A lineage almost forgotten, but never lost emerges from
the ocean’s depths, a clarion call for our times.

IIn Egyptian, Mary is derived from Mr (Meri) which means love or beloved.
Mer is the French word for sea.
Miriam in Hebrew, mar “bitter” and yam “sea”: salt water.

The Mer aspect of Mermaid means beloved, love, or sea, so what does maid mean? On the surface, maid means servant or in service to. However, another meaning is a virgin or state of purity.

So what is in the name Mermaid?

MMary Magdalene is documented as the apostle of the apostles in the gnostic gospels, who received the highest level initiations, a high priestess and royal queen of the serpentine anointing mysteries of the Mother Goddess. She did not walk alone, but with many incredible, miraculous women by her side, each playing their perfect role in the great story. Just as YOU have a unique role to play in the story of our great remembering.

After the crucifixion, she traveled to Gaul, the south of France, and evangelized with her heart of love. A place with many Jewish communities as well as temples to the Goddess; from Isis to Diana, Minerva and Aphrodite. It was a place that honored the primordial Mother Goddess, a natural land for her teachings to flourish.

Magdalene’s legacy lived on and grew: equality of women, women inheriting property, women becoming priestesses, believing in reincarnation, teaching a legacy of love.

Her lineage of blood and spirit flourished, becoming a certain kind of Catharism. The Cathars, “the pure ones”, were named such by others; they called themselves the bon hommes, the good people.

In the 1209, the catholic church officially launched a crusade against the Cathars, who were considered a threat to the pope’s rule. As they were teaching many things that directly opposed that of the Catholic Church such as a belief in reincarnation, that women could be priestesses and equals to men, and most dangerously, the Consolamentum. A sacred rite passed directly from Yeshua and Mary Magdalene to the Cathars which involved a laying on of hands and baptism of fire from the Holy Spirit.

In addition to this, the good men and women lived in the Languedoc, which was separate from France, and the king of France wanted their land and wealth. So the pope’s desire to eliminate this “heresy” was supported by the king, and over 200,000 people were killed in what is known as the Albigensian Crusade, mostly in the south of France and northern Italy. The largest mass killing of Christians against Christians ever recorded. Their teachings of love were such a threat to the catholic church that they were hunted and burned en masse.

The first mass murder of their people, in the town of Béziers, was on July 22nd, Magdalene’s feast day. Then a year later, the next massacre, in Minerve, also fell on her feast day. In Béziers it is documented that the Cathars believed Magdalene was married to Yeshua.

What is so remarkable is that the high initiates of the Cathars chose to die rather than give up their beliefs. They knew death wasn’t the end, the body a temporary house of the soul, and that there is nothing more important than truth.

Guilhem Bélibaste, the last known Cathar parfait to be caught and burned alive, shared a prophecy in 1321: that in 700 years the laurel would turn green again, meaning that the way of the Cathars and the teachings of love would return.

Now we are in the time of the fulfillment of the prophecy.

We can learn much about the original teachings of Christ and Magdalene by diving into the mysteries of Occitania, a way of love that includes and exalts the feminine, and the union of man and woman as sacred.

Much of what you find about the Cathars was written and propagated by the same people that persecuted them, as almost all of their original sacred documents were either destroyed or hidden. However, there are a few genuine documents that made it through, which we can learn much from. But I believe it is through our communion with the land and the waters that we can most clearly remember the living scripture of the shining realms that the Cathars and Magdalene anchored, bridging heaven and earth within our bodies.