Amma Sarah
A Magdalene–Christos journey into the wisdom of the Desert Mothers.
A Magdalene Desert Mother: Purity, Presence, and Liberation
Online Retreat
Long before Christianity became an institution, women entered the desert seeking direct communion with the Divine. They became known as the Ammas—the Desert Mothers: mystics, ascetics, spiritual teachers and keepers of a fierce feminine wisdom that has largely disappeared from our collective memory.
Among them was Amma Sarah of the Desert, one of the most extraordinary women of early Christianity.
Tradition remembers Sarah as living for decades as a hermit beside the Nile, devoted to prayer, contemplation and radical inner transformation. It is said that although the river flowed beside her dwelling, she remained so inwardly focused that she never turned to look at it.
But Sarah was not meek in the way history so often taught women they should be.
She was fierce, discerning and spiritually sovereign. Male ascetics came to test her and attempted to diminish her because she was a woman. Sarah met them with an extraordinary clarity that exposed their pride and challenged the assumption that spiritual authority belonged to men.
And perhaps one of her most powerful teachings speaks directly to us today.
Sarah refused to build her life around the gaze of others. Rather than praying that everyone would think well of her, she turned the prayer inward: let my own heart be pure toward all.
What freedom there is in this teaching.
What if our spiritual path were no longer about being approved of, understood, chosen or validated, but about becoming so deeply rooted in the Divine that our inner life becomes our authority?
This is the wisdom of Amma Sarah.
And this is why I believe the Desert Mothers are calling to us again.
In The Desert Mystic: Amma Sarah, we will enter her world through the Magdalene–Christos path and explore the mysteries of the inner desert, feminine spiritual authority, purification of the heart, sacred solitude, devotion and the Divine Presence within.
This is not simply a workshop about an ancient Christian mystic.
It is an invitation to meet the Desert Mother within you.
Amma Sarah understood something that remains profoundly relevant today: the moment we allow the gaze of others to determine our worth, our choices, or our sense of belonging, we abandon the inner sanctuary.
Her teaching invites us into another way of being—to become so deeply rooted in the Divine that we no longer shape ourselves according to how we are perceived.
What can an Egyptian Desert Mother who lived more than 1,600 years ago reveal to us about the Magdalene Way—and why is her wisdom returning now?
Amma Sarah carries one of the great mysteries at the heart of the Magdalene path: the return to the Lebbā, ܠܒܐ—the heart.
The Lebbā is the heart beneath the noise, beneath the roles, beneath everything we have learned to become. It is the place within us that remembers the Divine—and perhaps, the place where the Magdalene has never left us.
For centuries, the voices of the Desert Mothers remained at the edges of Christian history. Yet their teachings carry something astonishingly alive for us today.
Perhaps they are returning because we are ready to hear them.
Because the Magdalene Way is also returning.
A way that calls us out of fragmentation and back into the sacred center. A way of inner authority, embodied devotion, and a heart so deeply rooted in the Divine that it no longer abandons itself.
In this workshop, we will enter the desert with Amma Sarah and explore the mystery of the Lebbā—uncovering what this extraordinary Egyptian mystic can teach us about becoming women of the Magdalene Way today.
Some teachings belong to history.
Others wait until the moment we are ready to remember them.
During our three hours together, we will enter the teachings of Amma Sarah not as wisdom belonging to the past, but as a living contemplative path with profound relevance for our lives today.
We will discover the freedom that becomes possible when we begin to withdraw our attention from the constant need for approval, validation, and appraisal, and return that attention to the sacred interior life.
Through Aramaic Mysticism, we will enter practices, meditations, chants, and prayers centered upon Lebbā, the Heart—journeying into the heart as the inner sanctuary of consciousness, spiritual orientation, and Divine Presence.
Through Dances of the Living Heart™ and embodied contemplative practice, we will encounter the need for approval where it actually lives—in the body—and experience what begins to shift physically, emotionally, and spiritually as we release it and return to our own center.
We will also enter the mystery of the feminine spiritual principle in women and in men. The feminine belongs to the wholeness of every human being, and beyond the division of masculine and feminine lies the ancient mystery of the Anthropos—the integrated human being, the human being becoming whole.
This is more than a workshop about Amma Sarah.
It is an invitation to enter the desert with her—and discover what her fierce, uncompromising wisdom can awaken within us today.
When the heart is no longer scattered among a thousand voices, it begins to hear the Eternal.
I feel deeply drawn to the Desert Mystics as I experience them as Magdalenes.
As a woman walking a spiritual path, as a woman who leads a Mystery School, and as someone who has spent most of my life teaching, writing, creating, and holding spaces for others, I have returned again and again to these extraordinary women and men of the desert. I have found strength in them. They remind me that authority and leadership does not ultimately belong to gender, status, recognition, or the gaze of another. It arises from depth, presence, embodiment, and our relationship with the Divine.
Beyond gender is the Anthropos.
Beyond division is Union.
Beyond the gaze of others is the quiet place where the soul stands before God.
Whatever threshold you are standing at in your life—whether you are healing, creating, beginning again, stepping into greater visibility, releasing an old identity, or simply longing for a deeper interior life—I believe Amma Sarah has something profoundly important to say to us.
Desert Mystic
Amma Sarah
A Magdalene Desert Mother: Purity, Presence, and Liberation
A three-hour online Retreat workshop
Date: September 30th, 15,00 CET
Replay available for all registered participants.
Includes a beautiful companion eBook: 22 Days with Amma Sarah — a contemplative journey of journal prompts and practices to deepen and embody the teachings of the Pure Heart.
Ana Otero