Do-It-Yourself New Age Black Madonnas
&
Magdalenes
Paul Smith
21 May 2024
Updated 24 May 2024
There's a plethora of Do-It-Yourself New Age Black Madonnas & Magdalenes. A whole variety of different categories – literally someone for everyone. But none of them are directly linked to Medieval Tradition, never mind Biblical Texts – they merely use the Biblical Names of the Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene and apply Modern New Age Thought onto them. New Books are published fast-paced at Amazon. Go and see.
New Age Thought has been described as having the consistency of runny jelly.
In Medieval Times, there was nothing to differentiate the Black Madonna from any other Madonna. The Madonna was simply the Virgin Mary. The Magdalene was always known as The Penitent no matter how much the Present wishes to “upgrade” her in the modern New Age.
The sheer versatility of spiritual need knows no boundaries. Absolutely anything is possible. It is literally possible to turn Joseph of Arimathea into the latest Japanese “Phoenix Wright” stereotype.
As far as can be determined, the-modern-day-alternative-esoteric Black Madonna originated in the form of a fictional short story by William Sharp, using the pen-name of W. S. Fanshawe, published in the Pagan Review, Number 1, pages 5-18, 15 August 1892. Here the Black Madonna – as well as being the sister of Jesus Christ – is also the sexual concubine of Jesus Christ, in what is a perfect conflation of paganism and Christianity. It all started here, unless anyone can point to an earlier origin.
Mary Magdalene has been done to death by adherents of the New Age and the attempt to define her as a Gnostic sexual concubine of Jesus Christ has utterly failed because people have not read the original Gnostic texts properly; people have immediately jumped to the wrong conclusions. Afterwards those same people have gone silent after reading the Gnostic texts properly.
Henry Lincoln's sound-bite lacks all insight, revealing his ignorance of Christianity: “Is it more plausible”, asks Lincoln, “that a man should be married and have children, or that he should be born of a virgin, walk on water and rise from the grave”.
One early text hit the nail on the head when it describes Jesus Christ as the harbinger of death, because that is precisely what he is; and Mary Magdalene is his penitent bride in that context. The Devoted Religious Adherents of Christianity would not venerate The Black Madonna or Mary Magdalene otherwise. After all, this is their religion that has been wrongly hijacked by the uneducated.
Scholars of Gnosticism have always known this from the very beginning. That the Gnostic Bridal Chamber is indeed where the male and female become united – united into one – becoming the Sacred Androgyne, whereby male and female cease to exist.