Mary Magdalene’s mission

Dear Mary Magdalene, Apostola Apostolorum! I am very honored to speak with you.

Well, you’re welcome, and just call me Mary. It’s been quite a while since anyone interviewed me. Or rather, I can’t remember ever being interviewed.

Wow, that’s strange… but then again, in your time it wasn’t customary to give interviews, and podcasts certainly didn’t exist yet.

True, and in my time people were not very interested in what I had to say either. After all, I was an apostle… and a woman. That wasn’t something people valued much when it came to higher matters. My gospel was only discovered much later in Egypt, in 1896. It was a version translated from Greek into Coptic… Who wrote it? I have no idea, because in my time knowledge was passed on purely orally. And even after its discovery, it took a long time before it was published, only in 1955…

Really! Just a year before I was born… why was that? It seems your person was not taken very seriously.

Well, I focused on gnostic inner liberation—esoteric in nature—where mystical experiences are of great importance, rather than on church orthodoxy… so people quickly dropped out, because inner work demands a lot from a person.

And yet you came to be called Apostola Apostolorum, which means “Apostle of the Apostles,” right?

Yes, I come from the village of Magdala on the Sea of ​​Galilee. A beautiful spot! Hence the addition of Magdalena. And yes, I was the first witness to the resurrection of Jesus. I arrived at the tomb early in the morning and saw that the stone had been rolled away. I thought that Jesus had been taken out of the tomb… that shocked me tremendously! But a moment later I suddenly saw Jesus, but did not recognize Him. Only when He spoke my name did a huge sense of relief wash over me! It turned out to be Jesus! He explicitly told me to inform the others: “Go to your brothers and tell them that I have risen…”
But please understand the meaning of this: I awoke to consciousness again after the blow of grief I received—I was completely devastated—and was given the task of sharing the truth about this ‘resurrection’. This was not just an event, but a major spiritual breakthrough that I therefore had to tell my fellow apostles about.

Ah, clear. Still, in our time there is much confusion about you. When I ask people what they know about you, they can hardly tell me anything, even if they were raised with the Bible. I keep hearing something about a woman who was rather loose with sexuality…

Well, in my time I became quite an influential leader. In gnostic texts—such as the Gospel attributed to me, written down somewhere in the first century—I am even described as the disciple who understood Jesus best. But yes, that was denied for a long time. Especially when, in the sixth century, a certain Pope Gregory the Great merged me with other women of my time. There was Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus, who was devoted to Jesus and listened to Him for hours and anointed Him. And then there was the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’ feet before his arrest, but who remained anonymous, as her name is never mentioned. It was mainly this woman who was identified with me. Thus three women were turned into one person. Convenient, isn’t it? That is why my icon often shows me holding an ointment jar. But I myself did not anoint Jesus during His lifetime…

So that icon of you is actually a bit ‘false’…

My icon often shows that ointment jar. I wanted to anoint Him, in His tomb, but discovered that He had risen. Because I intended to do so, I have no problem with the icon depicting it. For me, that jar is a symbol of my devotion. I came with this balm to give His body a final honor, my last act of love I could offer Him. But I never had to use it! He was no longer there! Death had been overcome! So this jar is now an ‘empty’ symbol. It reminds us that my care was no longer needed for a ‘dead’ one, because I became the first witness of the Living One. A sign of my presence at the most important moment in history.

Okay, I can understand that… but still… that ointment jar actually also represents that wrong view of your person.

In the Orthodox tradition I am also depicted with a red egg. This tells a very different story—one of my confrontation with the rulers of my time. After Jesus’ resurrection, I traveled to Rome to confront Emperor Tiberius with the injustice done to Him by Pilate. A crude political scandal. I handed the emperor a simple white egg, a symbol of new life, and declared, “Christ is risen!” But Tiberius laughed at me and said, “A man can no more rise from the dead than this egg in your hand can turn red.” Well… at that very moment, the egg in my hand turned deep red! That certainly made him pause, haha! So this symbol is far more powerful and shows me as a woman who was not afraid to stand before the most powerful man in the world to proclaim truth. In Greek and Russian Orthodoxy, dyeing eggs red at Easter is still a direct reference to my courageous act. Quite wonderful! I feel honored. This is the true Easter egg: the symbol of victory over death and of my voice that could not be silenced.

