 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
 The Virgin Mary was the Holy Spirit in incarnation, just as Jesus was the incarnation of the Only-begotten Son.
Because the Two appeared on the stage of the world for the single purpose of our salvation, They are inseparable and in the iconographic tradition of the Christian East are usually depicted together. As a rule the Virgin is shown in Her role of Mother, of “Birthgiver” (Theotokos), carrying Jesus in Her arms. Often She is gesturing toward Him as She looks at the beholder. Though Jesus is a child, His features are always those of an adult to indicate that He was born with perfect will and awareness.
In some icons Mary is not carrying Jesus in Her arms, but rather has Her arms raised in a gesture of prayer–for “the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us,” as Saint Paul said. In the center of Her chest, in rings of light, the Child Jesus is shown, holding the scroll of wisdom in one hand and blessing with the other. This particular style of icon is intended to show that within the heart of the infinite ocean of Light and Being–the Mother, the great Holy Spirit–is the guiding and ruling Consciousness which appears to be the child of this Light and yet is in reality its Master: the Only-begotten of the Father. He is not only in the bosom of the Father, He is also in the bosom of the Mother.
From Mary To Jesus
Because Jesus of Nazareth is the Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son, and the Virgin Mary is the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit, we can say: “to Jesus through Mary,” for They are also One. Jesus is in Mary and Mary is in Jesus. To know One is to know the Other. However, to our individualized consciousnesses which are presently polarized to material existence, the Mother is “nearer” than the Father. That is, our consciousness is “touching” the Mother as we are growing within Her universal womb of Light. Therefore we are in the realm of Mary, the Virgin of Light. Only when we are fully formed within Her Being are we spiritually “reborn,” coming forth from Her womb of matter into Jesus’–the Father-Son’s–realm of Spirit.
Just as the mother brings forth the child, nurses it, and then sets it upon the father’s lap, saying: “Here is your child,” so it is in spiritual life. Through Mary the Mother we grow and are brought forth, delivered from the bondage of matter into the freedom of Spirit. She and She alone sets us free into the freedom of Spirit, saying to the Son and the Father: “Behold Thy child,” just as Jesus exhorted His Beloved Disciple from the Cross: “Behold thy Mother!”
Marks Of The Divinity Of Mary
The Mother of the divine Son had also to be divine Herself. She was conceived and born miraculously, as the various historical records preserved by the Eastern Church disclose. If we look at the accounts of Her life, we find the same signs and wonders that occurred in the life of Christ, and even some more. Her Divine Nourishment
Except for nursing from Saint Anna, the Virgin never ate any food of this earth, but was fed daily by angels. Why was this? Because She did not have the type of body which is sustained by the imperfect, corruptible food of this earth. The Holy Scripture plainly tells us that the body is “the fruit of sin”; that is, the body is the effect of the spirit falling away from God. When Adam and Eve transgressed and were banished from Paradise, God created the human form specifically for their embodiment. Though He did it in mercy, still the human form can be considered a result of transgression, attuned to fallen consciousness. If allowed to dominate, it imposes that consciousness on the soul and spirit, binding them to ignorance and its consequence: rebirth.
As the ages had gone by, through human subservience to ignorance and evil, the bodies, gross and subtle, of the human race became progressively attuned away from spiritual consciousness and were made increasingly susceptible to the opposing influences. This type of body could not contain the perfect consciousness of either Mary or Her divine Son, nor could that which grew from the distorted earth nourish the kind of body necessary for the fulfilling of the divine plan. Whereas the ordinary body is the abode of death, subordinating the immortal spirit to the ignominy of mortality, Mary’s body was to be a vehicle of life, the golden jar in which the manna of Christ would be contained. The fulness of the Godhead was to descend into Her womb at the conception of Christ. An ordinary body would have been destroyed at the contact of such infinite power and light, therefore the body of the Virgin had to be nourished from heavenly realms to be prepared for the inpouring of that power. Signs Of Her Perfect Mastery
At the time of Her birth, She walked several steps to show that She was not under the bondage of the body and did not need to grow and mature to have full mastery of the physical vehicle. (Buddha did the same.) Upon Her entry into the Temple at the age of three, She went from the bottom step to the top step in an instant as evidence that She was everywhere–that there was no time and space for Her.
