Mary isn’t secondary to Jesus. The heavenly Queen shares an equal glory with the heavenly King. In approving this exaltation almost unanimously, the world’s bishops were being moved by forces in the human psyche to instinctively revive the Divine Feminine. Is it not curious that so many Catholics respond to Mary as Mother of God in a way they don’t to God or Jesus? I’m thinking of her various purported apparitions. It’s not Jesus who’s said to be appearing, but his mother. People Clock to anything to do with Mary’s appearing. There’s something more about Mary all right. She’s an archetype of the suppressed feminine. We are instinctively drawn by the feminine we deny—so much so that Mary has been increasing in status. If Mary as Mother is inching her way into her own, her body at last accepted, Mary Magdalene still waits in the wings. It will take the integration of both Marys to end patriarchy and restore the balance of yin and yang. The reappearance of Mary as mother in the church, and Mary Magdalene in the secular media, points up our deep longing to reconnect both polarities. I Cind it particularly signiCicant that the Magdalene is resurrected from the annals of ecclesiology at the very time we’re raping the Great Mother, planet Earth. What hope is there for a reconnection of the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine? I see hopeful signs even in the bastion of patriarchy itself, the Vatican. It’s evident in the making of Hildegard of Bingen both a saint and a Doctor of the Church on October 7, 2012—only the fourth woman in history to be so honored. After being largely ignored for almost nine long centuries, she’s reappearing in one of the most patriarchal papacies in a long time. What irony! Even the papal patriarchal psyche can’t lock out the Divine Feminine. It all goes to show that you can’t keep a good woman down. I am thrilled that Namaste Publishing has just released a groundbreaking book by acclaimed author and spiritual teacher Matthew Fox. Entitled Hildegard of Bingen—A Saint for Our
Times, it’s all about the real signiCicance of Hildegard. You’ll Cind much about this book in this ezine. The message is that the Divine Feminine will out—and in its wake will come the awakening of the Sacred Masculine. For when we no longer buy into what psychologists call the Madonna-‐Whore syndrome, an integration of maleness and femaleness that can save us as a planet will become possible. Mary the Mother of Jesus understood the importance of the restoration of women’s deeply buried, culturally obscured feminine essence. She recognized that when women come into their own there will then be an end to the patriarchy that has blighted Earth. In her song The MagniCicat, she imagines, as a result of her exaltation, the corrupt powerful removed from their thrones, the hungry and oppressed Cilled with good things, the rich patriarchy sent empty away. This vision of a world healed of the Madonna-‐ Whore split of patriarchy is echoed in the words of a song: “The rising of the women is the rising of the race.” I’m sorry the task falls to women. It’s just the way it is. As the Divine Feminine rises up, it will concurrently bring men into their sacred wholeness as well. We are not separate but deeply connected. Heal one aspect of the divine expression, and you heal the other. In celebrating our diversity in our oneness, relishing the mirroring of our whole selves in the opposite sex, we will have taken a giant leap to realizing the One Divine Son—and indeed Daughter—of God. Books by Constance Kellough...
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