Wow! That suddenly explains a lot. I never really understood painting Easter eggs. We did that at home too, but with all kinds of cheerful colors. What do those eggs have to do with the Festival of Light, I used to wonder as a boy… Yes, okay… as a symbol of spring and new life, but that’s quite different from what you are describing here.
But… I’d like to return to that merging of the three women, including you… that should never have happened! A pope falsifying history!

Historical falsification indeed. It created the image of me as a repentant prostitute. This remained official doctrine in your Roman Catholic Church until 1969. This ‘transformation’ of my person—from a direct witness of wisdom into a symbol of repentance—is one of the most fascinating errors in religious history. Eventually my role as an evangelist was restored and the stigma of ‘sinner’ was removed. But yes, only after centuries of misinformation that apparently suited the male church leaders quite well. That framing still exists in certain circles and is hard to eradicate.

That must have been terrible for you…

Oh, I’ve moved beyond that, haha. My rehabilitation is actually not very significant from a church perspective. It is only truly understood when women are seen not only as bearers of ‘birth’, but also as carriers and proclaimers of ‘revelation’. There is still much to gain in that regard.

Well, your mission… that’s what I’m most interested in…Also how history treated you, of course, but what you revealed back then—that is far too little known. Your knowledge and experience still seem overshadowed by what the canonical evangelists had to say.

Indeed, you are right. Jesus’ followers, including those evangelists, were not all pleased with me. In my time, as a woman, you had to be very strong to stand your ground. Women simply did not matter—and that is putting it mildly.

Oh??? Please explain.

Well, an influential French writer once said in the previous century: “What is so irritating about women is their claim to intelligence”… Do you feel it…? That could just as well have been a statement from my time! Women with spiritual insight who could express themselves well were truly looked down upon.

And yet people eventually did start listening to you, as Apostola Apostolorum…

Mm-hm… eventually. After Jesus’ crucifixion, the male followers were very afraid. Angry as well. In fact, they forgot almost instantly what Jesus had taught them. They fell back into the sleep of ignorance. I had to comfort them… reassure them… call them back to order… and to truly reach them, I shared a great secret: a vision that Jesus had revealed only to me, explaining the Ultimate Reality of Everything. Tell me… you interviewed Arjuna, didn’t you?

Indeed.

Well, Arjuna also received such an immense vision from Krishna, and that was centuries before my time. Arjuna struggled greatly with it, as you know… as a man… as a warrior. But we, of course, were not aware of that story back then. That was long before our time, somewhere one to three thousand years before the birth of Jesus… opinions differ on that. But the vision I shared with Jesus’ followers—they found it very difficult to accept.

What kind of vision was it, and why did they struggle with it?

That vision showed how we could escape our prison—our small humanity, all the illusions that sustain fear and loss. I spoke of the path the soul travels along seven ‘powers’ to find liberation from matter, from the world of duality, from the world of opposites. These are powers such as fear, desire, and ignorance. My vision revealed how the soul could move past these ‘powers of darkness’. A kind of spiritual navigation to overcome inner blockages, for the reunification of the human soul with the divine. This process is often symbolically referred to as the Mystical Marriage.

That must have been comforting for them, surely?

No, it was not received that way… A heated discussion even arose, mainly stirred up by Peter. He openly questioned why Jesus would have shared these secrets with a woman and not with one of them—the men. A clear illustration of how he truly viewed women who stood beside Jesus. It became a clash between two forms of authority: that of theoretical knowledge and that of inner lived knowledge. Peter even demanded that I leave—he became that agitated… Of course, I stayed.

Wow… that is quite shocking. You wouldn’t expect such hostility from Jesus’ followers after all the teachings they had received.

In the end, I did manage to engage them in deep, meaningful conversations. Philip even referred to me in his gospel as the companion of Jesus, because he knew that Jesus loved me more than any of the other apostles.

Am I speaking here with the beloved of Jesus???

