The Teacher went into Levi’s dye works. He took seventy-two colors and threw them into the vat, and when he took them out, they were white. He said, “That’s the way the Son of Humanity has come: as a dyer.”
The Wisdom [Sophia] who is called “the barren” is the Mother of the angels. The companion [Koinonos] of the Son is Mary Magdalene [the Tower]. The Teacher loved her more than all the disciples and often kissed her on the [mouth].
When the disciples saw how much he loved Mary, they asked him, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” The Teacher said to them in reply, “How can it be that I do not love you as much as I love her? When a person who’s blind and one who sees are both in the dark, they’re no different from one another, but when they both come into the light, one sees it and the other remains in darkness.” (The Gospel of Philip, vs. 54-56)
Light has been an apt metaphor for the Divine for as long as humans have thought about God. No doubt this begins by associating the Sun with a great, mysterious power in the sky which brings us warmth, nourishes plant life, and illuminates the world around us. This carries over into concepts related to vision, wisdom, insight, and the force that pushes back the darkness.
Here, the metaphor is reduced to colors, but we know that visible light is composed of a spectrum of various wavelengths that correspond to red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Using a prism, we can separate the white light into these individual colors, and we can look to the sky to see the rainbow arching across the horizon in a brilliant display of this phenomenon.
What are we to learn from this object lesson? Simply that God is One, and that we, as unique expressions of the Divine, are like the various wavelengths of color that intermingle within the One true Light. The Son of Humanity is all of us. We are expressions of Light, and our life reflects the unique expression of the light within. All of us together, in combination and union with one another and all things, are the One Light, and yet, we are unique expressions of the light – whether red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, or violet.
From here, the author of this Gospel turns to answer a practical question about the special relationship that Jesus had with Mary Magdalene, but does so by using the analogy of light and darkness introduced above. He tells us that Wisdom [Sophia] is “the Mother of the angels” and that Mary Magdalene [Koinonos] was the companion of Jesus, the Teacher. But, why does Jesus prefer Mary to the other disciples? Why is she different? What makes her so special? The answer is that she is the one who responds to the light; who sees the light clearly, without requiring anyone to help her to see. Before Jesus came to teach them, they were all in the dark. But, when Jesus spoke the words of light to them, Mary was the one who realized she wasn’t blind. She could see exactly what Jesus was talking about, where the other disciples struggled to see or understand.
This is what makes her the Apostle to the Apostles. This is why Jesus shared things with her in private that he did not share with the other Disciples. She got it where the others did not. Sadly, those who struggled to see and understand did everything in their power to quiet, silence, and erase Mary Magdalene after Jesus was gone. They called her a prostitute. They claimed she was filled with demons. They took away her title as “The Tower” and suppressed her message and her Gospel.
Thankfully, they failed to silence her completely. Her testimony endures. Her message remains. Her prominence is being restored. Nearly two thousand years later, Mary Magdalene is revealed to be the one that Jesus loved more than all the others, and the light that she could see so clearly is still shining bright.
The new book, “The Quantum Gospel of Mary and the Lost Gospel of Truth” is now available on Amazon.
The book from Keith Giles, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon. Order HERE>
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has been interviewed on CNN with Anderson Cooper, Coast to Coast Radio with George Noory, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.” He co-hosts The Heretic Happy Hour Podcast and his solo podcast, Second Cup With Keith which are both available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Podbean or wherever you find great podcasts.
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