Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 8

The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is wrought of gold.

She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.

With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the King's palace.

1 Compa.s.sion of the B.V.M. (Friday after Pa.s.sion Sunday), antiphons from Canticles 6: r, t: 13, and 2: 5.

Advent ro7 The ultimate picture of the Virgin in the fullness of her heavenly glory comes from the vision of St. John at Patmos:

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven: a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.'

Upon this pa.s.sage Catholic art bases its iconography of the Virgin reigning as Queen of Heaven after her a.s.sumption-with the crescent moon beneath her feet, and the twelve stars forming an aureole about her head.

Despite its richness and complexity, the symbolism of the Virgin gives a definite picture of her role in the scheme of Christian mythology. The Virgin Mother is, first of all, Mater Virgo-virgin matter or the unploughed soil-that is to say, the Prima Materia prior to its division, or ploughing, into the multiplicity of created things. As Star of the Sea, Stella Marls (mare=Mary), the Sealed Fountain, "the immaculate womb of this divine font", she is likewise the Water over which the Spirit moved in the beginning of time. As the Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet", she is also everything signified in other mythologies by the G.o.ddesses of the moon, which s.h.i.+nes by the sun's light, and appears in the night surrounded (crowned) with stars. As the Womb in which the Logos comes to birth she is also s.p.a.ce, signified in the common artistic convention of clothing her in a blue mantle, spangled with stars. As the Jesse Tree, the Cedar of Liba.n.u.s, the Cypress of Mount Sion, the Palm of Cades, and the Olive of the Plains, she is also to be identified with the Axle/Tree of the World, with the serpent at its roots-it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise its heel"-and bearing alike the fruits of death and life.3 As the Rose and the Lily 1 Revelation 1a: 1. S Genesis 3: 15.

The Virgin has also been a.s.sociated in another way with the Tree of the Cross, upon which Christ performs the feminine.redemptive function of to8 Myth and Ritual in Christianity she is the on cup of the Rower, symbol of the receptive, pa.s.sive, feminine aspect of mans spiritual transformation-represented also in the Chalice or Graal which receives the lifeblood of Christ.

The Virgin Mary in Christianity thus typifies everything signified by Maya in Hinduism and Buddhism-that is, the female shakti, or consort, of G.o.d, the world which "G.o.d so loved", or the finite manifestation of the infinite. The word mayd is derived from the root mater, to measure, from which in turn come /thing (mother), metre, matrix, mater, and matter, for mdyd is that "nothing, which, when measured or divided, becomes things. The Divider ("I came not to bring peace, but a sword") is the Logos, who "set a compa.s.s on the face of the deep, who "divided the light from the darkness,2 and created the firmament to "divide the waters from the waters" .3 Thus it is prophesied of Mary, "A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,4 since in all the great traditions creation is always through a sacrifice: the multiplicity of things is the One dismembered and divided. By yet another sacrifice the One is remembered-"Do this in remembrance (anamnesis) of Me"-for the original Unity is restored when the sacrifice is repeated, because the repet.i.tion is a recollection of what was done "in the beginning".

The story of the creation of the world by the dismemberment or division of the feminine Chaos, Prima Materia and Virgin Matter, has one of its earliest forms in the Babylonian tablets

When in the height heaven was not named And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name, And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,

And Chaos, Tiamat, the Mother of them both,

giving himself up" to death-to Non'being and Night. Death is always a return to the Womb in the sense of going back to the Northing out of which one came, and it is of interest that the bone behind the uterus is the os cn ds, popularly known as the Holy Bone, krer~zben, etc.

r Pros 8: 27. 3 Genesis r: 4. 3 Genesis r: 6. 4 Luke 2: 35.

Advent

Their waters were mingled together,

And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen; When of the G.o.ds none had been called into being, And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained... .

The Lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,

And with his merciless club he smashed her skull... .

Then the Lord rested, gazing upon her dead body,

While he divided the flesh . . . and devised a cunning plan. He split her up like a fiat fish into two halves;

One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven.'