Well, I do not wish to boast, but he often kissed me on the mouth… yes indeed! But… you must also understand that in ancient writings, kissing on the mouth symbolized the direct transmission of wisdom, rather than romantic affection… In mysticism, the connection between Jesus and me is seen as the symbol of the Hieros Gamos: the sacred marriage between the masculine and the feminine within ourselves, dissolving duality. This is not the same as the Mystical Marriage I mentioned earlier. The sacred marriage—the Hieros Gamos—is a necessary condition to arrive at the ultimate Mystical Marriage. A stage, therefore.
But of course… Jesus was also a man, and I was quite a beautiful woman, so we cannot exclude any human dimension to his affection, haha! We were very fond of one another, and how far that went… I prefer to keep that to myself, if you don’t mind.

Understandable. No need to reveal everything!

Jesus praised me repeatedly because my heart was “more directed toward the kingdom of heaven than all others”—self-realization, in other words—and he saw me as a human embodiment of Sophia, which stands for divine Wisdom. When the church began to institutionalize in the fourth century, there was no longer any place for Sophia. Her role as the personification of the highest form of knowledge and insight was too abstract for church leaders and gave too much power to individual mystical experience. The church replaced her influence in three clever ways.

Oh? How did they manage that? How could they make people forget Saint Sophia? For in my upbringing, she was not spoken of, neither in church nor by my parents, who were Catholic.

By turning religion into a church institution in the fourth century. This set in motion a development in which—just as you describe on your website—a massive collective identification was created, under which people increasingly suffered. All those persecutions of those who believed differently… terrible. It had nothing to do with true religion. It eventually even led to the rise of immensely wealthy institutions such as the Vatican. The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was formalized. But in our early Christian communities, we had a far more human starting point: the Holy Family. In it, the divine world mirrored the earthly family: Father, Mother, and Child. The Father—the unknowable Absolute, the invisible God. The Mother—Sophia and Rucha, as the Holy Spirit of feminine, creative power and wisdom, as the active partner of the Father. And the Son—the Logos, the Word, and thus also Jesus: the offspring bridging the divine world and humanity.

You mention a term alongside Sophia that I do not know… Rucha…

In the earliest Syriac Christian traditions, the Spirit was feminine, called Rucha. The qualities of Rucha—Spirit—and Sophia—Wisdom—were used interchangeably. Both were seen as the feminine presence of God on Earth. In the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus even literally calls the Holy Spirit “My Mother.” In the Greek era, the Spirit became neutral—Pneuma—and in Latin even masculine—Spiritus. Thus, the active, wisdom-bringing role of Sophia disappeared from the Trinity, and with it its feminine essence.

The feminine aspect of God was effectively erased, one could say. By removing the Mother figure, church fathers were able to claim that only men could reflect the image of God. But I was seen by Jesus as the one who had received the Rucha, the Spirit, and thus, according to Him, became the earthly voice of the heavenly Sophia.

Wow… what a history… Fortunately, people today do seem to view your person very differently than in all those centuries of church tradition… more realistically… but also more as ‘flesh and blood’.

That’s true. In today’s spiritual world there is more appreciation for my person, especially because I am a woman and conveyed true spiritual wisdom. Sophia is also once again seen as an inner guide. Where the Father represents law, truth, and intellect, Sophia represents intuition and mystical wisdom. Recognizing Sophia means realizing that God is not ‘up there on a throne’, but present as a feminine spark within your own heart. This marks the transition from believing to knowing, from exoteric to esoteric.
But still… what I truly came to say, and still say, is largely unknown in the modern spiritual world. I have become an attractive symbol, but people rarely truly explore my actual mission.

What is most important to discuss now? What message of yours should we understand first? Does it concern the ‘powers of darkness’ you mentioned earlier?

Exactly! You could also call them the ‘Seven Veils of Ignorance’, formerly known as the seven destructive powers or forces… Also known as the deadly sins, which we as souls must overcome here on Earth. We can go through them if you like.

Please do!

I divided them into these forces: Darkness, Desire, Ignorance, Jealousy of Death, Dominion of the Flesh, Foolish Wisdom, and Wrathful Wisdom.