She was the new Ark of the Covenant, as Jesus was the new Manna, the new Bread of Life, which was contained in the Ark. That is why, when She was brought to live in the Temple, Saint Zachariah met Her at the Temple steps, with all the Temple Virgins carrying lighted lamps in Her honor. Taking Her by the hand, he led Her into the Holy of Holies. It would have been shocking for Her to even enter into the court of the men, but Zachariah took Her into the Holy Place where only the priests of the Temple could go, and then on into the Most Holy Place where no one but the High Priest himself was permitted to go, and that only once a year. Why did he do this? Because She was Herself the Most Holy. She was already there, for She was the holy Shekinah, the glorious light of God’s presence that rested upon the Ark.
The Most Holy
When the Virgin brought the infant Jesus to the Temple, Saint Simeon told Her: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul” at the crucifixion of Jesus. While living in the Temple, She had woven the purple into the great veil that hung before the Most Holy Place. This was truly fitting, because just as the veil blocked the sight of the Ark of the Presence, so the Mother, the Holy Spirit, through Her “veil” of matter, covers and conceals the presence of the Son behind creation. When Her heart was pierced by the sword at the death of Christ, the Temple veil was rent in two. The veil was the work of Her hands, the symbol of Her own supernatural being, so in the supreme moment of Her grief the veil was torn–not from bottom to top, but from top to bottom, signifying the exaltedness of Her divine consciousness.
The Virgin Mary is a secret held in the bosom of the Church as its inmost heart. Outsiders often accuse us of putting more emphasis on the Virgin Mary than on Jesus. In a sense, they are right, for we cannot reach Jesus without first perfecting our relationship with Her. But since our motive for drawing near to Her is to attain union with Christ, all attention given to Mary is really given to Him.
Mary In The Christian Plan Of Salvation
Jesus of Nazareth was Adam, who had attained to divinity through perfect union with the Only-begotten Son. The Virgin Mary was Eve, who had likewise attained to divinity through perfect union with the Holy Spirit. Since their folly had plunged the emerging human race into chaos and death, they returned to the earth plane to set right what they had set wrong.
Eve had participated in the fall of humankind, so she had to have a part in its restoration, becoming as Mary the Co-Redemptress of the World. She is the source of the deifying power of the Holy Spirit which flows through Christ to us. In a sense, She is that power, the power of the Holy Spirit, since She is in perfect union with the Holy Spirit Mother. This is why the correct icons of Pentecost show the Virgin seated in the midst of the Twelve, who in turn are surrounded by the one hundred and twenty other disciples. She imparted the Holy Spirit to them, thus giving them birth in the Spirit as She had aforetime given birth to Christ in the flesh. Pentecost is called “the birthday of the Church,” and Mary is the Mother Who gave–and still gives–that birth.
In His incarnation as the prophet Isaiah, the Lord Jesus spoke of Pentecost and the Virgin Mary’s role in the Church as follows.
“Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.… Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of the Lord shall be known toward his servants.” Both “Zion” and “Jerusalem” are symbolic titles of the Virgin.
The divine presence within the Church is the presence of Mary, which communicates the presence of Christ Jesus. For this reason, in some icons She has been shown in the vestments of a bishop. Christ is the Source of the Christian empowerment, but Mary is the empowerment–as the channel of the Holy Spirit’s power. Meaning For The Individual
This may give us somewhat of an idea of the practical functioning of the Dual nature of the Godhead within the Church, but what is its meaning to the individual Christian? Does it really matter whether we hold the concept of God as both Father and Mother? What is the practical effect of such a belief? To determine that, let us recall two basic metaphysical facts, one from Hermetic Philosophy: “As above, so below,” and one from the Bible: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” In other words, being in the image of God, Who is both Male and Female, we, too, are both male and female.
The individual spirits do not come forth from the Bosom of the Father singly, but in pairs. (No, the pairs are not “soul mates.”) One of the pair polarizes to the Father-Son, and the other polarizes to the Mother-Holy Spirit. Consequently, in their various incarnations they will be born mostly in male or female bodies, according to that polarization. They will also be born in bodies of the “opposite” sex whenever their karma (usually negative) so requires. Their destinies will be to perfectly manifest either the Motherhood or the Fatherhood of God before eventually shedding their assumed polarity and reentering the Bosom of the Father. However, since our particular world has gone out of balance we, too, are growing lopsidedly, psychologically speaking, and therefore do not balance the positive-negative polarity within our own selves.
