The Shadow Side of Mary Magdalene

Is anyone else connecting to these energies…or are most people staying in the love and light version of the divine feminine?

Because to fully love ourselves, which is the invitation of her transmission…we have to feel and connect to all aspects of ourselves with love. And that requires us to go deep into the shadow. Real shadow work. The kind most people skip over.

I’m not seeing many people share their experiences and conversations around this. So I’m putting mine out there.

I’ve been connecting to Mary my whole life.

I was raised Catholic. Multiple priests told me specifically to pray to God or Jesus — with the exception of the Hail Mary on the rosary. And yet, even as a child, I was obsessed with Mary Magdalene. I couldn’t tell you exactly why then. But I understand it now.

The woman who gave birth to me and raised me was extremely narcissistic and abusive. Spiritually, religiously, psychologically. You learn a lot about love, when love was conditional. When your love for someone was weaponized to manipulate and control you. When it was used as something to dominate.

The depths of the path you take to heal from that. Loving all the aspects of yourself you were taught to hate, by the very person who was supposed to nurture you…that’s not a love and light journey. That’s shadow work.

So there’s a lot of spiritual and religious trauma alongside mother trauma here. And I mention that because our traumas, our experiences, even our most joyful moments, all shape the way we connect to and understand these energies.

Therefore, my worldview also help helped shape my relationship with Mary Magdalene.

I’m not saying I understand more than anyone else. We’re all going to have our own relationship with these transmissions. But I haven’t met or seen anyone with the relationship I’ve had with Mary Magdalene. And through my own magnetic curiosity, perhaps I’ll call forward and connect to others who share in this.

I used to do the rosary with my grandmother.

She was 96 when she passed, and I was 21. I’m in my 40s now…so there has been a very long time of connecting, and experiencing the transmission and container that Mary provides.

A few years ago, I was listening to a podcast on the divine feminine. One episode featured a scholar — I believe her name was Elizabeth — a PhD who took a deep dive into Mary Magdalene and the Bible. She had learned Greek and Latin so she could read the Bible pre-translation, side by side. And she discovered many discrepancies. So much of the Bible had been changed to fit a patriarchal narrative. Women removed. Names literally changed to men’s names.

One of the most significant changes was the role of Mary Magdalene. Who she actually was beside Jesus. By many accounts, they were equals. Side by side. Some scholars describe her as the primary apostle. Instead, she was cast as a whore. Devalued. Erased.

Yet she played an equally important role. And it is that…the experience of being erased, of having your story told through the lens of someone who wants to manufacture belief in others, that I feel so deeply in her transmission.

Then the scholar said something that stopped me completely. She spoke about the old French grandmothers at the back of the church — holding their rosaries, passing down the transmission. The quiet Mary devotees. The ones carrying the wisdom.

My entire body filled with goosebumps. Tears started flooding down my cheeks.

My grandmother was one of those french women. She didn’t even speak English.

Every room of her house had a single vase with a single rose.  Each plastic rose matched to the colour of the room. Mary statues and rosaries throughout the house. When she moved to a seniors home, she had an entire shelf dedicated to her Mary statues. I loved the one I bought her a few years before she passed. Soft dusty rose, that shade popular in 90s living rooms, her feet resting in a bed of roses. When she passed, her things were withheld — family causing harm to each other the only way they knew how. I never saw that statue again. But I’m secretly hoping it turns up in a thrift store one day.

In that moment listening to those words about the grandmothers on the podcast about Mary …I realized. This transmission was passed down to me.

And what I’ve come to understand since then is this: most people only work with the love and light side of Mary’s energy. They miss the shadow entirely.

But if you ignore the shadow, you aren’t actually connecting to the depth of self-love you think you are. To love the shadow, it must be acknowledged. Alchemized.

What we know is this: there was a woman, romantically involved with Jesus, her name and role deliberately diminished. A woman many believe was his equal, sharing the teachings alongside him. After witnessing the brutal murder of her lover, she fled. Or she went underground. And she continued. She carried the wisdom forward. On new soil, learning a new language.

That is not a soft story. That is a story of survival, erasure, and transmission across centuries. That is the story of a woman who continues to guide, love and empower us through our darkest days.

I often see people turn to Lilith when they want to do deep shadow work. And that’s valid. But I have always felt that Mary Magdalene’s shadow runs just as deep…and that she invites us into it just as fully. I always felt that Mary Magdalene’s shadow was a lot like Lilith’s.

Not many people talk about that. I’m starting to.

And I would love to know if you connected to anything here. What resonated?

Lots of love, 

Natalie

**EDIT: YouTube Link to the conversation of Mary as a Shadow worker and the men who threw a hissyfit when I spoke about her erausure in this blog: https://youtu.be/RBRw9wbIBJ8?si=xayT_PhRBC5DXODK

**I also wanted to share the work of Elizabeth Schrader Polczer — she's an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Villanova University who learned Greek and Latin specifically to read early manuscripts of the Gospels side by side with translated versions. Her peer-reviewed research, published in the Harvard Theological Review, shows physical evidence of scribes literally scratching out Mary Magdalene's name and replacing it with "Martha" in the Gospel of John — splitting one woman into two. It's textual evidence of deliberate erasure. I think you'd find it genuinely interesting: https://futurechurch.org/women-in-church-leadership/women-erased-mary-magdalene-and-the-gospel-of-john-with-elizabeth-schrader/

Walking to my car in the parking lot of the hospital following my annual mammogram… the sunlight was beaming just right through the roses. So I stopped…. Smelled… and wanted to re-create this moment through photograph.