That’s quite a list… Could you explain them so we get a sense of what they mean for our development?

Certainly. What was originally called ‘the seven powers that hold the soul captive’ is not an official fixed list. My words were only partially recorded at the time. It is important not to take these forces too literally. They are not external powers, but inner mechanisms of the human mind… of every human mind. Everyone recognizes them through fear, desires, clinging to identity, the urge for control, self-justification, and the belief that theoretical knowledge is enough or that wisdom can be possessed. In essence, they are veils of ignorance: ways in which consciousness obscures itself and becomes entangled in separation.

Well, I’m curious, what is the first one?

First there is the veil of Darkness, the source of all unconsciousness and deception. It is the state of the soul before it awakens and causes all feelings and ideas of separation. A kind of spiritual blindness… an ignorance of the absolute light. The soul does not know who she is, where she comes from, or that there is even a divine origin within her. That darkness holds her captive in this.

So how does such a soul get out of there? Because I would also like to know from you whether there are solutions for those ‘powers that keep the soul captive’. People talk quite often about what ails us, but much less about what we should do to be freed from it.

I understand that and I will do so! A person must first, with every feeling of discontent or misery, examine within themselves what the cause of it is. That is called ‘repenting’… one must therefore turn inward. One must become self-reflective. In that darkness one is namely first driven by impulses of the second power, that of Desire and Craving: unbridled longing for earthly things. This goes far beyond just sexual desire. It is the insatiable hunger for everything that is temporary, such as possessions, attention and power. The soul in darkness looks outward to find happiness. But because material things never provide lasting satisfaction, the soul remains trapped in a vicious circle of ‘wanting to have’ instead of coming into a state of ‘wanting to Be’. The solution is abstinence from ‘wanting and having’.

Is this then about abstinence in the broadest sense of the word?

In a sense… But it starts mainly with realizing that earthly possessions will never truly bring a person happiness. And that the accumulation of ever more brings you ever less and keeps you off your path. The veil of Ignorance is therefore the third power that justifies these first two. In Gnosticism this ignorance — agnosia — is called the greatest delusion, especially when it is willful. It is about the lack of self-knowledge and spiritual insight. Ignorance is a choice! Especially in this time with so many means to discover knowledge and truth. This power ensures that the soul continues to mistake the illusions of the world for reality and convinces her that material and legal laws are the only laws that matter. The soul thus ‘forgot’ her heavenly origin. I think primal mother Eve explains this very well in the interview you had with her!

Yes… now that you say it like this, I understand it completely. She spoke about it at length, from her own experiences! She also told how she managed to resolve this within herself.

So you will have to search for which heavenly laws matter! And there are quite a few of them. In this context the veil of the Illusion of Death also comes into play: the fear of death, the fear of disappearing as a separate entity. That is the fourth power, which causes separation and division as an obstacle on the journey of our soul to heaven. Eve spoke about that too, remember? The feeling of ‘smallness’ and ‘imperfection’ that overcame her? 

Yes, I remember that, but I hardly know anyone who is not afraid of death. That is such a general given… so generally accepted too… When someone becomes terminally ill, panic immediately sets in and people try everything to avoid death. One hardly lives anymore then…

Correct. That is actually their true illness… That is also caused by the veil of the Flesh, the fifth power, the complete identification with the physical body and the material world. You could also say the slavery to corporeality. It is the conviction that we are only our body. The soul is ‘trapped’ in it because she thinks that the five senses are the only source of finding truth. This power rules by satisfying all bodily needs such as hunger, comfort, looking good, sex, being safe… in short, pleasures of any kind, without regard for their spiritual origin. That origin lies namely in the only true need: that of realizing yourself as a soul… of making it true, therefore. The temporary versus the eternal: as long as the soul believes that she belongs to this perishable material ‘kingdom’, she cannot ascend to the eternal light, which Jesus called the kingdom of heaven. When the soul succeeds in passing this power, she recognizes that the body is merely a temporary vehicle and not a permanent prison and knows: “In Essence I am not bound to the laws of matter.” Then she no longer lets herself be led by what the body dictates.

