copyright 1999
Margaret Starbird.
All rights reserved

       Margaret Starbird's website       
 

 Sacred Union in Christianity

 Celebrating the
archetypal Bride and Bridegroom
 
 

Kilmore Church
Dervaig, Scotland
1906
by Stephen Adam
photo courtesy of John Shuster
copyright 2005, all rights reserved
 

In Gaelic "Caell Muire" ("Kilmore") means "Church of Mary"

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". . . there came a woman with an alabaster jar of ointment,
genuine nard of great value; and breaking the alabaster jar,
she poured it on his head." (Mark 14: 3)

Then Mary took a pound of ointment, genuine nard of great value, and
anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet dry with her hair.
And the house was filled with the fragrance of her ointment." (John 12:3)

The Christian Gospels say nothing specific about the marital status of Jesus, but the Hebrew language had no word for "bachelor" in the first century A.D., probably because marriage was taken for granted in their society--a "cultural imperative." We must seriously examine the available evidence that Jesus WAS married in light of the norms of the Jewish society in which he lived.

A preponderance of evidence from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, including the Gospels themselves, supports rather than denies the claim that Jesus was married. Starbird's books set forth the evidence, reclaiming the "Sacred Partnership" that was at the heart of the Christian story. Her research was a major source for the The Da Vinci Code and two of her books are specifically cited in that book.
 

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Books by Margaret Starbird

"Offers an alternative view of Christianity ...it cannot be ignored." Publishers Weekly "Magdalen, the great Mary, emerges with new power." Archbishop John Shelby Spong "Provocative and controversial" Catholic Women's Network "A heretic teaches what the Church does not teach.  A prophet teaches what the Church doesn't teach yet. I teach what the Church taught in the beginning and has forgotten --the Sacred Union at the very heart of the Christian story." Margaret Starbird

Vocal critics of Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code remind us constantly that the thriller is "fiction." They seem unwilling to examine the strong evidence from the Gospels--discussed in Starbird's books--that supports the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

The evidence for the intimate partnership of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is found in the canonical Gospels themselves, manifesting a sacred union at all levels of experience, and restoring a model for true partnership to western civilization at the threshold of the third Chrisitian millennium. The healing of the broken partnership mandala is the Sacred Reunion incarnate in the archetypal Christ-Couple.
 

This book explores the truth behind the fiction!
 

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to order from amazon.com click here

 

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Margaret Starbird's theological beliefs were profoundly shaken when she first encountered the suggestion that Jesus Christ was married and that his bloodline survived in Western Europe. Shocked by such heresy, this Roman Catholic scholar and former University instructor set out to refute it, but instead found compelling evidence in support of the forgotten Bride of Jesus.

Starbird's research traces the origin of the heresy of the Holy Grail, whose medieval adherents believed that Jesus was married and that his wife and child emigrated to Gaul, fleeing persecutions of the Christain community in Jerusalem. Numerous legends, works of art, and artifacts of medieval Europe clearly reflect a widespread "alternative Christianity" brutally suppressed by the Inquisition beginning in the mid-13th Century. The heresy survived in an underground stream of esoteric wisdom guarded by artists, artisans, poets, and alchemists.

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to email Margaret Starbird:  starbird@wa.net
 
 

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  Mary Magdalene,
Bride in Exile
 

book contains a bonus
60-minute CD audio presentation
by Margaret Starbird

with highlights of her research
and "journey of faith."

Margaret Starbird's newest book reveals      many faces of Mary "called Magdalene,"      examining in greater depth the question,     "Who do we say that she is?" Here the      focus is on  historical, symbolic, and      mythological interpretations of the "Lost      Bride" of the Christian story--woman and      archetype--restoring her to the preeminent      position she once held as the intimate and      most favored companion of Jesus. We now     recognize the "Sacred Bridegroom/ King"      sacrificed for his people; how can we fail to      recognize and to celebrate his beloved      Bride--the Mary called "the Magdalene"?   Contains 24 color plates and 60-minute audio CD

to order from amazon.com click here
 

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 The Feminine Face of Christianity
(Godsfield Press and Quest Theosophical Press, 2003)

