The Magdalene Line Trilogy

Kathleen McGowan is a well known author. She is notable for her claim to be the descendant of Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene. Do you believe or do you think that it is possible that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene? There is absolutely no evidence to say they were NOT married. But then again there is no evidence to say they were either.

Kathleen McGowan has written a trilogy of books based around the life of Mary Magdalene and her marriage to Jesus. These books are more controversial than The Da Vinci Code because they claim that Mary was the true Apostle to the early church and that Peter was not. Therefore he never had the authority to be the first pope.

There are 3 books in this trilogy. Only the first book is reviewed here. There is also video series about Mary Magdalene. Books 2 and 3 of the trilogy will be reviewed at a later time and added to this lens.

The Expected One (Book 1)

by Kathleen McGowan

Simon & Schuster 2006

Maureen Paschal is a Journalist and Historian. Originally she was born and raised in Louisiana, USA. After her father died when she was barely 7 years old, Maureen's mother took Maureen to her ancestral home in Ireland where Maureen grew up. As soon as she could, Maureen returned to USA where she attended college and began writing and researching. All her life she had been having dreams and visions. These visions appeared to show brief glimpses of the life of Jesus Christ, but those glimpses did not match what the New Testament and the Catholic church said.

Maureen began thinking about the unsung heroes of history, the women. History is written by the victors. Most of the time those victors were men. Women were expected to be unseen and unheard.

So Maureen wrote a book entitled HerStory - A Defense of History's Most Hated Heroines. Maureen's book was about the misunderstood women of history. Women like Lucrezia Borgia, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, Bathsheba and Mary Magdalene.

During her research, Maureen had spent some time in Jerusalem where she had picked up an antique ring with a unique design on it. The ring had 9 hammered dots surrounding a central circle. The ring fit her fingers perfectly. Maureen wore this ring when she was photographed for the obligatory author photo on the back of her book.

Shortly after the book is published and right when Maureen is in the middle of a busy book tour, she receives a mysterious message.

It asks her to meet the writer at the Church of the Notre Dame in Paris on the summer solstice, saying that the writer may have answers to her questions, while she has answers for the writer.

Maureen and her catholic priest cousin Peter Healy (a teacher of ancient greek) visit the Notre Dame cathedral where they meet one Berenger Sinclair - a Scotsman who has long lived in France and is a secret Cathar.

Maureen learns that there is a prophecy that every now and then a women would be born who would fulfill the requirements to be the Expected One and she would find the scrolls of Mary Magdalene. A number of women had been identified as the Expected One over the last 2000 years, but the catholic church was (and still is) desperate enough to prevent the truth from emerging. The church was always able to stop or prevent the women from fulfilling the prophecy - often by execution.

Some women who are known to be Expected Ones include Joan of Arc (Arc comes from Arques in Languedoc even though Joan was born in Domremy), Matilda of Tuscany and now Maureen Paschal. Paschal is a known Cathar and royal bloodline name.

Maureen and Peter visit Berenger at his home in Arques, not far from the famous village of Rennes Le Chateau in the Languedoc. Berenger is putting on an annual costume party (always held close to the sumemr solstice). For the costume party, Maureen is given a gorgeous red costume that identifies her as Mary Magdalene.

Over the next few days while Maureen explores the area and learns more about the Cathars and their religion and beliefs. She also learns how they have survived from the 11th century down to the present day by using only oral histories and teachings. Nothing is written down - that being the only way to really stay safe.

Over the next few weeks, Maureen has more visions, including one of the actual crucifixion of Christ. Eventually Maureen is led to an old tomb - made famous by Nicolas Pouisson in Et in Arcadia Ego - where she finds the original scrolls and the original story of the real Jesus Christ. These scrolls were written by Mary Magdalene herself.

The basic story is that there were 2 messiahs - Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. Jesus (Easa or Yeshua) was a Nazarene and they were less strict about the law and allowed reforms in their teachings. They were also much less strict about the people they associated with. They allowed women and gentiles (non-jews) to listen to their teachings. The Nazarenes taught that it is more important to love God and love your neighbours than to follow the very strict jewish religious and dietary laws.

John the Baptist on the other hand was called the Teacher of Righteousness. He was assocated with the asetics known as the Essenes who lived at Qumram. They rejected women and adhered very strictly to jewish laws.

Mary Magdalene was the younger sister of Lazarus who was married to Martha. Mary was betrothed to be married to Easa - or Yeshua - who was the dynastic Prince of the line of David. Mary was a dynastic princess of the line of Benjamin. Their marriage was required under jewish law.

The Pharisees began to turn away from Jesus as their future messiah because of his liberal and reformative Nazarene teachings. They opted instead to force Lazarus to marry Mary off to John the Baptist who was a cousin of Jesus's - although not of the line of David. John was however, of the priestly line of Aaron. John being the asetic that he was, had no interest in women and certainly had no interest in being married.

John was persuaded to be married and would have the support of the Pharisees to become the Messiah. So he agreed to the marriage and so Mary Magdalene was married to John the Baptist.

The wedding happened in Cana. Since John had no money, his wedding was paid for by his nearest male relative - Jesus. It was Jesus who turned the water into wine at the Cana wedding - but Jesus was not the groom.

As a married women, Mary was required to live with her brother Lazarus while John was out preaching and baptizing. He would return every so often to partake of his conjugal duties. John turned out to be a cruel man. He hated women and thought them to be stupid and foolish, and far too emotional.

Mary had been ordered to stay away from Jesus and the Nazarenes as their teachings were too liberal for the wife of John the Baptist to be listening to.

