Review by Bonnie Cehovet
Margaret Starbird was raised
within the Catholic faith, holds a Master's Degree from
the University of Maryland, has studied at Christian
Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany and at Vanderbilt
Divinity School. In 1995, under a recommendation from
friends, Starbird read the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail (by
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln). This
brought about a major turning point in her life - the life
of a faithful daughter of the Catholic church. The
major premise of Holy Blood, Holy Grail was that Jesus
had taken a wife - the Mary called Magdalene, the same
Mary Magdalene that the church called a "penitent
prostitute"!
Starbird made the decision to "debunk" what she saw as the
blasphemy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. To do this, she
researched the paintings of the artists that had been
implicated by the authors as being in collusion with the
Grail heresy. She worked with the symbols found in these
paintings, cross-referencing them with the watermarks
(symbols worked into the paper used for writing) of the
Albigensians (heretics who flourished in southern France from
approximately 1020 through 1250 A.D.).
From The Woman WIth The
Alabaster Jar: "My research eventually drew me deep into
European history, heraldry, the rituals of Freemasonry,
medieval art, symbolism, psychology, mythology, religion
and the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Everywhere I
looked, I found evidence of the feminine that had been
lost or denied in the Judeo-Christian tradition and of
the various attempts to restore the Bride to her once
cherished status. The more deeply involved I became with the
material, the more obvious it became that there was real
substance in the theories set forth in "Holy Blood, Holy
Grail". And gradually I found myself won over to the
central tenets of the Grail heresy, the very theory that
I had originally set out to discredit." 1
The Woman
With The Alabaster Jar speaks of the life of the man
called Jesus and his followers, of the politics of his
time, and the reason for the sacred marriage with Mary
the Magdalene. The book starts with a fictional
account of the initial meeting between Jesus and Mary the
Magdalene. Aside from representing the marriage of the
archetypal Sacred Bride and the archetypal Sacred Groom, the
literal marriage between Jesus and Mary the Magdalene was
a highly political one - uniting the daughter of the
tribe of Benjamin and Jesus, the messianic son of David,
uniting the Benjamite lands surrounding the Holy City with
the Holy City, fulfilling the prophecy and acting as a
source of healing for the people of Israel. This was also
a marriage that was, for political reasons, kept
secret from all but a select circle of royalist
followers.
This is the story of the sacred feminine, and how it
has been denied down through time - how the church
became based on the masculine principle of the Sacred
Triple God, without acknowledging the feminine
counterpart of the Sacred Triple Goddess -
maiden/mother/crone. I grew up in the Congregational Church, and seemed
to have no problem with the virgin mother Mary (I was
truly not aware that Jesus had siblings!), and a
celibate Jesus.
It was amazing to me the process that
Starbird went through in this book - and how it brought
many disparate bits of knowledge in my life together.
Amongst these bits of knowledge were the "why" of the
multitude of shrines to Mary in France and Italy, the Black
Madonna (referring not to race, but to the hidden aspects
of Mary the Magdalene), the holy grail as a euphemism
for the vessel of Mary the Magdalene as a mother,
Tarot as a tool of the symbolism of the time ... and
much more.
In the middle of the book Starbird has
included full color plates of representative Tarot Trumps
from the Charles VI deck, and color plates of the
Madonna by Botticelli and della Francesca, as well as
representative water marks from this time. Connecting Tarot as a
tool of the time - it is one thing to say this, and
another to see it!
Whether you end up agreeing with
Starbird or not, this book is a "must read". This world
needs to realize the sacred union - the balance of the
masculine and the feminine principles. We have known this
for a long time now - but if you are like me, you
never took the thought back far enough, back to the
"beginning" - or what serves as our beginning. The Woman WIth
The Alabaster Jar will show you how to think outside
the rules - to find your own truth.
Oh ... and what
is the alabaster jar? The who is Mary the Magdalene.
The alabaster jar is the jar that contained the
scented substance called nard that Mary the Magdalene
anointed Jesus with. The beginning of the journey for her,
and for us.
Footnotes: 1
ibid. pages xx-xxi.
© November 2003
Bonnie Cehovet is Certified Tarot Grand Master, a professional Tarot reader with over ten years experience, a Reiki Master/Teacher and a writer. Bonnie has served in various capacities with the American Tarot Association, is co-founder of the World Tarot Network, and Vice President (as well as Director of Certification) for the American Board For Tarot Certification. She has had articles appear in the 2004 and 2005 Llewellyn Tarot Reader.
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