A new, integrative account of the life and work of Mary Magdalene • Examines the lives of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, using biblical, historical, apocryphal, and recent channeled sources as well as regression reports • Explains the concept of ascension through a quantum-physics framework, detailing Mary Magdalene’s ascension along the Tree of Life • Explores Mary’s family background, her education in Egypt, her mission in Western Europe, and her life and work alongside Jesus, including her role as his wife and his appointed successor Expanding the scholarship and understanding of the early Christian period and the world of the Essenes from a feminine perspective, religious historian Annine van der Meer offers a detailed new account of the life of Mary Magdalene, also known as Mary of Bethany or Miryam the Migdalah, showing how Mary’s spiritual path is intimately connected to our current times of ascension. She explores Mary’s family background, her education in Egypt, her mission in Western Europe, and her life and work alongside Jesus, also known as Yeshua, including her presence at his baptism in the River Jordan and her anointing as his wife and his appointed successor—which was not recognized by the patriarchal disciples, Peter, Andrew, and Paul, who later claimed to be Jesus’s successors. The author also explores biblical, historical, apocryphal, and recent channeled sources and regression reports, including those of Dolores Cannon, Stuart Wilson, Joanna Prentis, and Claire Heartsong, to provide eye-witness details of the lives of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, including Jesus’s travels to England and India and Mary Magdalene’s time in France. Examining Mary’s ascension process through seven branches and portals along the Tree of Life, detailed in The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, written by Mary herself, the author shows how we are currently undergoing a collective and individual ascension process as the frequency of Earth accelerates. Scientifically explaining ascension—the changing of the physical body into a light body—through recent developments in quantum physics, she then takes the reader through seven portals from individual ascension to collective ascension, illuminating Mary’s heavenly journey of becoming light and its spiritual significance for each of us as individuals and for the world as a whole.