Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Mid-bite of his falafel and lettuce pita, as he sits in a spot of shade along the Acropolis wall in Athens, American graduate student Tonio Fletcher's jaw drops. His breathing stops as the beautiful young Maia Spiros, guiding a group of students, enters the Theatre of Dionysus just below him. Maia's graceful gestures and vivid descriptions of long-forgotten events that took place there evoke the drama of the past and bring the ancient site, and him, suddenly to new life. The Magdalene Gates is a love story and an esoteric/initiatic mystery novella set mainly in Ephesus (resting place of Mary) and Crete. Mysteriously attractive, it centers on Tonio and Maia's discovery of long-lost Magdalene letters--threads in a teaching founded by Hermes, developed and handed on by Mary Magdalene as the most advanced of Jesus's apostles--and the intrigue surrounding their discovery as a growing love brings spiritual awakening and new life to both characters. Through his relationship with Maia and her contemporary family of seekers immersed in Mary's teachings, Tonio is initiated into a spiritual practice that leads toward the spiritual maturity of enlightened consciousness through a series of nine planes--or Gates, as Mary describes them.