Easter

Yesterday I left behind a bit of lawn, roughly 60x30, unmowed. Weather got warmer, and we had adventuring to do, as a family! So I pushed it off til tomorrow, which was today.

I pulled out the lawn mower and got to work, careful that I wouldn't start until after 8, because it was the weekend, and people sleep, good heavens! I waited until 8:30. 

I got started, and noticed a couple neighbors out in their backyards, shooting me glances and whispering to each other. At first I chalked it up to my half-assed mowing the night before, or maybe I was leaving lines somewhere? It was clear that I was obviously being watched and judged. (Was it my kids?)

Then it came to me.

Jesus.

It was Easter, this morning, and I'd forgotten. 

Look, friends, Easter morning is when Jesus rose from the tomb and got to work. I'm fairly certain he would have approved of me mowing the lawn, by my belief system AND yours. 

Frankly, Mary Magdalene was ready to be interrupted by a gardener. It's a day for gardening and lawn care, and everybody knows it. How else are we supposed to find all those eggs under the long grass?!

Anyway. Fortunately I'd hid eggs outside prior to beginning my lawn mowing journey, so when I finished after ten minutes, our neighbors got to see us egg-hunting with our children, which is a proper and good thing to do on Easter morning, so they stopped shooting judge-y glances.

Why did I hide eggs? Because it's absurd, and absurdism is where I'm leaning, these days. Also, Julian wouldn't stop talking about egg hunts on Easter, so I felt kind of obligated. It used to bother me, how "secular" these religious holidays were, but now I'm grateful, so that's been a weird 180.

Anyway. Thinking about Easter.

I've recently posted several quotes from a book that I've been reading on the Bookmobile, when there are no patrons. It's slow-going, stopping and starting, but it's giving me the time I appreciate having to deconstruct and think and hypothesize.

The Templar Revelation by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.

Yes, this makes me want to steal the Declaration of Independence too, but I'm actually finding the book extraordinarily well researched. It uses a simple, clarifying voice that makes the subject at hand accessible as well, which I'm always grateful for. (I can be thick as a brick.)

The book is going over Templar history, obviously, while also incorporating some of the larger Christian questions in France and different gospels, cultural differences of belief and values, and analyzing what is KNOWN while playing with what can be honestly hypothesized, why/why not, etc. etc. Great book. I'm loving it.

(The DaVinci Code? It certainly mentions some of the other gospels, the fact that Mary and Jesus probably had a "thing" going on, but it really delves into that and elaborates on the cultural significance of events/statements/customs, and hypothesizes on origins, due to similarities in the same time period/area.)

Anyway.

Easter.

This book has given me a new appreciation for Mary Magdalene - The Black Madonna.

"They have removed my Lord and I do not know where to find him," were the words that the goddess/priestess uttered, in the mystery plays of the schools of Osiris, Tammuz, Dionysus, and Attis, as she anoints the god prior to his death (symbolic or real). (Traditionally, it was also three days later that the priestess/goddess would intervene in raising him again.)

Obviously, this is suspiciously familiar. Why were women, especially Mary, included in the story of Christ, given the time and place and cultural attitudes held towards women? Because they were essential to what was happening. They were with him at the cross and they were with him in his resurrection. These were the roles of the priestesses in the mystery schools.

"Christ(o)" means "Anointed One," and there is only one incident of Christ being anointed in all the gospels - by Mary. She used spikenard for his feet. Spikenard was a costly oil from India, where it was used in the Tantric tradition, where different perfumes and oils were assigned for specific parts of the body. Spikenard was for the feet. (And hair...)

Mary was a priestess, likely from a town called "Magdolum" in the north-east of Egypt, and it was she who made Jesus the Christ. ("el Mejdel" in Galilee, which has been said to be her hometown traditionally, was actually known as "Tarichea" in the time period, disproving that theory.) 

Mary was the Magdala - the tower, or elevated, great, and magnificent one. 

Mary was a priestess, and... (big words, hide sexy meanings)... she was the hierodule who, through hieros gamos could bestow spiritual enlightenment - through the process of horasis. 

In reading this book, I had a moment where I asked myself if the current Priory of Sion still practiced sex rituals, and then I was like, "Oh my gosh, how do they pick women to be the priestesses? I wish I could be a goddess in a sex cult!" 

And then I was like, "Dammit! Joseph Smith! I already WAS!"

Anyway. Happy Easter.