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Magdalene Mysteries

The Left-Hand Path of the Feminine Christ

Published by Bear & Company
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

Discover the Womb Rites and initiatory magic of Mary Magdalene, who was revered as a Priestess and human embodiment of the Goddess

• 2020 Nautilus Gold Award

• Reveals how Mary Magdalene was a sacred priestess of the ancient Womb Mysteries, connected to moon wisdom, sacred harlot archetypes, and goddesses in many traditions, including Sophia, Isis, Inanna, Asherah, Lilith, Jezebel, and Witches

• Explains how the Magdalene Mysteries have been encoded in Gnostic texts, sacred art, and literature and unveils the secret Grail heresy of the Ghent Altarpiece

• Offers rituals and practices to initiate you into the Womb magic of the ancient priestesses and access deeper dimensions of sexuality and feminine power

A sacred priestess of the ancient Womb Rites, Mary Magdalene was at the center of a great and enduring Mystery tradition, one that touched on a stream of perennial spiritual wisdom as old as humanity. Worshipped as the human embodiment of the Goddess, the earthly Sophia, her womb was the spiritual luminatrix that anointed and empowered Jesus, transforming him into the Christ. As a priestess of the Goddess, Mary Magdalene knew how to embody the light and the dark, how to harness the magic potency of sacred sexual energy, and how to cleanse, awaken, and resurrect the soul. Yet, even though she sparked the creation of a worldwide religion, her story and teachings have been forgotten.

Unveiling the lost left-hand path of the Magdalene, the Feminine Christ, authors Seren and Azra Bertrand explore how this underground stream of knowledge has been carried forward over the millennia through an unbroken lineage of Womb Shamans, Priestesses, Oracles, and Medicine Women. They explain how the Magdalene Mysteries, symbolized by the Rose, have been encoded in Gnostic codices and gospels and in the highest art, literature, and architecture of many ages, including most significantly the Ghent Altarpiece. They examine Mary Magdalene’s connection to moon wisdom, sacred harlot archetypes, and goddesses in many traditions, including Isis, Inanna, Asherah, Lilith, and Jezebel, and look at shamanic, tantric, and Cathar expressions of sacred feminine mysteries as well as the Witch and Templar roots of Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

In this revelatory and magical text on the lost feminine mystery traditions of Mary Magdalene and the lineage of Sophia, the authors present encompassing theological, historical, mythological, and archetypal wisdom, with rituals and practices to initiate you into the Womb magic of the ancient priestesses and the path of the wild feminine.

Excerpt

Preface: Our Love Letter

Dear Rose Pilgrims,

We open the prayer circle of this book, and invite you to take your seat. Red rose petals are scattered at your feet, and the harpist strikes a note. We have a tale to tell.

Mary Magdalene is a talismanic name--it has magic within it. Before we start our Quest, we should pause a few moments at the temple gates and really drink in the essence of this name. How much can fit within two simple words? Entire worlds it seems; a new dreaming, a renewed holy matrimony of the universe. A forbidden herstory of such magnitude it could melt entire worldly structures. This name is a deep, spiraling, serpentine power portal; play with it on your lips, feel its thrilling, enchanting, alluring, disturbing call. Mary Magdalene, Marie Madeleine, Miriam of Magdala. Miryai e Mara, Mary. Mary. Mary. The Magdalene. Maria. Our Mary. Mari. Maryam. This name is truly a secret and dangerous invocation; it belongs on hidden manuscripts of lost incantations and alchemical formula. It is a lost promise, now remembered.

Jesus gave his disciples and cohorts spiritual names that reflected the essence of who they were. He called Peter “the Rock,” he called Judas “the Knife”--and he called his beloved spiritual partner, Mary, “the Portal”--meaning mystic yoni gateway. Magdalene is a word of great feminine power: it derives from the Semitic ’ma-gadala, meaning “Great Mother,” as well as the Aramaic magdala and Hebrew migdal, both meaning “elevated, magnificent or tower.” In ancient Semitic, mag and dal are among the oldest primitive roots, signifying “great, powerful, magical” and “portal, doorway”, respectively. They are shared across other language families: the word maga is also the feminine version of mage--a magician. The Biblical Greek amygdale derives from the same roots, and means “almond” in the sense of a mandorla or “Magic Doorway,” portal of the Goddess. The name “Magdalene” at its origin means Magic Doorway of the Great Mother, the primordial Goddess, the Tree and Source of Life.

