The perfectae once carried a form of Christian wisdom the Church couldn’t control. Today, women across the world are reclaiming that same lineage through contemplative practice, mystical insight, and the resurgence of Magdalene’s voice. This is the prophecy unfolding through living bodies.
Perfectae refers to female Cathar perfects, the spiritual elite of the Cathar religion. Along with the male perfecti, they lived lives of extreme austerity, renouncing possessions and material pleasures to help others achieve spiritual salvation through the consolamentum ritual
Perfectae timing. I think as revisiting Monsegur last night in Catherine de Courcys book. I feel it in the rivers, in the tides, the Towers roots are wide and deep and they are breaking ground, like a grid of lighthouses forming a map across the planet. She stayed. She faced the fire and never abandoned us, or her soul. This is the calling, not to waste energy against, but for. Forward.
The way you describe the roots and rivers makes it feel less like history and more like something rising under our feet right now. Monsegur never went dark. It just went underground until enough hearts were ready to carry the signal again.
OK. The messages I’m receiving, the phrases that have rung true my whole 78 years are stunningly coming into focus. VMB, with your wisdom which appears on my doorstep at EXACTLY the moment I have ears to hear…well, all I can do is to continue thanking, having gratitude, for whomever keeps putting more connecting dots on my path. My image is I have a whole village of Guardian angels carrying me, holding me up, inspiring me, filling me with Joy, and with every breath I have so much gratitude with whomever connected me with Bill, with whom we embodied the holy, and now more and more and more keeping touching me soft touches, soft impulses resonating in my body…I have felt for sometime that body is no longer a big enough container to hold all my gratitudes…my skin keeps wanting to burst from the inside out.
What to do?
With your wisdom and kindness and PRESENCE you are an Anam Cara, walking beside me. I can feel your elbow occasionally giving a soft nudge…just like my Soul Friend canine Jessie does which she senses I may have lost my focus momentarily and wants to nudge me awake…again.
Sandra, this is beautiful. When someone’s inner world starts clicking together like that, it’s rarely random. It’s usually the moment when the years of listening, grieving, healing, and paying attention finally rise to the surface as one clear thread.
What you’re describing isn’t overload. It’s alignment. When the heart finally stops bracing, gratitude rushes in fast, and it can feel like the whole body is too small for what’s arriving. That isn’t something to fix. It’s something to breathe with.
If anything, the only instruction is the one you already named. Be still and listen. Let the nudges come. Let the joy take up more space. Let the soft touches land without trying to make sense of them.
You’re not losing focus. You’re finally seeing the path you’ve been on the whole time.
I hardly know what to say. (Doesn’t happen very often 😊). I recently took a course from Caroline Myss, “Guardians and Grace: Embracing the Sacred.” When I first saw this roll by on FB, I know I read the sub-title as EMBODYING the Sacred. I hit the sign-up button immediately and registered. In the first session I saw the handouts and they were labeled “…Embracing the Sacred.” I said, “oops out loud and said to self, someone made a mistake.” I spent a serious search in FB trying to find the marketing promo I signed up for. Never found it. I listened to all her conversations as if I was EMBODYING the Because that’s what it felt like. At the end of the course I suggested when she writes the book on same subject, that she use EMBODYING the Sacred, that “embracing” suggested my putting my arms around a body, while I experiencing every cell in my body shifting to something. Embodiment has been with me a long time…may have started with learning from horses how to be able to partner with them in coaching. “Embodying” suggests me being infused in every cell. The other time I experienced this was driving home after a session I’d facilitated with a friend and her horse. She experienced an awakening with her horse. I knew about cell-level healing from another friend, and said, “damn! I feel as though every cell in my body was healed.” It was days before that expanded sensation faded.
That ‘s the closet to what I’m feeling tonight. You have stopped me in my tracks…I can only breathe and listen. No more words. More gratitude for you oozing from my pores. I’ll be back…just don’t when. “I don’t know. I can’t know. I don’t need to know.” - John Prendergast. Good night and Amen, So Be It, A’Ho.
that makes perfect sense. Bridget belongs to both worlds without apology, and so do you. The old currents never died. They just waited for people who could hold more than one stream at a time without getting anxious about labels.
