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The Story of Jesus & Mary Magdalene

By Cynthia Avens

Richard and I were talking the other day about our negative feelings toward so much of what we see in the media. Almost everything is based on the cult of personality – shallow, superficial and illusory – truly a “hall of mirrors” that reflects the dark passions of our collective inner lives. The question we raised was: what human need does the popular media so profoundly address? I think that the answer is at least in part that television and movies often serve the same needs that stories did in the past. In the days before our modern media, people entertained themselves with music and storytelling, which served the human need to connect with others and to something larger than one’s little self. Getting caught up in the “story” was an ordinary form of ego-transcendence. But today we have for the most part lost our collective stories. However, since we still have the need to connect in a personal way with something beyond our own lives, the media creates stories to fill this void. Unfortunately the stories that briefly capture our attention today often reflect our basest instincts rather than the wisdom that generated the traditional stories that were passed on from one generation to the next. We have a desperate need today to create new stories that provide us with the wisdom to guide our individual lives and transform our culture.

This discussion led to my reflection upon the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene that is emerging so strongly today through many contemporary storytellers. It seems to me that this is a story that can convey the deeper wisdom that truly nourishes the human soul. Mary Magdalene is the representative of Lady Wisdom (Sophia) that seems most accessible to many people today. I have thought in the past that this huge interest in Mary Magdalene is because in our modern world we can only believe something if we think that it is historically true. Many writers today are trying to make the case that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were literally married and had a child together. Since Christianity has always emphasized its historical basis – the Divine entering human life as a historical event – it would seem crucial to prove that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were actually married. But to me this has never seemed all that important. After all, modern Biblical research reveals that even very little that is written in the New Testament about the life of Jesus can be proven to be factual. So what seems significant to me is that Mary Magdalene represents the archetypal Divine Feminine, and it is this archetype in union with the Divine Masculine that is breaking forth into human consciousness now. But the term “archetype” sounds so abstract. Perhaps it is better to say that the union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is a new story that is emerging out of the deep unconscious in our time. Just like the great mythic stories of past ages, it may not be historically “true” but it can be spiritually valid in its ability to provide meaning and purpose for our lives today. The union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the Earthly embodiment of the union of Christ and Sophia in the spiritual realm.

I have found that many people seem to have difficulty grasping the concept of “ChristoSophia” and I now realize that this is because there is not a story to express it. Because the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene enables us to relate in a more personal way to the archetypal union of masculine and feminine, it may be the primary pattern for the new mythic “container” that is needed today.

As the Christian story continues to unfold throughout the ages as human consciousness evolves, it seems to me that the “new creation” that Christ promised is more than what we have been taught in the past. It is a creation born of the masculine-feminine union that he and Mary Magdalene lived out. This is the “new creation” that is still gestating within the human species. The Age of Chivalry, with its devotion to Mary and elevation of the feminine, brought us closer to this birth. But it was not complete at this time, partly because sexual love and the physical body were not accepted into the Code of Chivalry. It is only in our contemporary age that we are beginning to see many men and women uniting as true partners, physically and spiritually, following the pattern initiated by Jesus and Mary Magdalene and continued by only the few “seekers of love” throughout history until our present time. But today the situation is changing. As Joan Norton suggests in her book The Mary Magdalene Within, a “shift in the Earth’s story” began with the love of Jesus and Mary Magdalene over 2000 years ago. This shift is accelerating at a rapid pace today, perhaps in response to the urgency of our Mother Earth’s needs. The vibratory field of love-energy, as mediated through loving human partners, is crucial for the survival of our beloved Earth. This is why the practice of “sacred partnership” is so crucial today: it is through conscious love that embraces body, soul and spirit – love that is expressed and enacted in all the mundane activities of daily life as well as in transcendent sexual experience – that the full conception of the “new creation” will take place. When enough human beings conceive in this way through their sacred love relationship, then the shift to a higher level of consciousness will take place as Love and Wisdom are born within the Heart of Humanity. In this way the union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene – as ChristoSophia – is the completion of the Christian story that is being accomplished in our time.


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The union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the Earthly embodiment of the union of Christ and Sophia in the spiritual realm.