14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine: Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene

This is a good book for people who want practical ways to bring the Sacred Feminine into their lives. Each chapter has a brief explanation and overview, a guided meditation, and questions for reflection and journaling/discussion. The poetry alone is beautiful and inspiring. It is more creative and personal to me than some of the other books I've read on the Sacred Feminine and Mary Magdalene. Most of them were scholarly dissertations on the validity and history of Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine. I already accept that women have had an important and definitive place in Spirituality and was looking for ways to honor and experience Sacred Feminine presence. This book delivered that for me.The Resources chapter was also very helpful and interesting. It includes other books, groups, organizations, artists, and websites devoted to the Sacred Feminine.

This book is written for a group but can be easily adapted for a solitary practitioner. Upon starting it, I realized that I personally needed to read a couple of the books by Margaret Starbird that came before it. Standing on its own, the book offers powerful insights and meditations that can help lead you into the mystery of Mary Magdalene. I am reading this book and another at the same time, this book for the meditations and the other for the history. This book is a must if you are drawn to Mary Magdalene and the teachings hidden by the Church.

I am enjoying this book. The one problem I have with it is the same problem I have with most books about Mary Magdalene. The portrait painted of her is that of victim. Because this is a devotional, readers are encouraged to touch those places inside where they can identify with the various ways Mary Magdalene was victimized in her life and in the mythos that was created about her by the Roman Catholic Church.If what is written about the Magdalene is true, she led a life of great adventure and love, worth and meaning. Of course, to go there, perhaps we first have to begin with no longer seeing Jesus as a victim but as the powerful creator of his life and destiny. I don't believe it serves her memory or us living now to focus on the victimization at the expense of experiencing Jesus and Mary Magdalene as co-creators with God of their lives and their destinies!How can we take charge of co-creating our own lives when religious and spiritual leaders and teachers continually teach that we are victims? By having the courage to step even further outside tradition than the Magdalene teachers do!

GOOD READ

This is an amazing book for women's groups. An inspiring guide, it helps women create viable, intensely functional Mary Magdalene Circles. What are Mary Magdalene Circles? They are groups of women who share their focused energies on understanding and enacting the wisdom that has come down from Mary. The purpose: to gain insight and understanding of the path life takes and how the sacred feminine can enhance and enrich personal growth. There are 14 lessons in the book, which are the steps to creating that path for women who have come together to share and help one another to discover that inner light and strength that comes to both Christians and spiritual feminists alike.For many, this book will provide a conduit to self-understanding and awareness. It brings forth the call to appreciate and proclaim the validity of the Sacred Feminine, long kept under the thumb of the Church. Western Christian tradition has kept secret, denied, tainted, and exiled positive mentions of Mary Magdalene in biblical and religious writings. This book will help transform that trend into an affirmative way to experience and enjoy the revered female side of faith, without being defensive or critical of mainstream religion.The book is divided into two halves, each vital in recovering our beliefs and standards. Part One covers the steps, called lessons, to educating women in the Magdalene story. It covers the warped history of Mary as a prostitute, the time with Jesus in the garden, the weeping Mary and more. Starbird and Norton discuss with great clarity the mythology and the metaphors that abound in Christian literature and the way women have been denied their place as partners in the hierarchy and oligarchy of the Church. Their intent is not to criticize or demonize traditional beliefs, but to show us that the Sacred Feminine should be part of our lives, part of the profound, deeply personal journey to the inner self.Part two is equally remarkable. Focused on Prayers and Poems to Complement the Lessons, each section corresponds to the lesson in the first part of the book with the same name. In Lesson Two of Part Two, (where the erroneous history of Mary as a prostitute is discussed,) there is a prayer-poem by Susan Kehoe-Jergens, Self Re-Creation through the Magdalene. Powerful and hopeful, we can read these within our groups, or alone, to help us understand and appreciate the need to acknowledge and affirm our personal soul power.The resource section of the book is extremely useful as well. It lists Internet Discussion Groups, Spiritual Training and Sacred Feminine Information Websites, Books, and Art and Icons. This inspirational book should help those struggling as individuals to comprehend that part of our feminine psyche. We do not have to struggle alone; we can create or join groups that will give us clarity and strength to be complete as women, awake and aware of our passions and our passages through a spiritual life. To know that as women we can be part of a greater whole is a life-changing piece of knowledge, a step I encourage us all to take.by Laura Strathman Hulkafor Story Circle Book Reviewsreviewing books by, for, and about women