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 UNCORRECTED PAGE PROOFS
Not For Resale

Magdalene Mysteries
The Left-Hand Path of the Feminine Christ
SEREN BERTRAND and AZRA BERTRAND, M.D.

Discover the Womb Rites and initiatory magic of Mary Magdalene,

who was revered as a Priestess and human embodiment of the Goddess

• Reveals how Mary Magdalene was a sacred priestess of the ancient Womb Mysteries, connected to
moon wisdom, sacred harlot archetypes, and goddesses in many traditions, including Sophia, Isis,
Inanna, Asherah, Lilith, Jezebel, and Witches
• Explains how the Magdalene Mysteries have been encoded in Gnostic texts, sacred art, and literature
and unveils the secret Grail heresy of the Ghent Altarpiece
• Offers rituals and practices to initiate you into the Womb magic of the ancient priestesses and access
deeper dimensions of sexuality and feminine power

A sacred priestess of the ancient Womb Rites, Mary Magdalene was at the center of a great and enduring Mystery
tradition, one that touched on a stream of perennial spiritual wisdom as old as humanity. Worshipped as the human

For Review Only

embodiment of the Goddess, the earthly Sophia, her womb was the spiritual luminatrix that anointed and empowered
Jesus, transforming him into the Christ. As a priestess of the Goddess, Mary Magdalene knew how to embody the light
and the dark, how to harness the magic potency of sacred sexual energy, and how to cleanse, awaken, and resurrect the
soul. Yet, even though she sparked the creation of a worldwide religion, her story and teachings have been forgotten.
Unveiling the lost left-hand path of the Magdalene, the Feminine Christ, authors Seren and Azra Bertrand explore
how this underground stream of knowledge has been carried forward over the millennia through an unbroken lineage
of Womb Shamans, Priestesses, Oracles, and Medicine Women. They explain how the Magdalene Mysteries, symbol-
ized by the Rose, have been encoded in Gnostic codices and gospels and in the highest art, literature, and architec-
ture of many ages, including most significantly the Ghent Altarpiece. They examine Mary Magdalene’s connection to
moon wisdom, sacred harlot archetypes, and goddesses in many traditions, including Isis, Inanna, Asherah, Lilith, and
Jezebel, and look at shamanic, tantric, and Cathar expressions of sacred feminine mysteries as well as the Witch and
Templar roots of Robin Hood and Maid Marian.
In this revelatory and magical text on the lost feminine mystery traditions of Mary Magdalene and the lineage of
Sophia, the authors present encompassing theological, historical, mythological, and archetypal wisdom, with rituals
and practices to initiate you into the Womb magic of the ancient priestesses and the path of the wild feminine.

Seren Bertrand is a visionary creatrix and spirit keeper with a degree in English literature and modern philosophy, who
is dedicated to restoring the lost global feminine wisdom traditions. Azra Bertrand, M.D., has a degree in biochemis-
try and studied at Duke University School of Medicine, with research at the NIH. He has been a pioneering doctor
and mystic for over two decades, following the feminine pathway of alchemy. Their previous book, Womb Awakening,
received five awards, including a Nautilus Award. They live in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina.

Bear & Company • ISBN 978-1-59143-346-0 • $30.00 (CAN $37.50) Paper • Also available as an ebook
592 pages, 7 x 10 • Includes 16-page color insert and 120 black-and-white illustrations
Rights: World • New Age/Goddess Worship

April 2020
For Review Only
 For Review Only

Plate 1. The Virgin Mary of St. Marie’s Cathedral, Sheffield, England, holding her hands
in the womb mudra position. She takes center stage in the ornate stained glass window
behind the altar, as Queen of the Heavens, with stars above her head
and the crescent moon under her feet.
(Photo by A. and S. Bertrand)

MagMys_insert.indd 1 11/11/19 1:13 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 2. Wearing the priestess colors of white and red, the pregnant Magdalene
holds the skull of initiation on her lap and looks into the smoking flame. Georges de la Tour,
The Magdalene with the Smoking Flame, 1640. Oil on canvas.
(Louvre, Paris)

MagMys_insert.indd 2 11/11/19 1:13 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 3. Saint Mary Magdalene by Master of the

Palazzo Venezia Madonna, ca. 1350. Egg tempera on wood.
(The National Gallery, London)

MagMys_insert.indd 3 11/11/19 1:13 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 4. Mary Magdalene, draped in rose fabrics,

gazes softly but intently into the eyes of the iconic skull.
Carlo Cignan’s The Penitent Magdalen, ca. 1690. Oil on canvas.
(Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)

MagMys_insert.indd 4 11/11/19 1:13 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 5. The regal Magdalene sits on the golden throne, resplendent in her red robes.
She holds a tau crucifix in her left hand, resting on her lap, and an alabaster jar in her right.
Angels serenade her and members of the Confraternity of Magdalene kneel at her feet.
Spinello Aretine, Saint Mary Magdalen Holding a Crucifix, ca. 1400.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

MagMys_insert.indd 5 11/11/19 1:13 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 6. Magdalene, dressed in red, holds the white egg of life as the New Eve.
Modern Orthodox iconography by Brother Robert Lentz.

MagMys_insert.indd 6 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 7. A haloed, red-haired, and red-robed Mary Magdalene

holds a skull on a cliff overlooking the desert. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes,
St. Mary Magdalene in the Desert, 1869. Oil on canvas.
(Städel Museum, Frankfort)

MagMys_insert.indd 7 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 8. A red-robed and haloed Magdalene, adorned with gold earrings and bracelets, holds
her alabaster anointing jar. John the Baptist stands beside her in his camel-hair shirt.
Angelo Puccinelli, Saint John the Baptist and Saint Madeleine, created before 1370. Oil on poplar.
(Museum of the Petit Palais, Paris)

MagMys_insert.indd 8 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 9. Wearing the earth priestess color of green, as well as her traditional red robe,
Mary Magdalene holds her alabaster anointing jar. A twinkle in her eye hints at a secret.
Giampietrino, or Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, ca.1495–1540. Oil on panel.
(Private collection)

MagMys_insert.indd 9 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 10. Dressed in red and white, the barefoot Magdalene lights
down the stairs with a flowered garland in her red hair, holding her anointing jar.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Mary Magdalene Leaving the House of Feasting, 1857.
(Tate Gallery, London)

MagMys_insert.indd 10 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 11. The Mary Monstrance of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church of Chicago.
She looks every bit a priestess of the Old Ways: red-robed, a halo of stars above her head,
her womb is the golden Ark of the Covenant, and a crescent moon rests in her lap.
She holds the Eucharist offering in her body. Due to the flood of parishioners who visit,
the chapel stays open twenty-four hours a day.
(Photo by Dees Stribling, Been There, Seen That website, Sept. 8, 2014.)

MagMys_insert.indd 11 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 12. A color restoration of the Burney / Queen of the Night relief. The Red Goddess Ishtar
reveals her Underworld aspect, with downward pointing wings and owl-like talons that grasp the
backs of her sacred lion steeds. She holds talismanic shen rings of infinity in her hands and wears the
horned tiara of divinity as her owl familiars look on. Terracotta plaque. Old Babylonia, 1800 BCE.
(British Museum; color restoration ©Stéphane Beaulieu)

MagMys_insert.indd 12 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 For Review Only

Plate 13. Sarah-le-Kali, the dark goddess and patron saint of the Roma,
adorned by her devotees in Stes.-Maries-de-la-Mer, France.
(Photo by Armin Kübelbeck, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

MagMys_insert.indd 13 11/11/19 1:14 PM

MagMys_insert.indd 14
Plate 14.
The Ghent
Altarpiece by
Jan van Eyck.
Oil on oak,
1426–1432.
(St. Bavo
Cathedral,
Ghent)

For Review Only

11/11/19 1:14 PM
MagMys_insert.indd 15
For Review Only

Plate 15. Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, central panel

of the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck.

11/11/19 1:14 PM
 For Review Only

Plate 16. Yeshu holds hands with the pregnant Mary Magdalene in the famous stained glass window
of Kilmore Church on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. A caption below reads, “She hath chosen
the good part which shall not be taken away from her,” from Luke 10:42, confirming that
this is Mary Magdalene (Mary of Bethany).
Created by Stephen Adam, 1904.

MagMys_insert.indd 16 11/11/19 1:14 PM

 MAGDALENE
MYSTERIES

For Review Only

MagMys.indd 1 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 For Review Only

MagMys.indd 2 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 M AGDALENE
MYSTERIES
The Left-Hand Path
of the Feminine Christ

For Review Only

Seren Bertr and & Azr a Bertr and, M.D.

Bear & Company

Rochester, Vermont

MagMys.indd 3 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
www.BearandCompanyBooks.com

Bear & Company is a division of Inner Traditions International

Copyright © 2020 by Azra and Seren Bertrand

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information

For Review Only

storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data for this title is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-59143-346-0 (print)

ISBN 978-1-59143-347-7 (ebook)

Printed and bound in XXXXX

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text design and layout by Virginia Scott Bowman

This book was typeset in Garamond Premier Pro, Gill Sans, and Legacy Sans with Trajan Pro
and Avenir used as display typefaces

Illustrations on pages x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x,
x, x, x, x, x [x-refs] by Natvienna Hanell; pages x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x [x-refs] by Helen Claira
Burt

To send correspondence to the authors of this book, mail a first-class letter to the authors
c/o Inner Traditions • Bear & Company, One Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767, and we will
forward the communication, or contact the authors directly at www.SerenBertrand.com.
[Site just has placeholder for now. Must be completed by January 10th (1/10/20) the
latest. –Jeanie]

MagMys.indd 4 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense
This book is dedicated to
Mary Magdalene,
Mother Mary,
And to Mnemosine,
The Goddess of Memory,
Mother of the Nine Muses.

••

For Review Only

In Honor of the Mother
To all the Mothers,
And to our mothers,
Margaret and Jean.

••

Naked I came from my mother’s womb,

And naked I shall return
Job 1:21

MagMys.indd 5 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 For Review Only

MagMys.indd 6 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 CONTENTS

PROLOGUE
Miryai and Yeshu—A Love Story 00

INTRODUCTION
Visions of the Rose—Left-Hand Path of the Feminine Christ 00

OUR LOVE LETTER

Rose Pilgrims—Meeting Mary Magdalene and Sacred Masculine Vision 00

For Review Only

Mary Magdalene—Holy Whore of Sophia 00

PORTAL ONE
M AGDALENE CHRONICLES
Mary Magdalene’s Lineage, Her Lifetime, and Her Legacy

Magdalene’s Lineage:
The Dragon Priestesses

CHAMBER 1. Dragon Mothers—Ancient Elemental Magic 00

CHAMBER 2. Mermaid Priestesses—Chalice of Holy Waters 00

CHAMBER 3. Moon Shamans—Serpent Daughters of Fire 00

CHAMBER 4. Divine Whore—Inanna, Mistress of the Vulva 00

CHAMBER 5. Goddesses of Galilee—Temple of Asherah, Wisdom of Lilith 00

CHAMBER 6. Motherline of Christ—Son of the Goddess 00

MagMys.indd 7 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Magdalene’s Lifetime:
Story of the Feminine Christ

CHAMBER 7. Apostle of Ecstasy—Magdalene, the Female Pope 00

CHAMBER 8. Divine Prophetess—Ancestry and Origins of Magdalene 00

CHAMBER 9. The Circle of Marys—Feminist Ministry of Jesus 00

CHAMBER 10. Holy Matrimony—Were Jesus and Mary Married? 00

CHAMBER 11. Resurrection Mysteries—The Crucifixion and Divine Rebirth 00

CHAMBER 12. Bishops of Sophia—Female Spiritual Leaders 00

CHAMBER 13. Gnostic Magdalene—The Salvation of Sophia 00

CHAMBER 14. Tantric Temple—Ecstatic Mystics on the Path of Love 00

Magdalene’s Legacy:

For Review Only

Rose Line of the Grail

CHAMBER 15. Heretic Queen—Magdalene’s Escape to Europe 00

CHAMBER 16. Magdalene Order—Cathar Priestesses of the Dove 00

CHAMBER 17. Red Witch—Scarlet Saint of the Wise Women 00

CHAMBER 18. Templar Wizards—Robin Hood and Maid Marian 00

PORTAL TWO
M AGDALENE CODEX
The Ghent Altarpiece—Art and Symbols of the Holy Grail
CHAMBER 19. The Ghent Altarpiece—Gateway to the Mysteries 00

CHAMBER 20. Pilgrimage into the Painting—Art of the Grail 00

CHAMBER 21: Templars of Burgundy—Alchemists of Mary 00

CHAMBER 22. The Lady in the Landscape—Body of the Goddess 00

MagMys.indd 8 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 CHAMBER 23. Magdalene and the Sibyls—Prophetesses of Sophia 00

CHAMBER 24. Red Throne—The Original Sacred Altar 00

CHAMBER 25. Feminine Eucharist—The Primeval Sacrament 00

CHAMBER 26. Fountain of Life—Womb of the World 00

CHAMBER 27. John the Baptist—Waters of Life 00

CHAMBER 28. Divine Sophia—Return to Love 00

PORTAL THREE
M AGDALENE VISION QUEST
Pilgrimage Path: Stories, Oracles, and Personal Rituals
CHAMBER 29. Honoring the Motherline—Walking the Red Path 00

CHAMBER 30. The Way of Love—Awakening the Feminine Soul 00

For Review Only

CHAMBER 31. Magdalene Mandala—The Wheel of the Witches 00

CHAMBER 32. Sacred Union—Entering the Bridal Chamber 00

CHAMBER 33. Ministry of the Magdalene—Return of the Wild Feminine 00

••

Acknowledgments 00

Notes 00

Bibliography 00

Index 00

About the Authors 00

MagMys.indd 9 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 For Review Only

MagMys.indd 10 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 PROLOGUE

MIRYAI AND YESHU

A Love Story

When the rose is gone and the rose garden fallen to ruin,
Where will you seek the scent of the rose?

For Review Only

Rumi

DEAR ROSE PILGRIMS,

We open the prayer circle of this book, and invite you to take your seat. Red rose
petals are scattered at your feet, and the harpist strikes a note. We have a tale to
tell.
Before we turn to the world of facts and suppositions, let us first immerse our-
selves in the imaginal world of storytelling, allowing a weaving of words to lure us
in. This story is a magical key to unlock the secrets held within this book and the
vision it unfolds for you:

Two thousand years ago there existed a man whom we will call Yeshu and a woman
named Miryai who lived together near a curiously shaped “lyre lake”—the Sea of
Galilee—where the ancient goddess was once a mermaid. Their native language
was Aramaic, the language of provincial Samaria and Galilee, which had, by their
time, become an extraordinary cultural melting pot.
For thousands of years the region had been the tribal homeland of the moon-
revering Canaanites, who worshipped Asherah and her consort Ba’al. But over
time, Asherah, Ashtoreth, and other native goddesses would slowly be degraded,

xi

MagMys.indd 11 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 xii  Prologue

sidelined, and pushed underground by the increasingly patristic sentiments in

Roman, Greek, and Judaic cultures.
However, the goddess was not forgotten by the Syrian-Phoenician people, who
still flourished intact at the dawn of the first millennium CE, just a few dozen
miles north of the Sea of Galilee. The Syro-Phoenicians drew from far-ranging
spiritual influences—from the Canaanite Asherah, the Assyrian-Babylonian Ishtar
(Astarte), the Syrian Atar-Gatis, the Anatolian Kybele, the Hellenic pantheon that
had by this time adopted Artemis, Aphrodite, and other west Asian deities, and
the most widespread ecstatic religious cults of the day—the Mystery religions—in
their various forms that included Isis / Osiris, Kybele / Attis, Astarte / Tamuz, and
Demeter / Dionysus. During Yeshu and Miryai’s time, the Great Mothers Kybele
and Atar-Gatis—the Star-Fish goddess—still sat prominently on their lion thrones,
representing the ancient wisdom of the goddess, the power and mystery of the Great
Womb, whose unmistakable and alluring mana still resided in the female priestesses
who had not abandoned the old ways.
Miryai and Yeshu’s homelands were also closely connected to the Eg yptian port
city of Alexandria, the foremost center of Hellenic culture in the Roman empire,

For Review Only

home to mystical and gnostic Jews, the temples of Isis, the ascetic Therapeutae, all
manner of mystery religion cults, as well as the Mayagi (Magi) magical traditions of
Persia. The scholars of Alexandria also maintained connections with Indian tantric,
Buddhist, and Vedic masters, linked by the vast web of Eastern trade routes created
by Alexander the Great, setting the stage for a mystical education.

Yeshu’s Story
Yeshu was born into a high-ranking family. His adoptive father, Yosef, was politically
connected to the rabbis, priests, and sages as well as the Hellenized leaders and
businessmen of the time; he was well educated and heavily involved in Jewish-gnostic
mysticism and the Jewish nationalist cause. The open secret was that Yeshu’s mother
was a priestess, educated and trained in the goddess temples from a very young age,
as the sacred feminine tradition had not disappeared completely in northern Israel
and Syria.
The wisest of the zealot mystics knew that it was the priestesses who held the
power of magical conception. Only they knew how to birth a messiah—an anointed
king—as did Bath-Sheba, the pagan priestess-wife of King David and mother of
King Solomon. She, like Yeshu’s mother, Miriam, was recruited to birth an heir to
the royal line of the lion and dragon.
By the first century BCE, the people of Israel desperately needed a messiah. For

MagMys.indd 12 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Miryai and Yeshu   xiii

generations they had suffered terrible oppression at the hands of several different
self-serving parties: the Roman armies and tax collectors, the tyrannical vassal-
governor Herod and his family, and the wealthy Sanhedrin collaborators. Though
the zealot leaders found the goddess traditions distasteful, this was the time to set
aside the law in the name of the greater good.
The young priestess Miriam was selected by the mystic-spiritual political
movement to be the vessel. She was sought after for her maternal bloodline, woven
into the millennia-old magical tapestry of the sacred goddess traditions. Miriam
was trained in the esoteric rites of hieros gamos—so that she might conceive and
give birth to the messiah-king who would lead Israel out of Roman bondage. She
was the chosen “harlot,” the qedesha, who at the age of sixteen was arranged to
mate with a panthera, a “panther” or “lion” priest—an initiated adept of the
Mysteries, who himself was charged with magical mana. Though the secret rites
were considered terribly taboo by the greater Jewish community of the day, it had
been arranged beforehand that Yosef, who was already the father of four children,
including Ya’cov (later called “James the Just”), and who was recently a widower,
would take Miriam and her child into his family for the good of the nation, even

For Review Only

though he still had mixed feelings about her pagan roots.
Shortly after the birth, Miriam and Yeshu were sent to Alexandria, Eg ypt,
along with several other family members, so that Yeshu could study with the best
teachers and scholars in the known world. Tremendous resources were passed to
him, so that he did not have to take common work, in order to study, train, and
prepare for his mission. His curriculum included intensive tutoring with the most
well-respected rabbis and sages of the day, in both the Therapeutae community
native to Alexandria as well as with a very prominent rabbi and high priest of the
Jerusalem Temple who was brought in specifically to mentor Yeshu.
He also studied the magical arts of the Eg yptian and Persian masters, including
in the temples of Isis and Osiris, as well as Greek and Vedic-tantric philosophy. His
practices included fasting, ritual cleansing, and meditation. He took the initiations
of the Mystery Schools of Isis and Osiris. When he came of age he was sent to
India to learn the philosophies of the Brahmins, Buddhists, and tantrikas of Odissa.
From both the mystical Kabbalist practice and the Eastern ways he learned the arts
of sacred sexuality necessary for a mystical king-priest.
But the path was not always easy or clear. In time, Yeshu’s rabbinic mentor
excommunicated him from the temple community. Yeshu felt the rabbis were too
narrow-minded and patriarchal in their perspectives—they could not tolerate the
magic of the left-hand path and ancient goddess mysteries. At the age of twenty-

MagMys.indd 13 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 xiv  Prologue

nine, after completing his studies, he returned to his family in Palestine with a new
vision.
Even though he was so clearly accomplished, Yeshu was still a mystery to his
family. Though he was a brilliant scholar of the pagan Greek philosophies and
Mosaic law, a bold leader, an anatomist and healer, a charismatic speaker who
knew how to hold power and work with crowds, he was also extremely sensitive and
introspective at times. He liked spending time alone in nature, so that he could hear
himself think, away from the politically intense environs of his family. Everyone but
himself was convinced of his destiny as a king and political leader who would save
the Jewish nation. Yet, in his heart, he knew he did not fit in with his father and
eldest brother Ya’cov’s world.
Yeshu needed a spiritual renewal, and announced to his family, to their great
concern, that he would retreat for a time to the wilderness camp of his cousin
on his mother’s side, John the Nazorean (the Baptizer), to fast, pray, and have
some time away from politics. John was considered radical, heretical, and terribly
fringe even to the mystic zealots, but he was impeccably disciplined, bursting with
righteous fire and fiercely ascetic—commanding all people to repent and revoke

For Review Only

their materialistic ways so they could be prepared for the end of days, the coming
of the Kingdom of God-Goddess. John, known by his people as Yochanan, attracted
a massive following that came to hear his impassioned preaching, as he denounced
the wicked Romans, the incest-ridden Herods, and the corrupt Sanhedrin.

Miryai’s Story
The priestess Miryai was named the Magdalene to honor her calling to the
sacred work of the Divine Mother. Miryai was, like Miriam the mother of Jesus,
a highborn priestess of the goddess traditions. Her father, Cyrus Eleazer, was of
Syrian-Phoenician kingly blood. He converted to Judaism in name only, to wed her
mother who hailed from a wealthy Hellenic family in Tiberias, closely related to
Herodian family. Miryai was trained in the both the Canaanite-Phoenician religions
of Tyre as well as the mystical feminine aspects of the Torah.
Miryai was a stunning young woman—brilliant in her studies, big-hearted and
devoted, but bold, fiery, and unwilling to fulfill the role as a submissive Jewish
wife, even within the wealthy and Hellenized world she lived in. She was mystically
inclined, a trained temple dancer, a musician and poet, and a prized potential bride.
Her father received marriage proposals beginning when Miryai first came upon her
moontime as a thirteen-year-old girl, but he held her in reserve, waiting for the
perfect match for his beloved daughter. She, however, had other plans for her life.

