“Jesus’s original plan was for the Magdalene to guide the inner mysteries, which would be protected by the esoteric church. As we have seen, this did not happen, with the disastrous consequences we have explored. Throughout the Gnostic Gospels, rediscovered in Nag Hammadi in 1945, we find exalted descriptions of her real status after crucifixion as ‘The woman who understands the All.’
“Mary Magdalene traveled widely, teaching the secrets of the sacred marriage she had lived and increasingly embodied in what many scholars believe to have been a sacred marriage mystery school that instructed adepts in the stages of a way that leads to oneness with the one through the union of opposites in what the Gnostic Gospels call the ‘bridal chamber.’ The aim of her teaching was not to exalt herself or even Jesus, but to present them both as Way-showers, who lived a path available to anyone who undertook it with passion, devotion, and progressively expanding inner revelation.”