ChaosTiamat is represented as a dragon or serpent because, before the division, she is "footless" or unmeasured. She is the "nothing" which by the measurement, the mdyd, the "art" of the Word is made to appear as things.

In Christianity, however, theology has consistently repressed a truth which in other traditions is abundantly clear. For when the primal Mother is dismembered into "things", it is only then that she becomes created. Prior to her apparent division into parts by the art or mdyd of the Word, she is uncreated and divine, being simply the female aspect of G.o.dhead.2 But for theology this is blasphemy and heresy, since theology, as distinct from myth, is the creation of individuals who cannot see this truth for the very reason that they are still spellbound, enchanted by the Word which makes the Many seem to be different from each other and from the One, and the creation separate from the Creator. Yet whereas the individual theologian 1 L. W. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation (London, 1902). Note, again, the repeated a.s.sociation of the creation of things with "naming", for it is always the "Word of G.o.d which is a sharp twoedged sword" which is the instrument of division.

2 Christian official theology having ever been onedsided, and unable to grasp the riddle of the "compa.s.s" which G.o.d set upon the "face of the deep". For the compa.s.s, the dividers, is "two" at the points and "one" at the pivot, so that he who holds it at the pivot is above and beyond the "pairs of opposites" which include being and nonbeing, Father and Mother.

u o o Myth and Ritual in Christianity remains spellbound, it is otherwise with the folk, the common man.1 For more than six hundred years theology has fought a steadily losing battle with the Catholic folk mind, which, step by step, is persuading the official Church to recognize the true divinity of the Virgin.

This is the obvious tendency behind the promulgation of the Immaculate Conception and the a.s.sumption of the Virgin as dogma, belief in which is "essential to salvation", and one can hardly doubt that these will in due course be followed, first, by the dogma that she is Mediatrix of All Graces, and, ultimately, by some dogma to the effect that she must receive latria-the wors.h.i.+p proper to G.o.d himself by virtue of her a.s.similation to the G.o.dhead.2 This will be the victory of what was apparent long ago at Chartres and today in Mexico, where the Virgin of Guadeloupe is-in practice-honoured far above the Father and the Son, and whose icon stands before the wors.h.i.+ppers in its own right, representing the Virgin one without even the Christ Child in her arms.3 Furthermore, the shrine of Our Lady of Guadeloupe is a basilica, and ranks third among all the shrines of Catholic Christendom.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin 1 In the proper meaning of a now debased usage, for the "common man" is the Man common to us all, which Jung would call the "collective un' conscious". He is the man who is a "nameless n.o.body", not being this or that particular individual. Hence the monastic and, in general, initiatory practice of giving up one's proper name when entering into religion, and receiving instead a "Christian" name-i.e. one of the names of the Common Man, Christ, who--as even theology insists-is not a particular human person, not a man but man. It is only in the Nestorian heresy that Christ is held to be a man.

2 Wors.h.i.+p is of two kinds-latria, the adoration of the G.o.dhead, and Julia, t e veneration of the saints, though the reverence paid to the Virgin is already called' byperdulia. One might venture the guess that some further step in the divinization of the Virgin is contained in the parts of the Fatima visions remaining unpublished.

= See the marvelous treatment of this problem in the section dealing with Mexican culture in F. S. C. Northrop's Meeting of East and West (New York, 1946).

Advent t t t not to be confused with that of the Virgin Birth of Christ-is to the effect that Mary was conceived without inheriting the taint of Original Sin which has descended to all other human beings from Adam and Eve. It is no wonder that the proper Ma.s.s for the feast of this mystery has, as its Episde, the Dominus possedit me pa.s.sage from Proverbs 8, in which Sophia, the handmaid of Logos, declares that she was set up from eternity, and that "he who shall find me shall find life".' For the miracle whereby the Virgin is free from Original Sin, that she never missed the mark" or was off the point", is clearly that she is of heavenly or divine origin. Like the Son, she was "begotten before all the worlds, for "I was set up from of old, before ever the earth was".