You Are What You Worship
Religion is therapy, meant to heal our psychic sicknesses and deformities. “As a man thinks, so he is” is in no way as accurate as the statement: “What a man worships, that he becomes.” Therefore in all valid religions God is presented as the archetype of the spirit, with all the qualities which the spirit must manifest to attain reunion with its divine Origin. Those who worship God only as Male become unbalanced in their energies and psychology, as do those who worship God only as Female. Father and Mother must be worshipped with equal emphasis if the religion is to prove truly therapeutic for the wandering spirit. Naturally, the individual will often have an affinity or preference for one or the other of these aspects of Godhead. That is perfectly correct and even desirable, for sometimes we need an emphasis on one aspect or the other to help us fill a deficiency in our inner polarization and growth. Because of this, we will no doubt find throughout our lifespan that we will alternate in being drawn more to one or the other as we balance out on various levels. But it must be a personal matter, not something imposed from outside. The Wedding Of The Gods
Many religions have celebrations of the “wedding” of their deities. This is not superstition, but profound symbolism portraying the harmonizing of the two halves of our nature–a process that is essential to our becoming whole. There must be equal emphasis given in our Christian development to Jesus and Mary, and to the Only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit–to the Father and the Mother.
The transcendent Being is neither male nor female, though the Source of both, but beings in relative consciousness and existence have to pass back through the divine foreparents, the Father-Son and the Mother-Spirit, to reenter the “neutral” Being of the supreme “Father.”
Our worship of God as Father and Mother effects our transmutation into the perfect balance of energies which can then be transcended for the revelation of Pure Spirit. The Witness Of Icons
The earliest icons are of the Virgin and Christ together, not of Christ separately. Mary is the ladder by which God came down and is now the ladder by which all Her children ascend. As the Byzantine liturgical texts known as “the ladders” say: In the Holy Spirit all is received, all is elevated, all is assumed.
Mary is the Light from which the Christ Light has come forth. It should be no shock to hear that She is divine, for after all, true–esoteric–Gnostic Christianity teaches that all beings are divine, as well.
In an Eastern Christian temple the icons of the Virgin and Jesus are often placed on either side of the entrance to the temple or on either side of the altar itself. The three elements–Mary, Jesus, and the altar–symbolize the Trinity, the altar, which holds no form, standing in the place of the unseen and unseeable formless Presence of the Father. To reach the altar, the transcendental, we must “pass through” the Son and the Holy Spirit, though Jesus and Mary, to reenter the being of the Father.
In Egyptian temples the Isis and Osiris pillars formed the entrance to the altar. The meaning was the same as it is for us. When the One becomes Two, there is then the possibility of spirits coming and going from the Bosom of the Father through the “parental” agency of the Son and the Holy Spirit Who give them birth into relative existence, and later give them birth back into the Absolute, where they “shall go no more out.” Therefore in Eastern Christianity we unhesitatingly say to the Virgin: “Most Holy Theotokos save us!” She is our Savior, just as is Jesus. Indeed, Jesus cannot save us without the cooperation of the Virgin Mother. No one comes unto the Son unless the Father draws him, but it is the Holy Spirit Mother that is the drawing force.
The Gospel of Christ is the Gospel of Mary, as well. More chapters of the Gnosis of the Creed:
• Chapter One—The Nicene Creed
• Chapter Two—I believe
• Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
• Chapter Four—Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible
• Chapter Five—And in one Lord
• Chapter Six—Jesus Christ
• Chapter Seven—The Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages. Light from Light, True God from true God. Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father; By Whom all things were made.
• Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
• Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
• Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
• Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. Suffered and was buried.
• Chapter Thirteen—And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
• Chapter Fourteen—And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
• Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
• Chapter Sixteen—And in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of life: Who proceedeth from the Father. Who together with the Father and the Son Is worshipped and glorified. Who spoke by the prophets.
• Chapter Seventeen—And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
• Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
• Chapter Nineteen—And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.
1) A fuller explanation of this can be found in Ladder of Light. [Go back]
2) Romans 8:26,27 [Go back]
3) John 19:27 [Go back]
4) “And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. And Moses said, This is the thing which the Lord commandeth, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept.” (Exodus 16:31-33) “And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all; Which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant” (Hebrews 9:3,4). [Go back]
5) “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” (Colossians 1:19.) Another reading is: “For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell.” “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” (Colossians 2:9) [Go back]
6) Hebrews 9:7 [Go back]
7) Luke 2:35 [Go back]
8) “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” (Matthew 27:50,51) [Go back]
9) Isaiah 66:8,10-14 [Go back]
10) Genesis 1:27 [Go back]
11) Further information on this is given in The Gnosis of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. [Go back]
12) Revelation 3:12 [Go back]
13) “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44) [Go back] |
