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The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception
Mary and the Lineage of Virgin Births
Table of Contents
About The Book
• 2022 Nautilus Silver Award
• Award Winner in the Spirituality: General category of the 2021 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest
• Explains how Mary was born into a lineage of powerful women who cultivated and passed on the ability to consciously conceive elevated beings
• Includes a complete translation of the Infancy Gospel of James and reveals the hidden codes it contains relating to the practice of miraculous conception
• Shows how Mary was trained and initiated in the “womb mysteries” and reveals the esoteric techniques she used to conceive Jesus
Delving into one of the Virgin Mary’s forgotten gospels, the Infancy Gospel of James, Marguerite Mary Rigoglioso, Ph.D., reveals a truth that has been suppressed for nearly two millennia: that Mother Mary was not a passive bystander to her own pregnancy but an advanced member of a sacred order of women trained in divine conception.
Unlocking the hidden codes of Mary’s gospel and other ancient source texts, the author reveals how Mary conceived Jesus through a careful process that she willed and initiated. She explains how Mary was born into a family of powerful priestesses, women who possessed, cultivated, and passed on the ability to consciously conceive elevated beings to help the planet. This lineage included Mary’s own mother, Anne, who conceived Mary with this method, her relative Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist), and the biblical matriarch Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. These women were schooled in the shamanic “womb mysteries,” secret knowledge of the capacity of the womb. Decoding the Infancy Gospel of James, the author shows how Mary was trained and initiated, reveals the esoteric techniques she used to conceive Jesus, and explores the birth itself and the mind-altering reality that accompanied it.
By revealing the Virgin Mary as a trained holy woman and a conscious actor in the conception of Jesus, the author corrects the impression we have been given of a passive and bewildered girl who had no idea how or why she was pregnant. She also restores Mary as the empowered feminine orchestrator of these significant events, paralleling the redemption of Mary Magdalene in recent years. Explaining how and why virgin birth was accomplished, this book allows us to make sense of miraculous conception and reveals the power that lies in all women’s wombs.
Excerpt
The Virgin Mary’s time has come. In fact, we are long overdue for a revolutionary understanding of her that frees her from dogmatic baggage and restores her to her rightful place as a great holy woman. In recent decades thousands of readers worldwide of books such as Meggan Watterson’s Mary Magdalene Revealed, Cynthia Borgeault’s The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, and Margaret Starbird’s The Woman with the Alabaster Jar have awoken to a Magdalene who is not a prostitute but rather a consort of Jesus. Now it is the moment for us to recognize a Mother Mary who is not a passive bystander to her own pregnancy but rather a specialized priestess who deliberately planned and carried out the miraculous conception of her son.
Who was this most famous of women, really, and what was her conception of Jesus all about? We hear painfully little about her from the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Where we find the motherlode of information about her and her miraculous event is far outside of those books, in a little-known writing called the Infancy Gospel (or Protovangelium) of James, which became the basis of Mary’s feast days in the church calendar. It is this gospel onto which I throw the floodlights in this book so as to reveal a truth about Mary that is very ancient but will seem new to many readers.
That truth is that Mary indeed conceived Jesus in a miraculous way. But she did so not through some kind of divine force that was using her body for its own agenda. She accomplished this feat through a careful process that she willed and initiated, and for which she was trained by a lineage of holy women before her.
Mary was born into a family and a history of women who possessed, cultivated, and passed on the ability to consciously conceive elevated beings to help the planet. These were specialized women schooled in what I call the “womb mysteries,” secret knowledge of the capacity of the human womb, including the capability for divine birth, which women all over the ancient world shared with other promising candidates over thousands of years. Mary was one of several powerful priestesses in her family and ancestry who had command over the human conception process -- but one who took the art to a whole new level.
All of this is precisely what her infancy gospel tells us--if you know how to look. No one has known how to look before now, however, because they have lacked the broader historical view of divine birth as an actual practice of real women that spanned the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond. In my years of scholarly sifting and sorting through ancient records, I have been able to piece together that history. And I have been able to bring it to bear to decode what Mary’s gospel has been hiding in plain sight for nearly 2000 years. That deciphering is what this book is about.
