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| The Hodegetria |
I think what my first issue thinking about Mary was that she is known as "the mother of us all." Now, I understand that to many this would have to do with the fact that Mary is also the Church, and through her we are baptized in the name of Christ. Thus we are "reborn." But are we not already baptized in Christ merely by existing? For "through Him all things were made." He is that which is, and through Him beings have their ability to exist. Nothing may be said to exist unless it partakes in a fundamental union with the Logos. (I prefer to refer to Christ as the Logos for that is what He represents. It is better to use general terms such as these in order to not exclude anyone who is not necessarily "Christian." Because of course the Logos/Christ is not a concept only contained in Western thought, and we should remember this.) Again, the Logos is that fundamental defining purpose for an existing being. It is its DNA, if you will - the coding for its manifested existence.
But the Logos in and of itself is useless. Like a man with no female partner, it cannot create by its own means. Therefore it must create for itself a feminine counterpart, or a passive extension and image of itself. If we look at the Sephiroth, this is clearly illustrated for us. Kether, sometimes referred to as the first Logos, first mover, etc., begets Chokhmah and Binah, the Father and the Mother respectively. Kether is the original point of unextended, impartial existence. Nothing can be said about it other than the fact that it exists. Chokhmah, the more overt Logos and the first sephirah on the Pillar of Mercy, is Kether's first more defined force or wisdom. Now we can say something about the original point of existence - we can characterize its will. However, we cannot really understand it. Binah, understanding and the first sephirah on the Pillar of Severity, teaches us the limitations of this wisdom and thereby balances out Chokhmah's infinite stream of force. The harmony between these two factors, the masculine active will and the feminine passive will, or the Will of God with the Image of God, results in the birth of something definitive and glorious. It is the birth of the Word made Flesh.
I hope now you see the obvious correlation between the Sephirotic/Neo-Platonic philosophy and the Christian Mystery of the Incarnation. They are strikingly similar. The Virgin Mary is a representation of Binah, the Divine Feminine, and Christ is more or less Chokhmah and Kether sort of conglomerated, or the Divine Masculine. It's difficult to really fit Christ into the Sephiroth because they're simply different systems of interpretation, and they do not intersect seamlessly. Christ is somewhat akin to the Ain Soph, Kether, Chokhmah, and Tiphareth all at the same time. I believe it depends on how we are talking about Him. If we refer to the Logos as that which is coeternal with the Father, then we are referring to the Ain Soph. If we mean Him to represent the Cornerstone of any existing being, then we mean Kether. If we speak of Him as the Life or Will of any existing being, then we mean Chokhmah. And finally, if we mean to speak of Him as Jesus Christ, the dying and resurrecting man-God, then we mean to say Tiphareth, or consciousness at the level of Tiphareth.
Regardless, the Virgin Mary still fits very neatly into the category of Binah, or even the Ain Soph Aur. For our purposes, however, let us stick to the idea of Binah, and leave the Ain Soph Aur for even more lofty discussions. Frankly, the whole business of Ain-anything is really confusing, and is meant to be so. Being at the very top of the Tree of Life, it is the most hidden, the most esoteric, the most difficult to describe, and yet it best describes the idea of God as unmanifested, unmade Being. But leaving all that aside, let us instead return the original Marian myth: the Annunciation. In the story, Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, who pronounces her to be the future Mother of God. She humbly accepts the divine command issued by the archangel, calling herself "the handmaid of the Lord," and as a result is infused with the Holy Spirit and conceives Jesus. By giving birth to God, Mary in effect gives birth to all things that are made, and essentially baptizes all those things in the waters of her womb in the name of Christ. Note that Mary's name has the obvious etymological connection to the word "mare" in Latin, which translates to "sea." St. Jerome was the first Christian writer to write about this connection prominently, and it is from him that we get the imagery for the famous Marian hymn Ave maris stella (Hail, Star of the Sea). Mary therefore has an overt connection to the ocean and the womb. In Genesis as well, remember that "the Spirit of God moved across the waters" and brought life from chaos.
