Discussing The Secret Magdalene

Did I do it? I'll only know when I hit submit. I did begin one on my least favorite reads, so this must work.

????

I did it! Not sure it's in the right place. But if not, someone will set me straight. I should like to discuss the ideas found in The Secret Magdalene. As a seeker all my life, I can't read things like Tolle. I find myself going to the East for I AM THAT but have always wanted to find something rooted in my own culture, something that came from a world familiar to me. I am not a Christian which does not mean I am not spiritual. It does not mean I am going to hell. Hell is a Christian idea that comes from wonderful and very ancient ideas of an Underworld. No ancient Underworld was a place of torment or punishment. They were places to go to shed old ideas and experience a terrifying growth of spirit. I am, I imagine, someone who would do much better way back when. I search for meaning and for me if there is meaning in organized religion, it is buried in so much wrongheadedness I cannot listen. There are glimmers here and there, like tiny nuggets of gold in a rocky stream. But here, in this book, it's as if all that wrongheadedness has been swept away and we are back listening to first thoughts and these thoughts thrill me.

You want to discuss this Artful and Ivyd and anyone else? I am really up for it.

Yes, TadAD? You were saying?

Hi, Shaggy! Glad I found you and this thread! Today's the first day for 2 weeks that I've had my head above water.

My thoughts about The Secret Magdalene are starting to settle down, but it's taken a month since I finished reading it and I'm also ready to read it again (I rarely re-read books).

When I first finished reading the book, I was full of questions about where she got her ideas and how her version of the story correlated with other versions, knowing all the time that my real question was much simpler and far more profound: Is this the message that Jesus was really teaching?

I think maybe it was. Or, at the very least, a part of his message that has to a large extent been shrouded by the church. The church's need (all churches and religions, for that matter) for power and control have dictated against an individual route to spirituality and -- perhaps -- divinity.

Many of the people who've reviewed The Secret Magdalene say something about this being a book that has changed their lives. For me, it seems more like coming home: this is what I've always thought religion should be about, what I've always been looking for.

I think you may be right, Shaggy, to call her a mystic.

I've read a great deal of Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels and The Gnostic Paul among others), and many more who seem to dance around the subject of personal divinity, maybe afraid to dive in, or not yet ready. Pagels is a Christian and is trying very hard to remain a Christian in this day and age. To be a Christian means you accept the Church stands between you and your own divinity. I agree with you, ivyd. It was like coming home to live in The Secret Magdalene. When I first saw the book I thought it might be one of those following the Dan Brown bandwagon. There are so many. And then there's some very thoughtful people like Margaret Starbird and her theory of The Bride and Bridegroom in The Woman with the Alabaster Jar. But these are all unsatisfying because they're really touching only the surface of things and are avoiding the most important message of all. It's true that Starbird goes deeper than the ordinary things taught in church, but it's still about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene. Starbird discusses this allegorically, but so? What does it matter when all is said and done? What matters is what Longfellow is talking about. The real teaching of real mystics. This book seemed straight from Source. And I'd love to see it read by so many who struggle through Tolle or someone like Tolle. For me this writer is a true mystic and she's used this story to talk about it.

I just finished this book. Usually when I finish something, I find its place on my shelves or give it away. But this one sits on the table near my bed. I'm not really finished with it. I open it up and read certain passages over again. I might have to buy a highlighter to highlight some of it and that would mean buying another copy because I don't write in books. I'm not a religious man. My wife read The Red Tent and kept at me until I read it too. Hated it. So I made my wife read The Secret Magdalene. Now we sit in bed and talk about The Secret Magdalene. I wonder how many people are interested in ideas? The Secret Magdalene is bursting with ideas. Even if it weren't beautifully written, which it is, or an exciting story, which it is, I'd still keep it on my table.

Does anyone here, whose brain isn't locked down with dogma, think Longfellow got the story right? Or close enough? I know she got the ideas right.

Happypages. I don't know if she got the story "right" because I'm not sure there is an actual story. There seem to be a lot of tales told by various people over many many years and they are all similar stories. Artful, if you've read Pagels, I imagine you've read a lot more. I have, and have found that this story is a variation of the same story that goes so far back its sources seem to disappear. So, to me the details of this truly ancient story don't matter all that much. I think what matters is what you are both saying. What matters is the experience that all these stories are trying to tell us about.