Because paradox scares the people who think truth has to fit in a shoebox. Holding two streams at once takes a wider ribcage, a quieter ego, and a soul that isn’t afraid to breathe in more than one language.
The mystics never struggled with it. Only the gatekeepers did.
There’s something beautiful about that image. When a tradition remembers how to offer its silk without the sacrifice, you know the old wisdom is finally growing in the right direction.
Judith, when something in you lights up at the mention of this lineage, that’s usually the lineage tapping you on the shoulder. Calling isn’t always a trumpet. Sometimes it’s a quiet yes that won’t go away. If you feel drawn, keep following that thread. It tends to lead somewhere real.
I have been reading your posts, no gobbling up your posts and also searching for info online. Feeling connected with everything I read except the idea of a good God in the spiritual world and an evil one in the material world. My belief is that spirit and matter are one. Having trouble reconciling this one.
Judith, you’re bumping into one of the oldest misunderstandings people project onto these traditions. The real lineage was never teaching that matter is evil. That was the rumor spread by its enemies and repeated by people who never sat long enough with the texts to let them breathe.
What the teachings point to is this. Spirit and matter are the same field wearing different outfits. The problem isn’t the physical world. The problem is forgetting what shines through it.
Mary Magdalene, the early mystics, the Sufis, and even the desert hermits all said the same thing in different accents. The sacred is not somewhere else. It is right here, thick in the grain of the world, and the work is learning how to see again.
If your intuition tells you that spirit and matter are one, trust that. The deeper lineages agree with you. The talk of division is just the language people used before they had better words for the layers of consciousness.
Abbie, that flame you’re carrying is exactly how these lineages stay alive. Magdalene never needed institutions. She needed people who could feel the summons in their own chest and answer it with courage. If you’re rising, others will rise with you.
that line you quoted lands right in the center of what this whole path is trying to restore. The old wells were never dry. They were just guarded, buried, renamed, and fenced off. When someone hears water again, it means the aquifer is waking up. Thank you for listening with that kind of heart.
Loose cannons aren't WELCOME. Also equally true of Protestant Evangelical Christianity. They are just as intolerant of female leaders or anything else that's an unknown or X - factor, maybe WORSE.
absolutely. Any system built on fear of the unpredictable ends up policing the very people who could bring it back to life. Mystics, women, artists, anyone who doesn’t fit the program gets branded “dangerous” before they even speak. Funny how every tradition claims to follow a God who keeps breaking His own rules, yet they panic when a human does it.
I read it and I feel the old wound under my ribs, the one that remembers being told to sit down, be quiet, be grateful someone let me into the room at all.
The essay is beautiful, sure, but what moves me is the raw truth inside it: women didn’t disappear from the story, they were cut out of it. and still they kept the flame under their coats, through fire, through exile, through centuries of men pretending they were the only ones who could hear God.
I don’t hear prophecy in this. I hear a correction.
I hear women finally stepping out of the shadows with no apology in their throat.
and part of me wants to bow, and part of me wants to scream, and part of me just whispers:
I am really enjoying reading the Cathar Series. As a 50-something, happily married white male, I can honestly say that I am so tired of the patriarchy in our American society and the holding back of women.
If we had more female leadership both in religion and politics, I feel our country would be in much better shape. Behind every good man is an even better woman. Any man who is worth his weight should admit that, and give women their props that they deserve.
Unfortunately, it's all about control, and fear of change, and losing that control. When it should be about partnership and equality, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses.
Mike, this is exactly the kind of clarity that gives me hope. Patriarchy doesn’t collapse because women push back. It collapses because men finally say, “This isn’t strength, it’s fear in a costume,” and decide they want something better.
The Cathar women weren’t dangerous because they were radical. They were dangerous because they were competent, trusted, and spiritually awake. And every system built on control knows exactly what happens when women lead without asking permission.
You’re naming the truth that keeps trying to surface in every age: partnership is healthier than hierarchy, and a world shaped by women’s wisdom is a world that breathes easier.