The dogma of the a.s.sumption maintains that, after her death, the Virgin Mary was a.s.sumed bodily into heaven, where she was subsequently crowned-"more glorious than the Cherubim and Seraphim-to reign with Christ for ever and ever.

The most ineffable Trinity itself applauds her with unceasing dance, and since its grace flows wholly into her, makes all to wait upon her. The most splendid order of the apostles extols her with unspeakable lauds, ... un, willing h.e.l.l itself howls to her, and the wanton demons shriek her praise?

The mysterious and altogether peculiar nature of the a.s.sump Lion is still clearer in the following pa.s.sage from St. John of Damascus: 0 Blessed Virgin, thou halt not gone to heaven as Elias did, or as Paul, who went up to the third heaven; 1 The Tract of this Ma.s.s also identifies her with the City of G.o.d, in view of which it is interesting to read the vision of Ezekiel 40, in which the Holy Ciry is measured by "a man whose appearance was like the appearance of bra.s.s"-i.e. the Son of Man.

2 From the Homilies of Gerardus, quoted in de Voragine's Golden Legend, trs. Ryan and Ripperger (London and New York, 1941), vol. ii, p. 458.

Ira Myth and Ritual in Christianity thou hat mounted even to the kingly throne of thy Son! The death of the other saints is blessed because it brings them to blessedness, but this is not true of thee: for not thy death ... has bestowed upon thee the security of thy blessedness, since thou art the beginning and the middle and the end of all the blessings that surpa.s.s the mind of man! Hence death has not beatified thee, but thou halt glorified death, dispelling its sadness and turning it to joy!'

We are here within sight of the recognition that the a.s.sump, don is the revelation of what the Virgin was from the beginning-the one who reigns eternally with Christ, Sophia as the consort of 2 os, divine Matrix of the universe. All the honours and symbols of this estate are present, and the only thing lacking is the precise theological definition.

We are now in a position to see what light the figure of the Virgin throws upon the metaphysical problem of mans redemption from time, death, and the past. A widespread symbolism likens the creative movement of life to the pa.s.sage of a bird through the sky: the point is that it leaves no trace, because the sky is always "pure and immaculate. Similarly, the real world and the real life of man is an eternal present having neither a past nor a future; it "moves through the Void Tike a bird or dancing spark which leaves nothing behind. For this reason, the memories which give the impression that there is an "I", a conditioning past whose dead hand rules the world, are shadows without any substance. It is for this reason that Ruysbroeck says, "We must found all our lives upon a fathomless abyss"; for this is, in truth, how they are founded-upon an abyss in which nothing "sticks" or leaves any trace, since all things past are as unreal as "the footprints of a star. This abyss in which nothing leaves any stain is the Virgin, the Immaculate Womb wherein Creation comes to birth, and which, after birth, remains ever Virgin" and spotless.

1 tbd.. PP- 463-4 Advent I13

Thou art all fair, 0 Mary; there is no spot in thee.... Thy raiment is white as snow, and thy countenance like the sun?

As the Prima Materia, the Nothing out of which all things were made, the Virgin has always represented our own true nature-the human nature which she gave to the Christ in bearing him. Thus the redemption of man from time depends on the realization that his own true or real nature Is, from the beginning, immaculate: he has no past, and the stain which he seems to leave behind him, and which is everything that makes up his individuality, is a seeming only. In reality it is not there; in reality there is only the spark of eternity in the trackless abyss. The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ, moves on"-yes, but in truth it writes on the sky. Of all this there is perhaps no more eloquent symbol than the fact that our earth and the whole host of heaven are suspended in emptiness. Time and s.p.a.ce are the same void. "Look!" said Meister Eckhart. "The person who lives in the light of G.o.d is conscious neither of time past nor of time to come but only of the one eternity... . Therefore he gets nothing new out of future events, nor from chance, for he lives in the Now/moment that is, unfailingly, `in verdure newly clad'."