Mary missed her friends who were Nazarenes and one day she sneaked away to listen to Jesus preach. Here she learned that she was pregnant.

Some months later John arrived at Lazarus's house and started hitting his wife because she had disobeyed him and gone to hear the Nazarene preaching. He also claimed that she was a fallen woman as her baby could not be his child because he was convinced that she must have slept with another man. Shortly after, Mary gave birth to her son and he was named John-Joseph.

One of Mary's friends was Salome, the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee. She was appalled at how badly John had treated Mary and so Salome decide to so something. She demanded that her father arrest John for insulting the family of Herod. John had said that Herodias (Salome's mother) was an adulterer to put away her first husband without just cause and to marry another. That made Herodias an adulterer - punishable by death.

By chance a Roman envoy was present in the palace that day so Herod demanded that John be arrested. Herod did not wish to look weak in front of Rome.

Even in jail, John continued to attack Herod's family and also began insulting and attacking Rome. Eventually Herod had no choice (especially with a Roman envoy around, watching closely) but to have John executed, and so he was beheaded.

Shortly after Mary became a widow, Easa (or Yeshua) again asked Mary to be his wife. This time the wedding was held outdoors on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The wedding itself was small and private but with many thousands of followers waiting to hear Jesus preach, there was no way to feed them all. A boy was found who had a basket of 5 loaves and 2 fish. The boy was brought to Jesus and the feeding of the 5000 began. This was the wedding feast of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Mary and Jesus had 2 children - a daughter Sarah-Tamar and Mary was pregnant with a son at the time of the crucifixion.

When Jesus was arrested at the garden of Gethsemane, Mary was spirited into the palace to see Jesus in his jail cell after he was whipped and scourged. That would be the last time they would see each other privately.

Jesus quickly gave Mary instructions on what to do (flee to Alexandria and from there, go to some place you feel safe), what to name the baby (Yeshua-David) and what to teach (take the Book of Love with you, and start teaching the others from it. There is much that they do not yet know.)

When Jesus's body was removed from the cross and laid to rest in the tomb, by jewish law, only the wife or mother were permitted to wash and anoint the body of their loved one. Since the new testament gospels do tell us that Mary Magdalane washed and anointed the body of Jesus Christ, she must therefore have been his wife.

When Jesus rose again and appeared to Mary outside of the tomb, he did not tell her "Do not touch me". NO. He told her "Do not cling to me" There is a vast difference between do not touch and do not cling. A wife would want to cling, anyone else would be told to not touch.

Mary was the first to witness the resurrected Christ and she ran to tell the other apostles the good news. She should have been recognised by the apostles as Yeshua's successor and as their new leader.

As was mentioned in the Gospel of Philip, the apostles Peter and Andrew did not accept that she had been given authority over them.

So Mary and her children (Yeshua-David was born in Alexandria) were forced to flee from Judea to Alexandria.

This is where the scrolls of Mary Magdalene ended.

Maureen's cousin Peter (the irish priest who knew ancient greek and had translated the scrolls) stole the scrolls and took then to Paris to hand them over to the catholic church. Fortunately he also felt guilty and mailed his notes and translations to Maureen.

Maureen was the one who would have to deal with the church if she wanted to write about these scrolls. She was after all the Expected One. L'attendue.

The catholic church for centuries has given humanity the wrong image about this great woman. Let us see who Mary Magdelene really was

The Divine Feminine

Balance, Union and Harmony.

Most of you are going to read this and say that I am crazy or a heretic. But you do need to know that I am not a liar. What follows is in the bible.

Genesis 1 v 26

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground (NIV)

Genesis 3 v 21-22

The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

Who is US? Note that Man only became like one of us after both Adam and Eve were made. What if the likeness of US (the likeness of God) refers to the female and the male - that God is either male and female or (more likely) that God has a mate and she is the Goddess.

After all the Goddess tradition has been around for thousands of years - far far longer than the tradition of the male god.

So - what does all this have to do with Mary Magdalene?

Belief in the goddess persisted and so several hundred years after the "crucifixion", the catholic church attempted to wipe out the worship and belief of the goddess by downplaying the importance of Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus and upgrading the importance of Mary the mother of god.

To reduce the importance of Mary Magdalene, who might have been the wife of Jesus, she was made out to be an easy women who sold her body for sex - which therefore made sex an ugly word. Mary the mother of god was upgraded to that of a perfect mother and one who does not have sex - ergo she must be a perpetual virgin.

This bypasses the notion that Mary had sex and had other children.

The new testament states that Jesus had brothers and sisters.

NO WOMEN can have a child and remain a perpetual virgin.

Once you lose your virginity, it's lost forever.

The Church also carried this further by saying that if Mary the mother of god did not have sex, then Jesus the son of god also did not have sex. If he did not have sex, he was a virgin. Therefore he could not have had a wife and he did not have children.

Following this, the church also decreed that priests were also to follow the example of Christ and remain virgins and not have sex, not have wives and not have children.

With all the scandals coming to light in recent years of how many many priests/pastors/rabbis (catholic, protestant and jewish) regularly did (and possibly still do) abuse children in their care, the notion that mankind can remain celibate is just wrong.

Mankind was made in the image of God the creator. God the creator has a female mate for balance, union, intimacy and harmony. If Man is like God then man too must have a female mate in order for that union to be balanced, to be intimate, to procreate and continue the species, and being in harmony with another makes you strong.

Do YOU believe that Jesus was married, or do you think Jesus was a virgin and celibate?

It was Jewish tradition to be married. It was extremely unusual to not be married.

Jesus could never have been called Rabbi if he was not married.

Jesus was a Jew and he followed Jewish law.