Unicorns, Christ and Mary Magdalene

Early versions of the myth of the Unicorn are from Ctesias, Greek physician and historian from the 5th century B.C., who, during his expeditions to India, described it as a wild animal with the appearance of a horse, pure white body, purple head and intense blue eyes.
The Horn of this prodigious beast, according to his description, was black with red tip and a white base, and had medicinal properties that allowed healing stomach problems, epilepsy or poisoning.




Genesis, The Creation of Animals - Oxford MS. Douce 135 fol-017





Harleian Bestiary - Unicorn - c.13th



During the Middle Ages, the unicorn was widely accepted as a symbol for Jesus Christ. In the Scriptures we find images of the “monoceros” ("one-horned mammal") that are associated with power: “But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil” (Psalms 92:10) sings the David, blessing God for His continued support.
The horn is the symbol for masculine power and virility, celebrated in ancient rites of anointing of a lingham stone or glass representing the Life Force. Anointing of the “horn” is found also in Psalm 23: “Thou has anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows.” This assertion echoes ancient pagan rites of the “sacred marriage”  uniting the king with the princess or priestess who represented her land and people. It was the role of the “Bride” to anoint the Sacred King and to be united with him in the bridal chamber, where the consummation of their marriage brought blessings of life and fertility to the people, crops, and herds of the realm.

Various exotic legends are attached to the mythical unicorn. In the popular Physiologus, a bestiary compiled in the 3rd c. in Alexandria, we find the ferocious unicorn, which can only be captured when he is lured to seek refuge with his head in the lap of a maiden. The powder ground from the unicorn’s horn was believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac and his horn was further reputed to purify polluted or poisonous waters.

“He is a small animal, like a kid, but surprisingly fierce for his size, with one very sharp horn on his head, and no hunter is able to catch him by force.  Yet there is a trick by which he is taken.  Men lead a virgin to the place where he most resorts and leave her there alone.  As soon as he sees this virgin he runs and lays his head in her lap. She fondles him and he falls asleep.  Then hunters then approach and capture him and lead him to the palace of the king.”

The Maiden and the Unicorn - Domenichino



Ormesby Psalter - Bodleian Library MS. Douce-366



Wildweibchen mit Einhorn

However, not all copies of Physiologus agree on the symbology of the unicorn.  In Syriac and Provencal versions of it, the unicorn becomes not the symbol of Jesus but the symbol of the Devil.  Its capture by a virgin reinforces the idea at the time: evil can only be overcome by virtue.  This is the Syriac version:

“There is an animal called dajja, extremely gentle, which the hunters are unable to capture

because of its great strength.  It has in the middle of its brow a single horn.  But

observe the ruse by which the huntsmen take it.  They lead forth a young virgin, pure and

chaste, to whom, when the animal sees her, he approaches, throwing himself upon her.  Then

the girl offers him her breasts, and the animal begins to suck the breasts of the maiden

and to conduct himself familiarly with her.  Then the girl, while sitting quietly, reaches

forth her hand and grasps the horn on the animal’s brow, and at this point the huntsmen

come up and take the beast and go away with him to the king. – Likewise the Lord Christ has

raised up for us a horn of salvation in the midst of Jerusalem, in the house of God, by the

intercession of the Mother of God, a virgin pure, chaste, full of mercy, immaculate,

inviolate.”

British Library, Royal MS 2 B. vii, Folio 101r

British Library, Royal MS 12 F. xiii, Folio 10v

The attributions given to the horn in regards to virility and the capacity to purify are related to the image of the Unicorn as the “Bridegroom King” of Israel (Rev 19:11-21), of the lineage of King David and heir to the Bible’s promises made by Yahweh that his descendants would rule forever. The truth that Jesus was fully human, a husband and father, was denied by the tradition of the medieval Roman Church that Jesus was the celibate son of God, ruling with power and might from a throne in heaven. The “waters of spirit and truth” which were to have flowed through the Christian realm, nurturing the land and people, had been tragically distorted and perverted. Only the “horn” of the Unicorn (the symbol for his virility) could purify the polluted waters.

This 15th c. illumination from a Medical journal illustrated by Robin Tessart depicts the Unicorn, the “Maiden” and the purification of the stream.

                          

Robin Tessart - c.15th.

The roses above the head of the maiden are symbolic of the eternal “feminine.” The Maiden is wearing the red commonly worn by medieval brides, while the lacing of the bodice is a style associated with pregnancy (since it enables the gown to be adjusted).

