In the Song of Songs: Mary Magdalene Awakes, I tell the story of Jenna, who is both irreligious and impenitent, and yet her early twenties starts to have powerful dreams about a time with Christ, where she walked with him.
At first she ignores these dreams until one day she crosses through time and finds herself weeping with his mother at the foot of the cross. She realizes then, after trying to rub life back into the bruised and bloodied palm of a man she loves very much, and after wiping away the tears on his face, that she has lost someone dearer to her than life itself.
She thinks that this is a call to return to the church, and as her dreams and visions increase in intensity she takes refuge within the bastions of a traditional Christianity that tells her she is only "dreaming dreams" and "having visions", as re-incarnation is not possible.
She knows this is a lie, especially as her grief and her visions intensify.
She sets out on a journey to find answers, and travels into the Languedoc region of France. There she starts to feel the presence of the Cathars. She feels their grief and anguish in the ancient battlements and towns that once housed and protected them during the crusade that ultimately annihilated them in the 13th century.
She came to understand that the "Pure Ones", as they were called, not only loved the Magdalene, but also had a profound belief in re-incarnation, and so while they would have found the recent obsession regarding the bloodline theory of Mary Magdalene to be irrelevant, they would have had no problem believing that she could come back. They also believed that she walked among them after fleeing persecution in Palestine. And that she died there.
This, and their dualistic view of the universe which saw the world as a battle between the God of Good and the god of evil, (who held sway over the church, they believed) ultimately led to their demise.
Jenna also came to understand that the Catholic church, in its crusade against the Cathars, took exception to their belief in the Magdalene and, among their acts of cruelty, destroyed Beziers, a town of at least 20,000 souls on July 22, her feast day.
When the crusaders approached their leader to question whether this act of complete annihilation was necessary, and asked how they could distinguish between the Catholics and the Cathars,he said to them, "Kill them all; God will know his own."
At this point in my own investigations, of course, I was hooked.
At first she ignores these dreams until one day she crosses through time and finds herself weeping with his mother at the foot of the cross. She realizes then, after trying to rub life back into the bruised and bloodied palm of a man she loves very much, and after wiping away the tears on his face, that she has lost someone dearer to her than life itself.
She thinks that this is a call to return to the church, and as her dreams and visions increase in intensity she takes refuge within the bastions of a traditional Christianity that tells her she is only "dreaming dreams" and "having visions", as re-incarnation is not possible.
She knows this is a lie, especially as her grief and her visions intensify.
She sets out on a journey to find answers, and travels into the Languedoc region of France. There she starts to feel the presence of the Cathars. She feels their grief and anguish in the ancient battlements and towns that once housed and protected them during the crusade that ultimately annihilated them in the 13th century.
She came to understand that the "Pure Ones", as they were called, not only loved the Magdalene, but also had a profound belief in re-incarnation, and so while they would have found the recent obsession regarding the bloodline theory of Mary Magdalene to be irrelevant, they would have had no problem believing that she could come back. They also believed that she walked among them after fleeing persecution in Palestine. And that she died there.
This, and their dualistic view of the universe which saw the world as a battle between the God of Good and the god of evil, (who held sway over the church, they believed) ultimately led to their demise.
Jenna also came to understand that the Catholic church, in its crusade against the Cathars, took exception to their belief in the Magdalene and, among their acts of cruelty, destroyed Beziers, a town of at least 20,000 souls on July 22, her feast day.
When the crusaders approached their leader to question whether this act of complete annihilation was necessary, and asked how they could distinguish between the Catholics and the Cathars,he said to them, "Kill them all; God will know his own."
At this point in my own investigations, of course, I was hooked.