Did Mary Magdalene experience a transcendent path that led her to a place beyond the ego?
Did her contemplative posture give her advanced understanding when compared to the other disciples?
Did her expansive love open the ‘eye of the heart’ to a realm that Jesus recognized in her and became part of her ‘go and tell’ ministry?
Between chapters 7 and 9 of the Gospel of Mary1, the entire chapter 8 is missing from the text. There have been many who have researched and written about what might have been in this section of her Gospel. If you read the entire Gospel of Mary for yourself you will most likely have questions and thoughts too.
Why this chapter?
What did Jesus say to her to ‘tell them?’
She had been with them on this spiritual pilgrimage, and I’m guessing it wasn’t the first time that she shared with them.
Her gifts and talents would have already been seen and known based on the exchanges between her and Jesus.
Were they jealous of her?
Could this have been Jesus’ desire to end patriarchy? Giving ‘Mary the Tower’2 and ‘Peter the Rock’3 an opportunity to witness his ‘Divine Kingdom’ before his ministry ended?
Was the ego expanding and contracting?
Over the past six years of Table Conversations we have invited Wisdom, Spirit, and Love to guide us as we listen, learn, and hold holy words from…
From each other…
From authors, researchers, podcasters, theologians, mystics, saints, preachers, storytellers, and writers who have held the words of Mary Magdalene in their hands. In their third eye. In their minds.
Mary asks Jesus…
“I said to him, ‘Lord, now, does one who sees the vision see it with the soul or with the spirit?’ The Savior answered and said, ‘One does not see with the soul or with the spirit, but the mind which is between the two sees the vision.”4
Then chapter 8 of the Gospel of Mary is missing at this time… possibly lost, burned, or intentionally destroyed.
As we meet each Wednesday at Table Conversations it offers a place for us to hold holy words, biblical insights, and translations that provide a path for how Mary Magdalene practiced contemplation and transcendence. A path for how Thecla baptized herself when Apostle Paul wouldn’t.5 A path for how women mystics transcended via the ‘interior castle6, via the ‘sixteen revelations of Divine Love,’7 via a ‘dark night of the soul.’8
These authors and storytellers have taught us that Mary Magdalene had a transcendent path that led her beyond ego.
These authors and storytellers have taught us that Mary Magdalene‘s posture of a contemplative life led her to see with the ‘eye of the heart.’ To live knowing the kingdom was within. To realize that Divine Union means we are never separated from love.
These authors and storytellers have taught me to see a common thread about Mary Magdalene. That the ‘movement of the Magdalene’ was not tribal for Jesus. Meaning, he wasn’t interested in starting a revolution or movement so that Mary had more followers than Peter. He was demonstrating ‘movement’ as a central ‘interior motif’ for understanding how to find balance between ego and the true self.
In the Gospel of Mary chapter 9 the ‘Ascent of the Soul’ offers a framework for how to see the ego and transcend it. In particular, as the soul ascends between realms, she has interior conversations between her soul and the powers of the ego. She may not have had the word ‘ego’ in mind when she began this movement but she knew the power of the ego long before Sigmund Freud’s work on this subject was introduced. His work would influence the way we have been taught to think about ego and the behaviors associated between our ‘true self and ego.’ Mary Magdalene’s gospel offers us a view into her vision. A path. A way. A portal or threshold for moving into unity and oneness with the Divine.
Mary Magdalene would have her own experience. Her own framework. Her own words for beginning to describe to the other disciples what she had been experiencing with Jesus as she walked, shared, and offered in her own words what the ‘ascent of the soul’ meant to her.
In her book, Mary Magdalene Revealed9 Meggan Watterson has done a beautiful job of pulling the ‘Seven Powers of the Ego’ from Mary’s Gospel to share them with us. I offer them here with a brief summary from her work:
“The First Power - Darkness
Darkness is a power of the ego that can convince us we’re alone, separate, and disconnected.
The Second Power - Clinging / Desire
We cling to the desires of the ego, most often not even realizing that it’s the ego that’s driving us to crave so desperately.