Even to this day, iconography of mother Mary is often held within an almond mandorla. This is a coded wink, “for those who know” that there is a secret “Mary Mystery” waiting to be revealed. This symbolism of the magdala encompasses both the sacred doorway of the woman’s womb, and the mystical womb of consciousness sought out by all the great alchemists, shamans, and initiates. This divine gateway was also symbolized by the rose, and those who followed the Magdalene Mysteries were known as initiates and priest/esses of the “rose line.”

This mandorla or “Mystic Rose” also suggests the amygdala region of the brain, the intuitive, feminine “feeling” center in all human beings, which is a portal to the cerebellar cosmic mother consciousness, and can initiate profound awakenings. Using this lunar wisdom the priestesses initiated others into the intuitive, visionary, divine love of the Christ Mysteries.

. . .The earliest shamans in the archeo-anthropologic record were shamankas; they were women. They were adorned in the color red, with mineral paints. Their figures were carved on cave walls with hands raised up in the orans and ka prayer positions of magico-spiritual invocation. Their vulvas featured prominently in paleolithic art, with “V” and “M” vulvic symbols engraved on stone and bone, later called “Witch Marks” in medieval times. Their womb-vulvas were considered the greatest source of their mana, their spirit power. Over time, this ancient lineage of womb shamans would gradually shapeshift into priestesses.

The first art or symbolic communication created by humans was an “M” engraved onto a sea shell on the islands of Indonesia, 500,000 years ago, showing us that the spirit of the Mermaids of Magdalene were with us from the beginning. The mysterious letter “M” is a doorway of primeval sea magic, our original mother matrix.

Mary is also a priestess name that means “beloved, honored and womb awakened.” And in the apocryphal Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Mary is described as “Magdalene Skywalker”--she who conquers and travels through space, which intuitively places her beside the ancient Dakinis from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, divine feminine deities and teachers who are described as cosmic “sky dancers”.

In the Aramaic of the Syriac tradition, to this day, the name for God is “Maria Alaha”, and in the byzantine Eastern Orthodox Church Mary is considered to be the fountain of life, the divine wellspring, the holy waters of life. Mary is the honorific title for the great goddesses of ancient Egypt, Isis or Ast, meaning the holy throne, and Hathor, the Great Womb.

Magdalene’s sacred colors were always depicted as red and green. Red was the symbolic color of a Womb Priestess, a witch-shaman of the feminine. Green was the color of the wild fertility of the forest and the Earth Mother’s body. These alchemical “color codes” reveal Mary Magdalene (MM) as an elemental witch, sexual maga, and herbal adept in the medicine path of Sophia.

There has been an underground stream of worship of Mary Magdalene for almost 2,000 years spread across the near-east, Egypt, and all across Europe, supported by secret orders of initiates. These occult left-hand path traditions often explicitly name Mary Magdalene as a priestess-shaman, and revere her as the Holy Womb--recognizing her as the wisdom-keeper for a lineage of female magicians and oracles, and the birth-portal of Christ Consciousness.

Rather than just modern “wishful thinking,” these secret teachings were clearly encoded in the middle-ages by famous artists, philosophers, and alchemists, often in “plain sight” for those who could “see”--and we can still peer through this magical mandorla, this doorway of wisdom, kept open by the alchemists, even today.

There is a revelation underway, as something lost and veiled is returning to us. Can you sense the fragrance of the lost rose-garden, calling out once again?

About The Authors

Seren Bertrand is a visionary creatrix and spirit keeper with a degree in English literature and modern philosophy who is dedicated to restoring the lost global feminine wisdom traditions. The coauthor of Magdalene Mysteries and Womb Awakening, she lives in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.

