Magdalene and the red egg

This morning I am thinking of Mary Magdalene.  She comes to me at different moments in my life and when she does her presence is amazing and for me, life changing.  I have been mainly drawn to the Celtic myth for so many years now.  I have by no means covered all that I want to paint there, and yet these Gnostic yearnings come to me now and then and distract me away from the Holy Isles.
I have painted Mary before, but only her face.

I do love the emotion I captured in her face.  I always imagined it as a young Mary Magdalene meeting Yeshua for the first time.  But now I am being pulled to paint a larger work of her.  I am channeling many thoughts about the work right now and I almost feel like I need to write them down before I lose them.  Sometimes I get triggered like this and have strong impulses to create a new work but can't do it immediately and then I lose that space I was in and the thoughts that were flowing. So I thought I would share one piece with you, in an effort to preserve this energy for later.
It starts with Mary and the red egg.  Often in Eastern Orthodox icons Mary is painted holding a blood red egg.  There are a couple of legends that surround this egg, one being that after Jesus died Mary went to the Roman Caesar to tell him about the poor treatment of Jesus by the Romans and that Jesus had risen.  Mary was sitting at dinner and holding an egg in her hand and Caesar responded that Jesus could no more have risen than that egg could turn blood red.  Of course the egg immediately turned blood red.  Another story is similar but has Mary pulling off the same miracle in front of a group of Russians she was telling the tale of Jesus' resurrection to and when the egg went red it marked "The Way" being brought to Russia.
There are many symbols associated with Mary and what intrigues me is their connection to the chakras and the ascension, or the mastery of death.  I am starting with the red egg as I feel it is a strong symbol for the root chakra.  The egg is the creative potential that we hold at our root.  Red is the color of blood, of creation, of the Earth.  Out of the blackness of the womb the egg and the blood create life.  We connect with the creative energies of the Earth through our root chakras.  All possibilities lie in this energy.  By raising this energy up through the chakras to the sacred marriage chamber of the heart (the place where the goddess meets the bridegroom) we transmute the energy into Love, and from there we can conquer death.  We raise it into consciousness at the third eye, where mind, body, and soul align into one.  We take the hidden potential that lay in the egg and bring it into the light of consciousness.
I feel that in this uncertain time that we are in now, connecting with our red egg is more important than ever.  We need to be bathed in those creative energies everyday to be able to create the new reality that is called for.  Once a symbol is unlocked in your consciousness you begin to see it everywhere, and suddenly it makes more sense what it is speaking to you.  Here is another old work of mine called Bindi:

The root chakra is the way to the third eye.  The root is the primal mother Earth goddess creative force.  You have to tap that before you can evolve into the higher realms of consciousness.  Many, many people are stuck in their root because they ignore the goddess.  This only leads to survival issues and greed.  They ignore their own creative potential.  The way to change the world begins at the root.  This seems more apparent than ever as we sit here fearing for the people of Japan as they are dealing with nuclear meltdowns.  We all know that nuclear weapns are the ultimate result of greed, destruction, and fear; and maybe now we know that nuclear power is not so safe an energy source after all.  Then there is Japan's flag, setting there showing us the way to release the fear and "the way" to ascension is through the root.  The red dot on the flag is called the rising sun (son).  It is time to raise the red egg.

Oh, and I just thought of another red dot...the site I put my artwork on Red Bubble.  It is full of creative people working with their red egg energy.