Early Christianity was fundamentally egalitarian      but later influences conspired to curtail the role      of women in the Church. Starbird seeks to reclaim      the gender-balanced Christianity implicit in the      Gospels. Comprehensive and challenging, this work      presents women of faith who have led by example,      and whose powerful messages are still  relevant      today. Martyrs, mystics, scholars, activists, virgins,      wives and mothers - they incarnate the great themes     of Christianity: the presence of the Spirit and the     sanctity of human life. The book details how issues      of social justice and environmental concerns can      provide a platform for Christian women's voices in      the modern world. At the threshold of the third      Christian millennium we pause to examine the con-     tributions of passionate women who have embraced      the “Way” and walked its journey of faith. The book     is enhanced by numerous fine art illustrations,  quo-     tations and practical suggestions for enhancing the     faith journey of contemporary Christians.

To order from amazon.com
 click here
 

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Magdalene's Lost Legacy:
Symbolic Numbers and Sacred Union in Christianity

(Inner Traditions, Bear and Company, 2003)

* Reveals the symbolic numbers of the New Testament proving that the 
       union of Jesus and his Bride was the cornerstone of earliest Christianity.

* Reveals the meaning of the "666" prophesied in the Book of Revelation. 

   * Explains how the worship of a celibate god has warped the collective    psyche of Western Civilizaton in favor of "masculine" preferences that
threaten the health and safety of the human family and planet Earth.

Here Starbird explodes the myth of the celibate Jesus, revealing truths  encoded in symbolic numbers in the Gospels themselves by the authors of the Greek New Testament. This book demonstrates unequivocally that the "Sacred Union" of  Jesus and his Lost Bride was the true cornerstone of early Christianity. Magdalene's Lost Legacy explores the fundamental tenets of the fledgling faith in light of the gematria encrypted in its own Sacred Scriptures, casting exciting new light on the beliefs of the early Church.  The book explains profound teachings hidden for centuries in the gematria of the Gospels and in the Apocalypse of John (the Book of Revelation).

To order from amazon.com, click here
 

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The Goddess in the Gospels Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine in Christianity The sacred number of her epithet identifies Mary Magdalene with the most ancient symbol for the "Great Goddess" -- the  ()  known as the "Vesica Piscis" and "measure of the fish." The Mary called "Magdalene" is the lost Bride of the Christian story. Margaret Starbird has always believed the promise that if the Grail were found, the wasteland would be healed.  Here is the story of her own journey with  its anguish and its joy -- her quest for the "Lost Bride" hidden behind the medieval legends of the Holy Grail. The book also discusses gematria encoded in the Greek texts of the New Testament Gospels. These ancient number codes provide astonishing proof that the sacred partnership of Christ and Mary Magdalene was once the corner- stone of the "Way." Exiled from our consciousness for nearly two millennia, it is time to reclaim the Forgotten Bride who was once at the very heart of the Christian mythology.

"Margaret Starbird has turned her courageous  spiritual journey into a courageous book ...." Virginia Ann Froehle author of   Called into Her Presence

to order from amazon.com click here

"Must reading for anyone who has suffered from the unbalanced and distorted masculine principle in the institutional Church and who longs for a community and a world built on the partnership paradigm hidden in the Scriptures."

Dr. Nick De Los Reyes,
Psychologist and Marriage Counselor

Biography

Margaret Starbird holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Maryland where she concentrated in comparative literature, medieval studies and German language, studies she pursued on a Fulbright Student Grant at the Christian Albrechts Universitat in Kiel, Germany. She taught German language classes at the University of Maryland for four years and for one year at North Carolina State University. She later studied theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN. Margaret Starbird has lived and traveled widely  in Europe including pilgrimages to Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene shrines and Cathar citadels in Provençe. Starbird and her husband of 39 years currently reside in the Pacific Northwest. They have five grown children. Starbird presents frequent lectures nationwide as well as international seminars and retreats honoring the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Marriage at the heart of Christianity.
 