Sounds ideal… But also theoretical… because the body demands a great deal by nature, if only to continue to exist.

Certainly! Because the body is in every life the ‘temple’ of our soul, it is important to take good care of it, with physical and subtle nourishment and by not doing it any violence, in any way whatsoever. That requires common sense and a pure power of discernment. It requires reverence for the body, not excessive body worship or physical exploitation. But yes, then there is also the veil of Folly of the Mind, the sixth power that must be passed. That is the ratio that thinks it knows everything, but lacks every spiritual essence. Think especially of current science that can sometimes even be called ‘completely godless’… Every analysis or logic is foolish if it ignores the true divine source of existence. The soul is seduced to categorize and understand everything from the rational brain, instead of also proceeding from inner intuition and experience. The foolish mind is a real label-sticker and excludes everything that does not fit!

The people who dare to proceed from intuition and inner experiences are now often considered crazy… flaky or unrealistic. They are even cancelled and removed from their office if they try to provide clarity about how certain branches of science are going off the rails because of that godlessness… Then it becomes difficult to still share truth.

Yes, that has always been the case. The ‘lower’ fights the ‘higher’ because it understands nothing of it. This is exactly what became fatal for Jesus too… And this also comes from the last power, the seventh veil: Wrathful Wisdom, the cruel, dogmatic knowledge that stifles all love and higher nuance. This seventh is the last barrier before the soul reaches eternal rest and Silence. Wrath and rage are the harshest forms that the unschooled soul undergoes. It is the power that tries to keep our soul captive by poisoning her with anger, judgment and aggression. To condemn, dominate or exclude others. It is the conviction that one’s ‘own rightness’ gives someone the right to be destructive. We see this everywhere around us nowadays. Brutal dogmatism, in religion and science.

I do indeed see destruction and wars everywhere… mainly driven by so-called ‘religious’ leaders. When you see how aggressively they are raging now and decimating entire peoples… But, I also notice a lot of anger in myself, precisely because of that massive injustice that is happening everywhere now.

Because this is the last gate, the resistance here is the greatest. It traps our soul in negativity. It is understandable that you feel that negativity and you will therefore justify it from a sense of justice. But still you will have to ‘pass’ it, despite the resistance of feeling your ‘rightness’… despite justifying your ‘going hard against it’. That is not easy, I understand that very well… I had only one way to respond to this wrathfulness: I did not enter into discussion and did not become angry, even though I felt it rising in me. That requires a lot of discipline and every soul can learn that by giving up that negativity and surrendering it to her own divine essence. Many wise women and men have shown that this is possible. My most famous words have therefore been preserved: “What bound me is killed; what surrounded me is overcome; my desire has come to an end and my ignorance has died.”

Well, I certainly recognize some of those ‘powers’. Maybe even all of them… They regularly make me restless. Sometimes confused, sometimes angry… sometimes also depressed.

As long as these patterns remain unconscious, they determine how you look, think and act. But when you become aware of them, an enormous difference immediately arises. Because light falls upon them… and darkness cannot stand against light. So give that your full attention. Because the powers apply to everyone, this also works collectively and thereby becomes stronger. From this arise all systems of power, fear and control in the world.

If there is one thing that is clear nowadays, it is that… Our current peace movement, for example, is completely unaware of this!

You’re right about that. True awakening does not mean that you are going to fight these powers, but that you can first recognize them when they arise within yourself. Through recognition at that moment they already lose some of their grip. What used to be called ‘powers’ are now best understood as identification processes in human consciousness. You can fully see through them once you get them. That is exactly where the possibility of liberation lies.

Well… seeing it when you really get it… that is an expression that has meanwhile become very well known here in the Netherlands, haha. Thanks to a popular person whom I was also allowed to interview.

Is that so? Well… what you really need to understand is that these powers cannot disappear through mere insight, but must be transformed by a special force: a force that you can recognize in the image of the goddess Nike. This is not only a Greek goddess from antiquity, but also an inner principle. Her essence is inseparably connected with Athena, goddess of the wisdom of justice and civilization… but also with Sophia, which shows that true victory can never be realized without inner wisdom. No victory of Nike without Sophia!