The Third Power - Ignorance
Ignorance is our ultimate blind spot. The ego thinks it is the true self.
The Fourth Power - Excess / Gluttony
Within Mary’s gospel, the power of excess is not a “sin,” it’s not a “demon,” it’s simply a power. It’s a power of the ego, like the other powers, that can derail us from what the soul has come here to do.
The Fifth Power - Forgetting
This is what it means to be human — we forget we are not only this body; we are not only these fears and desires the ego conjures. We are also, equally, and entirely, a soul.
The Sixth Power - The Body
The body, if we know how to listen has ancient wisdom for our lives.
This power centuries later would be referred to as sloth. We are held captive to this power when we can’t hear the way the soul is constantly speaking to us from within.
The Seventh Power - Rage / Anger
Anger is information. Being angry is human. And being human is holy. Rage is clarifying. It can help us to begin to set boundaries as an act of love for ourselves.”
For a more expansive understanding of Mary Magdalene’s soul experience as shared through the eyes and writing of Meggan Watterson I encourage you to purchase her book and allow it to stir your own interior movement.
Ultimately, I am interested in the transformational and transcendent path of Mary Magdalene… I believe this is the holy work of the Sacred Divine Feminine Spirit within us that calls frequently and consistently to come up higher. To expand our views. To move towards our ‘true self.’ The Seven Powers of the Ego in the Gospel of Mary offers an ancient knowing. An ancient remembering. A time and place when Mary experienced with Jesus, unconditional Oneness, turned poetry, and started the path of Divine Love. When I read this quote by Thomas Keating10 I could imagine and see that this too was Mary Magdalene’s path of transcendence… Jesus invited her to ‘go and tell’ her vision and expression of Divine Love…
As the false self diminishes,
And the ego becomes servant,
Everything turns into poetry
And everything becomes a movement of Divine Love.
But, the separate self lingers on.
Once the separate self has been laid to rest,
The Divine Presence alone remains,
And the Creator of all becomes all in all.
I leave you with these questions to weigh .. to revisit.. to hold as you consider the ‘movement of the Magdalene…’
Did Mary Magdalene experience a transcendent path that led her to a place beyond the ego?
Did her contemplative posture give her advanced understanding when compared to the other disciples?
Did her expansive love open up the ‘eye of the heart’ to a realm that Jesus recognized in her and became part of her ‘go and tell’ ministry?
Love Expands the Table ~ Shelly
Join Table Conversations each Wednesday as we embrace more love and expand ancient remembering and inner knowing… continuing to hear and listen to Thecla’s story. Share and invite.
The Acts of Paul and Thecla. A New New Testament Dr Hal Taussig.
Elizabeth Schrader-Polczer, Mary the Tower.
Peter the Rock. Reference in the book of Matthew 16:18.
Gospel of Mary 7:5-7 in the New New Testament Dr Hal Taussig.
The Girl Who Baptized Herself Meggan Watterson.
St Teresa of Avila.
Julian of Norwich.
Mother Teresa.
Mary Magdalene Revealed Meggan Watterson.
Out of a Stone Thomas Keating.
Chapter 8 was torn out because patriarchy always fears what a woman might say when she names the powers directly.
Mary’s ascent is not a tantrum of rage. It is a calm dismantling. She lays the powers down one by one like stones from her pocket. Darkness. Desire. Forgetting. Body. Even anger she speaks of as information, not condemnation.
That is the threat. She did not fight to prove herself louder than the men. She held her ground with the kind of steadiness that makes empires nervous.
Blessed be the Magdalene who showed us that transcendence is not escape. It is intimacy with what we most fear in ourselves, spoken without flinching.
Hello, thank you for your thoughts on this. As a mental health therapist myself, these passages have piqued my interest. I see a lot of similarities between these verses and Internal Family Systems. In this view, each power is a part that the soul (Self in IFS) can interact with and unblend from (not overly identify with). When the Self is unblended, qualities like calm, curiosity, clarity, and compassion arise and would equate to transcending the ego as in Freud. I’m inclined to think the answer to your questions is yes ☺️.