For anyone who devours books about Mary Magdalene—and I suspect
we’re a growing number since The Da Vinci Code movie and Brown’s prequel, the upcoming Angels and Demons have introduced more people to the Magdelene“heresy”—Kathleen McGowan is someone you need to know.
Ever since reading The Expected One, I’ve been eagerly awaiting her second—The Book of Love. She’s not an author who disappoints. Like her heroine, Maureen Paschal, it’s obvious Kathleen's mission is to uncover stories of extraordinary women who dared to challenge the world. History often either misrepresents these women or denigrates them—often actually killing them. Matilda the 11th century countess of Tuscany, heroine of The Book of Love, is one such woman. As it turns out, she is the only woman buried in St. Peter’s basilica and when you read the book, you’ll learn why.
But it’s her coverage of the origins and importance of the labyrinth, information about Chartres and the Cathars as well as the way McGowan
introduces Sophia that captivates me. She reminds us that the Gnostics believed the Holy Spirit was female, in the guise of Sophia--sometimes depicted as a dove.
She quotes from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: “Some say that Mary was impregnated by the grace of the Holy Spirit. But they do not know what they say. How can the feminine impregnate the feminine?” (p. 375)
And she introduces readers to the Genesis verses that tell us God said, “Let us make man in our image…” and “The Lord God said, ‘Behold, man has become as of of us, to know good and evil…” The “us” indicates “The equal, female face of God, if you will. The feminine half that completes the male half of God.” (p. 376)
Sophia. Our Lady. Our sweet dove. She's far from a new idea, of course. In fact the mystical Lutheran shoemaker and writer, Jacob Boehme wrote about her as the third part of the Trinity way back in 1620. But now Sophia appears in what will undoubtedly become McGowan’s second New York Time’s best selling book. And many more people will discover Sophia, as well as that legendary lost manuscript, The Book of Love.







Recent Comments