Victory? That sounds different again from ‘passing’ as you said earlier. How should I see this then, because you overcome by waging battle, right?

Nike actually does not overcome by battle. Not by doing things, but by letting things. I hope I explain it well. Nike overcomes because with her presence every battle loses all meaning. If you see through your fear, you do not need to fight it. If you see through your desires, you do not need to suppress them. Where you see through yourself, every urge for control falls away. That is what I call a gentle victory. A triumph within the human spirit. You could also say a feminine victory. It means no longer reacting with battle out of fear, anger or hardened convictions, not going along with the reflex of resistance, but remaining clearly seeing, even when the world around you is completely in confusion and tries to drag you into it. Actually a victory through surrender… that sounds like a contradiction but it is not, because even Jesus’ victory over death only became possible through total surrender. 

I thought Nike was the goddess of Victory, precisely of wars and battles…

Nike is indeed seen as the winged goddess of victory after battle, but she is also the goddess of inner victory. The Romans adopted Nikè and called her ‘Victoria’… making her more warlike in character.

We often make the mistake of imagining “victory” as a man on a horse planting a flag in the ground. But that is not the kind of victory meant here. Inner victories arise through surrender, not through struggle.
Nikè brings powerful harmony that leads mortals toward success… where intellect and strength merge. Not on a physical battlefield, but on the non-dual field of the non-violent soul. Just as Arjuna was told, and as he told you in your interview with him.

Yes, Arjuna’s struggle was something very different from defeating armies. It concerned inner armies, or as you call them: powers.

Exactly! Nikè is the inner “drive” you need to clear blockages and limitations around your own soul. As a symbol of soft feminine victory, she is the exact opposite of the masculine warrior who constantly seeks to win through weapons and violence.
Nikè is therefore also the force of Peace that does not depend on struggle, because peace knows no duality. When you live from that state, the old powers lose their nourishment and can be “passed through.” Truly defeating them is difficult. Nikè gives you the determination not to give up when you become entangled in the foolishness of ego or in conditionings you have acquired.
She encourages you to use all the creativity you have in this life to develop your soul… or even to “de-form” it, so to speak, on an esoteric level. Nikè gently offers the laurel wreath to everyone who has had the courage to overcome inner obstacles, so that they could realize the glory of Silence and Peace within themselves.

Wow… But Jesus received a crown of thorns instead of that beautiful laurel wreath… Not so nice…

Yes, and that shows how foolish humanity was in not recognizing the Truth in person, and even mocking it. That crown of thorns was placed on Him by people of the lowest level… people who are completely unspiritual. Even today, many people tend to ridicule or persecute what they do not understand. Just read the newspapers or social media… you see it everywhere, on a large and small scale.

Indeed…
Now, could we return once more to why you were called Apostola Apostolorum?

Of course. I was called Apostle of the apostles because I was the first witness on the third day of Jesus’ resurrection. The number three represents completeness and is often used in moments of transformation or fulfillment. I stood at that empty tomb… and realize that this tomb symbolizes every identity that collapses.
The disappearance of Jesus from the tomb on the third day is therefore the symbolic expression of his fully awakened state, in which he was no longer limited to an individual personality but merged into the universal essence of the divine Self. His “person” had disappeared! Only his cloth remained…
This resurrection was not the restoration of an old form, but an awakening out of form. Anyone who truly undergoes ego-death becomes witness to this: the death of illusion and the arising into That which was never absent.

Phew… that is quite something…

So stop searching for sacred stories outside yourself. Become the Field in which the Absolute is recognized. Remain aware of yourself in all your actions—while speaking, writing, struggling, loving. Not as a controller, but as a clear presence. Then life is no longer a difficult project, but a passage. And when enough people live like this, all oppressive systems will change—not through struggle, but because their foundation disappears.

Thank you very much for this conversation! I learned a great deal. Your presence is truly worth getting to know deeply, and I hope many will learn from this interview. You are amazing!

You’re welcome…
And remember: the first veils arose from forgetting. So do not forget anymore!