Mother of God – Orthodox icon

In the previous post, the small girl in Irene Claremont de Castillejo’s dream longed to find the Queen of Hearts. For many Mary, Mother of God, fulfils that role – acting as a mediatrix and balancing out all those black-clothed men in the dream mumbling in Latin.

Carl Jung was very taken by the elevation of Mary in the 1950s, which he saw as arising from what he calls:

‘… an anonymous movement of the Catholic world … There was a deep longing in the masses for an intercessor and mediatrix who would at last take her place alongside the Holy Trinity and be received as the “Queen of Heaven and Bride at the heavenly court.” … The numerous miracles of the Virgin which preceded it … are genuine and legitimate experiences springing directly from the unconscious psychic life of the people.’

The psychological need of the people for this feminine representative could begin to balance the masculine in the church. Jung saw that Mary’s virginity was essential as marking her independence from the male. Her immaculate conception freed her from original sin, and so she could be seen as belonging to time before the Fall. Mary is the new beginning, and as the bride of God Jung sees that she:

‘… not only bears the image of God in undiminished purity, but … is also the incarnation of her prototype, namely Sophia [wisdom]. …The blessed among women, is a friend and intercessor for sinners … Like Sophia, she is a mediatrix who leads the way to God and assures man of immortality. Her assumption is therefore the prototype of man’s bodily resurrection. As the Bride of God and Queen of Heaven she holds the place of the Old Testament Sophia.’

As Jung then pointed out, the elevation of Mary leaves Protestantism as, ‘being nothing but a man’s religion which allows no metaphysical representation of woman.’ Although 70 years later there will now be an actual female Archbishop of Canterbury, Jung believed that equality requires to be ‘metaphysically anchored in the figure of a “divine” woman, the Bride of Christ’ and the bride cannot be replaced by the Church.

‘The feminine, like the masculine, demands an equally personal representation. … The new dogma [of the Assumption] expresses a renewed hope for the fulfilment of that yearning for peace which stirs deep down in the soul, and for a resolution of the threatening tension between the opposites … How could Protestantism so completely miss the point?’

However, there is a tradition of some Anglican clergy and writers placing Mary at the centre of the Christian story. Donald Allchin in his book The Joy of All Creation, writes about how Mary reminds us of the mystery of incarnation and the physicality of our divine life which is mediated through our bodies, and where ‘the material world, the world of plants and animals in all its fragility and exuberance, is touched by the divine and is shown to be capable of the divine.’

‘The human is capable of the divine. Through the gift of God, the divine life is rooted in the human, the human in the divine. And here precisely is the cause of great joy and amazement. … Mary’s name is associated with joy …In her there is a meeting of opposites, of God and humankind, of flesh and spirit, of time and eternity, which causes an explosion of joy, a kind of ecstasy.’