VMB, it feels like an age since I read your work and yet, it was just a moment ago! Excellent piece! I’ve been chastised for my beliefs, belittled and berated for saying what to me seems obvious, but through all of that I’ve held firm in my center. It is not the church I walked away from so many years ago, it is the patriarchy. I’ve always leaned toward Buddhism and Goddess worship, the first for its embrace of duality, the second for what to me seems obvious, the ‘holy mother’ energy. It is why I am so drawn to your writings and your path, I’m glad I stumbled onto you!
I’m glad you found your way back here. What you named is the real story for so many of us. We didn’t walk away from the holy. We walked away from the machinery that tried to shrink it.
The church never lost you. The patriarchy did. And the moment you stepped outside that frame, the feminine current, the contemplative heart, the spaciousness of Buddhist practice, all of it had room to breathe again.
The funny thing is that once you strip away the fear and control, the paths start to recognize each other. The Goddess current, the Magdalene current, the contemplative traditions of the East. They all point to a wholeness the old institutions tried to fence off.
I hear you. Some of us spent years wondering if this rising was going to stay a rumor or finally take shape in the daylight. Feels good to see the tide turning in real time.
And thank you for trusting the work. If a few men need a monk in a ragged robe to repeat what women have been saying for centuries, fine. As long as the truth gets where it needs to go.
I feel this truth so deeply.
I have never heard the term Perfectae. Curious. Form of priestess?
Perfectae refers to female Cathar perfects, the spiritual elite of the Cathar religion. Along with the male perfecti, they lived lives of extreme austerity, renouncing possessions and material pleasures to help others achieve spiritual salvation through the consolamentum ritual
Perfectae timing. I think as revisiting Monsegur last night in Catherine de Courcys book. I feel it in the rivers, in the tides, the Towers roots are wide and deep and they are breaking ground, like a grid of lighthouses forming a map across the planet. She stayed. She faced the fire and never abandoned us, or her soul. This is the calling, not to waste energy against, but for. Forward.
The way you describe the roots and rivers makes it feel less like history and more like something rising under our feet right now. Monsegur never went dark. It just went underground until enough hearts were ready to carry the signal again.
OK. The messages I’m receiving, the phrases that have rung true my whole 78 years are stunningly coming into focus. VMB, with your wisdom which appears on my doorstep at EXACTLY the moment I have ears to hear…well, all I can do is to continue thanking, having gratitude, for whomever keeps putting more connecting dots on my path. My image is I have a whole village of Guardian angels carrying me, holding me up, inspiring me, filling me with Joy, and with every breath I have so much gratitude with whomever connected me with Bill, with whom we embodied the holy, and now more and more and more keeping touching me soft touches, soft impulses resonating in my body…I have felt for sometime that body is no longer a big enough container to hold all my gratitudes…my skin keeps wanting to burst from the inside out.
What to do?
With your wisdom and kindness and PRESENCE you are an Anam Cara, walking beside me. I can feel your elbow occasionally giving a soft nudge…just like my Soul Friend canine Jessie does which she senses I may have lost my focus momentarily and wants to nudge me awake…again.
Be still and listen.
❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Sandra, this is beautiful. When someone’s inner world starts clicking together like that, it’s rarely random. It’s usually the moment when the years of listening, grieving, healing, and paying attention finally rise to the surface as one clear thread.
What you’re describing isn’t overload. It’s alignment. When the heart finally stops bracing, gratitude rushes in fast, and it can feel like the whole body is too small for what’s arriving. That isn’t something to fix. It’s something to breathe with.
If anything, the only instruction is the one you already named. Be still and listen. Let the nudges come. Let the joy take up more space. Let the soft touches land without trying to make sense of them.
You’re not losing focus. You’re finally seeing the path you’ve been on the whole time.
