And that “something” was Mary Magdalene, known as the Living Embodiment of the Divine Feminine, the Apostle to the Apostles, the Woman Who Knew The All. She was the source of feminine power. She had stood side by side with Jesus, the Living Embodiment of the Divine Masculine. She was his “koinonos,” his Other Half. She had power. She had status. She had authority. She had knowledge and wisdom beyond what the male disciples who followed Jesus had. She had twelve female disciples of her own. She had to be destroyed. She was the key to feminine power.

In turning Mary Magdalene into a prostitute, the Church could then accuse all women of power as being wanton, beguiling men and leading them astray. Women were accused of worshipping the Devil, the boogeyman of the Church. The Old Testament, which said “You shall not suffer a Witch to live,” didn't help. But that's another story, although parallel to the destruction of feminine power by patriarchy. Any woman of power, authority, gifts, or intelligence were accused of witchcraft.

The Pope created a system called “the Inquisition,” which was the tribunal established by the Catholic Church to prosecute heresy, and it became heavily involved in witch trials, especially after the 15th and 16th centuries. The Dominican Order was created to have jurisdiction over these Inquisitions, and they played a particularly zealous role in prosecuting those accused of witchcraft, particularly after 1233, and inquisitors produced guides like the Malleus Maleficarum, an influential and infamous guide for witch hunters, which was written by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and published in 1486 to help identify and prosecute witches. Thus began the genocide of women, any woman who dared to challenge the patriarchy in any way, whether it was women in positions of power and influence, women of intelligence and education, women who had gifts and talents that the Church accused of coming “from the Devil,” such has healing, midwives, herbalists, etc. Even a woman who had a cow that produced milk when other cows ceased giving milk, or a well that had water when other wells ran dry, was somehow a witch. Women started being accused of witchcraft if someone fell ill and died. Townsfolk began accusing any woman they did not like or wanted eliminated to be a witch, and the Dominican priests showed up, formed an Inquisition, tortured and tried the woman, and then murdered her in heinous ways. It reached a point that no woman dared to raise her head or stand out in any way. She must be totally submissive – to her Father, to her husband, to the Church. The subjugation of women was complete. But the Church took it even further, stating that women were dirty and evil, that sex was only to be tolerated and that enjoying it was a sin, going so far as to question whether a woman even had a soul or could go to “heaven.”

Unfortunately, in order to make headway in the femininst movement, women eventually had to become like the men, especially after World War II, when men went off to war and women had to fill their role in places formerly considered to be man's domain. They were expected to do a man's work and act like a man to do it. Women worked in factories and even served in the military with distinction. But they were never considered “as good as” a man. Women became more masculine in order to fit into the masculine world. Women had to be tough. Women had to learn to compete. Women had to learn how to climb the corporate ladder and work in the business field. Women had to fight for equal pay and equal treatment. To do so, they had to become like the men. And in doing this, women forgot how to be women or even what it meant to be a woman. Divine Feminine? The Catholic Church portrays her as a virgin, pure and undefiled, with no understanding of what it means to fully be a woman. Women have had no divine guidance or example to follow. But again, the Divine Feminine will not be denied. She is rising once again to take her rightful place – not above the man, but at his side as an equal but separate Being in her own right.

The Catholic Church rescinded its declaration that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute in 1969, and the liturgical texts were revised to distinguish her from the "sinner woman" in Luke's Gospel. This correction was a result of the Church's re-evaluation during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The Church officially stated that Mary Magdalene was a distinct individual and not the same as the sinful woman described in Luke.

In 2016, Pope Francis took a further step by elevating Mary Magdalene's feast day to the rank of the apostles, calling her the "Apostle to the Apostles," which emphasized her role as a leader and the first witness to the Resurrection.