The Breath Of Life Has No Race

I love all the great paintings of Mary Magdalene. This one is by Cassandra Barney. I could care less whether the artist portrays her as black, or olive brown, or "white." Those who argue about Mary Magdalene's "race" and skin color totally miss the point. Every devotee is entitled to have their favorite picture of Mary Magdalene. But the image, the icon, is merely a symbol of the subtle energy in the heart, the resonance of her presence in the breath. Does your breath have a "race"? Does the Goddess dancing round the tree of your spine have a color?

 

Magdala, Migdal in Hebrew, means "column" or "tower." Your spinal column is a tower of myrrh and hyssop, bittersweet herbs of longing and love. In the West, the yoga of Shiva and Shakti expressed its ancient message as the marriage of Christ and Sophia, Word and Wisdom. Their union takes places in what Christian Gnostics deemed the subtlest and deepest sacrament, the sacrament of the Bridal Chamber, which happens in the temple of the body, at the sanctuary of the hridaya chakra.

Shiva and Shakti represent the eternal dance of the divine Masculine and Feminine: pure consciousness and its expression as creative energy. In our human physiology they are the solar and lunar energies that spiral around our vertebrae: Ida and Pingala. When these two "nadis" or nerve currents unite, our Tree of Life blossoms. It's fruits open and offer their juice.

 

At the dawn of the Western mystical tradition, these eternal archetypes were known as Logos and Sophia, the Divine Word and the Breath of Wisdom. They incarnated as Jesus and Mary to teach this ancient path of yoga and interior alchemy. They meet in the resurrection garden of our body. Like Radha and Krishna in the garden of Vrindavan, Mary Magdalene and Jesus represent longing and union, energy and peace. Her energy, her wild longing for the Source, and the ecstasy of her return, breathe and charge and gather the cosmos.

 

O Mary, guide the rudderless boat of my mind to that distant shore where the sun is setting, for the sea is wide. Yet it is only the distance of one breath. Let your grace be a current of yearning, let me drift into my own heart. For like you, I seek an ancient wilderness in a new land, and the fountain of tranquility, which is union with Christ.