The Assumption of Mary: The Still Burning Flame of the Great Mother Goddess

Today, 15^th August, is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is also known as the Dormition of the Mother God. The feast day marks and celebrates the falling asleep “death” of Mary and her entry into heaven.

Officially recognised by the papacy in 1950, the Assumption of Mary is one of four Marian dogmas; it marks the journey of Mary, once her earthly life is finished, being 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.

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 the transfiguration and the assumption is an interesting one to consider- both can be read symbolically as well as dogmatically.

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

For the past few years, I have written about the Assumption of the Virgin from a symbolic perspective using the astrology chart of the moment. In today’s astrology chart, asteroid Cybele is at 23° Leo, closely conjunct the Sun at 22° Leo.

For me, this invites reflection on the link between Mary, Mother of God, and the ancient goddesses, particularly the Anatolian Mother Goddess, Cybele. In ancient Greece, Cybele was assimilated with several other goddesses, including Rhea, and Gaia.

These ancient goddesses are so deeply imprinted in the human psyche that any attempt to erase their presence and power entirely has proved futile. Carl Jung, writing about the Assumption of Mary, in Answer to Job, in 1952, recognised that there was a deep longing in the collective psyche for a Mother God.

“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.”

The depiction of Mary however, chaste, virginal, demure, is very different to the earthy, wild and sometimes raucous goddesses of the ancient world. Goddesses such as Cybele, Rhea, and Gaia, were not cut off (dismembered) from Earth, they were one with it. Theirs was a divinity that embraced the chthonic, it was not separate from the dark, fertile, and often chaotic Earth, but deeply fused and infused with it.

In Homeric Hymn 14, Cybele is “the Mother of all gods and all human beings”, and is depicted as wild, ecstatic, and instinctual.

I prithee, clear-voiced Muse, daughter of mighty Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods and men. She is well pleased with the sound of rattles (krotala) and of trimbles (tympana), with the voice of flutes (auloi) and the outcry of wolves and bright-eyed lions, with echoing hills and wooded coombes.

And so hail to you in song and to all goddesses as well!

H.G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, 1959.

In the summer of 2019, I stayed for a short time in the city of Lyon, France. On the day of the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, I walked to the top of the hill overlooking the city. There stands the Basilica of Notre dame de Fourviere, which is dedicated to Mary. Sitting side-by-side with Roman remains of a temple previously dedicated to the Great Mother Cybele, this site was once the most important centre in Gaul. In 1704, a taurobolic altar was discovered on the hill; it was used for ritualistic and sacrificial offerings to the Cybele as far back as 160BC.

In the crypt of the basilica there are at least a dozen statues and paintings of Mary from all over the world. There are also a few Black Madonnas among which are the ‘Black Madonna of Loreto’, and ‘Notre Dame de Fourviere’.

The city of Lyon sits on the Apollo/Athena Line which is an extension of the Michael/Mary Line. According to Hamish Miller in The Dance of the Dragon, the Apollo/Athena line extends from Skellig St Michael in Ireland to Armageddon in Turkey. Apollo/Athena, Michael/Mary, as Mysterium Coniunctionis symbolically express the hieros gamos or marriage of the God and Goddess in the physical world.

It is interesting to note that it is St Michael who aids Mary in her Assumption.

Staying with the symbolic, I was reflecting on how the Assumption of Mary can be read in many ways: On one hand, the Assumption can be viewed as the awakening of a fully realised feminine consciousness, or feminine Christ consciousness; on the other hand, the Dormition, or the sleeping of Mary, and her entry into Heaven, may be seen as a further split between the divine and the material realm, as the goddess once a symbol of immanence and divine presence on Earth, is subsumed into a dimension that is separate and distinct from the human sphere of existence.

It depends on whether one believes that Heaven, Mother/Father God, divine masculine, divine feminine are states of consciousness that are attainable while incarnate in a physical body and earthly existence, or, as in the canonical teachings, that believers will only be reunited with God upon death.

For me, the Assumption of the Virgin is a teaching that allows for the possibility of the union of body, soul, and spirit, i.e., fully realised consciousness while living in a human body. The Assumption of Mary speaks to a cosmic feminine principle, an immensely liberating force, animating and flowing with 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.