Coming Out

No, I'm not gay. I'm a heretic. This is kind of a project of sorts. It's research. I've been researching several early Christian heresies for years. Some of them have kind of gone mainstream, thanks to the DaVinci Code. Given that I live in a fairly conservative part of the world, this may come back to bite me, but I feel compelled to write about it.

I am still a Christian. I practice as an Episcopalian, but I am a Gnostic Christian. For one thing, I believe that Mary Magdalene was a very important figure in early Christianity, that she was a teacher and apostle in her own right. I also believe that she was Jesus's wife. Yes, the DaVinci Code is somewhat based on truth, but he got a lot of things wrong. For one thing, Leonardo DaVinci was connected with a different heresy, he was a follower of John the Baptist. There was a different sect that believed that John the Baptist was the true Messiah. Allegedly, their rituals included spitting on crucifixes, calling Jesus a false priest, among other things, and reverence for a skull called Baphomet. These are also among the charges levied against the Knights Templar when the order was, um, disbanded in the fourteenth century. If you're looking for hidden Magdalene symbolism in art, look at Botticelli's fresco "Primavera." Mary Magdalene is usually depicted with a red veil, as is the central figure in the painting.

For another thing, I don't think the idea that there are descendants of the Grail bloodline still living is as important as the idea that Jesus was just as human as he was divine. Conventional Christianity has promoted divinity over humanity, and I think the human, family man side of Jesus deserves just as much respect.

I'm not sure why this came up now. I'm just finishing my second reading of the first two books of a trilogy by Kathleen McGowan, The Expected One, and I'm just finishing The Book of Love. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to read them again. I'm sure it will make sense in time. Those books speak to me in a way that I don't quite understand. They're fiction, but a lot of it just seems right to me. Some of it is verifiable from outside sources, from some of the Gnostic gospels in the Nag Hammadi Library, and books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but the rest of it, the parts that come from the oral tradition of the Languedoc (southern France), they seem right, too. I think some things are just right, proof or not. There's also the fact that the Church led a crusade against these people in the thirteenth century. If it wasn't important, wasn't a threat, why did they care so much?