Easter Song - Lady of the Resurrection

The secret traditions of Mary Magdalene still unfolding today....

I’m sharing this extract from the Magdalene Mysteries today, as we prepare to go to Savanah for the Easter Sunday resurrection mass - for the first time.

Also, last night a stranger emailed me to say he’d had a dream of the words ‘seren savanah’ repeating - and had to google the words to discover who I was…

Meanwhile, we also discovered that my husbands Huguenot relatives escaped from France to America, one of them, a young girl, smuggled in a wine gasket.

It feels good over this Easter weekend to pay a honorific nod to our lineage…

In Christianity the descent into the Underworld is translated into the Crucifixion and Resurrection event—formed into a pilgrimage of the fourteen Stations of the Cross, featuring a cosmic transfiguration over three days in the womb of Christ’s tomb.

It is known as the Mystery of Golgotha—the stations of death and rebirth within the skull, also symbolic of the feminine “skull,” the pelvis with its instinctive cosmic intelligence.

The Resurrection Mystery begins on the morning of Maundy Thursday with Chrism Mass, where the holy anointing oils that will be used throughout the year are blessed.

Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, and Maundy is the rite of foot washing. This ancient ritual is explained by Jesus in the Gospel of John, where he says: “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos,” or “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you.” During Chrism Mass priests are called to renew their ministry by reaffirming their vows.

In Britain this mystical day of the Last Supper and initiation of the Resurrection ritual was called Royal Maundy and coins were given out in red and white purses. Across in India, pilgrims and entire families traditionally visited fourteen churches, one for each station of the cross, traveling across the lands in devotional caravans.

I asked myself, for what or whom do we need to perform this ritual of love? What do we stand for fullheartedly, that we need to renew our dedication and commitment to? What love calls us? It felt like a preparation ritual, this symbolic Last Supper, before the descent begins, where we sustain ourselves with acts of love and strengthen our faith, like our ancestors who feasted so they could withstand the oncoming famine.

In the goddess Inanna’s descent, she prepares herself with the rituals and adornments of feminine power, make-up, turban, wig, dress, and lapis jewelry.

At every station of the Underworld, which has seven gates, she has to lose one item. Eventually she is stripped naked, and strung up as a corpse on the under- world tree.

In the rebirth mysteries of Jesus, he also descends into hell where he is “strung up.” In their rebirth and resurrection rituals, Templars would go under- ground into a round womb church, for a descent into the underworld. Likewise, in the early Irish church, Saint Patrick was lowered down into a cave for three days, in a death and rebirth ritual. This cave is called Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, and was used by pilgrims who would also be lowered on ropes down into the dark womb of the cave for their rebirth. There is also is a cave under the holy sepulcher in Jerusalem, the womb cave of the mother, whose powers can rebirth the soul into its resurrection.

High initiates of Pythagoras would descend into a dark, earthly womb chamber, where they would take sacred entheogens to midwife their visionary resurrection.

For modern pilgrims, this womb-tomb power can still be found in the church womb.

Womb of Rebirth

So, on one Easter weekend, we pilgrimage to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, first founded by those fleeing the Huguenot persecutions in France. The cathedral is like a huge cosmic womb, a temple of Isis that has traveled across time.

The whole cathedral is a ritual landscape devoted to rebirth and resurrection; at the entrance is an octagonal baptismal womb font, flowing with the sacred waters, adorned with sacred feminine symbology of downward pointing triangles and Celtic crosses. The grand ceiling arcs up above painted in deep royal blue with constellations of starry golden fleur-de-lys, as if the queenly heavens of the cosmos are arrayed above us.

As we approach the birth canal of the central aisle, we are surrounded by fourteen Stations of the Cross, with statues of Jesus, each depicting and marking his soul disrobing. At the heart of the cathedral we are greeted with a huge marble altar, housing the Cosmic Cross, and rich red velvet thrones decorated with the alpha and omega, and the pelican, the Christ, feeding her children from the substance of her body’s blood.

We see Our Lady—the Lady of Sorrows, the Lady of Mercy—and to her we bow.

Sorrow of the Motherline

I percolate on the last few years, the death of my father, and my mum’s sickness, not just in body, but in mind, inherited through the maternal line. Little do I know that during this descent, my mother is also preparing for her death. It is as if my world is dissolving.

It feels as if I am navigating Inanna’s descent for my entire maternal lineage. This is the emotional and spiritual cauldron that I am in during our Easter pilgrimage. A deep grief has floated close to the surface, and I feel the lamentation cry sounding within me.

Savannah is turned out for Easter Saturday, and the Stations of the Cross service, wearing their best clothes and best faces. I do not think they have heard a woman cry out her wild lament for Jesus; where the pain of his time inside the tomb is vocal- ized. They hear one now, as I surrender into this great mystical rite of Isis. At each station I mourn for Jesus, and for my own “cruxed” soul fragments. I lament his pain and my own, and that of the world.

I pray feverishly, weeping out loud, calling out within my heart: “Jesus I am in the tomb with you, please grant me my resurrection.” At each station we turn to face the next station of his suffering. It is in the turning I feel the power of the mandala, the “facing” of whatever it is we don’t wish to see or feel or let go of, but that needs completion.

Under the starry canopy of the blue cathedral dome, praying and weeping during Stations of the Cross, ritually undergoing Inanna’s descent journey, it feels as if I have been transported back in time. The polite faces fade, and the priestesses arise. I can hear the lamentations of the Marys, and the rich timbre of the Magdalene’s cry.

The Holy Mother’s presence is vast, as if the world opens and expands to fit into her.

I am astounded at the continuity of the rituals of Sophiology, still being enacted—even if their origins are somewhat obscured. I conjure up the texts that tell of Inanna’s descent, and how at each station of the underworld, the womb cross, the crux of life, the center of earth, she has to peel off one more layer of her worldly self. I also call to mind the fourteen pieces of Osiris that Isis had to remember and reassemble so she could impregnate herself and give birth to the new child of consciousness, for a new cycle. I feel the magical power of the numerology, the power of the seven, doubled to power of the fourteen, symbolizing sacred union and the unified celestial birth womb.
I surrender into the great mystery of Virgin Mary Isis, who presides over this shamanic journey of dismemberment and reconstitution, to refertilize the world. I weep with gratitude to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, shamanic guides of this rebirth.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Psalm 139:13–16 (ESV)