 

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The FISHES

Lord and Lady of the Age of Pisces

This unusual image from c. 1250 is displayed in a regional history museum in Metz, a town located in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Ancient legends come together in this painting from the seat of the Merovingian power in Alsace-Lorraine. It appears to be an ancestral portrait of the Lord and Lady of the FISHES (Pisces). A recent discovery of a mosaic depicting two fish at a 3-4th century church in Megiddo confirms that the "partnership" of the Fishes was an early emblem of Christianity. The mandala is reminiscent of the Zodiac symbol of Pisces, the "Fishes"--the New Age dawning at the time of Jesus. The linking of the geometric square and circle depicts the "marriage of irreconcilable opposites" in geometry, the square represents Earth/matter and the circle, Heaven/spirit.
 

Expanding on the material discussed in her    The Woman with the Alabaster Jar,     Starbird here examines the historical con-    nections between the tarot trumps, the     Grail Heresy, and the Knights Templar,     the medieval "guardians of the Grail family."     Adherents of the "Great Heresy" believed     that Jesus was married, that his wife and     child found political refuge in Gaul, and     that his bloodline, the sang raal of the     royal house of King David, survived in     Western Europe. The earliest tarot trumps    provided a visual catechism for these     "other Christians" so brutally suppressed     by  the Inquisition. Symbols on the earliest    trumps whisper "Great Secrets" (major     arcana) of the alternative Christian Church     of the Middle Ages--The Church of Love.

Also by Margaret Starbird
     (articles posted on the web---click to access)

Mary Magdalene, the Grail-Bearer
Mary Magdalene and the Twin Towers/ 9 -11-2001
Mary Magdalene, the Beloved
Imaging God as Partners
The Little Mermaid Archetype

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Music suggestion: "Aurora"

Amazing songs celebrating the sacred are recorded by a duo called "Aurora." --Marie Garry and Katherine Conrad.  Information about their albums, "Aurora Mystery" and "Pagosa Rose," is available from Aurora Song
 

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Margaret  Starbird's 

Up-coming Lecture Presentations
and Retreat/Seminars

2008
 

Autumn '08   Huntsville, AL September 26-28 Retreat weekend   "The greatest story Never told" Mary Magdalene Bride of the Beloved details will be posted contact: Dave Leonard dlhcrs@aol.com   *        *        * October 11-12, 2008 Gaia Festival Los Angeles, CA please check back later for details  *     *     * Pennsylvania October 17-18 New Hope, PA Friday Lecture $20 and Saturday All-Day Workshop $110 "Mary Magdalene" the greatest story never told  http://www.soulworks.tv/starbird.html contact:  soulworks2000@gmail.com *    *    * Sunday, October 19 [Boston area] Andover, MA "Women's Spirituality Series" sponsored by The Deborah Rose Memorial fund details will be posted here     If your church or study group would like to schedule a  seminar or retreat centered on one of these themes    "Sacred Union in Christianity" "Mary Magdalene: Bride and Beloved" (The Greatest Story Never Told!) "Reclaiming the Sophia in Christianity" "Many Faces of Mary Magdalene"    please contact Margaret Starbird to arrange an event in your area. Purchase link below takes you to amazon.com Click HERE to Purchase Books by Margaret Starbird   *           *           *   THE WOMAN WITH THE ALABASTER JAR Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail $16.95 * MARY MAGDALENE, BRIDE IN EXILE includes an audio CD lecture "Mary Magdalene, Bride and Beloved"   $20.00 *    THE GODDESS IN THE GOSPELS Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine $15.00 * THE FEMININE FACE OF CHRISTIANITY $19.95 * MAGDALENE'S LOST LEGACY Symbolic Numbers and Sacred Union in Christianity $15.00 *   THE TAROT TRUMPS AND THE HOLY GRAIL: Great Secrets of the Middle Ages $15.00   To view other books published by Inner Traditions International click here: Inner Traditions, Bear and Company   For information regarding times, locations and local contact numbers for upcoming events, please inquire directly with Margaret Starbird: starbird@wa.net

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