You will discover not only how Mary consciously conceived Jesus in a non-ordinary way, but also how she herself was divinely conceived by her mother Anne. That means you will come to recognize that Mary was already born as an embodiment of something much-needed in the ancient world and in today’s world: the Divine Feminine, in all of her power and wisdom. Knowing the base of potency from which she was operating will help you see why she was able to birth forth an especially high-level embodiment of the divine from her own body for the benefit of humanity. You will get glimpses of how she was trained, when, and by whom, as well as some of the esoteric techniques she used to fulfill her ministry in this regard.
The book also uncovers the fact that Mary and Anne’s lineage of divine birth priestesses began all the way back with Sarah--the wife of the biblical patriarch Abraham and therefore the great matriarch of Hebrew culture. We will see how this lineage extended across their family to include Elizabeth, who was not only the mother of the miraculously born John the Baptist, but who also may have been Anne’s sister.
By exploring the reality of Mary as a trained agent in divine conception, this book corrects the impression the New Testament has given us of a passive and bewildered girl, an incidental receptacle who has no idea what is happening to her beyond a short pronouncement by the angel Gabriel. It also corrects the view that her virginity was a sign of her moral purity and that strict chastity is therefore something to be imposed on other women. This book puts this sacred woman in her rightful place, front and center in the story of Jesus, as the pivot point around which the entire Christed enterprise was able to unfold. By showing that Mary was a conscious actor who deliberately intended for Jesus to come into our world--and a priestess whose celibacy was a chosen practice needed for the task--this book restores her as the empowered feminine orchestrator of these significant events.
With The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception, we are taking an important first step toward getting that fuller understanding of Mary by focusing especially on her powers of conception. In doing so, we are further anchoring true feminine spiritual power more broadly. By showing what was possible for Mary and her female kin, this book sets the stage for women to understand what powers lie in their own wombs. For Mary’s abilities were not hers alone, but were--and are--capacities open to all women who wish to go deeper on their spiritual path.
Product Details
- Publisher: Bear & Company (May 1, 2021)
- Length: 192 pages
- ISBN13: 9781591434139
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Raves and Reviews
“Marguerite Rigoglioso is a holy conduit who proclaims a message so timely, so graceful, and so filled with truth that my hands tremble as I pick up this book. It is about time the prestige and wisdom of Mother Mary are seen and acknowledged in the devastation of an institution that gave her nothing more than the appearance of a passive spectator. These pages are soaked with Her presence, offering us a generosity that comes freely and touches deeply. The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception is a body of work that reveals the real Mary, one who lived before the church and sure as heaven shall live on after the church.”
– Anaiya Sophia, author of Fierce Feminine Rising
“With exquisite clarity and impeccable scholarship, Rigoglioso details the ancient, historical tradition from which Mary sprang, which culminated in Her conscious decision to bring forth into the world an elevated being. Fascinating insights into the many priestess traditions that were widely practiced throughout the ancient Mediterranean infuse every page. Rigoglioso illuminates for modern audiences the essence of the esoteric teachings of and about Mary and other holy women, and what they mean for us today.”
– Natalie Galli, author of The Girl Who Said No
“An opus for our times based on the re-birthing of who Mother Mary really was. Through scholarly research, together with deep spiritual wisdom, Rigoglioso shares with us the power and intentionality behind the divine conception of Jesus. This book is ablaze with a rising revolution of Mother Mary and the tribe of women who supported her over generations. It gives a fresh look at who she really was, her amazing spiritual prowess, and how she serves as a beacon to all humankind, giving us a deeper view of what it means to embody the Divine Feminine.”