The Church fathers, who recognized the Unicorn as a symbol for Jesus Christ explain his head in the lap of the maiden by explaining that Jesus is trying to return to the womb of his mother. Clearly this is a stretch, an attempt by the Church patriarchs to co-opt the popular symbol of the unicorn, but taking away any sexual connotation of his horn. The representation of the “anointed one” in the lap of the maiden comes straight out of the ancient rites of the hieros gamos in which the Bride chooses her consort and anoints him in a ceremony foreshadowing the “anointing” that occurs in the Bridal Chamber when the nuptials are consummated.

The famous unicorn tapestries “La Dame à la licorne” celebrate the Bride in the garden awaiting this consummation of her nuptials in the final panel depicting the Bridal tent. Each panel represents one of the five senses, while the sixth celebrates the “union” of the beloveds. 

In the first panel, “Sight,” the unicorn has lifted the skirt of the Bride with his hooves and is gazing at his image in the mirror she holds.

La Licorne de Cluny Tapestries

  
The Bride in these tapestries is dressed in gold brocade, the wedding gown of the Bride of the Messianic king described in Psalm 45: “All glorious is the king’s daughter within; her clothing is wrought of gold; in embroidered raiment she is brought into the king.”

In numerous medieval paintings, Mary Magdalene appears dressed in gold brocade, and the passage from Psalm 45 was, for centuries until 1969, part of the liturgy for her feast day, celebrated on 22 July.


                                           

 

 
In his book about the tapestries “La Dame à la licorne,” their long time curator reports a suggestion that the tapestries represent tenets of the Cathar heresy. We have the assertion of the 13th c. chronicler, Pier vaux de Chernay, that the holocaust of the Cathars and their friends who sought sanctuary in the village church at Beziers on her feast day in 1209 as “divine providence” punishing them for their slanderous assertion that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers. Apparently the belief was widely disseminated in that century, but distorted and repudiated. The Pope and the French king collaborated to launch the Albigensian Crusade in 1209, reducing the towns of Provence to rubble.

In "Love in the Western World", Denis de Rougemont suggests that the unicorn represented the Cathar faith, hounded and eventually destroyed by the Catholic Church. Each of the early panels of the “Hunt of the Unicorn” tapestries displayed at the “Cloisters” in New York City depicts a phase of the hunt
culminating in the extermination of the “Unicorn” (representing the “Bridegroom Christ” and the tenet of the Cathars). But the final panel shows the unicorn in the garden of delights, where each flower represents an aspect of love and fertility, and the blood-red juice from the pomegranate tree above drips on his pure white coat. The word “paradise” comes from the Persian word for garden, and in the Song of Songs, the Bride is likened to a “garden enclosed.”

The Unicorn in Captivity - Tapestries at The Cloisters

                  
Among the watermarks found in the vernacular Bibles written on paper manufactured in small paper mills throughout the “Languedoc,” unicorns are the most popular of the images. Of approximately 13,000 watermarks collected in the early 20th century from antique bibles and other medieval literary
works (notably the "Romance of the Rose" and "Song of Roland'), nearly 10% are images of unicorns. 

M.L. Starbird's "The Woman with the Alabaster Jar" discusses the faith of the Cathars as revealed in the symbols they hid in sheets of paper after the faith was forced "underground" by the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1250). One charming unicorn is very suggestive of the “Bloodline heresy” of the “Sang Real” which asserts that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were parents of a child whose descendants survived to become the peers of European noble families. This unicorn watermark clearly depicts the unicorn as associated by blood with the royal french “fleur de lis.”

                                                       

Interestingly, this same distinctive flower appears to be growing in front of the fence of the enclosed garden in the “Captured Unicorn” panel of the “Hunt” tapestries. Both the watermark and the tapestries are dated c. 1500. It appears that the “heresy” of the bloodline of Jesus was widespread at that period of European history. Other watermarks depicting the “Lion of Judah” show a similar theme as illustrated below:

Since both the Lion and the Unicorn are symbols for the legitimate King of Israel, it’s easy to conclude that this "fleur de lis" in the heraldic animal's tail refers to the bloodline of the heirs of Israel's King David.

There is no verifiable proof that Jesus, the “Bridegroom King” and his beloved Mary Magdalene had a child and that heirs of this “Sang Real” bloodline survived in Western Europe. What can be proved is that this belief was widespread in the Middle Ages, supported by art, artifact and legend in an underground stream of esoteric wisdom, brutally suppressed by the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church.

La Licorne de |Cluny Tapestries

Note: A large part of this text is adapted from Margaret Starbird's website  (link here).

Margaret is the author of "The Woman with the Alabaster Jar"