Talking with Angels
“Then Mary stood up and greeted them; she tenderly kissed them all and said, “Brothers and sisters, do not weep, do not be distressed nor be in doubt. For his grace will be with you sheltering you. Rather we should praise his greatness, for he has united us and made us true Human beings.”
—The Gospel of Mary
In Jean-Yves Leloup’s translation of Mary Magdalene’s gospel, he mentions an unforgettable and true story transcribed by Gitta Mallasz titled Talking with Angels. It’s about a powerful group of friends in World War II Hungary who began to meet once a week as the climate of hatred built in the world around them. During one of those meetings, Hannah, closed her eyes and began to recite the words that she was suddenly hearing loudly and clearly from within her. These words, as the group soon finds out, are messages from each of their corresponding angels.
The words that came through Hannah, and that Gitta transcribed, are so beautiful, and so powerful, my copy of Talking with Angels has duct-tape all down it’s spine; I’ve read it at least once a year over the past 20 years.
At one point, Gitta asks her angel through Hannah, “What is the heart?”And Hannah answers, “The sanctuary of sanctuaries, The place where the divine dwells, The place of grace, the chalice.” So, similar to the gospel of Mary, the heart is considered sacred and central.
And reminiscent of Mary 2:2, “Every nature, every modeled form, every creature, exists in and with each other.” The angels reveal to Gitta and her friends, “The circle is the key. There is no hierarchy: the circle is completed.”
And echoing so much of the emphasis of union, and of transcending the opposites in the gospels of Thomas and Philip, the angels explain, “There is no high and no low, there is nothing brought low, nothing base, if you achieve union with the divine. Away from the divine, there is above and below. United, all is One.”
Then the number seven comes up as well. Just as there are seven powers of the ego that Christ reveals to Mary in her gospel, the angels reveal that there are seven forms of creation, and that the human is the fourth.
The first, number one is the mineral, so the earth itself, all the rocks, soil, water, which turns into clouds and returns to earth as rain. Two is the plant, so the trees, the greens and food we eat, the seeds that provide life for us all, and then three is the animal, so every gorgeous creature here on earth from the majestic whale to the stunning and wise timber wolf. These first three forms of creation make up what the angels refer to as “the created world.”
Then, there’s what the angels refer to as “the creating world.” This starts with number five, the angel. These are the metaphysical beings, meaning without material form, that the group of friends in Talking with Angels united with in order to receive “heavenly” support throughout their terrifying human circumstances. This angel that we each have is how I understand the theological concept of soul. I don’t think the angel is separate from the soul. I think we can perceive the angel through the heart. And merge with it while embodied. I think in a sense, or to say this all another way, I think the angel is the brightest and wisest aspect of who we are.
The sixth form of creation is the seraph, and this is an angelic being that is separate from us. Separate meaning an intensity that we can’t perceive while we’re in human, material form. And finally, there’s the seventh. The angels refer to the seventh with a symbol rather than a name. It’s an O or a zero. A circle really. Or they simply refer to the seventh as the divine.
The angel, the seraph, and the divine comprise “the creating world.” And like “the created world,” “the creating world” cannot speak for itself.
This is where number four, the human, comes in. The human sits between “the created world,” mineral, plant, and animal, and “the creating world,”the angel, the seraph, and the divine.
The task or purpose of the human is to be a bridge between the worlds.
We, the human being, are the bridge between the two worlds that cannot speak except through us, from within us.
When we consider every form of creation as significant, as sacred, we are uniting the seven. Only the human has the capacity to become aware of the soul and speak on behalf of love. This is why the angels tell Gitta and her friends, “Rejoice at being human,” even as they face their deaths, because of the ignorance of the Nazis' antisemitism, racism, and homophobia.
The angels explain, “ONLY THE HUMAN HAS THE WORD. YOU SPEAK IN THE NAME OF THE DIVINE.”
Gitta writes after the angels reveal this understanding of what it means to be a true human being, or the Anthropos according to Mary’s gospel: “I discover my own dignity: the dignity of the individual human who is called to unite spirit and matter. Never have I so intensely felt that creation cannot be fulfilled without the participation of the human. It is only through me, the human being, the fourth in the middle, that my angel can act on earth. With this discovery, my life takes on a wholly new meaning.
I have the possibility and the task of uniting matter and spirit, in my body as in my soul.”
These words, “uniting,” “union,” “to be united,” are foundational and represent a theme throughout the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. When the disciples are panicked in Mary chapter 5 and feel despair about how they could possibly go out and announce the good news of, “the realm of the child of true humanity.” Because, “if they,” meaning the Roman Empire, “did not spare him,” Christ, then, “how will they spare us.”
Mary Magdalene stands up, the scripture reads. She greets them all as her brothers and sisters, and she comforts them. In one version of the Gospel of Mary, it says she tenderly kissed them all, and says, “Brothers and sisters, do not weep, do not be distressed nor be in doubt. For his grace will be with you sheltering you. Rather we should praise his greatness, for he has united us and made us true Human beings.”
The true Human being is the Anthropos, the being that has united body and soul and heaven and earth inside them.
Gitta was the only one among the small group of beloved friends to survive. And when she was finally safe in France, and emotionally ready or able to go back over the transcription of the powerful words the angels spoke through Hannah 33 years after the end of the war, she published the first edition of Talking with Angels in French. It became an immediate international bestseller and is translated now into many languages.
Here are several messages from the angels that have red pen underlined in my copy, and that resonate the most with the truths also revealed in the Gospel of Mary.
“The goal is not above; the goal is not below; for the divine dwells neither above nor below. Above and below are but parts: the divine dwells in the WHOLE. To unite: that is the goal.”
“My beloved ones, is it so difficult to reach the mountain peak? It is beneath the depths of the seas, and it is far beyond the seas. It is above, high above: in the depths of the human heart.”
And finally, and this is printed in all caps because as Gitta explained, sometimes the angels shouted, or expressed an exuberant joy that had an intensity Hannah said felt like rivulets of light streaming through her:
“THE BODY IS LOVE WHICH HAS BECOME MATTER.”
This is what it means to “call the human into being,” as the angels direct. It is to unite all those aspects within us that we have understood or misunderstood to be separate, or greater or less than the other. We are to experience the worth, the dignity of being human and our truest purpose by existing as the bridge between them.
With only more love,
M.