MagMys.indd 14 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Miryai and Yeshu   xv

The most exciting man of that day was Yochanan the Baptist, considered by
all to be a prophet. The rumor was that he was starting a revolution and that he
may have been the Messiah foretold by scripture. John was filled with wisdom and
spiritual power. He promised entry for all people into the queendom of heaven
through prayer, sacred ritual immersions, self-discipline, and renouncing worldly
corruptions; it was said that he even taught the secrets of the greater mysteries,
reserved for his inner circle of disciples.
Most important, in his camp, women held equal status to men. They could
be priestesses and oracles and live a life of spiritual mystery unavailable in the
repressive world of temple and palace. Ignoring the warnings of her parents, the
bold and fiery Miryai scandalously fled to John’s desert camp. Her family never
forgave her, calling her a harlot and prostitute, deeply ashamed that Miryai, as an
unwed woman, took company with a mixed-sex community of wild mystics—led by
a man who dared to openly criticize her relative and the governor of Galilee, Herod
Antipas. Her father, in his anger, began to drum up support for his campaign to
eradicate John the Baptist. John was an embarrassment to Herod and a shame to
his family. Herod, in his cunning, knew that the people of Galilee would be angered

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to the point of violence if anything happened to their perceived prophet. He needed
to move slowly, carefully.
Cyrus Eleazer went with a gang of men to John’s camp, threatening to stone
Miryai for her supposedly sinful behavior. Miryai denied all wrongdoing—her
intents were pure, her mission spiritual. She could not believe that her father would
turn on her in this way, and shouted at him to leave. John mobilized his followers
to drive them away from the camp, and took Miryai under his wing.
John’s central practice was a daily purifying baptism in the Jordan’s waters
of life—fully naked, whole-body immersions for all men and women of the
community, in the mother river of the Yardana—along with a prayer of rebirth
to the Mother-Father deity, called Abwoon in Aramaic. His camp included both
male and female disciples, a controversial position in the eyes of the greater Judaic
community but a precedent that had already been set by the respected mystical
sects of the Therapeutae and Essenes. John taught the old secrets of the moon
and Eastern Mysteries. He had grown up in the greater Essene community, which
tolerated dissidents and sects of many varieties, but he himself had been profoundly
influenced by the goddess religions, and the Kabbalist-gnostic philosophies that
taught the secrets of solar-lunar alchemy at a spiritual, and also sexual, level.
Miryai immediately fell in love with the wild and ecstatic practices and
preaching of John; it felt that with him she had found her place. John for his

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 xvi  Prologue

part recognized her brilliance and spiritual power and knew that he had found
his queen and goddess. He called her many beautiful names: Ama’gadala, “Great
Mother Goddess” in Aramaic; Migdal, “the Tower” in Hebrew, the one to whom
the Messiah would first be revealed, as foretold by prophecy. He called her Ella,
the Hebrew name meaning “goddess,” and Elena (Helen), the Greek name for
“spiritual light.” He lifted her up, enthroned her as the goddess incarnate, and
made her his wife, opening her to the esoteric practices of sacred union and the
Mysteries of the Moon.
Miryai shortly became pregnant and gave birth to a boy, also named John,
her little “beloved.” But life in the desert camp was not easy—John the Baptist
was harsh and terribly difficult to live with. His infamous temper scorched the
land. No flower or feminine softness could bloom in his rigid field of discipline and
asceticism. John felt Miryai’s growing distance, but he would not bend from his rigid
and righteous position. The Queendom of God was at hand—all must be sacrificed
to prepare for this. Nothing else mattered.

Their Love Story

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Yet, as the mysteries taught, the moon must be balanced with the sun. A male
prophet, in order to be in the fullness of his power, must work together with a
female prophetess and soulmate. This was the greatest secret. A prophetess in her
years of fertility also held the power of the sacred menstrual blood, the sacred-taboo
flow—a living mystery that across so many cultures of the world was understood
to be so powerful as to be potentially dangerous. These rites were kept secret to all
but the most trusted inner circle.
Yeshu now returns to the story—arriving at John’s camp, weary of the
politicking of his family, and quickly weaving into the lives of John the Baptist,
Miryai, and several other members of the community who would become key
disciples and friends: Andrew, Philip, Thomas.
John the Baptist instantly recognized Yeshu’s bright spirit from his dreams. For
many years he had dreamed a man would come who would help take his message
out to the world. He baptized Yeshu and saw the descent of the Holy Spirit, the
dove of the Divine Goddess into Yeshu—and was humbled at the signs. Yochanan
was a renunciate prophet, not a worldy man, but Yeshu was of both the spirit world
and the world of men. At the same time Yeshu, more than any other, shared John’s
brilliance, discipline, and commitment. Quickly Yeshu became his lead teacher and
cohead of the community—second in command of the wilderness camp.
But in this paradise, a terrible problem arose. Over time, Yeshu fell in love

MagMys.indd 16 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Miryai and Yeshu   xvii

with John’s beautiful wife and prophetess Miryai, the Magdalene, and she with him.
They kept their distance from each other, painfully, and never violated John’s trust,
but John felt their hearts and was driven mad with jealousy and anger. He became
reckless. His tirades against Herod, the Sanhedrin, and the Saducees grew more
and more vicious, to the point of treason. Yeshu felt that he was the cause of this
disturbance—and that John’s Mystery School, and his life, were at risk—so he left
for Alexandria to try to give John and Miryai peace.
But things only grew worse. Herod sent his men to arrest John, and brought
him to prison in the hilltop palace at Machaerus. John, in a letter from prison,
announced his divorce of Miryai. He ordered her out of his camp. She did not need
any further prompting. Her time with him was over. She was older, wiser now—she
could not be with a man she no longer loved.

Their Rose Teachings

So Yeshu and Magdalene consummated their sacred union, in love and trust.
Magdalene’s womb opened and merged with her heart and the entire world shook
and warped around them. A magical power and wisdom was at play, flowing

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through them in a way they had never experienced. Nothing would ever be the
same. They had, without their full advance knowledge, embodied the true teachings
of the syzygy. The mythical and ancient rites of the bridal chamber, the inheritance
of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, were truly real. Miryai and Yeshu were
soulmates, born to be together, separated at birth somehow but now reunited.
This was the Great Revelation. Together they were the Unified Pillar; the Standing
One, the Tree of Life that emerged from the earth and sheltered and fed all, and
from those deep roots reached up into the heavens like a miracle, transcending the
bounds of nature. In Hebrew, the name for such a miracle and sign is SIMN.
But eventually, the Church of Rome would raise up one of Jesus’s more
conservative disciples, whom they called Simon Peter, to become a “puppet pillar.”
Peter represented the consolidation of worldly power. He set about to spread his
own version of the story and to undo and discredit Yeshu and Magdalene’s true left-
hand teachings of magic. There were other divisions within Yeshu and Magdalene’s
disciples—between the mystical gnostics (such as Philip and Thomas) and the more
literal disciples, and between those who wanted to include women and those who
didn’t (such as Simon Peter). Few could ever truly understand the mysteries of the
left-hand path and accept Mary Magdalene for who she truly was.
Yeshu and Magdalene wrote a great book, divided into four quartets, one for
each direction of the world, called The Great Revelation. The church, uncomfortable

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 xviii  Prologue

with Mary Magdalene’s elevated position as a founder, would fabricate their own,
upside down and inverted version of the Revelation—Apocalypsos, added as the
final book of the New Testament—creating a divided ideal of the Virgin Mother,
pure and controllable, as the goddess, while obscuring and defaming the “Great
Whore” Magdalene; the great light-bearer who “knew the all.” And so, the oracle
priestess and her magical lineage were sidelined and lost, along with her sacred
teachings.

This is the story whispered by tale-weavers since time out of mind, told around
fires, passed through caravans of travellers, encyrypted in illuminated mansuscripts
and secret alchemical works, along with the prophesy that the true Revelation
would awaken once more.

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 INTRODUCTION

VISIONS OF THE ROSE

Left-Hand Path
of the Feminine Christ

Footfalls echo in the memory

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Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
T. S. Eliot, Grail Poet,
“Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets

OUR JOUR NEY INTO THE Magdalene Mysteries is first and foremost a
Vision Quest—a descent into the unknown, placing ourselves at the mercy of
Spirit to be humbled, opened, astounded, and initiated by something greater
than our minds could imagine. By approaching the presence of Magdalene with
this grounded, sacred curiosity, with a genuine thirst from within our hearts,
we honor her true spirit, and open the doorway to the hidden truths about her
teachings.
Like any riddle of the mysteries, Magdalene can never be fully known or con-
tained by the “facts”; as she impudently wriggles free of any solid definition of
who she once was, who she now is, and who she might become, with a wink and
a forbidden smile. Because of the scant evidence of her life, lived over two thou-
sand years ago, we will never be restricted to one version of her life—instead it
is constantly expanding into new dimensions. We have the biblical Magdalene

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 2  Introduction

of religion, the historical Magdalene of scholars and academics, and the ­mystical
Magdalene of visionaries and oracles. And even these understandings are con-
stantly revised and rebirthed in this living tradition.
Maybe she always intended it this way? Or maybe the sheer voluptuous radi-
ance of her presence had to be forbidden, hidden, and written away by a patriarchal
world that could not handle her power, until—like a treasure text—she emerged
for a new age, a new era, that could bear the enlightened presence of an embodied
feminine.
As we gather together in the circle of this book, we are going to explore a
radical, forbidden version of Mary Magdalene (MM) as a priestess of the Womb
Mysteries who holds within her memory an entire lineage of women, lacing right
down into the prehistoric realms of the Neanderthal womb shamans of lunar con-
sciousness, and weaving upward through the red thread of the Cathar priestesses
of the Holy Spirit, and into your hands, as you rediscover the wisdom thread that
you are now holding.
We will learn how MM holds the secrets of the original Eve, and how she
became heralded as the New Eve—who, in her sacred union with Jesus, rebirthed

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the world. This mysterious and long-forbidden story of the sacred union of Jesus
and MM, with the alchemy of their deep love bond, has called out to humanity
through the ages—a cry that still resounds deep within the secret chambers of
our innermost heart. Within this union MM is a Christed Grail Priestess of the
feminine mysteries—an anointed and awakened teacher of the Way of Love, the
feminine counterpart of Jesus and the fulfillment of the prophecy. She is also a
wild woman, a bride, a lover, and a mother, and the lineage-holder of a sect of
ancient dragon priestesses.
During our journey together, we will remember the Holy Womb mysteries of
the feminine medicine path of Sophia, which became rewritten as whoredom and
sin. In this remembrance, we will discover the old priestess wisdom and how it was
overturned, degraded, and then shunned. This wisdom is now rising and calling
out to be reclaimed.

Magdalene the Christ

Many apocryphal and gnostic gospels portray Magdalene as the leading disciple,
the true inheritor of Jesus’s teachings, and the one whom Jesus loves most. Of
course the canonical gospels give Magadalene the most important roles aside
from Jesus—she is present at the crucifixion, anoints him for burial, and is

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 Visions of the Rose   3

the first witness to his resurrection. She is such a key figure in the movement
that the anti-Christian historian Celsus feels compelled to denounce her in his
book The True Word—an honor he gave to no other woman in Christianity.
Celsus also mentions that at the time of his writings, around 170 CE, there are
sects of Christians devoted to the teachings of “Mariamne,” referring to Mary
Magdalene.1 By the fourth century, devotees had already begun making pilgrim-
age to Magdalene sites, and soon after, Christian churches would begin battling
over claims to her relics.
There has been an underground stream of worship of Mary Magdalene for
almost two thousand years spread across the Near East, Egypt, and Europe, sup-
ported by secret orders of initiates. These occult left-hand path traditions often
explicitly name Mary Magdalene as a priestess-shaman, and revere her as the Holy
Womb—recognizing her as the wisdom keeper for a lineage of female magicians
and oracles, and the birth portal of Christ Consciousness.
Rather than just modern “wishful thinking,” these secret teachings were
clearly encoded in the Middle Ages by famous artists, philosophers, and alche-
mists, often in plain sight for those who could “see”—and we can still peer

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through this magical mandorla, this doorway of wisdom, kept open by the alche-
mists, even today.
There is a revelation underway, as something lost and veiled is returning to us.
Can you sense the fragrance of the lost rose garden, calling out once again?

