The title of this piece posts a provocative question… and the answer is… there’s actually no “should” about it.

But this week when I led participants in my Mary & Magdalene Priestess Training through a baptismal rite I had created through research and my intuition… I understood its power and I realized: Ah, yet one more thing for Sacred Women to reclaim.

More on that later, but first…

Right… remember baptism? Some of us grew up in Christian denominations that engaged in pouring water over the tops of our heads (probably resulting in our screaming in shock), anointing us with perfumed oil, and sending us home with a linen garment and a candle. Maybe some of us had our children baptized like this, or participated as “godparents.”

Interesting fun facts: Did you also know that this ritual served as an official “exorcism,” that we were asked to renounce (our “original”) sin, and that the sign of the cross was made over our third eye, and we were explicitly out loud consecrated to the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”?

Wowza. I never really looked at this. Anyone versed in magic knows… these are pretty powerful spells being cast over our little bodies, minds, and spirits before we can even make informed decisions. And… it’s not 100 percent clear what exactly we’re being bound to.

I’ll leave the discussion of that to other oracles for now.

In preparation for the ceremony held on Tuesday, I immersed myself in books about John the Baptist, so I’ve learned a lot about the origin and original intentions around baptism. It seems to have been based in Hebrew and other ritual immersions in the western ancient world to help one cleanse to stay energetically pure and live a divinely centered life. In the late centuries B.C. and the early centuries A.D., it emerged as one of five “Gnostic” sacraments that initiates of the ancient mystery traditions of the would go through.

John (or Yohanan/Johanan, back in the day) was the divinely born son of Elizabeth, just as Jesus was the divinely born son of Mary. You’d unfortunately be hard pressed to see much written about John’s mother (aside from my own books)… just about his father, the high priest Zechariah. Given his pedigree, John was not only part of a sacred family, he was himself a divinely born avatar. So… that’s important background here that most religion scholars and historians ignore.

Mother Mary’s infancy gospel indicates that under the threat of Herod, Elizabeth hid John away in the mountains when he was a child. It’s likely he was taken to “wilderness” regions for rearing (a common place for vision quest-type initiations of the time, by the way), because when we hear about him in the New Testament, he’s coming out of the “wilderness” and he is baptizing people in the Jordan river.

So what was this avatar, whom many thought was the reincarnation of the Hebrew prophet Elijah, doing with people in the water? He was helping them release their wrongdoing and come to connection with the Divine. The biblical sources call it “repenting,” but I find the implications of that term distasteful… and they were probably inaccurate.

As author Victoria LePage writes in her monumental Mysteries of the Bridechamber, John was very likely a mystery prophet, a deep teacher in his own right. He had followers, including two of Jesus’ (the famous Andrew and Peter), some of whom created schools all over ancient West Asia.

John was teaching and guiding people to mystical understandings about the cosmos, humanity’s place in it, and our True Divine Nature. He was instructing people in a new/old way of coming into relationship with the “Divine Light that pervades all” including we human beings ourselves. And he was using the water element to help people release what was holding them back from that.

So all of this informed my intention for our priestess baptismal ceremony on Tuesday, which was aided by the mind- and heart-opening assistance of Mama Cacao, the energetic loving presence of the Marys, and a bowl of water that each of us had purified overnight with a crystal.

The first thing we did was wash away anything that doesn’t serve us… from any previous baptisms. Then we washed away the spell of original sin, and many other hooks, snares, spells, and impediments that have been set upon us over the millennia and the centuries to keep us bound in any way.

We gently looked at our shortcomings and we experienced profound self-forgiveness through the compassion of the Blessed Mother. We also took a journey through the Archonic ladder that Jesus told Magdalene we’d encounter at our death, learning how to affirm our worthiness, our sovereignty, and our power as beings of the Love-Light when confronted with energies trying to keep us back.

And we received the blessings of that Love-Light as the Great Sophia.

I personally sensed us going through layers of reality, rungs of initiation that I did not even fully expect when I planned this. But as 3D turned into 5D and beyond with the assistance of Ix Cacao and the Marys, I was in awe.

That sense of wonder stayed with me for hours afterward as I tuned into my own oracle space. I was given to understand how important a true baptism, done in love and light in service to Love and Light, can be. And I was honored to be resurrecting this ceremony for our global Marys priestess community.

For myself personally, I saw that, like John/Yohanan/Johanan, with this act of leading people in a “new” baptism, I am coming out of my own “wilderness.” My aeon or great stretch of time learning about the Archonic forces, feeling estranged, lonely, and not fully supported has ended. I am now in a new Aeon, a new epoch, a new era. My wheel has turned.

It was also made very clear to me with a final stroke that I have outgrown the need for “psychic protection” technologies, because I am now guarded by the authentic Love-Light. This is what I want to radiate every day as my cloak of protection. So much easier. So much more fulfilling. So much more air tight.

The road now is to stay in the Love-Light as much as possible. And for this I am grateful to have the Marys as my guides, and to be able to assist others in calling on these Master Goddesses to come further into the light as well.

And so it is. Blessed be.