quite a bit on the Magdalene, this book makes me feel as though I've been brought into her presence in a way few others have. Highly recommended.

This title just seemed appropriate to me as I was reading this wonderful book. I received it last week through Amazon and I devoured it since then. I am still discovering wonderful things about this book and about Mary Magdalene. All I have to say is-WOW!! No wonder the early Church felt so threatened by her, by the power she wielded. And why wouldn't they-she was the one who truly understood, believed, and accepted Christ's word. Christ himself had seen this; which was why she received special teaching because her heart was more tuned to heaven than the so-called 12 disciples. She herself had disciples that she taught and instructed, AND she was the first to encounter the risen Savior. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Mary Magdalene was the REAL rock on which Jesus built his church (or intended to).

Hmmm. I'm not really sure what to say about this book. I think that's because I wasn't sure what I expected of it in the first place.

Probably the most important part of the book is the introduction, because it's the most informative. Here the author tells the reader that the traditions of Mary Magdalene have been orally transmitted through the ages and that these traditions have remained purposely fluid and changeable in order to meet the needs of the practitioners of the philosophy/faith through time. This is a good thing from the perspective of the initiate, since a rigid code tends to become obsolete. Unfortunately it also means that they reflect the sophistication, beliefs, values, and culture of the time of the practicing community transmitting them. Any of the actual beliefs and practices of the original disciples of, or of Mary Magdalene herself if she existed, has probably been heavily distorted if it exists at all in the modern form of the belief system.

Historically speaking this means that little of biographical value probably exists in the events recorded in Malachi's book, St. Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Tradition of the Holy Bride. Her birth, character, and life experiences reflect more the hidden mystery religion underlying the stories than anything like a real person. As Freke and Gandy suggest in their book, The Jesus Mysteries, many of the traditional stories of Jesus (and of Mary Magdalene) may have arisen in response to the cultural phenomenon of mystery religions common at the time.

The death, physical resurrection, and ascension to heaven of a male semi-deity and the devotion of his female counterpart became the common thread through many of the religions of the late Roman Period. The female in the role might be wife, sister, or mother or a combination of all three. In the New Testament as it has come down to us, the "three Marys" provide the dying and rising Jesus with Mary the mother, Mary the sister, and Mary the consort as separate and distinct individuals, while in Malachi's book St. Mary Magdalene, the author suggests that the saint herself mystically embodied all three.

From the point of view of the initiate--prospective or practicing--the gospel of this saint represents encoded information about the spiritual beliefs of this Gnostic sect and about its rites of passage. It is a highly feminized doctrine, and its intention seems to be to reestablish the rights and presence of women in the religious domain, something that the more patriarchal literalist Christian traditions seem to have gone to great lengths to suppress, as did the traditionalists and centralists of the Old Testament. For the latter two, the status quo was the mission and ulterior motive. The goals of the Gnostic religions seem to have been that of freeing the individual, male or female, from those in society who profited most from promoting the status quo, particularly that with respect to God, and of personalizing the relationship with him. (My guess is that this was the ultimate mission of Jesus, if he or someone like him existed, which is why the Jewish priesthood was more concerned with his activities than the Roman governors of the province were.)

The appeal of this religion/philosophy to a modern individual will vary considerably. The agnostic will find little that appeals to his/her--probably--more analytical mind. The stories of Magdalene will probably seem like poor fiction. The religious practices and philosophy more like a club for juveniles with secret decoder rings, etc. For some it might have the appeal that Masons and Eastern Star have, more of a social club. The true believer seeking knowledge by mystic means will probably find what he/she's looking for, especially women who often feel left out of traditional religion despite their devotion.

For myself and from the perspective of religion, I'd have to say the concept of a divine consort--both of the anthropomorphized deity and for God himself--seems something of a step backward. The concept of a sexual duality, with a male and a female god, harkens back to the earliest human concepts of divinity. If the "Great Time" gives validity to a belief, then certainly the sexual duality of divinity, God the Father and The Earth Mother, has time on its side, but with greater sophistication in society, one would expect a more sophisticated belief system as well. A god who is neither male nor female, who has no material existence that defines his beginning and end, who is all powerful, all knowing, and outside of time itself, seems less primitive than what's presented in this book.

From the point of view of culture, the cult of Mary Magdalene certainly seems to have served its purpose best in the European Middle Ages. It probably served to liberate the mind of the average person most from the control exercised by the Roman Church at the time and did so at great peril. Nothing else even compared to this until the fall of Constantinople and of Spain brought the deluge of Greco-Roman and Arabic literature to the European world and set the ball rolling for the Renaissance. For that at least one has to give Gnostic religions major credit.

In over twenty years of mystical study I have never come across a book that has so illuminated the teachings of St. Mary Magdalene and Yeshua (Jesus). When one considers the parables, some included in the traditional New Testament, some presented here for the first time (to me), with both mind and intuition and heart, one experiences what can best be described as the "fullness" of the Gospels. Truly, we have been recipients of only half of Jesus' teachings. The Magdalene represents a compliment to Jesus that, when felt within, brings both to life in a magnificent portrait of the Eternal Soul whose goal is to remind us that our essential nature is Light and that we are so far beyond the flesh and blood experience, that to accept less than our mystical natures is a true adulteration of our sacred identities. This is a great and timely gift to the world--to both men and women--but, particularly to the clergy who have been denied the grace of knowing this Eternal Soul in its majestic, loving and powerful fullness.