I hardly know what to say. (Doesn’t happen very often 😊). I recently took a course from Caroline Myss, “Guardians and Grace: Embracing the Sacred.” When I first saw this roll by on FB, I know I read the sub-title as EMBODYING the Sacred. I hit the sign-up button immediately and registered. In the first session I saw the handouts and they were labeled “…Embracing the Sacred.” I said, “oops out loud and said to self, someone made a mistake.” I spent a serious search in FB trying to find the marketing promo I signed up for. Never found it. I listened to all her conversations as if I was EMBODYING the Because that’s what it felt like. At the end of the course I suggested when she writes the book on same subject, that she use EMBODYING the Sacred, that “embracing” suggested my putting my arms around a body, while I experiencing every cell in my body shifting to something. Embodiment has been with me a long time…may have started with learning from horses how to be able to partner with them in coaching. “Embodying” suggests me being infused in every cell. The other time I experienced this was driving home after a session I’d facilitated with a friend and her horse. She experienced an awakening with her horse. I knew about cell-level healing from another friend, and said, “damn! I feel as though every cell in my body was healed.” It was days before that expanded sensation faded.
That ‘s the closet to what I’m feeling tonight. You have stopped me in my tracks…I can only breathe and listen. No more words. More gratitude for you oozing from my pores. I’ll be back…just don’t when. “I don’t know. I can’t know. I don’t need to know.” - John Prendergast. Good night and Amen, So Be It, A’Ho.
I choose my avatar carefully, and I wear a medal of St Bridget who walked both in the cultures of Celtic spirituality and Christian. Love this piece.
that makes perfect sense. Bridget belongs to both worlds without apology, and so do you. The old currents never died. They just waited for people who could hold more than one stream at a time without getting anxious about labels.
Yes…why do we not honor holding the paradox?
Because paradox scares the people who think truth has to fit in a shoebox. Holding two streams at once takes a wider ribcage, a quieter ego, and a soul that isn’t afraid to breathe in more than one language.
The mystics never struggled with it. Only the gatekeepers did.
Truth
Savouring each sentence... Slept on it. It's like when they finally figured out how to make silk without destroying the silk worms #peacesilk
Ahhhh.
There’s something beautiful about that image. When a tradition remembers how to offer its silk without the sacrifice, you know the old wisdom is finally growing in the right direction.
A profound piece of writing. Your words re-illuminate a lineage that was never lost, only driven underground. But some truths cannot be buried.
They simply wait for the world to become still enough to hear them again.
Thank you
🙏🙏
thank you. These currents have been whispering under the floorboards for a long time, waiting for ears that aren’t distracted by noise or gatekeepers.
🙏🙏
Sounds true to me. I want to learn more. Perhaps I have found my calling!
Judith, when something in you lights up at the mention of this lineage, that’s usually the lineage tapping you on the shoulder. Calling isn’t always a trumpet. Sometimes it’s a quiet yes that won’t go away. If you feel drawn, keep following that thread. It tends to lead somewhere real.
Thanks! Any suggested reading material or organizations to tap into?
I would start with some those listed at the bottom of the article.
I have been reading your posts, no gobbling up your posts and also searching for info online. Feeling connected with everything I read except the idea of a good God in the spiritual world and an evil one in the material world. My belief is that spirit and matter are one. Having trouble reconciling this one.
Judith, you’re bumping into one of the oldest misunderstandings people project onto these traditions. The real lineage was never teaching that matter is evil. That was the rumor spread by its enemies and repeated by people who never sat long enough with the texts to let them breathe.
What the teachings point to is this. Spirit and matter are the same field wearing different outfits. The problem isn’t the physical world. The problem is forgetting what shines through it.
Mary Magdalene, the early mystics, the Sufis, and even the desert hermits all said the same thing in different accents. The sacred is not somewhere else. It is right here, thick in the grain of the world, and the work is learning how to see again.
If your intuition tells you that spirit and matter are one, trust that. The deeper lineages agree with you. The talk of division is just the language people used before they had better words for the layers of consciousness.
Thanks so much for that clarification. It makes sense to me. Trust the inner knowing.
I love this so much! All of it. ❤️🔥Grateful to be a part of lineage of Mary Magdalene. May those who are ready rise to the call in their souls.🤲🏼❤️🔥
Abbie, that flame you’re carrying is exactly how these lineages stay alive. Magdalene never needed institutions. She needed people who could feel the summons in their own chest and answer it with courage. If you’re rising, others will rise with you.