Unfamiliar as such an interpretation of the Virgin may be, it comes naturally enough, without "stretching" the symbols, and is precisely the interpretation which brings the Christian myth into its proper relation with the other great mythological traditions-as a form of the philosophia perennis rather than a strange abnormality. As the deep upon which G.o.d set his compa.s.s, the waters upon which the Spirit moved, the Womb in which the Logos was made flesh, the Immaculate and Ever/Virgin Mother is clearly that "nothing" in which "things" are made to "seem" by mays, by measurement and division,

Imtnaculau Conception B.V.M., antiphons at the Hours.

2 R. Blakney, Meister Eckhart (New York, 1941), pp. tog--ro.

just as what we call time and s.p.a.ce are abstractions created by measurements upon the fathomless void. From another point of view, she is that which pa.s.sively, willingly, without resistance submits to the Dividers and the Sword, offering no obstacle to the free play of the divine nidyd; "Be it unto me according to thy word. She is thus the Open One--the Rose, the Lily, the Womb, the Sky. And out of this being nothing there comm, paradoxically and miraculously, fruitfulness-the Tree and its Fruit, the Rod of Jesse which blossoms and bears the Christ.

This miracle is what "I" can never understand; for "I" always thinks it must do something to be fruitful and creative. It does not understand the famous "law of reversed effort", whereby creative action at one level of one's being depends upon inaction at another. Only when the "I" is seen to be nothing, a shadow unable to move even a grain of dust, the Man in us comes to life "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

CHAPTER IV.

Christmas and Epiphany SHE who was, from the beginning, the Virgin of virgins and the Immaculate Mother of the universe, appeared in due time as Mary, the daughter of Joachim and Anna. According to St. Jerome, Joachim was from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, and Anna from the City of David-Bethlehem, and the two were just and G.o.dly folk who divided their wealth into three parts-one for the Temple, one for the poor, and one for their own needs. Anna, however, was barren and lived for twenty years with her husband without bearing him a child. But, moved to compa.s.sion by their holy lives, the Lord G.o.d at last sent his angel with the news that there would be born to them a daughter. They were to give her the name Mary, and to dedicate her from infancy to the service of G.o.d, for, said the angel, "as she will be born to a barren mother, so will she herself, in a wondrous manner, bring forth the Son of the Most High, whose name shall be called Jesus, and through whom will come salvation to Al the nations.

When the child was three years old, her parents took her to the Temple at Jerusalem, and left her in the company of the Temple virgins, with whom she grew up until she was fourteen-constantly visited by the angels and enjoying always the mystical vision of G.o.d. Now that she had become a woman, it was the proper custom that she should be returned to her home and given in marriage. But Mary told the High Priest that it could not be so with her, since she had promised her virginity to G.o.d. Perplexed, and seeking guidance from the Most High, the High Priest entered into the sanctuary of the Temple, and, as he prayed, a Voice came forth from the inmost shrine of the Holy of Holies, commanding that all the marriageable men of the House of David should come to the Temple and each one lay a branch upon the altar. One of these branches, said the Voice, would burst into flower, and he to whom it belonged was to take the Virgin Mary as his wife. And so it came about that the branch which blossomed was that which belonged to Joseph, a carpenter from Bethlehem. This branch was no doubt that ancient cutting from the Tree of Eden, which, according to another legend, had been handed down among the patriarchs of Israel until it had at last found its way to Joseph; and now, as it blossomed upon the altar, the Holy Spirit appeared from heaven in the form of a dove, and rested upon it.

Joseph was therefore espoused to Mary-whereafter he returned to Bethlehem to prepare for the wedding, and she to her home in Nazareth.' One day when Mary was at prayer 1 It is of interest that "Nazareth" means "branch", though St. Bernard understood it to mean "flower", and said that the Virgin was the Flower who willed to be born of a flower, in flower, in the season of flowers. As Christ is the Fruit of the Flower-the Mystic Rose, so in the traditions of India the avatars or incarnations of G.o.d are commonly represented as born from or enthroned upon the lotus. I have in my possession an old Chinese Buddhist print of an arbat (awakened sage) holding in his hand a small bottle from which arises a lotus FIG. 5 THE ANNUNCIATION.

Spanish woodcut, about 15th century. Note the inner border, where the