RE-IMAG I N I NG MA R Y RE-IMAG I N I NG MA R Y A JOU R NEY TH R OUGH AR T TO THE FEM I N I NE SEL F MA ri ANN BU R KE Fisher King Press www.fisherkingpress.com [email protected] +1-831-238-7799 Re-Imagining Mary: A Journey through Art to the Feminine Self Copyright © 2009 Mariann Burke First Edition All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. Published simultaneously in Canada and the United States of America. For information on obtaining permission for use of ma- terial from this work, please submit a written request to: permis- [email protected] ISBN 978-0-9810344-1-6 LCCN 2008934078 Cover image: Václav Boštík, The Virgin and Infant Jesus, (Oil on cardboard 50 x 30 cm.) Photograph © National Gallery in Prague, 2008. Distributed by Fisher King Books PO Box 222321 Carmel, CA 93922 +1-831-238-7799 1-800-228-9316 Toll Free Canada & USA CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IX FOREWORD BY NA NCY QU A LLS -CORBETT XI INTRODUCTION 1 REVISITING FR A ANGELICO ’S ANNUNCI A TION 13 PICTURING THE ANNUNCI A TION 37 DISCOVERING MOTHER MA RY 73 IM A GING MA RY A S TEM P LE 99 SOUNDING THE STONE DRE A M 127 COD A 143 BIBLIOGR ap HY 151 INDEX 159 For Bobbie, Kathleen, Patti, and Sheila and in memory of E. J. Greco IX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to many who helped to bring this work to comple- tion by reading part or all of the developing manuscript and by offering suggestions, encouragement and support: Paola Bio- la, Aileen Callahan, Judith and Dennis O’Brien, Anne Baring, Bob Baer, CSP, Cornelia Dimmitt, Jane Schaberg, John Peck, Ed Burke, Gail O’Donnell, RSCJ, Aline Wolf, Johannes Schatz- mann, Margarita Cappelli, RSCJ, Helga Schier, Meg Guider, OSF, Russell Holmes, Daniel Burke, FSC, Kathrin Asper, Susan Tiberghien, Fred R. Gustafson and David Oswald. I thank the staff at Bapst Library, Boston College, especially Adeane Breg- man and Arlene Feinberg, who generously offered help with art references. For their fine editing I thank Joseph Pagano and Patty Cabanas. Finally I am most grateful to Mel Mathews for his cooperative spirit, sensitivity, and patient guidance through- out the process. XI FOREWORD For two millennia throughout all Christendom the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been adored. From the lofty world’s cathedrals to the smallest Christmas crèche that adorns a humble family dwelling her representation is present. Anthems are sung to her, voices are raised to praise her name, her very being. And yet standing back with some reflection, are we consciously aware of a deeper, more significant meaning of Mary? In re- imagining Mary, may we broaden our understanding of the profound psychological value her image holds for us. Some years ago I was privileged to visit the caves at Lascaux in France to view the magnificent, bigger than life, prehistoric cave paintings. These depictions of noble beasts were majestic; some only in outline while others were painted in intricate detail with pigments made from minerals of the earth. I physically felt as I sensed this deep underground cave that it was permeated by the instinctual spiritual wisdom of twenty thousand years. It was as though the cave paintings were primitive man’s first expression of his soul. A numinous sense surrounded me as I knew myself to be in this holy place. It was not so surprising after such an awe-inspiring experience that I had a dream the following night. The dream was this: I was once again in the cave of Lascaux filled with wonder- ment while viewing the paintings of wild animals on the walls and ceiling. Directly in front of me on the cave wall I began to see a bare outline of a figure as if scratched into the wall. And then the outline became emboldened in black charcoal as if painted by unseen hands. While I continued to look with amazement, the figure began to take on more definition and color. I then realized I was viewing the image of the Virgin Mary… there on the wall of a most primordial setting. I awoke from the dream with a start. As my conscious mind was reviewing the detail, the image of Mary created more than a little discomfort within me. I realized I had envisioned, in sym- XII bolic form, the archetypal aspects of the divine feminine nature. There in the earth’s womb-cave, ever so deep and dark in the realm of the collective unconscious, was the image of the Great Mother, which we most often in our Christian culture depict in our mind’s eye as the blessed Mother