Thank you so much. 🥹
🌹Than you for your enlightening essay about feminine spiritual power. I “hear something in [your] words that feels like water in a desert.”🌅
that line you quoted lands right in the center of what this whole path is trying to restore. The old wells were never dry. They were just guarded, buried, renamed, and fenced off. When someone hears water again, it means the aquifer is waking up. Thank you for listening with that kind of heart.
🎄’Tis the season for Christmas Presence!🕊️
Loose cannons aren't WELCOME. Also equally true of Protestant Evangelical Christianity. They are just as intolerant of female leaders or anything else that's an unknown or X - factor, maybe WORSE.
absolutely. Any system built on fear of the unpredictable ends up policing the very people who could bring it back to life. Mystics, women, artists, anyone who doesn’t fit the program gets branded “dangerous” before they even speak. Funny how every tradition claims to follow a God who keeps breaking His own rules, yet they panic when a human does it.
yeah… this one hits a nerve.
I read it and I feel the old wound under my ribs, the one that remembers being told to sit down, be quiet, be grateful someone let me into the room at all.
The essay is beautiful, sure, but what moves me is the raw truth inside it: women didn’t disappear from the story, they were cut out of it. and still they kept the flame under their coats, through fire, through exile, through centuries of men pretending they were the only ones who could hear God.
I don’t hear prophecy in this. I hear a correction.
I hear women finally stepping out of the shadows with no apology in their throat.
and part of me wants to bow, and part of me wants to scream, and part of me just whispers:
about damn time.
I am really enjoying reading the Cathar Series. As a 50-something, happily married white male, I can honestly say that I am so tired of the patriarchy in our American society and the holding back of women.
If we had more female leadership both in religion and politics, I feel our country would be in much better shape. Behind every good man is an even better woman. Any man who is worth his weight should admit that, and give women their props that they deserve.
Unfortunately, it's all about control, and fear of change, and losing that control. When it should be about partnership and equality, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses.
Mike, this is exactly the kind of clarity that gives me hope. Patriarchy doesn’t collapse because women push back. It collapses because men finally say, “This isn’t strength, it’s fear in a costume,” and decide they want something better.
The Cathar women weren’t dangerous because they were radical. They were dangerous because they were competent, trusted, and spiritually awake. And every system built on control knows exactly what happens when women lead without asking permission.
You’re naming the truth that keeps trying to surface in every age: partnership is healthier than hierarchy, and a world shaped by women’s wisdom is a world that breathes easier.
Amen brother 🙏🏻
VMB, it feels like an age since I read your work and yet, it was just a moment ago! Excellent piece! I’ve been chastised for my beliefs, belittled and berated for saying what to me seems obvious, but through all of that I’ve held firm in my center. It is not the church I walked away from so many years ago, it is the patriarchy. I’ve always leaned toward Buddhism and Goddess worship, the first for its embrace of duality, the second for what to me seems obvious, the ‘holy mother’ energy. It is why I am so drawn to your writings and your path, I’m glad I stumbled onto you!
I’m glad you found your way back here. What you named is the real story for so many of us. We didn’t walk away from the holy. We walked away from the machinery that tried to shrink it.
The church never lost you. The patriarchy did. And the moment you stepped outside that frame, the feminine current, the contemplative heart, the spaciousness of Buddhist practice, all of it had room to breathe again.
The funny thing is that once you strip away the fear and control, the paths start to recognize each other. The Goddess current, the Magdalene current, the contemplative traditions of the East. They all point to a wholeness the old institutions tried to fence off.
They don’t like what they cannot control
Thank you for this excellent, highly informative essay! 🙏
Itz about time. Wasn’t sure I’d be alive in this physical body to witness it 🤞🙏
Grateful you are sharing all of this - they sure as hell don’t believe women writing this but maybe, just maybe, they’ll listen to you. 👏
I hear you. Some of us spent years wondering if this rising was going to stay a rumor or finally take shape in the daylight. Feels good to see the tide turning in real time.
And thank you for trusting the work. If a few men need a monk in a ragged robe to repeat what women have been saying for centuries, fine. As long as the truth gets where it needs to go.