Humanity has always been receiving the Christ in every culture and age, and
women are most naturally imaged as the receivers of the Divine Gift: Think
Willendorf, Ephesus, Constantinople, Ravenna, Mt. Carmel, Black Madonnas,
Valencia, Walsingham, Guadalupe, until every country of the world eventually
had its own feminine image, of one who has received the Christ in her very
body (not in her head!). And also note the rather universal pronoun “our,”
always “Our Lady,” never “my Lady.” This is a sure giveaway that we are dealing
with a Corporate Personality (one who stands for the whole) and a collective
understanding of salvation. Same with “Our Lord” or “Our Father.” I never hear
official liturgical prayers speak of “my Jesus” or “my Lord.” God and Mary are
always addressed as a shared experience, at least in the historic churches, and
before our later individualization of the whole Gospel message.
I find it interesting that male gods tend to come from the heavens, and are
usually associated with the sun, sky, power, and light. But in most mythology
and fairy tales, feminine gods tend to come out of the earth or the sea and are
often associated with fertility, subtlety, good darkness, and nurturance.
Invariably “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon,” except in German! If creation is
indeed the first Incarnation and the “first Bible” (Romans 1:20), if mother
precedes child, then it is not at all surprising that the physical, earthly, and
embodied symbols would be recognized in mind, art, and tradition as “Mother
Earth” (never “Father”). From this intuition the first fourteen hundred years of
Christianity, East and West, made an easy transference to Mary, who was
invariably clothed in flowing beauty and color, often crowned by Jesus, and was
no longer the simple, poor maiden of Nazareth.
Another important nonbiblical emergence was the widespread belief that
Mary’s body was taken up into heaven after her death. (This is the only example
I know of the Vatican actually taking a survey before it proclaimed the doctrine,
in 1950. They found that most of the Catholic world already believed this to be
true without it ever having been taught formally, which is called the sensus
fidelium.) Accounts of Mary’s Assumption aren’t found anywhere in the Bible—
unless you want to read Revelation 12 in that archetypal way—but they
circulated among Christians as early as the fourth century. And by the time the
Vatican formalized the doctrine, Carl Jung considered the confirmation “the
most significant theological development of the twentieth century” because it
proclaimed that a woman’s body permanently exists in the eternal realms!
Wow. The pantheon of male god images was forever feminized, and even more,
it was declared that human bodies, not just souls or spirits, could share in the