DARE
A reddening is useless for your fate,
If a bud can burn your heart.
I never take a breath from the sky –
Indeed, life forgot you…
What kind of pain is it? What kind of life is it?
Spring fills with the fall of the leaves.
A flower fades with its beauty, in truth;
In fact, a dawn becomes an evening…
This world – the mirage, low and low,
In the other world there is a sky-high glory.
What are you trying to avenge?
You have possibility yet, you are alive.
Here is a heart, the only solace,
Does not highness begin from that?
Wipe your tear, at that time
The elevation delivers you to the sky.
--tr. Asror Allayarov from "The Gate Opened by Angels"
Mary Magdalene of the Burning Heart -- Tanya Torres
Mariam (the Aramaic form of Mary) was from a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee named Magdala, hence she was known as “the Magdalene.” Because “magdala” meant “tower” or “elevated, great, magnificent” in Aramaic, so Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (“Jerome”) maintained that she “received the epithet ‘fortified with towers’ because of her earnestness and strength of faith.” Uncensored versions of the tractates Sanhedrin 67a and Hagigah 4b of the Babylonian Talmud, a woman was called "hamegadela se’ar nasha" ("Miriam, the dresser of women's hair"), which may have been a euphemism for prostitute. She is regarded as a saint by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. “Mary” was a common name in the 1st century and occurs frequently in the New Testament; as a result, in Western Europe, some of the women named Mary became conflated: an unnamed sinner in Luke 7:36–50 anointed Jesus’ feet became identified as Mary of Bethany (the sister of Lazarus and Martha), who anointed his feet in John 11:1–2, who in turn was regarded as the same person as Mary Magdalene, who appears in all four gospel and was mentioned more often by name than any of the apostles. In Luke 8:2 and Mark 16:9, Jesus cast out seven demons from her and she became part of his female coterie; among his followers, she was the only one to witness his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. In 591 pope Gregorius I made the connection explicit: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. What did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? It is clear, that the woman previously used the unguent to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts. What she therefore displayed more scandalously, she was now offering to God in a more praiseworthy manner. She had coveted with earthly eyes, but now through penitence these are consumed with tears. She displayed her hair to set off her face, but now her hair dries her tears. She had spoken proud things with her mouth, but in kissing the Lord’s feet, she now planted her mouth on the Redeemer’s feet. For every delight, therefore, she had had in herself, she now immolated herself. She turned the mass of her crimes to virtues, in order to serve God entirely in penance.”
ReplyDeleteThe composite Magdalene was never accepted by the Eastern Orthodox churches, which held that after the resurrection she lived as a companion to Mary’s mother and died in Ephesus; in one Orthodox tradition she went to Roma and denounced Pontius Pilate to the emperor, leading to his recall. Gnostic texts like the 3rd-century “Gospel of Philip” described her as Jesus’ “koinonos” (companion), a word which sometimes implied a sexual relationship as well as a spiritual partnership; the heretical Cathars of southern France and northern Italia between the 11th and 14th centuries seem to have identified her as the adulteress whom Jesus saved from stoning and that she was his concubine. In the 13th-century Domenico Cavalca suggested that she was engaged to St. John, who jilted her in order to follow Jesus, and in the “Legenda Aurea” (Golden Legend) Jacobus de Voragine claimed she was of royal descent and that, along with Martha and Lazarus, possessed the castles of Magdalo and Bethany as well as much of Jerusalem until after Jesus’ death, when they sold their possessions and distributed their wealth among the apostles; then she lived as a hermit for three decades, with no need of sustenance, and communicated daily with angels. Medieval Europeans believed that Lazarus and Mary fled across the Mediterranean in a frail boat without rudder or mast and landed near Arelate (Arles ); she went to Massalia (Marseille) and converted the area to Christianity before retiring to a cave; at her death she was carried by angels to Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence). In 1982, in “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,” Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln developed the theory brought forth in the 1960s by Pierre Plantard that Mary bore her husband Jesus at least one child, that the family emigrated to southern France and became the ancestor of the Merovingian dynasty that united Gaul (Francia) in the 5th century, only to be deposed by pope Zacharias church in the 8th century in order to buttress the authority of the Catholic church.
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