Azra Bertrand, M.D., has a degree in biochemistry and studied at Duke University School of Medicine, with research at the NIH. He has been a pioneering doctor and mystic for over two decades, following the feminine pathway of alchemy. The coauthor of Womb Awakening and Magdalene Mysteries, he lives in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Bear & Company (April 7, 2020)
  • Length: 560 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781591433477

Raves and Reviews

“Please do yourself the great favor of exploring this wisdom-filled and transformative book--full and alive as a pregnant mother’s womb! It will answer so many questions, fill in so many blanks, and offer much more than one could have imagined about the awakening of our sacred wombs. Grounded in a vital feminine spiritual lineage that extends back through all human time, Magdalene Mysteries opens wide the door not only to essential lineages of the past but also to the present and future of our own personal lives and empowerment. Much more than your mind is engaged here: your body and soul and connection to the womb of Gaia and the Great Mother, birther of all. Stepping into our loving, vital feminine power is profoundly important to reclaim our embodied place on our Mother, Lady Gaia.”

– Brooke Medicine Eagle, Earthkeeper, wisdom teacher, and author of Buffalo Woman Comes Singing and Th

“Beautifully written and illustrated, this extensively researched book restores Mary Magdalene to her rightful place as a spiritual leader from the lineage of womb shamans. Offering sacred rituals, the teachings in this book guide us effortlessly to follow the left-hand path of Christ.”

– Christine Page, M.D., author of The Healing Power of the Sacred Woman

“Magdalene Mysteries is a remarkable book that awakens the deep spiritual knowing that Mary Magdalene was a sacred priestess who has so much to teach us and that also sheds new light on the wild feminine. This exceptional book is a deep and rich immersion into the sacred feminine mysteries of Mary Magdalene and reveals a lost knowledge that needs to be reclaimed today. Seren and Azra wrote a truly exquisite book.”

– Sandra Ingerman, M.A., shamanic teacher and author of The Book of Ceremony

“Seren and Azra are two brilliant souls dedicated to diving deeply into the wisdom hidden within the ancient mystery schools to retrieve the sacred keys that will restore and give new life to the sacred womb initiation mysteries. In their new book, Magdalene Mysteries, the teachings they have discovered and returned to us may well be a profound step toward co-creation of an archetypal soul return for the sacred feminine and sacred masculine on Earth during these times that have been predicted throughout millennia. The information in this book is profound and tantalizing, brimming with life-force energies and preparing humanity for a time of rebirth.”

– Linda Star Wolf, Ph.D, coauthor of Visionary Shamanism, and author of Shamanic Breathwork

“Controversial and intriguing! This well-researched, passionately written book is a journey into a time in human history where women were treated as an expression of the Goddess of All Life. This is not only the aspect of the Great Mother but also the sexual goddess whose tantric arts affirmed humanity in the divine dance of sacred love. A powerful and enlightening take on the celebration of the Divine Feminine.”

– Tricia McCannon, author of Return of the Divine Sophia and The Angelic Origins of the Soul

"A unique, iconoclastic, inherently fascinating, exceptionally well written and informatively detailed study from cover to cover, Magdalene Mysteries: The Left-Hand Path of the Feminine Christ is unreservedly recommended for community and academic library New Age & Metaphysical Studies collections."

– Midwest Book Review, April 2020

“This is the perfect book for the current national health crisis and quarantines. There's a lot here to read... But it's not just reading. It's digesting. This is the kind of material you read, then mull over. Then ponder. Then do it again. If it all wasn't so well documented, you'd be tempted to toss it aside as the wild ravings of a disgruntled woman. Except the authors are a man and a woman. A married couple who have researched and written award-winning books.”

– Judy Blackstone, Facing North

Magdalene Mysteries offers a perfect combination of historic information across millennia along with the personal interactions of the authors with Mary Magdalene. It is a book to be read over time, allowing the information to seep in. It reads as a pilgrimage, and like all pilgrimages, time should be taken to allow the path to reveal itself to you, to allow yourself to open to revelations and notice the changes that occur as a result of the pilgrimage…It is a comprehensive introduction to Mary Magdalene to those new to the subject and also a deep-dive for those wanting a deeper interaction with Mary Magdalene. I highly recommend this book and encourage the reader to walk the path of pilgrimage to the Rose with these highly informed and passionate authors.”

– Anne Greco, Musing Mystic

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