Why Mary Magdalene Is Linked to the Tarot de Marseille ⋆ Angelorum

Tarot de Marseille-style deck on a stone table overlooking the southern French coastline, evoking Mary Magdalene, Cathar history, and the symbolic origins of the Tarot de Marseille

The idea that Mary Magdalene is linked to the Tarot de Marseille has circulated for decades. It surfaces in books, lectures, and Tarot discussions, usually framed as a rumour, a mystery, or a suppressed history. No clear historical proof has ever settled the question. And yet it refuses to disappear.

Mary Magdalene is associated with southern France through medieval tradition. The Cathars flourished in the same region before their violent eradication. The Tarot de Marseille later emerged from this cultural landscape. Geography alone proves nothing, but it does raise a specific question: why do so many researchers, working independently and often from different disciplines, keep returning to this same territory?

This article does not argue that Mary Magdalene is hidden in the Tarot de Marseille as a historical fact. Instead, it looks at why the connection keeps resurfacing, and how four different authors approach it from distinct angles: symbolism, Grail mythology, Cathar cosmology, and Kabbalistic structure.

The works discussed are by Raylene Abbot, Margaret Starbird, Russell A. Sturgess, and Michel Pérez Rizzi. Each offers a different explanation for the Magdalene–Tarot link, and in doing so reveals something about how the Tarot de Marseille operates as a symbolic system rather than a single, fixed narrative.

Southern France, Mary Magdalene & the problem of suppression

Southern France occupies an unusual place in Christian history. According to long-standing tradition, Mary Magdalene arrived by boat at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and later lived as a contemplative in Provence. Whether read literally or symbolically, this story shaped local devotion and pilgrimage for centuries.

The same region later became home to the Cathars, a Christian movement that rejected ecclesiastical authority and emphasised direct spiritual experience. Their theology developed its own stark cosmology of exile and return. The Albigensian Crusade of the thirteenth century attempted to eradicate this movement entirely. Texts were destroyed, communities dismantled, and alternative forms of Christian thought forced underground.

Marseille, meanwhile, grew into a centre for trade, printing, and card production. By the seventeenth century, the Tarot de Marseille had taken recognisable form. It was not a courtly or elite esoteric system, but a popular one, transmitted through repeated use rather than formal explanation.

This convergence does not demonstrate intentional encoding. It does, however, help explain why researchers continue to ask whether images might carry ideas that written doctrine could not safely transmit.

Raylene Abbot and symbolic presence in the cards

In The Hidden Magdalene in the Tarot de Marseille, Raylene Abbot approaches the Tarot de Marseille through close visual analysis. Her focus is not historical documentation, but symbolic patterning.

Abbot traces recurring feminine figures across the major arcana, paying close attention to posture, gesture, and gaze. Through this lens, she suggests that a suppressed feminine spiritual current may be present in the deck.

Importantly, Abbot does not claim that the Tarot de Marseille was designed to encode Mary Magdalene. Instead, she proposes that Magdalene symbolism provides a coherent way of reading certain visual patterns that otherwise remain underexplored.

This approach invites careful looking rather than belief. Its value lies in attentiveness, not proof. For readers interested in symbolic continuity rather than historical certainty, Abbot’s work offers a thoughtful entry point.

Margaret Starbird and the Grail tradition

Margaret Starbird is best known for her work on Grail mythology and sacred feminine Christianity. In The Tarot Trumps and the Holy Grail, she situates the Tarot within a much broader mythic and theological landscape.

For Starbird, Mary Magdalene represents embodied wisdom and lineage. The Grail, in this framework, is not an object but a living principle. In this view, Tarot trumps function as a symbolic language capable of carrying this principle across time, even when open transmission became dangerous.

Starbird’s work is not focused exclusively on the Tarot de Marseille, nor does it attempt strict historical reconstruction. Instead, it asks why certain stories persist and how symbols migrate across traditions.

This is the most expansive and controversial of the four perspectives. While not all readers will agree with her conclusions, Starbird’s influence on Magdalene studies and Tarot discourse is undeniable.

Russell A. Sturgess and Cathar cosmology

Russell A. Sturgess takes a more in-depth and historically rigorous approach in The Spiritual Roots of the Tarot. Rather than focusing on the Magdalene legend alone, he explores whether Cathar theology may underlie aspects of Tarot symbolism.

Sturgess highlights the cosmological themes of medieval gnosticism: spiritual exile, imprisonment in matter, and the possibility of return. He argues that Tarot imagery can preserve fragments of this worldview as structure rather than doctrine.

In this view, the Tarot functions more as a memory device than a teaching manual. Images survive where texts do not. Meaning persists through use rather than explanation.

This approach does not require the Tarot to be a complete, deliberate code. It only requires that symbols capable of holding meaning continue to circulate after overt transmission became impossible.

Michel Pérez Rizzi and Kabbalistic structure

Michel Pérez Rizzi’s The Tree of Life of Mary Magdalene stands apart from the other works discussed here. Rather than beginning with legend or hidden history, Rizzi begins with structure.

Drawing on Sephardic Kabbalah, he examines the internal architecture of the Tarot de Marseille in relation to the Tree of Life. Mary Magdalene, in this framework, is not a secret identity hidden in the cards. She represents a theological orientation centred on embodiment, descent, and return.

What distinguishes Rizzi’s work is coherence. The relationships he describes between cards follow consistent symbolic logic. The system functions whether or not one accepts the Magdalene framing.

This structural integrity is why Rizzi’s work has become foundational to my own Tarot de Marseille teaching. It offers a practical way of working with the deck as a living system, rather than a collection of isolated images or speculative stories.

Why the question persists

None of the authors discussed here claims definitive proof that Mary Magdalene is intentionally encoded in the Tarot de Marseille. What they do provide is a convergence of attention.

Across symbolism, theology, history, and structure, the same questions continue to surface in relation to the same deck and the same geographical region. That persistence suggests that something meaningful is being engaged, even if it resists final definition.

Rather than resolving the question, the Tarot invites relationship, reflection, and careful observation. In that sense, the Magdalene–Tarot connection may tell us less about hidden history and more about how symbolic systems remember what formal doctrine forgets.