Longfellow's Jesus is a human being struggling as we all are with what we think life is. He's thinking on his own, not repeating the thoughts of other men as a religious person does. A spiritual person does not have to be religious and a lot of religious people are not spiritual. I loved reading about his struggle and about Mary M (Mariamne) going through it with him from a very difference perspective. This book isn't another Mary Magdalene book. It's so much more than that. The characters didn't even have to be Jesus and Mary M. But I suspect that by making them so, more people might get the idea.

A few years back I read a whole lot of books about the origins of Christianity. I'd had a lot of trouble being a Christian and I wanted to deal with that. I see that humanity has created religion to explain away its fears and uncertainties. If we're nothing more than a scrap of material reality doomed to die and that's it, that's certainly a disturbing thought. And it doesn't make sense to me. Why bother to know and feel and wonder? If all we need to do is survive long enough to make more of us, we've done that. Too well, I think. Religions were also created to provide a power structure for a lot of people, mostly men. I could go on and on here, but all I read taught me I had a reason to be uneasy with the religion I was raised in. If I'd been raised a Muslim or a Jew or a Hindu, I know I'd feel the same. I don't want someone else telling me the "truth" about the world. And I don't want anyone telling me I'll suffer if I don't believe them. I don't want THIS IS THE TRUTH AND IF YOU DON'T BUY INTO IT, YOU'RE GOING TO HELL. I don't buy into it and there is no hell.

I want what I got from The Secret Magdalene. Thrilling possibilities and a sense that I was seeing a real "truth" I'd never seen before. So yes, ShaggyBag, I don't think the facts of the story matter much. It's the ideas. I with you Happypages. Ideas are the best.

Great conversation! Just found this site and it's fills me with joy to see that people still read books and still want to discuss them. I've been kind of worried hiding out here in my increasingly reclusive world. But to find a book like The Secret Magdalene as well as a chat about what it means has made my day. What the book means to me is very much what it means to all you above, a glimpse into a higher truth that ought to be something we all know by now. Instead we bicker over reality and call it God or whatever. One thing I'm noticing is that someone who hasn't read the book could get the idea it's all religious and difficult. I don't know about the rest of you, but I found it a breeze to read. These days, sadly, people want books that read like puff pastry. No chewing. No hard parts. Just swallow it up and look for the next pastry. Not me. I want a good story well told and in the end, I want to chew it over. This one fits the bill.

I read this book in my garden (I'm an ardent gardener!) and almost forgot to tend to my plants. I went somewhere else as I followed this tale of ultimate truth and honest heart. I've seldom had such a reading experience unless it's poetry like Emily Dickinson and for me, who loves Emily as much as I love my garden, that is high praise. But I lent it to my neighbor, a watercolorist, and she found the book not to her taste at all. She said it wasn't "true." I asked her what she meant by true? She said it didn't follow the Bible and that it could never have happened like that. An interesting experience for me. I've lived next door to this woman for years and never knew this part of her. It's changed our relationship. She doesn't care for Emily either. Oh well.

I have a friend who took one look at The Secret Magdalene and said, "Oh more Dan Brown crap." I tried to tell him it was nothing like Dan Brown but he was adamant. I have another friend who said he didn't read books like that. "Like what?" "Playing fast and loose with history," he said. I said, "What history? This is a novel far above worrying about facts." He wasn't buying it. So I suppose a book like this has to find those (like me!) who see its worth and carry it around like Alexander carried Homer around. The truths in the this book are so clear it's a read for anyone. If they'd just stop judging a book by its cover. I don't like the cover.

Sorry I set up a discussion and then disappear. Domestic turmoil intrudes. But reading all this is so interesting. I followed a conversation on amazon about Tolle's book A New Earth back when Oprah made the book hot and Tolle a billionaire. There were so many people reading his latest trying to get something out of it and so many others saying there were much better books out there to learn from. I agreed so much with those who said "Look for better books!" I read the discussions for weeks until they petered out. The West once had a tradition of spiritual mysteries that the East still has so we feel we have to go to the East for our spiritual longings. But with a book like The Secret Magdalene, the West finds its own traditions again. We've had them all along but our churches have claimed them for themselves and even lost them as far as I can tell. I talked to a priest a while back and he had no idea about gnosis or knowing or enlightenment. He could speak only in things "forever unknowable." I think we in the West are hungry to get back to what was taken from us so long ago. We want our own traditions back. The feminine and personal divinity and a world that is not terrifying but rather wondrous. A book like The Secret Magdalene tells us we have these traditions and teachings, they are alive and well and all we have to do is seek within ourselves for them. And this is why I wanted to start this discussion, to see if others felt as I do.

As soon as I think about this book a little longer I hope to contribute here.