Secret Magdalene (56 page)

I hear them come before I see them. From where I sit, I might see full half the length of the high stoned path leading back to my mother’s apple tree. Those who approach are farther still, but they are coming quickly.

Immediately I rise to play my part. I pinch my cheeks so that I seem flushed with awe. But I need not summon tears; tears are with me now always. They are as Yeshu’s blood; with them, my wounded life flows away. But I hold myself steady before what I know will be said and will be done. No man wishes news from a woman. No man bears well that a woman knows first, and I make myself humble before them. Meekly I stand, and submissively I wait, and humbly I look up, and they are upon me.
Yea Balaam!
Comes now someone I did not expect to see, nor did Yeshu, and just behind this one—both running as fast as they are able and both seeking to outrace the other—comes the man I never had doubts of seeing. Not only is Yeshu’s fiercest brother, Jacob the Just, more righteous than Simon Peter of Capharnaum, he is faster.

Jacob, as he has done since first ever I saw him, does not look at me. I am nothing to him. I will never be other than nothing to him. His skull as bald and as blue skinned as when last I saw him, Jacob stares at the stone rolled back from the door of the tomb. He stoops to peer into the darkness inside. He sees the linen that Yeshu had lain under. He notes the bowl of spices that I would use to sweeten the body. But he does not go in. That is left to Simon Peter, who does look at me, and the look is grievous in its envy and painful in its hatred. But this does not matter now. I do not matter now. What matters now is what Simon Peter will see and what Simon Peter will make of what he sees.

He enters Hokhmah’s tomb. There no more than a moment, he is back again. At this, and perhaps because no demon has seized Simon Peter, nor fit come over him, nor any other terrible thing happen, Jacob goes in. And is quickly out again.

“Woman,” says Simon Peter in a voice he can use now that Yeshu is gone, “what has happened here?”

I look at Simon Peter as a woman is required to look at a man, saying, “I found it as you see it, Simon Peter. Just as you see now, save one thing. I also saw an angel, I saw—”

Simon Peter thrusts his face into mine, grinds his broken tooth, stuns me with his breath. “Why would a woman see an angel? If there is an angel to be seen, I will see this angel.”

“As Yeshu loved you, Simon Peter of Galilee, you will see an angel. But it is gone from this place. It was here and it shone as white as rime, it shone as bright as fire, and then it was gone. Yet before leaving, it spoke as clearly as you or I.”

The color drains from Simon Peter’s cheek. Jacob’s back stiffens.

Simon Peter asks, “What did it say?” Simon Peter demands, “Tell us what it said.”

“The angel said that Yehoshua is risen.”

Simon Peter could not become paler, nor could his eye become rounder. “It said to you that he is risen?”

“Do you doubt it, Simon Peter? Did Yehoshua not say he would be betrayed by a friend, and was he not betrayed? Did Yehoshua not say he would be arrested by the Jews and tried by Romans, and has this not come to pass? Yehoshua said unto you that he would rise on the third day, and has he not risen? And did I not turn from the angel, and did I not see him?”

Simon Peter hisses, “See who?”

“I saw Yeshu who stood where Jacob stands.” And now I am certain that Jacob hears me, for though he does not seem to listen, the bulk of his body jerks away from its place to settle in another. “I saw him in a vision, and he said to me, ‘Blessed are you who do not waver at the sight of me.’ But I did waver. And I wept to see him so, for I could not touch him. But he said to me, ‘Mariamne, why do you weep? Do you not see I ascend unto my Father.’”

And here I falter. My throat is as sand. I cannot do this. I cannot say these things Yeshu would have me say for I am stricken with arrows of grief so sharp and so killing that my limbs tremble and the tears roll down my face. All this was to be done as Yeshu lived! It was planned that he returned in body so that he might open the Spirit! But Yeshu will not live. He will not remain in body. These things are no longer his intent.

In this moment, as I resist his will, surely my beloved stands before Glory. Surely he speaks with the Father. Surely the Mother opens her arms to him. And if this is so, then as Yeshu himself once said to Eleazar, “Who would easily turn back from the Father?” And in this moment resisting his will, suddenly I see before me the face of the old soldier who would not believe. If ever a man played his part, this man did. By his disbelief and by the strength of his sword, he has done the will of Yeshu who intends that all men who look for him will find the Father by finding themselves.

I gather myself. I shake off the doubt that weakens me. I too will play my part.

I speak on. “This too he said to me: ‘Tell the others I rise from the dead this day and I go before them to Galilee. There shall they see me.’”

Jacob will listen no more. Yeshu’s righteous brother is off down the path he has just come up as if a demon drove him. I think he will run to Galilee. But Simon Peter stands his ground for one moment longer. Simon Peter is torn between great joy and great anger. Only he is here and only I am here. There is none to temper his rage at my sex, nothing to stay his loathing of Mariamne the Magdalene. But what care I of this? I am lost in sorrow. I am lost and I am forsaken. Simon Peter’s rage cannot touch me.

