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Magdalene Metamorphosis: Mary of Magdala as Shapeshifting Archetype Across Time with Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D., Begins April 13
Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Mondays, April 13, 20, 27, May 4, 2026
7:30 - 9:00pm ET (NYC Time)
$150 Paid Patreon Members / $175 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Once miscast as sinner-“prostitute” and later reborn as saint, goddess, lover, and cosmic witness, Mary Magdalene may be the most restless and shape-shifting figure in Western spiritual history.
This course charts the many afterlives of Mary Magdalene as she metamorphosizes through scripture, legend, art, heresy, and modern spiritual imagination, treating her as an archetypal force unto herself. Though honored as a central figure in the canonical Gospels, she was later misidentified and diminished by Church authority, a distortion that paradoxically opened the door for centuries of mythmaking. Her unusual intimacy with Jesus, the emergence of non-canonical texts such as The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the mid-twentieth-century discoveries of the Nag Hammadi Library all contributed to alternative visions of the Magdalene: visionary, teacher, priestess, initiatrix, and sacred counterpart.
We will trace how Magdalene lore flowed into medieval Europe, shaping troubadour poetry, Crusader myth, and rumors surrounding the Knights Templar, and how these stories intersected with the violent suppression of the Cathars in southern France. Was Mary Magdalene a cipher for forbidden spiritual knowledge, a vessel for suppressed feminine authority, or a figure through whom older, esoteric Egyptian traditions resurfaced under Christian guise? These questions reverberate into the present, where the Magdalene reappears in psychology, feminist theology, contemporary ritual, and popular culture—reborn again and again as healer, death-guide, queen, and threshold figure.
Classes will blend short illustrated lectures, guided discussion, and close-looking and interpretive exercises using artworks, sacred texts, folklore, and modern media. Together, we will examine how different historical moments reshaped Mary Magdalene to mirror their deepest anxieties and longings—and what those projections reveal about the cultures that produced them. By the end of the course, students will come away with:
A clear understanding of Mary Magdalene’s historical, mythic, and symbolic transformations
Tools for reading religious figures as cultural archetypes rather than fixed identities
Insight into how suppressed or marginal figures carry enduring psycho-spiritual power
A richer framework for thinking about resurrection, transformation, and the sacred feminine
Finally, students will be invited to produce a creative final project based upon this archetypal, and metamorphic, approach to Mary Magdalene and their own spiritual histories and journeys.
Rather than seeking to recover a single “true” Magdalene, this course invites participants to dwell in her many incarnations—and to consider why this figure, endlessly dying and rising again, continues to act as a portal for spiritual imagination, renewal, and return."
Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D., is an author, professional mythologist, and creative consultant based in Los Angeles. He works with the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and completed a PhD program at the University of Southern California in English Literature and Visual Studies with the dissertation "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism." A frequent collaborator with the Back from the Borderline Podcast, Teddy is also hosting an upcoming public access television show in Laguna Beach, California entitled "Creative Mysticism."
Images: The Repentant Magdalene, Georges de La Tour, ca. 1635-1640. Castilllo cátaro de Montsegur en Languedoc, ca. 2005, Francia.
Four Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Mondays, April 13, 20, 27, May 4, 2026
7:30 - 9:00pm ET (NYC Time)
$150 Paid Patreon Members / $175 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Once miscast as sinner-“prostitute” and later reborn as saint, goddess, lover, and cosmic witness, Mary Magdalene may be the most restless and shape-shifting figure in Western spiritual history.
This course charts the many afterlives of Mary Magdalene as she metamorphosizes through scripture, legend, art, heresy, and modern spiritual imagination, treating her as an archetypal force unto herself. Though honored as a central figure in the canonical Gospels, she was later misidentified and diminished by Church authority, a distortion that paradoxically opened the door for centuries of mythmaking. Her unusual intimacy with Jesus, the emergence of non-canonical texts such as The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the mid-twentieth-century discoveries of the Nag Hammadi Library all contributed to alternative visions of the Magdalene: visionary, teacher, priestess, initiatrix, and sacred counterpart.
We will trace how Magdalene lore flowed into medieval Europe, shaping troubadour poetry, Crusader myth, and rumors surrounding the Knights Templar, and how these stories intersected with the violent suppression of the Cathars in southern France. Was Mary Magdalene a cipher for forbidden spiritual knowledge, a vessel for suppressed feminine authority, or a figure through whom older, esoteric Egyptian traditions resurfaced under Christian guise? These questions reverberate into the present, where the Magdalene reappears in psychology, feminist theology, contemporary ritual, and popular culture—reborn again and again as healer, death-guide, queen, and threshold figure.
Classes will blend short illustrated lectures, guided discussion, and close-looking and interpretive exercises using artworks, sacred texts, folklore, and modern media. Together, we will examine how different historical moments reshaped Mary Magdalene to mirror their deepest anxieties and longings—and what those projections reveal about the cultures that produced them. By the end of the course, students will come away with:
A clear understanding of Mary Magdalene’s historical, mythic, and symbolic transformations
Tools for reading religious figures as cultural archetypes rather than fixed identities
Insight into how suppressed or marginal figures carry enduring psycho-spiritual power
A richer framework for thinking about resurrection, transformation, and the sacred feminine
Finally, students will be invited to produce a creative final project based upon this archetypal, and metamorphic, approach to Mary Magdalene and their own spiritual histories and journeys.
Rather than seeking to recover a single “true” Magdalene, this course invites participants to dwell in her many incarnations—and to consider why this figure, endlessly dying and rising again, continues to act as a portal for spiritual imagination, renewal, and return."
Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D., is an author, professional mythologist, and creative consultant based in Los Angeles. He works with the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and completed a PhD program at the University of Southern California in English Literature and Visual Studies with the dissertation "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism." A frequent collaborator with the Back from the Borderline Podcast, Teddy is also hosting an upcoming public access television show in Laguna Beach, California entitled "Creative Mysticism."
Images: The Repentant Magdalene, Georges de La Tour, ca. 1635-1640. Castilllo cátaro de Montsegur en Languedoc, ca. 2005, Francia.