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| Atu III The Empress represents the Feminine as the Vessel of Nature. Her letter is Daleth which means "door." Her path on the Sephiroth connects Chokhmah to Binah. |
Mary then is not just a humble maiden mother. She is the womb of Nature, and is the Feminine will to live. She is rightly called "the door of life," for through her all things are born. The sacred Word that Christ represents is "Life," and she is its vessel. When she accepts the Divine Will to Live, she accepts Life in its most chaotic form. Remember that Chokhmah is barely defined, and Kether has virtually no definition. Chokhmah in particular is simply the infinite force and vigor of Life itself, the original impartial point of existence extending its energy outwards. With the third point, Binah, that energy is confined in the shape of a triangle - a metaphorical womb. Mary is associated with virtue and prudence because she Understands the proper course for Life. She is coequal with the Father, Chokhmah, and is the final direct expression of Kether, the Crown. By her means, Kether is able to manifest itself in space and time, and thereby experience itself as a made Being.
However, because she is "virtuous" does not mean she is so in any human sense of the word. Virtue is highly subjective, and in this case the example she sets for us by her humility does not mean we should humble ourselves to the point of absurdity. For example, women should not necessarily be housewives and remain subservient to men. Chastity is not necessarily a "good" thing, for by it we restrict the force of Life. Mary's passivity is the acceptance of Life in whatever form it can come in. She is understanding of God's wisdom because she knows how best to limit it for its own wellbeing. This limitation is more or less known as death. The Divine Feminine is the great recycler, being both the Fertile Mother and the Sterile Mother. She is fairness and justice in its highest notion, for she is balanced. For as much life she brings forth she also brings forth as much death. But this is how existence is allowed to remain intact. Can you imagine if nothing died? It'd be anarchy! In some ways we should be really thankful for death, even though it's obviously something most of us don't look forward to (myself included).
Now to bring in Mr. Crowley on this. Crowley equates Binah with the Whore of Babalon, and Chokhmah with Father Chaos, which of course all sounds very Satanic and icky. But at the same time, these descriptions make sense. Chokhmah has no sense of restriction, whereas Binah is the original notion of restriction. However, Binah does not restrict herself from impregnation with God's Will, no matter what form it decides to come in. We are more than aware of the diversity of Life - Life constituting all existing things, be they "alive" or "inanimate." The Divine Will to create Life then is equally diverse, and infinitely so. Binah/Mary as the humble Feminine accepts these creations and births them, but on the condition that they must eventually die. Binah/Mary as the Virgin remains ever fruitful, for her womb is never deprived of its fertility. She loves all of her creations equally, and subjects all of them to the same fair treatment out of this love. The love she has extends beyond the individual and encompasses the Universe. This is how the desires of the individual are not necessarily equivalent to what is actually best for that individual, given their relationship to the Universe at large.
So those of us who are lucky enough to raise their consciousness to the level of Binah effectively "die." They lose all sense of individuality, because they have ascertained their connection with the World. Their personal desires and identities are rendered meaningless in the sight of all that is made. Binah, like the Virgin Mary, shows us the Way of God, which is in Christ. She is our Guide, our Fountain of Life, our Protector, our Mother. The medieval tropes that continue to survive in modern Marian prayers certainly have some validity to them. By knowledge of the Mother we may come to knowledge of the Father/Son, and through knowledge of Him, we attain knowledge of God.
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| Gabriel with his scroll dispenses the Will and Word of God to the Virgin in the form of the Holy Spirit. |
I think what is most important about all this is to see the foolishness of Christian morality regarding sexuality and women. It is not necessarily God's Will that everyone should be chaste, nor is it possible that he prefers chastity to sexuality. It is not reasonable to say that woman is below man. Outside of the realm of sexuality and women, it is also foolish to say that baptism only occurs through the Church, when simply by being born we are baptized through Mary in the name of the Logos. Etc.