Magdalene the Great Womb Goddess

Mary Magdalene is a talismanic name—it has magic within it. Before we start
our quest, we should pause a few moments at the temple gates and really drink
in the essence of this name. How much can fit within two simple words? Entire
worlds it seems; a new dreaming, a renewed holy matrimony of the universe. A
forbidden herstory of such magnitude it could melt entire worldly structures.
This name is a deep, spiraling, serpentine power portal; play with it on your lips,
feel its thrilling, enchanting, alluring, disturbing, call. Mary Magdalene, Marie
Madeleine, Miriam of Magdala, Miryai e Mara. The Magdalene, Maria, Our
Mary, Mari, Maryam. This name is truly a secret and dangerous invocation; it
belongs on hidden manuscripts of lost incantations and alchemical formulas. It
is a lost promise, now remembered.
Jesus gave his disciples and cohorts spiritual names that reflected their
essence. He called Peter “the Rock,” he called Judas “the Knife”—and he called

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 4  Introduction

his beloved spiritual partner Mary, “the Portal”—meaning mystic yoni* gateway.
Magdalene is a word of great feminine power: it derives from the Hebrew name
of the ancient mother goddess ’ma-gadala (‫)אםא גדלא‬, meaning “Great Mother,”
as well as the Aramaic magdala and Hebrew migdal, both meaning “elevated,
magnificent, or tower.” 2 In the Semitic languages, mag and dal are among the
oldest primitive roots, signifying “great, powerful, magical” and “portal, door-
way,” respectively.3 They are shared across other language families: the Latin
maga is a female magician—the feminine version of magus or mage. The biblical
Greek amygdale derives from the same roots, and means “almond” or “almond
tree.” The primary mother goddess of the gnostic sacred serpent sects was called
Amygdalus—representing the almond tree, the feminine Tree of Life, the first
tree to flower in the spring: “[the almond tree] is the wakeful tree (Hebrew
shaqed), that is, the early blooming, the first to wake from the winter’s sleep,
sprang from the blood of the mother of the gods.”4 It is also the vulva-shaped
mandorla† or “magic doorway,” portal of the goddess. In ancient Sumerian, the
language of Inanna, who we will meet later in our story, the phrase mug-dalla
means “shining vulva gateway.”5 The name Magdalene at its origin means magic

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doorway of the Great Mother, the primordial goddess, the Tree and Source of
Life. It held the secrets of a primeval “cunt theology” that became encoded as
the “Mandorla of Mary.”
Even to this day, iconography of Mother Mary is often held within an almond
mandorla, a coded wink for those who know that there is a secret “Mary Mystery”
waiting to be revealed. This symbolism of the Magdala encompasses both the
sacred doorway of the woman’s womb, and the mystical womb of consciousness
sought out by all the great alchemists, shamans, and initiates. This divine gateway
was also symbolized by the rose; and those who followed the Magdalene Mysteries
were known as initiates of the Rose Line.
This mandorla, or Mystic Rose, also suggests the amygdala region of the brain,
the intuitive, feminine “feeling” center in all human beings, which is a portal to
the cerebellar cosmic mother consciousness, and can initiate profound awakenings.
Using this lunar wisdom, priestesses initiated others into the intuitive, visionary,
divine love of the Christ Mysteries.

*Yoni is a Sanskrit word for vulva, vagina, and womb—the sacred passageway—used throughout the
book to convey the sacred dimensions of these physical gateways.
†
Mandorla is the almond-shaped “glory” or aureola frame that symbolizes the womb and vulva. It
is derived from the vesica piscis sacred geometry, formed by the intersection of two circles with the
same radius.

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 Visions of the Rose   5

The Grail Witch

Across heretical and alchemical art Magdalene is depicted bearing her magical ala-
bastron (the holy vessel of anointing oil), held suggestively open like the mandorla
of her sacred womb, to bestow the initiatory blessings of her anointing elixirs. The
priestess tradition of the alabaster jar, flowing with its sacred ungeunts and perfumes,
was passed down to Mary Magdalene through the lineages of the Sumerian love
goddess Inanna, as well as the Egyptian Bast—cat goddess of sacred sexuality, and
the erotic soul of Isis—who both used the talismanic alabastron in their ritual craft.
Magdalene is imbued with the fragrance of these, and even more ancient priestess
lineages dating back in a continuous tradition to the female shamans of prehistory.
The earliest shamans in the archaeo-anthropologic record were shamankas;
they were women. They were adorned in the color red, with mineral paints. Their
figures were carved on cave walls with hands raised up in the orans and ka prayer
positions of magico-spiritual invocation. Their vulvas featured prominently in
paleolithic art, with V and M vulvic symbols engraved on stone and bone, later
called “witch marks” in medieval times. Their womb-vulvas were considered the

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Greek omega womb symbol, Samarran dancing womb shaman with

ca. 600 BCE “omega birthing hips,” ca. 5000 BCE

Phoenician / Canaanite The modern-day combined M / omega symbol

“womb on altar” scarab stamp seal, of Mary, at St. Marie Cathedral of Sheffield
ca. 1000 BCE and the Mary Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey

The omega womb / priestess symbol as it has evolved over time, eventually
merging with the Christian M symbol of Mary.

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 6  Introduction

greatest source of their mana, their spirit power. Over time, this ancient lineage of
womb shamans would gradually shapeshift into priestesses of Mary, worshippers
of the goddess, woven into the garland of her red thread of sexual and menstrual
womb wisdom.
Mary is a title that means “sea, beloved or awakened,” and the first symbolic
art created by humans was an M, along with wavy waterlines, engraved on a sea
shell on the islands of Indonesia 500,000 years ago, showing us the ancient spirit
of the Mermaids of Magdalene.6 The mysterious letter M is a doorway of primeval
sea magic, our original mother matrix.

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Medieval Magdalene engraving, drawing emphasis to her sacred womb.

Hendrick Goltzius, 1585.

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 Visions of the Rose   7

Magic of the Left-Hand Path

A crown of olive over her white veil,
A woman appeared to me; beneath her green
Mantle she wore a robe of flaming red . . .
I turned round to the left with the blind trust
Of a small child who races toward his mother
Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy,
Purgatorio, canto 30

A key to our journey into the Magdalene Mysteries is to understand the true left-
hand path of the goddess; and that Mary Magdalene, in her priestess robes of
red and green (see color plates), was the lineage holder for this sacred tradition.
Red was the symbolic color of a womb priestess, a witch-shaman of the feminine.
Green was the color of the wild fertility of the forest and the Earth Mother’s body.
These alchemical “color codes” reveal Mary Magdalene as an elemental witch, sex-
ual maga, and herbal adept in the left-hand medicine path of Sophia.
The left-hand path is the feminine mysteries. Left equals feminine, moon,
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lunar, yin, night. Right equals masculine, sun, solar, yang, day. Together they form
the perfect balance of the universe. Achieving this alchemical union is the heart
of the Magdalene Mysteries.
This can also be described as the ascending Christ (of the right hand) and the
descending Christ (of the left hand), the Feminine Christ, embodied in Magdalene.
Jesus descended through the path of the left-hand Feminine Christ for resurrec-
tion. We have to first descend before we can ascend. Darkness comes before the
light. Then, in the Christ Mysteries the two become one, and heaven and earth
entwine.
Records reveal that Jesus was an adept of these mysteries. According to a gnos-
tic text found at Nag Hammadi: “The Lord . . . did everything in a mystery, a
baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber.”
(Gospel of Philip 67:27–30)
Of all these rites, the chrism (anointing) is one of the most important, as
it creates the Christ: “The chrism is superior to baptism . . . He who has been
anointed possesses everything” (Gospel of Philip 74:12–20). And if Jesus is the
Christ, then Magdalene is the chrism that makes him so. She is the source of
Christ, she is the light-force that brings illumination. She is the annointer, the
illuminatrix, the redemptrix, the Feminine Christ of our supernal origins, “of

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 8  Introduction

the left.” In her chrism, her elixirs of love, comes a light that dispels our fallen
consciousness.
This is the ancient left-hand path of the Feminine Christ—rebirth through the
Mother, and resurrection through the Bride. One gives birth to the man, and one
to the “son of god/dess”—a term for an alchemist, magician, and awakened avatar.
The alchemical means for this transfiguration is the left-hand path—to lunarize
our soul and subtle body with the magical essence of the feminine sinistrum. Carl
Jung says that in gnostic writings, Sophia Prounikos—Sophia the Whore—is
known as Sinistra, the left.7 The twentieth-century gnostic scholar and translator
G. R. S. Mead, affirms the Mother is “She of the Left Hand,” the Sinistra.8
Sinister literally means “left”—and refers to the lunar feminine Womb
Mysteries.
Sinister is beautiful, luscious, dark, and mysterious—rich with fertility and
possibility. It revolves with the “round dance” of the moon in dark-light rites. By
reclaiming the Moon Mysteries and the Womb of Christos, we remember the orig-
inal primordial wisdom teachings.
As the left hand and right hand of god/dess merge, the heart-womb enters an

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infinity sigil of matrimony, catalyzing an etheric supernova of primordial Shakti
that emits out as dazzling spiritual radiance, known as tiphareth in Kabbalah, the
beauty of the descent of God. This is the Magdalene door, the ancient daleth,
where the virgin mother and sexual initiatrix merge into wholeness. Never truly
separate or dual, these qualities come from the mysterious circle of the Divine
Mother, and are united within her divine pleroma,* in the sacred flow of life.
Mary Magdalene, as a sacred priestess of the Womb Rites, knew how to
embody the wisdom of light and dark (known as the “dark bright” or “black light”)
and how to dissolve, cleanse, and resurrect the soul. Over the past two thousand
years many initiates—with various levels of understanding and integrity—knew
of the left-hand path of Christ, led by the figurehead of Mary Magdalene and the
lineage of womb shamans she hailed from.
By revealing the lost word of the Magdalene Mysteries, we allow MM and
the priestesses of Mary to once more take their seat in the wisdom circle of the
Ancient Mothers, who hold a womb web of mitochondrial DNA linking us back
to the Garden of Eden of human consciousness, and hold the keys to our returning
home.

*A gnostic term meaning “the fullness”—the infinite container of the heavens or divinity.

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 Visions of the Rose   9

This original matrilineal bloodline is more accurately described as the men-

strual bloodline—as it is only the womb blood that can grow and nurture a baby,
and each mother down the ages is created from the menstrual blood of the mother
who came before her. This generates an unbroken magical “red thread” of pri-
mordial wisdom; the Holy Sophia. Messianic blood is matrilineal womb blood.
A Eucharist of Sophianic blood links communities in an unbroken red thread
to the Holy Family, and beyond to the Ancient Mothers: “Thy mother is like a
vine in thy blood, planted by the waters; she was fruitful and full of branches”
(Ezekiel 19:10).

Magic Doorway of Love

I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single
diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms,
just as in Heaven there are many mansions.
Saint Teresa of Avila

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Mary Magdalene herself has become a “mansion of possibility” for the
rebirth of the world soul and the remembrance of our sacred roots in the pri-
mal Motherworld of creation. Ultimately, through communion with Mary
Magdalene, we connect to a magic door within ourselves where we activate, ini-
tiate, and awaken our own Magdalene essence. With this we step through a gate-
way of the feminine Holy Spirit—called Sophia, Tara, Isis, Yemoja,* Kali, Kwan
Yin, Changing Woman, Brighid—or many other names of the Divine Mother
throughout time.
This creative Spirit lives at the foundation of our universe, as the eternal
Birthing Womb of God, and embraces both the male and female, every spec-
trum in between, and all expressions of life. Magdalene is a title, meaning the
“Initiator,” and Christ is a title for the Anointed One. We all have the potential to
be a Magdalene and a Christ, as this story is archetypal. Through the love story
of one woman, we discover a universal story for humanity. We can all invoke and
embody this essence of love, and deep heart-womb wisdom.
In this book, we sometimes speak of Mary Magdalene in her personal incar-
nation as a woman from an order of priestesses that she trained within and also
initiated others into. Other times we refer to her essence as an embodiment of

*The Yoruban goddess Yemoja is also known as Yemaya or Yemanja in the Americas.

