Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

VIRGIN MARY BEARING THE CHILD JESUS

A symbol of the purified lower emotion-nature conceiving the Christ-soul through the brooding of the Spirit from above.

"And blessed is she that believed; for there shall be an accomplishment of those things which are spoken unto her from the Lord " (LUKE i. 35). "Thus St. Ambrose says on this passage,- And ye also are blessed who have heard and believed; for whatsoever soul hath believed, both conceiveth and bringeth forth the Word of God, and acknowledgeth His works. In each let there be the soul of Mary, that it may magnify the Lord; in each let there be the spirit of Mary, that it may rejoice in God. If according to the flesh the Mother of Christ is but one; yet, according to faith, the fruit which all bear is Christ.'" - I. WILLIAMS, Our Lord's Nativity, p. 49.

Let God be active in thee, and then in thy love of God art thou certain of thy bliss which can never again be destroyed by the evils of the age. Ever and ever therein goes on the incarnation of God as in Christ, for the Father did not bear the Son only in eternity, but ever and ever does He give birth to Him in the soul of him who offers himself to Him, and what the Son has taught us in Christ is merely this, that we are the self-same sons of God (Eckhart). - PFLEIDERER, Develop. of Christianity, p. 153.

“Eckhart, to quote his ipsissima verba, represents the Father as speaking his Word into the soul, and when the Son is born, every soul becomes Maria [i.e.Virgin Mary "]." - MAX MÜLLER, Theosophy, etc., p. 520.

“The love principle in the soul is the Virgin Mary, who conceives the Divine and Spiritual Life. This love principle or spirit is called a virgin, because it would not be defiled with the world's love, but naturally loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore it conceived and brought forth the Divine Life, which was the babe Jesus." - JOHN WARD, Zion's Works, Vol. III. p. 278.

“Only when she (the soul) has regained her virginity' (purity) and become' immaculate,' can the Christ-man's Saviour-be born of her." - The Perfect Way, p. 187.

"I must become Queen Mary, and birth to God must give;

If I in blessedness for now and evermore would live." - Scheffler.

"I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. . and the third day he rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God.' The Modernist does not ask for an alteration in the phraseology of these clauses. He acquiesces in the plain statements of fact being taught as the church's message, but he would plead that in the sphere of the scientific or critical intellect they should not be pressed in their literal meaning. They are in his view, symbolic statements: that is, statements which have certain spiritual values. ... I agree that symbolism must be admitted to apply to the language of religion in general and of the Christian religion in particular-meaning symbolism the use of material images, couched in the language of human experience, which are not to be understood literally by the trained intelligence, but only as the best available expression of transcendent spiritual realities." - C. GORE, Bp. of Oxford, art. Symbolism in Religion," Constructive Quarterly, March 1914.

“The history of the Virgin Mary and her functions in regard to her Son, as presented alike in the Gospels and in Catholic tradition and ritual, are in every particular those of the soul to whom it is given to be 'Mother of God in man. Her acts and graces, as well as his life and passion belong to the experience of every redeemed man. As the Christ in him delivers him from the curse of Adam, so the Virgin Mary in him delivers him from the curse of Eve, and secures the fulfilment of the promise of the conquest over the serpent of Matter. And, whereas, as sinner, he has seen enacted in his own interior experience the drama of the Fall; so as saint, he enacts the mysteries represented in the Rosary of the Virgin, his soul passing in turn through every stage of her joys, her sorrows, and her glories. Wherefore the part assigned to Mary in the Christian Evangel is the part borne by the soul in all mystical experience. That which first beguiles and leads astray the soul is the attraction of the illusory world of mere phenomena, which is aptly represented under the figure of the Serpent with glittering coils, insinuating mien, and eyes full of fascination. Yielding to this attraction, through directing her gaze outwards and downwards instead of inwards and upwards, the soul-as Eve-has abandoned celestial realities for mundane shadows, and entangled in her fall the mind, or Adam. Thus mind and soul fall together and lose the power of desiring and apprehending the divine things which alone make for life, and so become cast out of divine conditions, and concious only of material environments. and liable to material limitations. This substitution of the illusory for the real, of the material for the spiritual, of the phenomenal for the substantial, constitutes the whole sin and loss of the Fall. Redemption consists in the recovery of the power once more to apprehend, to love, and to grasp the Real." - ANNA KINGSFORD, The Perfect Way, p. 241.

"It is well to insist upon the true importance and value of favouring conditions in the production of moral character. Without these-which correspond, as it were, to a mould or matrix wherein the spiritual life is conceived and brought forth-it is certain no result whatever can be assured." - R. DIMSDALE STOCKER, The God which is Man, p. 130.

"Nature and man can only form and transform. Hence when a new animal is made, no new clay is made. Life merely enters into already existing matter, assimilates more of the same sort and rebuilds it. The spiritual Artist (Christ) works in the same way. He must have a peculiar kind of protoplasm, a basis of life, and that must be already existing. Now He finds this in the materials of character with which the natural man is previously provided. Mind and character, the will and the affections, the moral nature-these form the bases of spiritual life. To look in this direction for the protoplasm of the spiritual life is consistent with all analogy. The mineral supplies material for the vegetable, the vegetable for the animal, the animal for the mental, and lastly, the mental for the spiritual. . . . In this womb the new creature is to be born, fashioned out of the mental and moral parts, substance, or essence of the natural man. The only thing to be insisted upon is that in the natural man this mental and moral substance or basis is spiritually lifeless. However active the intellectual or moral life may be, from the point of view of this other Life it is dead. . . . The protoplasm in man has a something in addition to its instincts or its habits. It has a capacity for God. In this capacity for God lies its receptivity; it is the very protoplasm that was necessary. The chamber is not only ready to receive the new Life, but the Guest is expected, and, till He comes, is missed." - H. DRUMMOND, Natural Law, etc. pp. 297-300.

“A Divine element, a spiritual quickening, is required for the evolution of anything God-like in our mundane sphere; it is a Virgin Birth. Lower acting upon lower can never produce a higher. It is the downpouring and incoming of the higher to the lower which produces through the lower the Divine manhood which leaves the brute behind. This is the sense in which it is true that Jesus was of Divine as well as human parent. age."-R. J. CAMPBELL, The New Theology, p. 106.

See Also

ADAM (Lower)
AssUMPTION
BETHLEHEM
BIRTH OF JESUS
CAVE
CONCEPTION
CROWN (stars)
DEMIURGE
EVE
EVOLUTION
FALL
GOLD (frank.)
HEBDOMAD
HEEL
HEROD
HILL COUNTRY
HUITZILOPOCHTLI
INCARNATION (Souls)
INCARNATION (Spirit)
MARJATTA
REDEMPTION
REGENERATION
SERPENT (SUBTIL)
SIMEON
VEIL OF ISIS
WOMAN