Assumption of the Virgin: A Return To Source.

Today, 15th August is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, also known as the Dormition of the Mother God, celebrating the falling asleep “death” of Mary and her being taken up to heaven.

I noticed something interesting in today’s astrology chart~

Lunar south node, Black Moon Lilith, and asteroid Sophia are all at 8 ° Libra… and at midday the lunar south node and Black Moon were both exactly at 8 ° Libra 50’.

Sabian Symbol for 9 ° Libra~

PHASE 189 (LIBRA 9°): THREE “OLD MASTERS” HANGING ON THE WALL OF A SPECIAL ROOM IN AN ART GALLERY.

 

KEYNOTE: The need to return to source during a confused search for new value in a chaotic society.

Asteroid Magdalena is at 25 ° Gemini 20’ conjunct Uranus at 27 ° Gemini 08’

The Assumption of the Virgin was officially recognised by the papacy in 1950. One of four Marian dogmas, it marks the journey of Mary, once her earthly life finished and She is taken into heaven to be crowned Queen of Heaven. Rather than going through the usual processes of decay, Mary’s body was assumed into heaven to be reunited with her soul.

At the council of Ephesus in 431, it was declared and dogmatically defined that Mary was Mother God, and that it was correct to call Her Theotokos, “God Bearer”.

The Assumption of the Virgin became a popular subject in Western Christian art in the 12th century, promoted especially by the Cistercian Order and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, abbot, mystic, and co- founder of the Knights Templar.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church which teaches that the Virgin Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory”.

The Assumption happens just 9 days after the Transfiguration of Jesus; the difference between transfiguration assumption is an interesting one, and both can be read symbolically as well as dogmatically.

In Answer to Job, Jung writes of the Assumption of Mary,

“One could have known for a long time that 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.’ For more than a thousand years it has been taken for granted that the Mother of God dwelt there. I consider it to be the most important religious event since the Reformation.”

A possible symbolic consideration of the Assumption of the Virgin is (the whole unto herself feminine) being assumed into the kingdom of heaven (full awakened consciousness).

If Mother Mary is the Immaculate conception and the Queen of Heaven, the Black Madonna is the fecund, fertile Queen of Heaven and Earth who is not separate and has integrated dark and light, Sun & Moon. She is the bridge between the dualism separating humanity from their divine nature and from the body of the Living Mother.

Jungian analyst Ean Begg writes,

“The Black Virgin is a Christian phenomenon as well as a preservation of the ancient goddesses and compensates for the one-sided conscious attitudes of the age.”

According to certain Gnostic, Masonic, and Templar tenets as well certain beliefs in the South of France, Magdalene is a symbol of the Black Madonna, an integration of the human and divine- Queen of Heaven and Earth- an emanation of Sophia, the feminine face of God who is not detached in a lofty heaven but merged with all of matter.

Lilith is an aspect of the cosmic feminine who opens psychic awareness and connects the personal and transpersonal realms, she facilitates maturation of the self through a process of self-gnosis. She guides us to find the disenfranchised or unowned parts of ourselves so that we may bring them home… or wake them up. Her darkness in part lies in the recognition of unowned energy operating beneath the veil of consciousness.

In The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real, Peter Redgrove writes,

“There is a persistent rumour that she herself [Lilith] is the Messiah, come to redeem the divided souls of women, by virtue of her ability to circuit the sky and traverse the depths of the abyss.”

The cosmic feminine is an immense liberating force, animating and flowing with all of life, it is shakti, immanent, transcendent, mysterious, invisible, and utterly embodied. This immanence and transcendence are at the heart of the Sophianic teachings, the teachings of Mary Magdalene and the dark Goddess in her various manifestations including Isis, Cybele, Demeter/Persephone. It speaks to a feminine divine consciousness and wisdom that integrates the split between spirit and matter. As divinely human beings we exist as physical earthlings and cosmically integrated spiritual beings.

Interesting that today on the Feast of the Assumption, Sophia and Lilith are together alongside the south lunar node which evokes our collective past. On a transpersonal level something in connection with the divine feminine that was previously dormant is now surfacing, while the Magdalene is being transformed and freed from old structures of conscious thought (Mercury) through the liberating force of Uranus.

On a personal level, what is ready to die (Dormition), so that our consciousness can rise, and who or what, decides when it is in the fullness of time?