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 10  Introduction

Sophia, the mystical Aeon who emanated from the galactic womb to become the
World Mother. Allow yourself to weave between the personal and the eternal to
receive inspiration.
This book is our vision birthed from the Magdalene path that has called us,
and the research we have undertaken. It is by no means the only story, nor should
it be. Allow it to be a space to birth your own vision of the Magdalene Mysteries,
from your unique experience and perspective, weaving in your own knowings of
the path.
This work is created as a mystical mansion with many chambers and rooms. It
is not linear, reasonable, or logical. Its aim is to mystify, evoke, and provoke. Please
explore any chamber of this book as you feel called, in whatever order you choose.
You do not have to take a linear path through its many rooms. Follow your own
way toward the Rose.
Together, we light a candle and begin a pilgrimage into the spiral or labyrinth
path—we send out our prayers to bring forth the perfect ensouled questions, not the
perfect answers. At the center of this spiral path, you will find wisdom we have not
written but that has lain dormant, coiled as a serpent, in the womb of your soul.

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Always remember: you are an incredibly important thread in this visionary
weaving.
The book is divided into three portals to help you navigate this pilgrimage.
The first portal is called the “Magdalene Chronicles,” and is a journey into her-
story to discover MM’s lost priestess lineage, her lifetime, and her legacy, which is
rich in historical detail and background.
The second portal explores how the secrets of this lost lineage of the Magdalene
Mysteries were encoded in art and symbol by the medieval alchemists in one of the
greatest paintings of all time—the Ghent Altarpiece—a living manuscript that you
can see in color plates 15 and 16 and view online in detail (see the Closer to Van
Eyck website).
The third and last portal is the “Magdalene Vision Quest,” where personal sto-
ries and oracles are included alongside a comprehensive initiatory map and set of rit-
uals called the Magdalene Mandala, where you can undertake your own journey into
these mysteries. These rituals are designed to evoke the living path of the Magdalene
Mysteries within you. They can be practiced alone in your own home, with your
beloved, or in your circles, connecting you directly to the Holy Spirit. Feel free to
weave with them in your own practice in whatever way feels good. Everyone, no mat-
ter what their gender identification, is held within the red thread of the Magdalene
and the Ancient Mothers, and everyone has a spiritual womb within.

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 Visions of the Rose   11

This visioning focuses mainly on the male-female sacred union of Mary

Magdalene and Jesus, and the specific teachings and pathway of practice birthed
from this. But the sacred union of all sexual orientations and love-pod configura-
tions are holy and bring unique wisdom. The alchemical union of the cosmic yin
and yang at the heart of the journey is within everyone.
Mary Magdalene is calling out to us, like a divine torchbearer, emerging from
a dark tunnel of almost two thousand years of fundamentalist religion, to light up
The Way again.
This is an audacious soul retrieval for the world, a renewal of our cosmic des-
tiny. With her holy anointing cup, she pours out the secrets of the Holy Grail.
As prophesized, the Feminine Christ awakens.
The Rose Path unfolds its mystic petals.
The Order of the Magdalene returns.
Shall we unlock the Magic Doorway?
It is time.

For Review Only

MagMys.indd 11 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 OUR LOVE LETTER

ROSE PILGRIMS

Meeting Mary Magdalene

By Seren Bertrand

For Review Only

AM I LOOKING FOR MARY MAGDALENE, or is she searching for me?
My soul senses that it is the latter. For how could I search for this icon, this
“Saint,” this presence, this magical doorway, when I do not truly know who or
what she is?
Yet there is the uncanny feeling that she knows exactly who I am. And more
than that—who I am meant to become. This Magdalene essence knows the parts
of me that are lost and need to be rediscovered, that I unknowingly have so veiled
that I do not even know to search for them. So together we embark on this quest,
this inner journey to reassemble the parts of my feminine soul, like a cosmic jigsaw
of redemption. The great unveiling of the lost feminine.
For me, Mary Magdalene is an instinctive force as well as spiritual essence. The
more I read about her with my logical mind, the less tangible she becomes. Yet, as
twilight falls, a sudden sweep of thick, red velvet cape appears to the left of my
eye, moving quickly out of sight, around a corner, and I must follow and find her
there in the darkness.
In this magic world of MM, her true gospel is written on soft skin and in
the stars. Her parables are shared by lover’s eyes, and in the in-between spaces of
silence. Her true gospel breathes down the back of my neck, hot, subtle, mysteri-
ous, and laughing.

12

MagMys.indd 12 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Rose Pilgrims   13

I cannot find her within scrolls and scholar’s arguments, remote and historical,
or in dualistic theologies of bodily hatred, held in the inquisitorial records of her
legacy. She does not sing to me of crucifixions, or of Catholic, Gnostic or Cathar
priesthoods.
Instead, I find her seated by the fire in the desert, laughing, her body warm
against that of her lover, as they melt into the mystery of the two flesh becoming
one. Or I meet her in a wild old woodland at the foot of the Pyrenees, with the
Cathar priestesses of the Holy Spirit, preparing herbs, as red moon blood seeps
into wild green moss.
In moments, I see her like a rare crystal jewel, shining light across all dimen-
sions, sitting on a golden throne at the very heart of the earth, illuminating the
soul of matter. I glimpse beyond the doorway of life, into the great mystery of the
Womb of God.
Yet I must also be in this body, in this life, in this world.
She comes to meet me here.
I must also find her in the small details of my own childhood, my own strug-
gles, my own heartbreaks. When I am weeping, I discover her weeping right by

For Review Only

my side.
When I am shining, celebrating, loving, ecstatic, she is born again within me.
Her life, like my life, is full of contradictions and it is important to include it
all.
So I search for her, as she is searching for me—as she is searching for all of us.

Birthing a New Way

Although I was baptized into the Christian Church, and my grandfather consid-
ered the priesthood, the nature of my birth meant I never felt an affinity with
mainstream religion. When my mother labored in agony, surrounded by “sisters of
mercy,” who had never known motherhood, the nuns told her that her pain was
God-mandated, and that women were destined to toil in pain to create life. My
heartbeat stopped at those cursed words, and I was torn from my mother’s body
by surgical forceps.
My mother was a quietly stubborn rebel, and she subtly and determinedly set
about deauthorizing the religion she inherited from her father, and living by the
feminine folklore of her mother, and her mother’s mother, that celebrated Life’s
holy power. She sprinkled my childhood with the magic of the dreamtime, edu-
cating me with percolations, questions, and spiritual explorations such as “where

MagMys.indd 13 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 14   Our Love Letter

is the edge of the universe”—and what then lives beyond this infinity? She asked
me to imagine our world as a dream within a dream, and our universe as a liv-
ing, breathing, dreaming being (a dreaming-womb) who holds and births other
infinite dreaming universes. Often we would have to stop our visioning and make
a cup of tea, in order to reassemble our atoms, which were in danger of floating
away into that vast, unknowable, dark ocean of infinity; a witches cauldron of
wild quantum soup.
One day a local vicar paid a visit to our house to meet my family. A decision
he would soon regret. On a dark, foreboding, rainy Yorkshire night, my mother
barred his entrance, looming over him as he stood on the doorstep, making him
account for the death of thousands of wise women during the Inquisition. The
vicar looked embarrassed and flustered, standing in the rain, politely apologizing
for his religion. After ten minutes she relented and let him in for the supreme
unction of a cup of tea.
Like a chastised schoolboy, rather than give his intended religious proselytiz-
ing, he listened politely to my mother’s folk wisdom. Whilst pouring the sacra-
mental tea, she let him know that hell was what people (and religions) did to each

For Review Only

other through hate—and that heaven was the beauty of love and the wisdom of
nature.
So, I did not grow up in a religious household, and I rarely got to read much
Christian scripture, or hear the stories of this mysterious “sinner” and saint, Mary
Magdalene. Yet her Feminine Christ path, full of deep mystery, called me like
a siren.

Visions of Sainte Marie

My first emissary of Mary was the land herself, with its witchy feminine ways. The
wild moors and peaks of Yorkshire wore their conversion to Christianity lightly,
carrying on its ancient pagan goddess-worshipping rituals and ceremonies as usual,
with past vicars leading labryinth dances, and right up to the modern day where
iPhones capture the May Queen in all her glory. The new religion of Jesus was
neatly tucked, like a suckling babe, into the old religious traditions dating back at
least three thousand years, with sermons etched in the stones.
Within the craggy contours of Yorkshire and the nearby Pennine Way, ruined
castles, darkened caves, fallen abbeys, and old churches, all flowed with the same
essence, forming a magical landscape. I loved visiting churches, just like I loved
visiting castles; in fact, I liked churches more. Often set upon old pagan power

MagMys.indd 14 11/11/19 11:59 AM

 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
most thoughtful of sportsmen. If they were not, a book such as I am
dealing with could not possibly have secured a publisher. Continuing
his argument on this subject he says:

... and yet how often it has taken three, four, and even five
strokes to cover those hundred yards! It would be laughable
were it not so humiliating—in fact, the impudent spectator does
laugh until he tries it himself; then, ah! then he, too, gets a
glimpse into that mystery of mysteries—the human mind—which
at one and the same time wills to do a thing and fails to do it,
which knows precisely and could repeat by rote the exact
means by which it is to be accomplished, yet is impotent to put
them in force. And the means are so simple. So insanely simple.

To which I say, "And the means are indeed so simple, so sanely

simple." It is writers who do not understand the game at all who
make them insanely complex. As a definite illustration of what I
mean let me ask the man who writes that the golfer who desires to
drive perfectly "could repeat by rote the exact means by which it is
to be accomplished" where, in any book by one of the greatest
golfers, or in his own book, the golfer is definitely instructed that his
weight must not at any time be on his right leg. In fact the author
himself, in common with everybody who has ever written a golf
book, deliberately misinforms the golfer in this fundamental
principle.
How, then, can a man who claims to be possessed of an analytical
mind say that the ordinary golfer could repeat by rote the exact
means by which anything is to be accomplished when it is now a
matter of notoriety that practically the whole of the published
teaching of golf is fundamentally unsound?
Speaking of the golfer's difficulties in the drive the author says, "The
secret of this extraordinary and baffling conflict of mind and matter
is a problem beyond the reach of physiology and psychology
combined." Yes, there is no doubt that it is; but it is a matter which
is well within the reach of the most elementary mechanics and
common sense.
It will probably seem that I am dealing with this attempt to explain
the mystery of golf very severely, but I do not feel that I am treating
the matter too strictly. Golf is enveloped and encompassed round
about with a wordy mass of verbiage. All kinds of men and some
women, who have no clearly defined or scientific ideas, have
presumed to put before the unfortunate golfer directions for playing
the game which have landed him in a greater maze of bewilderment
than exists in any other game which I know. It is obvious that if a
man is both "a duffer" and a slow thinker it will be unsafe for him,
until he has improved both his game and his mental processes, to
attempt to explain the higher science of golf for anyone. It should be
sufficient for him to study the mechanical processes whereby he may
improve his own game until at least he has been able to take himself
out of the class which he characterises himself as the duffers. To
explain golf scientifically in the face of the mass of false doctrine
which encumbers it, it is necessary that one should be, if not at least
a quick thinker, an exact thinker, and that one should know the
game to the core.
It seems to me that there is possibly a clue to the remarkable
statements which we get in this book in the following quotation,
which I take from the chapter on "Attention":

When I first rode a bicycle, if four or five obstacles suddenly

presented themselves, these to the right, those to the left, I
found I could not transfer my attention from one to the other
sufficiently quickly to give the muscles the requisite orders—and
I came a cropper ... and so with the golf stroke.

It seems to me that here we have the key of the author's difficulty.

