There's Something About Mary

Mary, one of the most prominent women in the Bible and arguably the most prominent female in the New Testament has been a living legend since her introduction. Despite various attempts to suppress her importance, somehow she manages to make her way into the hearts and minds of devotees throughout the Christian world.

This yearning to grow the legend of Mary has resulted in all sorts of fantastic stories involving Mary and Jesus as lovers. The idea of the holy grail being the womb of Mary and the bloodline of Jesus was beginning to circulate around the thirteenth century. On July 22nd, 1209 the small town of Beziers was torched by Crusader dispatched by the pope as punishment for the heretical teaching that Christ and Mary had sexual relations

Compared to all the legends and myths surrounding Mary, truly there is almost nothing known about the actual Mary besides the small number of verses she is found in the Gospel Canon and early Gnostic writings. Whether or not she enjoyed existence as an actual person will probably never be known. This doesn't seem to matter as the myth of Mary has a life of its own and the breath that breathes life into her is the imagination looking for expression for its anima archetype.

The anima archetype, a term coined by Carl Jung represents an unconscious tendency toward expression of the female principle. Jung developed a theory regarding the union of opposites in the psyche. There are many conscious objects that have no meaning in the mind without their opposite counterpart, for example he says:

The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc..

"Two Essays in Analytical Psychology" In CW 7: P. 188

When tendencies in the psyche are repressed they exibit themselves in a dark way or as part of a shadow self. Mary thus somehow became the patron saint of flagellents - those who abused themselves to scourge away sexual desires and tendencies.

It seems that she makes the whole spectrum of the anima archetype in Christianity. She is known not just for penitence, but for devotion and sensuality. She anointed Christ's feet before his death and was the first to see him risen.

Apostolic Succession

A lot of "modern minded" people looking into Gnosticism get creeped out by the idea of "Apostolic Succession" in many of the modern Gnostic churches. I, for one, have been one of them. I now see it as something symbolic as well as magical in the sense that Dumbo's feather was magical. He held the feather in his trunk and did what he thought he couldn't. I'm not sure completely what it means to those who are a part of that tradition and I suppose I may never.

I do remember when my uncle laid his hands on my head and with oil on his hands, he conferred the melchizedek priesthood to me in the LDS church. Although I was really struggling at the time with huge doubts about the validity of the whole thing, there was something very warm about being brought into a tradition that my family grew up in.

My uncle immediately asked that I give him a blessing to help him recieve guidance regarding an upcoming business trip. This caught me completely by surprise. Given that I doubted that God even existed and I shouldn't have even been there, I did the best I could. I don't remember my words, only that my hands were shaking and I studdered a bit. He didn't seem to notice and seemed quite satisfied with the blessing. So that was that.

Given this background, this post by Reverend Troy Pierce+ of the Ecclesia Gnostica struck a chord with me.