| magdalene.org | Book review: "The Goddess In The Gospels" by Margaret Starbird

by Ros Calverly

The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming The Sacred Feminine, by Margaret Starbird. Bear and Company, 1998 (released in the UK Jan. 1999).

This is Margaret Starbird's follow-up to 'The Woman with the Alabaster Jar', the 1996 book which first presented the writer's take on the Jesus and Mary Magdalene marriage theory, and the significance she believes it might have, for the Catholic church in particular, in the future. In this follow-up, Starbird concentrates on her personal path to belief in the story, which turns out to be remarkably independent of any knowledge of 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' and suchlike works; and she introduces some new explanatory and possibly supportive material to the theory. She also, in the course of the book, makes her own, Catholic-based, agenda, absolutely clear.

It should be said first of all that this is not a work of profound scholarship, nor is it intended to be such a work. This is a deeply personal account of a woman's journey to a certain position of belief, and it includes a distressing account of the nervous breakdown and consequent hospitalisation that the writer suffered some ten years ago.

This breakdown was a result of her struggle to reconcile her realisation of the way that women and the feminine principle have been mistreated by the Catholic church down the years, with both her strong Catholic faith, and her quasi-revelatory encounter with what she believes to be the incontrovertible truth that Jesus was a married man, and had children.

On the way we meet members of a Catholic charismatic group with which Starbird was once involved, and we hear of their methods and practices, which can only be described as 'prophetic', in the Old Testament sense.

These were and are people who believe in 'signs' to be discovered in natural events (such as the coincidence of the first two eruptions of Mount St. Helen's with Pentecost and then the feast of St. Mary Magdalene in the Catholic calendar), and in the value of the 'sortes Biblicae', the consultation of Scripture at random to see what insight it might give about such and such an event or belief. This is a world which will seem strange to many of her readers, though this reviewer has been there to some extent, and knows what she is talking about, though I would hesitate to put the faith in it that Starbird so evidently does. There are also those who have experienced the operation of 'coincidence' in other spheres (the case of the number 23 is just one among many), and will know what she means on that level.

However one interprets it, Starbird herself found the concatenation of events compelling, and her enthusiasm and conviction shines through the plain writing of the book.

But she did have a nervous breakdown; and it was in the context of a 'raising of consciousness' both about the Marriage Theory and about the position of women in Catholicism. It probably isn't going too far to call this an ordeal and an initiation. Many of us will have been _there_, too.

So: this isn't a scholarly text; is an intiatory document, and it is a prophetic document. It is also a theological document, since Starbird devotes a certain amount of space to the discussion of the healing that might be brought to the church, were the marriage of Jesus to be recognised and his Spouse placed with his Mother on the heavenly throne.

And, as many readers will have worked out by now, it is above all a _mythological_ document. Starbird makes out a powerful case for the damage wrought to Christianity by its failure to recognise the true Bride of the Lamb, and there may or may not be historical and textual reasons for doing something of the sort, but as a mythological theme (and a 'meme') this is familiar stuff. This is the rediscovery by Christianity of the Sacred Marriage, no less, and Starbird, through signs 'given' to her, evidently regards herself as the prophetess of this rediscovery. She has taken upon her own shoulders the task of returning the Magdalene to her rightful place, and she even expresses a hope that the Pope himself might one day recognise the truth of the belief that she not only holds, beyond any possibility of doubt, herself, but believes to be the veritable and only future of christianity. To Margaret Starbird, it is only through recognising the truth of the Magdalene's role, and hence embracing sexuality and the Feminine as something sanctified by God's only Son, that the Catholic church will even survive into the next millenium.

She wishes Mary to be declared Co-Redemptrix, and the avatar of Sophia, the Holy Wisdom; but she doesn't mean the same Mary that the Pope means when he refers to these things. Instead, it's Magdalene, the Bride of Christ, who should take up these roles.

There's more in here than an evangelical statement, however. Starbird has some technical knowledge, and she corrects most other writers on the subject by pointing out that 'Mary Magdalene' doesn't simply mean 'Mary from Magdala'; it means 'Mary the Great', or 'the Tall'; 'Mary the Tower'. This is quite correct, as is her assertion that some of the earliest Gospel commentators, notably Origen, associated epithets now transferred to the BVM ('Tower of David'; 'Tower of Gold'; both from the Litany of the Virgin) with the Magdalene instead. And, as she did in 'Woman with the Alabaster Jar' with the Cathar watermarks, she introduces another intriguing snippet of obscure knowledge.

This time, it's Greek gematria. I can hear some readers groan aloud even as I write! However, this gematria is fascinating, particularly since the writer has discussed it with members of the Jesus Seminar (a standing conference of 'Historical Jesus' scholars) and extracted from them the information that yes, it's real, they know about it, but they don't know what to make of it, so they choose to ignore it for the moment. Most notably, the Greek translated 'the Magdalene', 'he magdalene', has the numerical value of 153, which is the number widely known in esoteric circles (or so Starbird assures us) as the Vesica Piscis number. I don't know enough about the subject to comment on it in detail, but at the least it's another avenue which might repay exploration.

So: this is probably not the kind of work that one will wish to refer to repeatedly, but there's enough intriguing stuff in here to repay a careful read, and I recommend it with these reservations.