His mind was fixed on the obstacles—some to the right and some to
the left. In similar circumstances most budding cyclists, and I have
taught many, confine their attention to the clear path right ahead,
and consequently the obstacles "these to the right, those to the left"
do not trouble them. This, psychologically speaking, is a curious
confession of the power of outside influences to affect the main
issue. It seems to me that right through the consideration of this
subject the author, like many other golfers, has been devoting his
mind far too much to the things which he imagines about golf,
instead of to the things which are, and they are the things which
matter. No wonder, then, that he has "come a cropper."
There is a chapter called "The One Thing Necessary," which starts as
follows: "But, since I stated that my own belief is that only one thing
can be 'attended' to at a time, you will probably be inclined to ask
me what is the most important thing? what precisely ought we to
attend to at the moment of impact of club with ball? Well, if you ask
me, I say the image of the ball." This is really an astonishing
statement. "At the moment of impact of club with ball" the image of
the ball does not really matter in the slightest degree. As I shall
show later on, the eye has fulfilled its functions long before the
impact takes place. Also, of course, to the non-analytical mind it will
be perfectly obvious that the image of the ball could be just as well
preserved if the golfer had lifted his head three to six inches, but his
stroke would have been irretrievably ruined.
Now, as a matter of fact, by the time the club has arrived at the ball
it is altogether too late to attend to anything. All the attention has
already been devoted to the stroke, and it has been made or
marred. As we have clearly seen from what James Braid says about
the stroke the moment of impact is the time when the attention and
the tension is released, so it will obviously be of no service to us to
endeavour forcibly to impress upon our minds in any way the image
of the ball. If there is any one thing to think of at the moment of
impact, the outstanding point of importance must be that the eyes
should be in exactly the same place and position as they were at the
moment of address.
Here is a most remarkable sentence:—
 It is a pity that so many literary elucidators and explicators of
the game devote so many pages to the subsidiary
circumstances.... I wonder if they would pardon me if I said
that, as a matter of simple fact, if one attended to the game
(with all that that means), almost one could stand and strike as
one chose, and almost with any kind of club.

There is a large amount of truth in this; but it comes most peculiarly

from the author of this book, for of all the literary obfuscators whom
I have ever come across I have never met his equal in attention to
the "subsidiary circumstances" and neglect of the real game. Much
time is wasted in an analysis of the nature of attention. Now,
attention, psychologically, is somewhat difficult to define from the
golfing point of view, but as a matter of simple and practical golf
there is no difficulty whatever in explaining it. Attention in golf is
merely habit acquired by practice and by starting golf in a proper
and scientific manner. I shall have to deal with that more fully in my
next chapter, so I shall not go into the matter here. Suffice it to say
that lifting the eye at golf is no more a lack of attention than is lifting
the little finger in the club-house. It is merely a vice in each case—a
bad habit, born probably of the fact that in neither case did the man
learn the rudiments of the game thoroughly.
We are told that "the arms do not judge distance (save when we are
actually touching something), nor does the body, nor does the head.
The judging is done by the eyes"; but we must not forget that the
arms accurately measure the distance.
 CHAPTER III
PUTTING
The great mystery to me, not about golf, but about the work of the
greatest golfers, is the attitude which they all adopt with regard to
putting. Now, putting may quite properly be said to be the
foundation of golf. It really is the first thing which should be taught,
but, as a matter of fact, it is generally left until the last. Practically all
instructors start the player with the drive. It is beyond question that
the drive is the most complex stroke in golf, and it is equally beyond
question that the put is the simplest. There can be no shadow of
doubt whatever that the only scientific method of instructing a
person in the art of playing golf is one which is diametrically
opposed to that adopted by practically all the leading players of the
world. Instead of starting the beginner at the tee and taking him
through his clubs in rotation to the putting-green, the proper order
for sound tuition would be to start him six inches from the hole and
to back him through his clubs to the tee.
This is so absolutely beyond argument that I need not labour the
point here, except in so far as with it is bound up the important
question of attention—that is, of riveting one's eye and one's mind
on the ball for the whole period employed in making the stroke. As I
said in the preceding chapter, attention is habit. Attention includes
the habit of keeping the eye on the ball and the head still until the
stroke has been played. The best way of inculcating the vices of
lifting the head and the eye during the stroke is to teach the player
the drive first. It stands to reason that if a player is started, say, with
a six-inch put, that he has at the moment of making his stroke both
the ball and the hole well within the focus of his eyes, so that it is
absolutely unnecessary for him to lift his eye in order to follow the
ball. It therefore follows that he is not tempted to lift his eye.
Now, no player should be allowed to go more than two or three feet
from the hole until he has learned to hole out puts at that distance
with accuracy and confidence. By the time he is allowed to leave the
putting-green, he will have acquired the habit of attention.
It will be clearly seen that, starting now from the edge of the green
with his chip shot, he is much more certain of striking the ball and
getting it away than he would be were he put on to the more
uncertain stroke in the drive; so by a gradual process of education
the player would come in time to the drive, and by the time he
arrives at the most complicated stroke in the game—the stroke
wherein is the smallest margin of error—he has cultivated the habit
of attention, which includes keeping one's head still.
Of course, this is a counsel of perfection which one does not expect
to find carried out, although a similar course is followed by all good
teachers in every trade, profession, science, or game, but as I have
said before, in golf there is a tremendous amount of false teaching
which is generally followed. It is, however, a certainty that any
beginner who has the patience, perseverance, and moral courage to
educate himself on these lines, will find golf much easier to play
than it would be if he had started, as nearly everybody wants to
start, with "the swing." It is bad enough that putting should be
relegated to the position it is, but the attitude of the great writers, or
perhaps I should say the great golfers who have written books about
golf, aggravates the offence, and forms what is to me the greatest
mystery in connection with golf literature.
I shall give here what Braid, Vardon, and Taylor have to say about
putting. Let me take Vardon first. At page 143 of The Complete
Golfer he says:

For the proper playing of the other strokes in golf, I have told
my readers to the best of my ability how they should stand and
 where they should put their feet. But except for the playing of
particular strokes, which come within the category of those
called "fancy," I have no similar instruction to offer in the matter
of putting. There is no rule and there is no best way.
The fact is that there is more individuality in putting than in any
other department of golf, and it is absolutely imperative that this
individuality should be allowed to have its way.

And now comes a very wonderful statement:

I believe seriously that every man has had a particular kind of

putting method awarded to him by Nature, and when he putts
exactly in this way he will do well, and when he departs from
his natural system he will miss the long ones and the short ones
too. First of all, he has to find out this particular method which
Nature has assigned for his use.

Again on page 144 we read that when a player is off his putting

... it is all because he is just that inch or two removed from the
stance which Nature allotted to him for putting purposes, but he
does not know that, and consequently everything in the world
except the true cause is blamed for the extraordinary things he
does.

Let us now repeat what James Braid has to say on the important
matter of putting. On page 119 of How to Play Golf he says:

It happens, unfortunately, that concerning one department of

the game that will cause the golfer some anxiety from time to
time, and often more when he is experienced than when he is
not, neither I nor any other player can offer any words of
instruction such as, if closely acted upon, would give the same
successful results as the advice tendered under other heads
ought to do. This is in regard to putting.
Further on we are informed that "really great putters are probably
born and not made."
So far we must admit that this is extremely discouraging, but there
is worse to follow.
Let us now see what Taylor has to say about putting. At page 83 in
his book, Taylor on Golf, and in the chapter, "Hints on Learning the
Game," he says:

Coming back to the subject of actual instruction. After a fair

amount of proficiency has been acquired in the use of the cleek,
iron, and mashie, we have the difficulty of the putting to
surmount. And here I may say at once it is an absolute
impossibility to teach a man how to putt.
Even many of the leading professionals are weak in this
department of the game. Do you think they would not improve
themselves in this particular stroke were such a thing within the
range of possibility? Certainly they would. The fact is that in
putting, more than in aught else, a very special aptitude is
necessary. A good eye and a faculty for gauging distances
correctly is a great help, indeed, quite a necessity, as also is
judgment with regard to the requisite power to put behind the
ball. Unfortunately, these are things that cannot be taught, they
must come naturally, or not at all.
All that is possible for the instructor to do is to discover what
kind of a putting style his pupil is possessed of, offer him useful
hints, and his ultimate measure of success is then solely in his
own hands.
It is easy to tell a pupil how he must needs hold his clubs in
driving or playing an iron shot, but in putting there is hardly
such a necessity. The diversity of styles accounts for this, and in
this particular kind of stroke a man must be content to rely
upon his own adaptability alone.
Now in the same book on page 240, in the chapter on "The Art of
Putting," we read:

The drive may be taught, the pupil may be instructed in the use
of the cleek, the iron, or the brassie, but in putting he must rely
upon his own powers of reducing the game to an actual science.
The other strokes are of a more or less mechanical character;
they may be explained and demonstrated, but with the ball but
a few feet distant from the hole there are many other things to
be considered, and hints are the only things that can be offered.
The pupil may be advised over the holding and grip of the
putter, but as far as the success of the shot is concerned it
remains in his own hands.

In passing, I may remark that it seems to me that in this latter

respect the put is not vastly different from any other stroke in golf,
or indeed, for the matter of that, in any other game.
Continuing, Taylor says:

Putting, in short, is so different to any other branch of the game

that the good putter may be said to be born, not made.
That this is really the case is proved by the fact that many of
the leading players of the day, professionals and amateurs alike,
are very frequently weaker when playing with the putter than
when performing with any other of their clubs. Speaking solely
of professionals, is it at all probable that this would be so were
they capable of improving themselves in this particular
department? Certainly not.

Now it will be admitted that this is a very gloomy outlook for him
who desires to learn how to put. He is thrown entirely on his own
resources. I must quote Taylor once again with regard to putting. He
says:
 And yet it is none the less true that to putt perfectly should be
the acme of one's ambition. Putting is the most important factor
of success, for it happens very frequently that a man may meet
a stronger driver, or a better performer with the iron clubs, and
yet wrest the leadership from him when near the hole.

