Virgin Mary

Within the depth-psychology corpus, the Virgin Mary functions less as a biographical or theological figure than as a living symbol at the intersection of archetype, dogma, and cultural history. The treatment divides into several distinct but overlapping concerns. Jung and his immediate heirs — Edinger principally — focus on the 1950 dogma of the Assumption as a psycho-historical event of the first magnitude, reading the bodily elevation of Mary into the Trinity as the unconscious pressure of the feminine archetype forcing its way into the masculine Godhead and completing a quaternary structure long implicit in Christian iconology. For Bulgakov, writing from Orthodox sophiology, Mary is the Spirit-bearing theandric figure whose humanity mediates between creation and the divine nature of Christ, making her the ‘heart of the world.’ Harvey, Baring, and Campbell situate Mary within a longer continuum of goddess imagery — Shekinah, Sophia, Prima Materia — and diagnose Christianity’s severance of Mary from instinct and nature as the tradition’s deepest spiritual wound. Woodman approaches the Virgin as a psychological type whose complexity — Virgin, Queen, Bride, Mother, Intercessor — illuminates the contradictions patriarchal culture has projected onto the feminine. Nichols reads the Virgin archetype as a living force inspiring authentic feminine vocation. The contested boundary between Mary as dogmatic person, archetypal image, and suppressed goddess remains the generative tension throughout the corpus.

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the recent promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption emphasizes the taking up not only of the soul but of the body of Mary into the Trinity, thus making a dogmatic reality of those medieval representations of the quaternity

Edinger, following Jung, argues that the 1950 Assumption dogma represents the archetypal pressure of the feminine finally entering the Trinity as a fourth element, completing the psychological quaternity.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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Medieval iconology, embroidering on the old speculations about the Theotokos, evolved a quaternity symbol in its representations of the coronation of the Virgin and surreptitiously put it in place of the Trinity.

Jung identifies the coronation and Assumption of the Virgin as the unconscious iconographic movement by which Christianity began substituting a quaternity for the Trinity, integrating the feminine into the Godhead.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis

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Mary’s own Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth of her son place her outside nature. She is below heaven and above nature. This is, perhaps, Christianity’s greatest problem: how to include nature and everything pertaining to it in the realm of the Divine.

Harvey and Baring argue that the doctrinal construction of Mary severs her from instinct and nature, revealing Christianity’s fundamental failure to integrate the immanent feminine dimension of the divine.

Harvey, Andrew; Baring, Anne, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996thesis

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the image of Mary lacks the deeper dimension of instinct that belongs to the older goddesses. Instinct is placed ‘beyond the pale,’ associated with the sin of Eve.

Campbell identifies the splitting of instinct from spirit as the structural deficiency of the Marian image within Christianity, contrasting her with the older goddess traditions she partially inherits.

Campbell, Joseph, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013thesis

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Mary gradually reveals herself to be the Prima Materia, the Root and Portal of Life, the Womb of Creation, the Fountain, and the Rose Garden — images that also belonged to the Shekinah.

Harvey and Baring trace the iconographic and symbolic continuity between Mary and the Shekinah, presenting her as the vehicle through which ancient goddess imagery entered Christian theology.

Harvey, Andrew; Baring, Anne, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996thesis

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Mary gradually reveals herself to be the Prima Materia, the Root and Portal of Life, the Womb of Creation, the Fountain, and the Rose Garden — images that also belonged to the Shekinah. Like the Shekinah, she is the secret, hidden ground of the soul.

Campbell reinforces the identification of Mary with the Shekinah, presenting her as the veiled form of the feminine face of God and the hidden ground of the soul in Christian mysticism.

Campbell, Joseph, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013supporting

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In her, creation is utterly and completely divinized, conceives, bears, and fosters God. In relation to the Father she is named Daughter, in relation to the Word, Mother and Bride, unwedded Bride of God, while in relation to the Holy Ghost she is the Spirit-bearer, the glory of the world.

Bulgakov articulates an Orthodox sophiological position in which Mary occupies a unique mediating role across all three Trinitarian persons, functioning as the personal embodiment of creation’s divinization.

Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937thesis

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The birth of Christ from the Virgin is not merely an isolated event in time; it establishes an eternally abiding bond between Mother and Son, so that an image of our Lady with her infant in her arms is in fact an image of Divine-humanity.

Bulgakov argues that the Virgin Birth institutes a permanent ontological bond between humanity and divinity, making every icon of Mary with Christ a living image of Divine-humanity.

Bulgakov, Sergei, Sophia, the Wisdom of God: An Outline of Sophiology, 1937supporting

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A study of the changing concepts surrounding the Virgin Mary, as Virgin, Queen, Bride, Mother, Intercessor, is eloquently developed by Marina Warner in her book Alone of All Her Sex.

Woodman situates the psychological complexity of the Marian image within Warner’s cultural-historical analysis, framing the contradictions inherent in the ‘ideal woman’ as psychologically significant.

Woodman, Marion, Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride: A Psychological Study, 1982supporting

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In our culture, the biblical account of the Virgin Mary dramatizes this archetype. Just as the Virgin Mary was chosen for a destiny uniquely her own for which there was ‘no room at the inn,’ so woman today is called to fulfill herself in ways to which our collective society still closes its doors.

Nichols reads the Virgin Mary as an archetypal pattern dramatizing the call to a uniquely feminine vocation, finding in her story a template for contemporary women’s individuation.

Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting

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the veneration of the Virgin Mary makes her, as intercessor and redeemer, almost the equal of Christ. It was long believed that like Christ she bodily ascended to heaven, and, in the Papal Bull of 1950, the Assumptio Maria was proclaimed as a dogma of the Church.

Woodman traces the historical elevation of Mary through veneration and doctrine, noting how the Assumption dogma brought the feminine into near-parity with Christ within Catholic Christianity.

supporting

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Mary’s allowing the cloud of Yahweh to rest on her makes her symbolically synonymous with the holy tabernacle in the wilderness or Solomon’s temple that houses Yahweh’s presence.

Edinger interprets the Annunciation as the symbolic identification of Mary with the sacred vessel or tabernacle, situating her as the human container of divine presence.

Edinger, Edward F., The Christian Archetype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ, 1987supporting

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There, in the center, sits the Virgin, crowned, the scepter of world rule in her right hand and her left supporting the infant Christ. She is in this vision the ‘Mystical Rose’ of the litany, vehicle and support of the revelation of God, the very Gate of Heaven.

Campbell reads the iconographic program of Chartres Cathedral as evidence for Mary’s role as cosmic queen and axial symbol of the medieval Christian worldview.

Campbell, Joseph, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting

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Glorification of the body portrayed as coronation of the Virgin Mary. Sapientia (Hermes senex) takes the place of the Son, and the Holy Ghost has a quite separate entity. Together they form a quaternity.

Jung analyzes an alchemical image in which the Coronation of the Virgin functions as the glorification of the body, and Sapientia completes a quaternary Godhead — linking Marian iconography to the alchemical imagination.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting

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‘Ave Praeclara’ is the opening of a hymn to the Virgin Mary, which has been attributed to various authors, including Albertus Magnus, whose putative authorship must have been particularly interesting to an alchemist.

Jung notes the alchemical resonance of the Marian hymn ‘Ave Praeclara,’ tracing its imagery of sea-star and virgin to alchemical symbolism and exploring the overlap between Mariology and alchemical language.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting

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At the end of the earthly life of the most Holy Mother of God was the beginning of Her greatness, ‘being adorned with divine glory.’ She stands and will stand, both in the day of the last judgment and in the future age, at the right hand of the throne of her son.

Harvey and Baring cite Orthodox liturgical and devotional texts to illustrate the eschatological stature of Mary as intercessor and co-regent with Christ.

Harvey, Andrew; Baring, Anne, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996aside

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She stands and will stand, both in the day of the last judgment and in the future age, at the right hand of the throne of her son. She reigns with Him and has boldness toward Him as His Mother according to the flesh.

Campbell cites the same Orthodox devotional sources to frame Mary’s eschatological intercession, contextualizing her within the broader tradition of the feminine divine as mediator.

Campbell, Joseph, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013aside

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