Magdalene's Lost Legacy author: Margaret Starbird Bear & Company Inner Traditions International 2003 ISBN #159143012-7 I became interested in Margaret Starbird's work through my professional interest in the field of Tarot. Very "back door" for such an esoteric subject, to be sure! The more I read, the more amazed I was that many of the issues that crossed my path as I went deeper and deeper into the Tarot were reflected in what is essentially a history of the beginnings of Christianity. Magdalene's Lost Legacy is all about symbolic numbers and the sacred union in Christianity. The sacred union discussed here is literally that of the human named Jesus and his bride, the Mary called Magdalene. Starbird shows us how through the politics of the time this sacred union was not only downplayed but had its existence denied, an example of which is the demand of the church, still in existence today, that priests be celibate. This sacred union was the very basis, or cornerstone on which the earliest Christian communities were built. Starbird refers to this sacred union as the heiros gamos - the teaching that unites masculine and feminine principles as a partnership model for civilization as it currently exists. The legacy of Mary Magdalene is that of restoration of the divine feminine as bride and sacred partner. I think this legacy goes much farther than that. It has to do with how we relate as a people - to ourselves and to our environment. Our planet is out of balance right now because the feminine has been denied. One of my favorite sections of this book, small as it was, dealt with the melissae - the community of female bees that surround and protect the Queen Bee. The priestesses of the Goddess Artemis were also called melissae, showing the strong connection with the feminine and spirit. The basis for Starbird's study was the use of the literary device of gematria, where the sums of certain phrases produce sacred numbers, to decode the symbolic numbers embedded in the original Greek phrases of the New Testament. How this study comes about, and what she posits from her results concerning the presence of the feminine divine make for very interesting reading. She gives many specific examples, including the true meaning of the number 666 prophesied in the Book Of Revelations. At the end of the book are three short sections that make reading the book all that much easier: a glossary of terms (this is highly esoteric material aimed at a largely layman population), a proposed timeline for Christian history and an excellent bibliography. Margaret Starbird is also the author of The Woman With The Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene And The Holy Grail and The Goddess In The Gospels. I find her work well researched and quite compelling. If nothing else, Magdalene's Lost Legacy acts as a wonderful reference book for Gematria and the sacred union in Christianity. I highly recommend this book - even if you end up disagreeing with her position, Starbird gives one a larger worldview, and encourages one to think outside the box! Thank you for visiting my Personal Empowerment page. May your day be Blessed. Mitakuye Oyasin - For All Of Our Relations. (c) October 2003 Bonnie Cehovet Personal Lifestyle Reading - I offer a Personal Lifestyle Reading using Tarot that looks at past, present and future influences in your life, at the energies that are currently available to help you along your path, and at those energies that are appearing as challanges. My goal is to offer you insight into your decision making process, as well as tools that you can use to both better understand your path and make conscious, choice centered decisions. Home Personal Empowerment links Personal Empowerment articles View My Guestbook Sign My Guestbook Graphics by Art for the web