There can be no doubt whatever of the truth of what Taylor says in

this last paragraph—"Putting is the most important factor of
success"; yet we are confronted with the amazing statement made
by the three greatest masters of the game, men who between them
have accounted for fourteen open championships, men whose living
depends upon playing golf and teaching it, that "the most important
factor of success" cannot be taught. There is no possible doubt
about their ideas on this subject. They deliberately tell the
unfortunate golfer, or would-be golfer, that good putters are born
and not made, that putting cannot be taught, and that each person
must be left to work out his own salvation.
It is admitted that putting is practically half the game. It has been
well illustrated in the following way:—Seventy-two strokes is a good
score for almost any course. The man who gets down in two every
time is not a bad putter. This allows him thirty-six strokes on the
green, which is exactly one-half of his score. Now what does this
statement which is made by Braid, Vardon, and Taylor amount to? It
is an assertion by them that they are unable to teach half of the
game of golf, and that the most important half, for, as we have seen,
Taylor says that it is "the most important factor of success." Now
surely there is something wrong here. As a matter of fact it is the
most absolute nonsense which it is possible to imagine. Putters are
not born. They are made and shaped and polished to just as great
an extent as any metal putter that ever was forged. Putting is the
simplest and easiest thing in golf to learn and to teach, and it is
positively wrong for men of the eminence in their profession which
these players enjoy to append their names to statements which
cannot but have a deleterious effect on the game generally, and
particularly on the play of those who are affected by reading such
absolutely false doctrine.
There are certain fundamental principles in connection with putting
which cannot be disregarded. It is quite wrong to say that the first
thing to consider is some particular idiosyncrasy which a man may
have picked up by chance. The idea of Nature having troubled
herself to allot any particular man or men, or, for the matter of that,
women or children, any particular styles for putting is too ridiculous
to require any comment. Needless to say, very many people have
peculiarities which they exhibit in putting, as well as in other
matters, but in many cases it is the duty of the capable instructor
not to attempt to add the scientific principles of putting to a totally
wrong and ugly foundation. The first duty of one who knows the
game and how to teach it is to implant in the mind of his pupil the
correct mechanical methods of obtaining the result desired. If, after
he has done this, it be found that his natural bent or idiosyncrasy fits
in with the proper mechanical production of the stroke, there is no
harm in allowing him to retain his natural style; but if, for the sake of
argument, it should be found that his natural method is unsuitable
for the true production of the stroke, there is only one thing to do,
which is to cut out his natural method, and make him put on the
lines most generally adopted.
Nor is this difficult to do, for it stands to reason that anyone who is a
beginner at golf has not already cultivated a style of his own.
The statements of these three great golfers are absolutely without
foundation—in fact, they are indeed so far from the truth that I have
no hesitation whatever in saying that in at least ninety per cent of
the cases which come before a professional for tuition, if the subject
is properly dealt with by an intelligent teacher, putting is, without
any shadow of doubt, the easiest portion of golf to teach and to
learn. In the face of the mischievous statements which have been so
widely circulated in connection with the difficulty of learning the art
of putting, one cannot possibly be too emphatic in stating the truth.
In doing this, let it be understood that I am not stating any theory or
publishing any idea which I am not prepared fully to demonstrate by
practical teaching. It is a curious thing, but one to which I do not
wholly object, that those who read my books seem to consider that
they have a personal claim on my services as well, and it is no
uncommon thing for me to receive visits from men who are in
trouble about their putting, their drive, or their approach, and I have
not, as a rule, any very great trouble in locating the seat of the
difficulty.
The pernicious influence of such teaching as that which I have just
quoted repeatedly comes before me. I know men who seem to
consider that the chief art of putting in golf is bound up in another
art, namely, the art of the contortionist, whereas, of course, nothing
could be further from the truth. Putting, as I shall show later on, is
an extremely simple operation. In fact its simplicity is so pronounced
that little children, almost without instruction, do it remarkably well,
because they do it naturally. It is only when people come to the
game possibly rather late in life, and perhaps with habits acquired
from other games, and in addition to this are told that they must
evolve their own particular style, that we find the difficulty, for the
style which is evolved is, in the vast majority of cases, no style at all,
and the stroke is played unnaturally.
That is what I have to say with regard to the "difficulty" of putting. I
shall, later on, deal with the principles involved in putting. It will, in
the meantime, be sufficient for me to consider and criticise these
statements generally. If this were my own uncorroborated opinion, it
is possible that the definite statements of three men like Braid,
Taylor, and Vardon might outweigh what I have said, although I do
not believe that even in that case they would; for what I have
quoted is such obvious nonsense that it would indeed be to me a
mystery if any golfer possessed of ordinary common sense could
accept any view of the matter other than that which I put forward.
However, when dealing with names like these, it is worth while to
reinforce oneself. Let us see what James Braid has to say about the
matter in Advanced Golf. At page 144, chapter x., dealing with
"Putting Strokes," Braid says: "Thus practically any man has it in his
power to become a reasonably good putter, and to effect a
considerable improvement in his game as the result." Here is the
message of hope to the putter. It will be remembered that Taylor
states that the good putter may be said to be born, not made, and
that Braid practically said the same thing. This, of course, is
nonsense, and if any refutation were necessary, James Braid himself
is the refutation. The first time I saw Braid putting, he was trying a
Vaile putter for me at Walton-on-Heath. He came down on the ball
before he had come to the bottom of his swing, and finished on the
green quite two inches in front of the spot where the ball had been.
Before I had reflected in the slightest degree, I came out quite
naturally with the question, "Do you always put like that?" "Yes,"
said Braid in his slow, quiet way, "and it is the best way." By this
time I had remembered who Braid was, and I did not pursue the
subject any further, but I thought a good deal. I thought that Braid
would, in due course, find out that it was not the best way, and I
fully understood why he was such a bad putter.
Since then Braid has found out that his method was wrong. He has
altered it, and now plays his puts in the only proper way, which I
shall refer to later on. As everybody knows, Braid is now a very fine
putter—but he was not born so. If ever there was an illustration of a
fine putter made out of a bad putter, James Braid is the outstanding
example, and James Braid is the answer to Taylor's question as to
whether a professional can improve his putting or not. Any
professional whose putting is bad can improve it by using his brains,
because when a professional puts badly it is rarely a question of his
hands, his eye, or his wrist being wrong. The seat of the deficiency
is much deeper than that.
Let us now see what James Braid has to say about putting. At page
146 of Advanced Golf he practically eats his own words. This is what
he says:
 Of course, they say that good putters are born and not made,
and it is certainly true that some of the finest putters we know
seem to come by their wonderful skill as a gift, and nowadays
constantly putt with an ease and a confidence that suggest
some kind of inspiration. But it is also the fact that a man who
was not a born putter, and whose putting all through his golfing
youth was of the most moderate quality, may by study and
practice make himself a putter who need fear nobody on any
putting green. I may suggest that I have proved this in my own
case. Until comparatively recently there is no doubt that I was
really a poor putter. Long after I was a scratch player I lost
more matches through bad putting than anything else. I
realised that putting was the thing that stood in the way of
further improvement, and I did my best to improve it, so that
to-day my critics are kind enough to say that there is not very
much wanting in my play on the putting green, while I know
that it was an important factor in gaining for me my recent
championship.
So I may be allowed the privilege of indicating the path along
which improvement in this department of the game may best be
effected; and what I have to say at the beginning is, that
putting is essentially a thing for the closest mathematical and
other reckoning. It is a game of calculations pure and simple, a
matter for the most careful analysis and thought.

Now here at least we have common sense with regard to putting.

Braid holds himself out as an example of the bad putter turned into
the good putter. He does not, it is true, tell us why he was a bad
putter and how he changed his bad methods to his present excellent
method, but I have already given the key to that. I shall, however,
deal with it more fully when I come to the question of the practice of
putting. Braid says on page 147 of Advanced Golf, still speaking of
putting, that "the mechanical part is comparatively simple." He
continues: "Putts most generally go wrong because the strength or
the line, or both, were misjudged, and they were so misjudged
because the different factors were not valued properly, and because
one or two of them were very likely overlooked altogether."
I think very few golfers will be inclined to dispute the opening
statement that "Putts most generally go wrong because the strength
or the line, or both, were misjudged." I may say that I never heard
of a put which went wrong for any other reason. If the strength and
the line are both right, one always has an excellent chance of ending
in the tin! Braid tells us again on page 148

... that what I call the mechanical part of putting—the hitting of

the ball—is simple and sure in comparison with the other
difficulties that are presented when a long putt has to be made;
yet it is hardly necessary to say to any experienced golfer that
there are absolutely thousands of players who fail in their
putting, not because of any lack of powers of calculation or a
good eye, steady hand, and delicacy of touch, but simply
because they have fallen into a careless way of performing this
mechanical part, and of almost feeling that any way of hitting
the ball will do so long as it is hit in the right direction and the
proper degree of strength is applied.

Again Braid says on page 149:

Absolutely everything depends on hitting the ball truly, and the

man who always does so has mastered one of the greatest
difficulties of the art of putting. A long putt can never be run
down except by a fluke when the ball has not been hit truly,
however exactly all the calculations of line and strength have
been made.

Now the point which I am making, and I hope making in such a

manner that no one will ever dare even to attempt to refute it, is the
fact that the mechanical operation of putting is one of extreme
simplicity, entirely devoid of mystery, and capable of acquirement by
persons even of a very low order of intelligence. I want to make it
plain beyond the possibility of doubt that putting is the foundation of
golf and that it can be very easily learned, provided always that the
instructor has a proper idea of the mechanics of the put. Generally
speaking, when one uses the word "mechanics" a golfer is afraid
that he is about to receive some abstruse lecture illustrated by
diagrams and mathematical formulæ, but it is not so. It is essential
to a thorough knowledge and enjoyment of the game of golf that
the golfer should understand the mechanics of putting.
James Braid says that it is a matter of mathematics and calculation,
and he is not far wrong; but the mechanics of the put are of such
extreme simplicity that no golfer or would-be golfer need be
discouraged because one refers to the elementary science which is
involved in the making of the perfect put. Rather let him be thankful
that he has James Braid's corroboration of the fact, which I have for
many years past tried to impress upon golfers, that the main thing
to strive at in connection with improving their game is a proper
understanding of the mechanical principles involved in producing the
strokes. Until the ordinary golfer has this he will not progress so
rapidly as he may desire.
I think that we may now consider that it is possible to teach people
how to put; so, having disposed of this fable, let us consider the
most important features of putting. I do not propose here to
illustrate the manner in which the stroke is to be played. I have done
that fully in Modern Golf and in other places. I am here concerning
myself mainly with the fundamental principles. When these are
properly grasped, and these I may say are practically all arm-chair
golf, any person of ordinary intelligence should be able to go on to a
putting green, and by carrying them out become quite a good putter.
Let us first consider the manner of propulsion of the ball. Provided,
for the sake of argument, that the putting-green were an enlarged
billiard table with a hole in the middle of it, and one were given a
penny to put into that hole from the edge of the table, how would
one endeavour to do it? There can be but little doubt one would try
to roll the coin into the hole. Now that is the way one must try to
put. The ball must be rolled up to the hole. At first sight this seems
an entirely superfluous direction. The reader may say: "In what
other way may puts be sent into the hole than by rolling?"
Practically, there is no other way. It was the idea that there was
another and a better way of holing puts than by rolling them into the
hole which made James Braid in the old days such a bad putter, for
in those days James Braid putted with what is commonly called
"drag." It is no uncommon thing to hear men who play a very fine
game of golf advise players to "slide" their long puts up. Put in
another way this simply means—advice to play a long put with what
is known as "drag."