of Christ. We continue to look upon her image to understand her meaning in our modern day life, aspects of the feminine in our own psychologies. Through the centuries the idealization of the blessed Vir- gin perhaps has inspired more masterpieces of art and great architecture than any living figure, as author Mariann Burke beautifully explores in the following pages. We see her as the youthful, blissful and serene Madonna, her adoring gaze on her infant child. Her slender fingers caress the child, as her long, slim neck turns gracefully arching downward. Or we see her as the Mater Dolorosa, the Pieta, her face wracked with pain and anguish or with a far away gaze of contemplative surrender. We also know her from myths and works of art as the Queen of Heaven seated on her throne or standing on the cres- cent moon with the milk flowing freely from her breast forming the Milky Way. We know of the lofty cathedrals painstakingly crafted throughout centuries that were erected in her honor and which bear her name. There is no question that her image has inspired artisans throughout all Christendom as did her image evoke prayers and supplications from kings and peasants alike. In our Christian mythology it is Mary’s image that may be ex- perienced as the archetypal mother goddess, the good breast, comforting and nurturing. Pope Pius XII’s proclamation in 1950 that Mary was taken up, body and soul, into heaven could not have been received with more understanding and joy than by Dr. Carl Jung. He writes: When in 1938 I originally wrote this paper, [Psychological As- pect of the Mother Archetype] I naturally did not know that twelve years later the Christian version of the mother arche- type would be elevated to the rank of a dogmatic truth. The Christian “Queen of Heaven” has, obviously, shed all her Olympian qualities except for her brightness, goodness and XIII eternality; and even her human body, the thing most prone to gross material corruption, has put on an ethereal incorrupt- ibility…The relationship to the earth and to matter is one of the inalienable qualities of the mother archetype. So when a figure that is conditioned by this archetype is represented as having been taken up into heaven, the realm of the spirit, this indicates a union of earth and heaven or of matter and spirit.1 Our ancestors had already expressed in their paintings prais- ing Nature, as the caves of Lascaux demonstrate, this longing for union of matter and spirit. However, these primitive paint- ings today are becoming endangered, if not destroyed, by the presence of a pernicious fungus obscuring or even obliterating them. We, too, in our present day culture have all but lost the true image of Mary. It has become obscure to us through in- sidious means. Through patriarchal edicts Mary has been rel- egated to the adoring or grieving mother, the mother who was declared a virgin, meaning asexual. We often take her story literally, and ignore the symbolic, the psychological realm. She has been relegated to less than the whole of the Great Mother archetype, the feminine reflection that is sensuous and fertile, an icon of woman who is earthy and who is one-in-herself. As author and analyst Mariann Burke wisely guides us and reawakens us to a renewed vision of Mary, we consciously begin to understand the extent of what her image embodies. NA NCY QU A LLS -CORBETT 1 CW, Vol. 9i, pars. 195-197. (CW refers throughout to The Collected Works of C.G. Jung.) Re-Imagining Mary A Journey through Art to the Feminine Self Painting has within it a divine power. —Battista Alberti This book is about meeting Mary in image and imagination. It is about the Mary image mirroring both an outer reality and the inner feminine soul. My first meeting with Mary began with an experience of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation (Cortona). I can- not account for my unusual response to the image except to say that, at the time, over twenty years ago, I was studying Jungian psychology in Zürich, Switzerland and was then probably more disposed to respond to the imaginal world. One day as I sat in my basement apartment reflecting on a picture of his Annun- ciation, energy seemed to surge through me and lift me above myself. Tears brought me to deep center. It does not matter whether my experience was religious or psychic. The two are very similar since any religious experience always affects our psyche and changes it. It was as if I was re- stored to my truest self.