Rennes-le-Château, Mary Magdalene, Gnostics
2 June 2024
The story of Mary Magdalene by Abbé Bérenger Saunière at Rennes-le-Château would have been the accepted and traditional version that was believed in by all Roman Catholics, and that Saunière would also have conflated her image with that of the medieval tradition of Mary Magdalene at Sainte Baume, as can be seen on Saunière’s altar.
Regarding Coptic texts – the only difference between the Gnostics and what eventually became the standard version of Christianity is that Gnostics interpreted the “historical” (Gospels) texts symbolically: they were not “history”, but rather (their) religious truth expressed in the form of stories.
The Gospel of Thomas Saying 22 has its New Testament equivalents in the part that contains the Epistles, the texts that the Gnostics valued most of all.
Here is Saying 114 from the same Gospel of Thomas that further evokes misogyny and the return to the pre-existent Sacred Androgyne:
“Simon Peter said to him, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
I have seen it written in various articles by the “Rennes Experts” that the Cathars “rejected the crucifixion and the cross” when in fact they held Easter to be their most important festival (Reverend Henry James Warner, The Albigensian Heresy, page 81, Volume 1, 1922).
One Rennes-le-Château Tour Guide said on a Teaser Video words to the effect: “Coptic documents which will make the Catholic Church tremble” – I doubt that there are any Gnostic texts that the Roman Catholic Church doesn't know about!
But whether you read Gnostic Sayings or believe in the regular Christian “history” of the Gospels – there is no intrinsic difference between them – they are both essentially identical – even though the Core Belief is expressed differently.
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