[Author’s Note: This essay in four parts is my webinar talk given to the Ubiquity University online Chartres Community Meeting ‘Madonna Rising’ August 14th, 2020]
The Virgin Mary Part 1
Apart from Christmas and Easter, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15th is the most important day of the year for Catholics and Orthodox Christians all over the world. In the town of Chartres, in France, the Black Madonna is taken from the Cathedral and carried through the streets, accompanied by the people of the town, in an intensely moving and timeless ritual. Exactly the same attitude of reverence and adoration would have accompanied the processions sacred to the Great Goddesses of the ancient world.
There are two Mary’s who are at the heart of Chartres Cathedral: The Virgin Mary and her daughter-in-law Mary Magdalene. Both are connected with the Black Madonna in the crypt. I have come to the conclusion that the image of the Black Madonna represents Mary Magdalene and the Wisdom Tradition that she brought with her from Palestine to France, or Gaul as it was called in the first century CE. The Wisdom Tradition enshrines the lost Feminine aspect of God, named Shekinah, Sophia, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit.
The Virgin Mary is the unrecognized Great Goddess of the Christian tradition. In our chapter on the Virgin Mary in The Myth of the Goddess, Jules Cashford and I showed how she appears as a new Christian incarnation of the Great Goddess of ancient civilizations. In icon, painting and sculpture, she is portrayed as the Great Mother, Queen of Heaven, Earth and Underworld, Goddess of the Animals and Goddess of the Wisdom of the Soul.
In the exquisite blue of this window in Chartres Cathedral – La Belle Verrière – a blue that has never been reproduced, we see the image of the Virgin Mary, seated on the Throne of Wisdom, holding her son on her lap. The words addressed to her as Queen of Heaven speak to us of her exalted being:
Hail! Queen of Heaven,
Hail! Lady of the angels.
Salutation to Thee, root and portal,
Whence the Light of the world has arisen.
These words echo the similar greeting addressed four thousand years ago to the Sumerian Goddess Inanna and the Egyptian Goddess Isis as Queen of Heaven — Hail! Great Lady of Heaven. Hail! Light of the world![1] Those who know only the Christian tradition do not know how deep the roots of Mary go and how the salutations and prayers to her echo the salutations and prayers offered to these Great Goddesses, both of whom were addressed as the Light of the World. Mary is addressed as ‘Star of the Sea’ and, like these ancient Goddesses, is associated with the morning star Venus and with the moon, whose crescent is often shown beneath her feet. And the image of the dove always accompanies her as it once accompanied the Great Goddesses and the Holy Spirit. Hence, when we hear the words spoken at the baptism of Jesus, accompanied by a dove: ‘This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased’, we can know, as the Jewish Christians did, that the Divine Mother, the Holy Spirit, is speaking to Her son.[2]
Once she has given birth to Jesus, the Virgin Mary does not play a prominent role in the Gospels, other than her presence at the wedding in Cana and the crucifixion. Yet within 500 years of her death, she has mysteriously assumed the presence and stature of all the Great Goddesses before her. In this role, like earlier Great Goddesses, Mary is both virgin and mother. She gives birth to a half-human, half divine son who, as in earlier incarnations of the dying and resurrected god, dies and is reborn. Like Osiris, Attis, Tammuz, Dumuzi and Persephone before him, Jesus descends into the underworld, where the mystery of regeneration has always taken place. And his ascent and resurrection or return, like theirs, is understood to renew life and to redeem it from the limitation of mortality and time. Behind the mythic figure of her son, is the shadowy form of Mary as the new carrier of the Divine Feminine who presides over the mystery of death and regeneration.[3]
In 431, at a Council in Ephesus, the city where the great temple of the Goddess Artemis had stood for centuries, Mary was proclaimed not only Christ-bearer but God-Bearer or Mother of God — Theotokos. In giving her this title, she was implicitly, though not yet doctrinally, recognized as the feminine counterpart of the Divine Father. Twenty years later, in 451, at a Council in Chalcedon, Mary was declared Aeiparthenos — ‘Ever-Virgin’, that is a virgin before, during and after the birth of Jesus. There are four dogmas of the Catholic church that have elevated Mary to the position of Divine Mother and Goddess: Her Immaculate Conception, her Perpetual Virginity, her being declared the Mother of God, and her Assumption. The extraordinary story of the doctrinal elevation of Mary to the position of the former Great Goddess as Queen of Heaven shows the persistence of an archetype and the profound need of people to have the feminine principle at the heart of their religion.
Because of everything that the figure of the Virgin Mary embraces, the whole past mythology of the Divine Feminine as the womb of life, as cosmic soul and as all that we call nature, the Assumption of Mary has crucial archetypal meaning. In this celebrated event, the feminine dimension of the Divine held in the person of Mary is raised to parity and union with the godhead. In Christ’s welcoming gesture, the tragic Christian tendency to dissociate nature, matter and the body from divine spirit, is dramatically and finally redeemed in a glorious affirmation of their sacredness, unity and divinity.
The Assumption of Mary was only doctrinally confirmed in 1950. In response to a petition signed by 8 million people, a Papal Bull of Pope Pius X11 declared the Assumption of the Virgin to be official doctrine, stating that ‘Mary was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.’ In 1954, a further Papal Encyclical proclaimed her “Queen of Heaven” – thereby bestowing on her the title once held by the Sumerian goddess Inanna and the Egyptian Isis. Through this Papal initiative, the feminine archetype was raised to parity with the masculine one, implicitly restoring balance and wholeness to the psyche.
The psychiatrist C.G. Jung thought this Papal Bull was the most important event since the Reformation. He recognized the significance of this elevation of Mary into heaven and anticipated the imminent resurgence of the Feminine Archetype in human consciousness. Why would Mary be given such an exalted position and significance at this time unless there was a need in the collective human soul for the union of the two primary archetypal principles? And why should this happen in the 1950’s unless there was a recognition that something essential was needed in order to bring balance and healing to the collective human psyche that had recently emerged from the carnage and trauma of the Second World War?
Jung commented in his book, Answer to Job: “The logic of the papal declaration cannot be surpassed, and it leaves Protestantism with the odium of being nothing but a man’s religion which allows no metaphysical representation of woman. Protestantism has obviously not given sufficient attention to the signs of the times which point to the equality of women. But this equality requires to be metaphysically anchored in the figure of a “divine” woman, the bride of Christ. Just as the person of Christ cannot be replaced by an organization, so the bride cannot be replaced by the Church [as the Bride of Christ]. The feminine, like the masculine demands an equally personal representation.[4]
Looking back over the last 70 years we can follow the gradual rise of the Feminine archetype as both nature and woman are beginning to be granted the honor and respect due to them, although not without huge resistance. Overturning the imprinted beliefs and prejudices of several millennia is no easy task.
(To be continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Anne Baring
[1] See Baring, Anne & Cashford, Jules, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, Chapters 5 & 6
[2] Quispel G (1973) The Birth of the Child, Eranos Lectures. Dallas: Spring Publications Inc., 23
[3] See the Myth of the Goddess, Chapter 14
[4] C. G. Jung, Answer to Job Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1954, pp. 170-171
Coming from a Roman Catholic view your article is excellent. Sadly, most Catholics don’t know the history of the Great Goddesses and the Virgin Mary herself. The Divine feminine has to have an equal place in religion, or as you say, all other religions are centered around a male deity alone.
Brava Anne,
Reverend Donna M. Swindells
OCDS