I speak in the face of it as a sapling stands in the wind, “As you are his rock, said he also this, ‘Where two or more are gathered in my name, there too I shall be.’”

Simon Peter draws back as if I have struck him. “Gathered in his name? Does he mean to have us speak out?”

“He would have you remember him so that you will find yourself.”

But Simon Peter does not hear what I say, for he is pulling on his beard and he himself is saying, “But if they did not spare him, how will they spare us?”

In this moment, I have had enough of humility. I think of what was reported to me, that three times as Yeshu stood before Pilate, Simon Peter denied him. So thinking, I stand forth as my very self, the beloved of Yeshu. I stand forth as Mariamne, the very Magdal-eder. “Be resolute, Simon Peter. He has made you a man as I am a man, and what is hidden from you now, in time will be shown to you. Depart this place and do his will.”

Simon Peter has stepped back from me, his uncertainty of self replaced by execration of me. Under the skin of his face, the muscles twitch with venom. “Woman, I will go to Galilee. I will speak of Yehoshua who is the Messiah. But I shall erase all thoughts of you from the minds of men.”

“Do what you will.”

And then Simon Peter, like Jacob, is gone. Moments later, so too am I.

It is done.

I
t took three days more for my friend to die. Never again did he open his eyes nor did he call me beloved. And when it was over, Yehoshua the Nazorean was placed in my mother’s tomb, and when I had accomplished all that must be done for him, I left Jerusalem. With me traveled Mary and Jude, and with us traveled Eio and Babel, the colt of Eio. I took nothing with me for there was nothing left to me, though Jude took less than this. His heart had died when his brother died. We set our feet on the road leading west out of the city of David that would take us to Joppa, but somewhere in the land of Lydda we found ourselves turning north, and in time came unto Galilee once more. And there, though I would have him stay with me all the days of our lives, Jude walked away. And from that day to this, I do not know what became of him.

But Eio and her son and Mary and I continued on to the Mountain of Carmel, for finding myself in Galilee, I knew nowhere else to go. There with the Carmelites, Addai and Tata still lived, Addai mending their walls, Tata growing roses over the stones. And there with the Carmelites lived Seth who had been waiting for us, and for Yeshu who would never come.

I left Babel with Tata and Addai but took with me Nyx.

And for many a year after, Seth and Mary and I walked where we would and stayed where we would, and behind us walked Eio and on Eio rode Nyx. We heard all who could teach us. We taught all we could teach. For a time, we lived in the city of Pergamum, where there stands a library as wondrous as the Brucheion in Alexandria. And from there the fame of Seth of Damascus began to spread until we feared they would make a god of him. Men and women will forever make gods of others rather than see the god in themselves.

By this, we determined to go farther, far enough to remove us from the world of men and from the sorrow of men. But more, from man’s fear of Life, and his need to be saved from it. So came we here to this far place from out the town of Massiliot where the Phocaeans were, and where everywhere there are statues of the Black Virgin, who is Isis.

In time Father joined us, bringing with him Eleazar. It is here Mary died in my arms. As Salome meant to do for John, here I have built her a tomb, and in it are lit lamps by day and by night so that she might be remembered for mothering such as Yeshu and such as Jude and such as Miryam. Even such as Jacob, for Jacob was a remarkable man.

And it is here, in a cave overlooking a Gaulish sea, I too shall die.

Here on our mountainside, all is still and all is fruitful under the western sun. Far below, I see that Father’s garden is in bloom, I see men leading a team of oxen from one fine field to another. Farther toward the sea, there sits on its rocky prominence the town of steep roofs and steep streets Seth and I have made our home. And there is our house of blue stone with a door of mossy green and beside it the small stable where Eio’s granddaughter will soon foal.

Eio has lived on. She who carries me each day to our cave stands even now in the sun, flicking her tufted tail.

Over these thirty years, Simon Peter has kept his word. I am as nothing in the stories they tell of Yeshu. But as it was not then, it is not now of any importance. I am a woman and women are used to such things.

Though we did once meet a certain Paul of Tarsus—a story in itself. In him, it seems the Mystery of gnosis lives and perhaps grows. In him, Yeshu becomes Osiris/Dionysus—as the
Daemon
of Yeshu intended.

I tire now. My story is all but told and the words within me fade.

Write you now, Seth, my last truth.

The
eidolon
of Mariamne does not know if Consciousness is God. It does not know if there is a place beyond this place. It does not know that if when it dies, Mariamne is no more. Mariamne of the body, who has lived a life of mind, knows nothing, but this thing. She knows pity and she knows sorrow, for in their deepest heart, all men are as she is. All men are as lost and as hopeful of being found.

But this the
Daemon
of Mariamne Magdal-eder knows, and this the
Daemon
of Yehoshua the Nazorean taught: as he
IS
and will always
BE
, so too
I AM
and will always
BE
. We are all Consciousness. We are all eternal. There is no Death. There is only Life.

Selected Bibliography and Source Material

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