MM

In this haunting and intimate portrait, we meet Mary Magdalene not as the sinner of church tradition, but as the priestess of mysteries, the bearer of sacred knowledge, the keeper of the secret flame. She is drawn in a moment of stillness, yet charged with the weight of esoteric sorrow and timeless wisdom.

Held close to her chest is a skull, rendered in broken ochres and deep shadow—a potent symbol of John the Baptist, whose decapitation marked the death of the old covenant and the silent ascent of the inner path. Within Gnostic and Magdalene traditions, the skull is not a token of death, but of gnosis—the raw truth, unmasked and eternal. It is said Magdalene anointed the feet of Christ in preparation for death, just as she now cradles the skull, preserving the sacred masculine in its most honest, vulnerable form.

Her gaze is calm but piercing. It does not plead. It remembers. She knows what has been hidden—beneath dogma, beneath empire. She is the companion of the Messiah, the initiated priestess of a higher love, a spiritual lineage concealed from common texts.

The only color in the composition—a vibrant yellow lily on her shoulder—blooms defiantly. The lily, in Christian iconography, represents purity and resurrection. But here, it is more: a symbol of feminine power reborn, rising out of centuries of ashes and silence. The yellow invokes the solar plexus, the seat of will, identity, and power—the very essence of the Magdalene’s suppressed truth.

This piece is both soft and defiant—gentle in form, yet charged with theological heresy and ancient reverence. It challenges the viewer to see beyond religious reduction and remember Mary is a priestess, a beloved, a bearer of truth. Her secrets, like the skull she holds, are neither morbid nor mournful—they are revelations waiting to bloom.