This discussion is a long time coming: Who is Mary of Magdala and what is she to the Christ? Is simply Christ's foremost and most advanced disciple? Is she fallen woman who was redeemed through the Christ as Pope Gregory claimed in the late 6th CE? Or was she much, much more? I want to make the case in this lecture for Mary as being the Shakti of Christ, the power by which the Incarnation and His holy Gospel was properly understood and spread, the power by which he is able to do what he does. I'll claim that she is to him what Sarada Devī is to Ramakrishna, Nitayananda is to Chaitanya, what Radha is to Krishna, Seeta to Rama etc.
I'll do this by appealing to the philosophical principle of the Divine Feminine as first articulated by the Sāmkhya school and then refined by the Non-Dual Tāntrikas. Next week, we can perhaps have a more historical discussion about Mary Devī but today, I want to stick to the overarching philosophical principles of the Avatar and the Avatar's śakti!
PS: I mentioned a book on Mary and said that it was written by Karen Armstrong but I was mistaken. It was actually the book "Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception" by Adriana Valerio that I was referencing. Forgive me!
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