| Abstract: | Like Isis, Ishtar, and Inanna, Mary Magdalene mourns the death of the god she loves, and when he resurrects, she celebrates his renewal. Through her intense feeling experience of personal and spiritual love, she represents the feminine side of the death and resurrection phenomenon that plays a realizing role in the humanization of the god-image and likewise of individuation. Although the Judeo-Christian fathers excluded any sign in their orthodoxy that Yahweh and Christ may have had love partners, archeological evidence and Gnostic texts point to the possibility that they did. In our era, with the psychological perspective that C. G. Jung heralded, we can reconsider and integrate the role of the Eros principle that was split off from our god-image, concretized, and banned along with the “evil” of the flesh. The emergence of Mary Magdalene in popular culture as the “Holy Grail” or vessel of Christ's child reflects the intense yearning in the psyche for the feminine principle to participate in the continuing incarnation of the god-image, and for the divine feminine–masculine partnership to realize itself in personal, human experience. |