PLATE III.
 HARRY VARDON

At the top of his swing, showing his weight

mainly on the left leg. This characteristic is
very marked in Vardon's play.
It is well known that at billiards one can hit very hard and direct
one's ball very well by playing with a large amount of drag, and
golfers have carried this notion on to the putting-green, but, it must
be admitted, in a very thoughtless manner. In billiards the ball is
very heavy in proportion to its size. It moves on a perfectly level and
practically smooth surface, the tip of the cue is soft and covered with
chalk, which gives a splendid grip on the ball, and the blow is
delivered very far below the centre of the ball's mass, and is
concentrated on a particular point. In golf it is impracticable in
putting to get very much below the centre of the ball. It can be
done, of course, with a club which is sufficiently lofted, but the
moment this is done there is a tendency to make the ball leave the
green, which is not calculated to make for accuracy. Moreover, be it
remembered that the contact here is between two substances which
are not well calculated to enter into communion, namely, the
comparatively hard and shiny surface of a golf ball, and the hard and
frequently unmarked face of a putter. Moreover, the golf ball is
frequently marked with excrescences called brambles or pimples.
It is obvious that in many cases the first impact will be on one of
these pimples, and also in many cases certainly not in a line dead
down the centre of that bramble and in a line coinciding with the
intended line of run of the ball. When the impact takes place in this
manner it is obvious that, according to the simplest laws of
mechanics, the put must be started wrongly. It is also obvious that if
there is this tendency to go crookedly off the face of the club the
ball will have more opportunity of getting out of the track, which it
makes for itself in the turf, if it is lifted in any degree from the turf
by a lofted club.
It is apparent that a golf ball on a putting green sinks into the turf. It
is equally apparent that it will, on its way to the hole, make for itself
a track or furrow of approximately the same depth as the depression
in which it was resting when stationary. That furrow, to a very great
extent, holds the ball to its course and minimises very much the
faulty marking of a great many of the golf balls of to-day, so that it
will be seen that the object of the player should be not in any way
whatever to lift his ball from the green in the put, which is the
invariable and inevitable tendency of attempting to put with drag by
means of a lofted club. It is an extremely common error to suppose
that a put played with drag hugs the green more than one played in
the ordinary way, or with top. As a matter of incontrovertible fact, no
put hugs the green more than a topped put. It would be easy
enough to demonstrate this were it necessary to do so, but it is a
matter which comes in more in the dynamics of golf, and possibly I
shall have the space to treat of it further there. We may, for our
immediate purpose, content ourselves with the fact that James Braid
has abandoned putting with drag, and now rolls his ball up to the
hole with, if anything, a little top, although, be it clearly understood,
there is no apparent intention on his part to obtain this top, nor does
he in Advanced Golf advocate that any attempt should be made to
obtain top; but there can be no doubt whatever that the manner in
which he plays his put tends to impart a certain amount of top to the
ball, and this, of course, causes it to run very freely.
Now with regard to putting drag on a long put, it should be obvious
to any one that, considering the roughness of the green, the
extreme roughness of the ball and its comparatively light weight in
proportion to its size, it would be impossible to make that ball retain
any considerable measure of back-spin over any appreciable distance
of the green. The idea is so repugnant to common sense and
practical golf that it has always been a matter of astonishment to me
to think that it could have prevailed so much as it has. However,
there can be no doubt that putting under this utterly wrong
impression has done a very great amount of harm to the game of
players who might otherwise have been many strokes better. Let our
golfer understand that there is one way, and one way only, in
practical golf to put the ball, and that is to roll it up to the hole.
There is generally an exception to prove the rule, and if I can find an
exception to this rule, it must be when one is trying to bolt short
puts. Practically every one has experienced the difficulty of holing
short puts, especially when the green is extremely keen. It is here
that the delicacy of the stroke allows the ball and the inequalities
thereof and any obstructions on the turf to exercise their fullest
power to deflect the ball from the line to the hole. James Braid, in
these circumstances, advises bolting one's puts. Needless to say, he
explains that one should put dead for the middle of the hole, and by
bolting, of course, is meant that one should put firmly so as to give
the ball sufficient strength of run to overcome its inequalities or
those of the turf.
This, unquestionably, is good advice; but if one puts at the hole in
this manner and does not get it cleanly enough to sink into the tin at
once, the ball with top will run round the edge of the tin and remain
on the green. This is the only case in golf that I can call to mind
where there is any use in putting drag on a put, and the reason for
this is that the distance from the ball to the hole and the nature of
the green is such that the ball is able to retain a very considerable
portion of its backward spin, and upon contact with the rim of the
hole, instead of having a forward run on it which enables it to hold
up and so get away from the hole, the back-spin gets a grip on the
edge of the hole and the ball falls in.
So far as I can remember, this is absolutely the only case in which
drag of any sort may be considered useful in a put. When I say drag
of any sort I am not, of course, referring to cutting round a put, or
negotiating a stymie with back-spin, for neither of these strokes
comes within the scope of my remark.
Having arrived at a decision as to the best method of sending the
ball on its journey to the hole, we have now to consider a point of
supreme importance in golf, and one which is not sufficiently insisted
upon by instructors. This is, that at the moment of impact the face
of the putter shall form a true right angle with the line of run to the
hole. That is the fundamental point in connection with putting; but it
is of almost equal importance that the right angle shall be preserved
for as long a time as possible in the swing back, and also in the
follow-through—in other words, the head of the putter should be in
the line of run to the hole as long as possible both before and after
the stroke. With this extremely simple rule, and it will be apparent
that this can be just as well learned in an arm-chair as anywhere
else, almost anyone could put well.
There is another point of outstanding importance. I have said that
the head of the putter should form a right angle to the line of run to
the hole. I shall be more emphatic still. Let us consider the line of
run to the hole as the upright portion of a very long letter T laid on
the ground. The top of the letter T will then be formed by the front
edge of the sole of the putter, so that it will be seen that not only
does the putter face form a dead right angle to the line of run to the
hole, but that the line of run to the hole hits the putter face dead in
the centre. For all ordinary putting, that is the one and only way to
proceed. One reads in various books about putting off the heel,
putting off the toe, and putting with drag. This is, comparatively
speaking, all imbecility and theory. There is no way to put in golf
comparable with the put that goes off the centre of the club's face.
If we may treat the face of the putter as a rectangle, bisect it by a
vertical line and also by a horizontal line, the point where these two
lines cross each other will be the portion of the putter which should
come into contact with the ball.
These are extremely elementary matters; but it is impossible,
although they are so elementary, to exaggerate their importance,
and it is amazing, considering their simplicity, how much neglected
they are in all books of instruction, and, generally speaking, by all
instructors. For instance, James Braid, at page 149, tells us:

Hitting the ball truly is simply a question of bringing the putter

on to it when making the stroke to exactly the same point as
when the final address was made, and of swinging the putter
through from the back swing to the finish in a straight line.

This statement would be correct if the address had been made

correctly in the first instance, but unless one has it in one's mind to
make one's putter the top of the T—that is, the completion of the
right angle to the line of run to the hole—the chances are that one's
original address was wrong. Then it will be clearly seen that it is not
"simply a question of bringing the putter on to it when making the
stroke to exactly the same point as when the final address was
made." The important point is to see that the final address is
correctly made; but in no book which I have read—and I have read
practically every book on golf which deserves to be read—do I find
any simple and explicit directions for the mechanical portion of the
put, which, as James Braid truly observes, is extremely simple.
Now for the idea of the stroke: The player will, of course, have
learned his grip from some of the books on golf, or from a
professional. He will in all probability have adopted the overlapping
grip, for that grip tends, more than any other, to bring both wrists
into action together; and there can, I think, be little doubt that for
most people it is the better grip. Having obtained a good general
idea of the simple mechanical operations involved in the contact of
the club with the ball, the player now has to consider how that club
moves where it is, if we may so express it, bound to him. Well, if he
has even a rudimentary idea of mechanics, he will know that if he
wishes to swing that club so that it may hit the ball in an exactly
similar manner every time, he should suspend it on a single bearing,
so that it would swing in a similar manner to the pendulum of a
clock.
The perfect put, from a mechanical point of view, is made by a
motion which is equivalent to the swinging of a pendulum. If,
instead of allowing the weight of the pendulum to be, as it generally
is, in the plane of the swing, it were turned round so that the flat
side faced towards the sides of the clock, we should have a rough
mechanical presentment of the golf club in the act of making a put.
This is, of course, a counsel of absolute perfection. It is an
impossibility to the golfer, both on account of his physical and
physiological imperfections, and on account of the fact that the
golfer practically never puts with an upright putter.
We are frequently told that a put is the only true wrist stroke in golf.
As a matter of fact there is no true wrist stroke in golf, for it is
evident that if one played the put as a true wrist stroke with a club
whose lie is at a considerable angle to the horizontal, the centre of
the circle formed by the club head will be away from the ball to such
an extent that the instant the club head leaves the ball it must leave
the line of run to the hole, and equally as certainly will it leave the
line of run to the hole immediately after it has struck the ball.
Now this is not what we require, so it has come to pass that the put
at golf is to a very great extent a compromise. It must, above
everything, be a deliberate stroke with a clean follow-through. There
must be no suggestion of reducing the put to a muscular effort. The
idea of the pendulum must be preserved as much as possible, and
the strength of the put regulated to a very great extent by the
length of one's backward swing.
It is of the first importance that the body should be kept still during
the process of putting, and it stands to reason that the wrists must
also be kept as much as possible in the same place. If one finds that
one has a marked tendency to sway or to move the body about,
standing with one's feet close together will frequently correct this.
I have referred to the fact that the put is not a wrist stroke. As a
matter of fact, the wrists must in all good putting "go out after the
ball." By this is meant that at the moment of impact the wrists must
in the follow-through travel in a line parallel with the line of run to
the hole, and they must finish so that the club head is able, at the
finish, to stay over the line of run to the hole. To do this, it is
obvious that the wrists, after impact, must move forward. No true
follow-through in the put can be obtained from stationary wrists.
This may sound a little complicated. As a matter of fact it is nothing
of the sort, and the action is very simple, very natural, and when
properly played the ball goes very sweetly off the club and with
splendid direction.
There is one good general rule for regulating the distance which one
should stand from the ball in putting. When one addresses one's
ball, one should be in such a position that the ball is right
underneath one's eyes. To put it so that there can be no possible
mistake as to what I mean, I may say that in most cases the eyes,
the ball, and the hole should form a triangle in a plane at a right
angle to the horizon. Now I know how hard it is for some people to
follow a remark which refers to planes and right angles and
horizons, so as this is a matter of extreme importance, and a matter
where many beginners go absolutely wrong, I shall make it so plain
that there is no possibility of misunderstanding what I mean.
Let us imagine a large, irregularly shaped triangle with the apex at
the hole. We shall suppose, for the sake of argument, that this
triangle is composed of cardboard, that it is a right-angled triangle,
and that its base is 4' 6" wide. This triangle, then, is laid on the
green so that its base is vertical, and the corner which is remote
from the hole represents the ball, the upper corner of the base
being, of course, the player's eyes.
I believe this to be a matter of very great importance, for here it will
be seen that we have the eyes, the ball, and the hole all in the same
plane. Some people like putting with very upright putters. For the
purpose of experiment I had a perfectly upright putter made, but
upright putters are, I think, open to this objection—one's body
hangs too far over them, so that at the moment of striking the ball
one is looking inwards towards the ball, for one's head projects
beyond the line of run to the hole for a considerable distance. It will
thus be seen that one is looking down one line to the hole, and
putting over another. Needless to say, this cannot be good for
direction. The eye, the ball, and the hole should undoubtedly be in
the same plane, and that plane at right angles to the horizon.
As regards the position of the ball in relation to the feet there is
some slight difference of opinion, but generally it may be said that
about midway between the feet is the best position. If anything, the
ball should perhaps be a little nearer to the left foot than to the
right, but this is a matter upon which we cannot lay down any hard
and fast rule. The main point for the player to consider will be how
he can best secure the mechanical results which I have stated as
being the fundamental requisites of good putting. The matter of an
inch or two in his stance, nearer the hole or farther from it, is not of
very great importance compared with this. Some players have an
idea that they can secure a better run on their ball when putting by
turning over their wrists at the moment of impact. This is one of the
most dangerous fallacies which it is possible to conceive. The idea is
absolutely and fundamentally erroneous.
If one desires to put any run on one's ball more than is obtained by
the method of striking it which I have stated, it is always open to
one to play the put a little after the club has reached the lowest
point in its swing,—that is to say, as the putter is ascending, but this
is practically unnecessary. If one requires a little more run on the
ball it is best obtained by making the stroke a little stronger. Any
attempt whatever to do anything by altering the angle of the face of
the club during impact is utterly beyond the realm of practical golf.
There are many refinements in the art of putting which go
somewhat beyond the fundamental principles laid down in this
chapter, in that they call for cut of a particular kind; but for about
ninety-five per cent of the puts which one has to play, practically
nothing more need be known by the golfer than is here set out.
I am not here going to describe the method in which one cuts round
a stymie, for I have done that very fully elsewhere; and, moreover,
this does not so completely come within the scope of this work, for it
enters much more into the region of practical stroke play than do the
matters which I have treated of and which I intend to treat of in this
book.
There is, however, one stroke which is played on the putting-green,
yet is not truly, of course, a put. It is a stroke which I myself
introduced into the game several years ago. This is the stroke which
is now known as the Vaile Stymie Stroke. It is unique among golf
strokes in that it is not an arc. Every known golf stroke before I
introduced this stroke into the game was an arc of a more or less
irregular shape, but it was an arc. The essence of my stroke is that it
is produced in practically a straight line. For all ordinary stymies it is
without doubt the most delicate and accurate stroke which can
possibly be played, and the manner of playing it, after a golfer has
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