– Melissa Sophia Joy, ND, founder of Somatic Awakening® and Sophia Healing Academy
“Teacher, priestess, and scholar Marguerite Rigoglioso has produced another compelling study of the history of miraculous conception. The focus of her carefully researched, eloquent new book shifts from her earlier work on classical antiquity to the Judeo-Christian tradition and invites us to perceive the Virgin Mary as an embodiment of the Divine Feminine accessible to us today in our own spiritual lives. Reading this powerful book is an inspiring and transformative experience.”
– Beth Darlington, Ph.D., professor emerita of English at Vassar College and certified Jungian psychoa
“Mary has been reduced to a mere passive vessel by the limitations imposed by patriarchal insecurity. Marguerite Rigoglioso performs a divine resurrection of Mary in this book, and that has profound implications for all women and our floundering culture. In an era of extreme misogyny superimposed against movements like #metoo and women taking to the streets all over the world, you will find this book an empowering, enlightening read.”
– Maura McCarley Torkildson, artist and author of The Inner Tree
“As with her previous scholarly works, Marguerite Rigoglioso displays a rare combination of erudition, courage, creativity, and skillful writing which leads to a fascinating result that has wide implications.”
– Byron Belitsos, publisher, journalist, educator, and author of Your Evolving Soul
“With Mary’s infancy gospel as our guidebook and Rigoglioso as our skilled interpreter and trusted guide, we cross what was once a threshold obscured by fear-based patriarchy. Here we find Mary’s archetypal sacred virginal womb . . . that abides within all women’s wombs, and that is our birthright.”
– Claire Heartsong, author of Anna, Grandmother of Jesus
“The sacred potential of divine conception is the mystery of mysteries. Marguerite’s sensitive and thorough treatment, found within The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception, offers a bold new step in her pioneering work on this topic. It is nothing less than a radical reclamation of the true potential available to women! At a time when much is being revealed about humanity’s true divine nature, and as the Divine Feminine rises to return to her rightful place within our human awareness, this book comes as an essential piece of insight about our collective feminine past.”
– Dawn DelVecchio, author of Spirit, Mind and Money
“The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception expands Marguerite Rigoglioso’s ground-breaking theory of holy parthenogenesis into more recent times by addressing Mary, Anne, and Elizabeth. While some have tried to dismiss the concept of virgin birth, Marguerite’s research restores and contextualizes it. Marguerite puts the ‘Virgin’ back into ‘Virgin Mary.’ A must-read for Marian scholars.”
– Mary Beth Moser, Ph.D., author of Honoring Darkness
“This convincing work reveals the lineage of priestesses who mastered the capacity to give birth outside the laws of biology. Well written, engaging, and accessible, Rigoglioso invites us to overturn centuries of false narratives and revision and remember what was once a known form of female power.”
– Patricia Reis, author of Motherlines and Through the Goddess
As the title suggests, this book, based on the Gnostic Infancy Gospel of James and on extensive cross-cultural research paints a very different picture of the Virgin Mary within an ancient tradition of parthenogenesis or miraculous conception. Mary emerges as a high priestess, an active holy woman and a living embodiment of the great goddess. The book certainly recontextualises the whole issue of virgin birth and is a powerful statement of the emerging Divine Feminine that has also seen a redefinition of the role of Mary Magdalene."
– David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer
"More than anything, I hope the information in The Mystery Traditions of Miraculous Conception becomes more wide-spread. I’ve been actively sharing what I learned from reading it with friends and family, initiating discussions about the topic of a virgin birth and Mary’s spiritual lineage. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the divine feminine, especially within Christianity. Rigoglioso has packed so much information into this text that I know I’ll be reading it again and again. I love that it’s filled with references and sources to assist the reader in doing their own investigation. All in all, this book is the major missing piece to the history of Christianity that is sure to spark meaningful revelation in all readers."
– Alanna Kali, Musing Mystical
"Mary’s parthenogenesis occurred at the time when patriarchy was diminishing the power and position of women. Today’s headlines regarding laws affecting women’s rights to their own bodies indicate that we need to learn more about our inner power. The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception could not have come out at a more appropriate time. I feel it’s a must-read for every woman."
– Sheila Graham, Psychic-Magic
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