Our Lady of the Sun
A Theology
“The Blessed Virgin is inseparable from the incarnate Word, as the Lotus is inseparable from the Buddha and as the Heart is the predestined seat of immanent Wisdom.”
Frithjof Schuon
“Hail Mary!”
That is my favourite prayer as of the time I am writing this post, followed closely by a “Lord Jesus, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner.” On a day in 2021, the exact date of which I cannot remember, during my Master’s program, while going through a mental agony that is now a frequent companion, I prayed to the Lady who seemed to reveal herself in a flash of thought, a rapid vision very much like an eternal explosion, bright but serene, dangerous but lovely; very much a description of the Sun. I have never seen her face, I suspect that I am not ready for that. Her brightness is not a mere lack of melanin; and somehow, I know if She took on skin, She wouldn’t be “white”. That is a lot to get from a flash of inspiration, and many other dreams that are as vague as they are striking, and very hard to remember – that last part being due to me being very inhibited, by choice, as I cannot face my pains and worries except in small doses.
I prayed for her help in my studies and pretty much everything else. I promised to be her servant the best I can in return. I almost took back that promise; I think I did, but I can barely remember. That is not a time of my life I like remembering. I did not feel any better, but I did finish my program. I defended my dissertation, and I have most of what I need. She is part of the reason I am here today, writing these things. She is also the reason I have continued to reconsider my stance as someone baptised into the Christian faith, with loyalty to her Son. Try as I might, I can’t separate them. Christianity hurts at this moment in time. It feels like everything about its current sects pushes me away. I want to have nothing to do with most of it. But, here I am, still baptized, sworn to a King and his Queen-Mother, the Great Lady of the Sun, my heavenly mother.
This inseparability is the centre of my Theology, for Christ is my Demiurge, the formative principle for the Cosmos in my perspective. The Logos as Demiurge is he who rides the Sun Chariot drawn by the Cherubim, his creation is a battle, as he divides Rahab[1] with the sword from his mouth, the words that divided the sea. The Virgin is the very chariot[2], the Solar vehicle, the Ark. She is the Sedes Sapientiae[3] drawn by the Cherubim on which the Lord of Glory rides out establishing his kingdom in the hearts of men. She is both the Visible and the Invisible Sun, her light grows visible and invisible plants, and her wrath burns away sensible and intellectual darkness, She is the very form of her Son’s radiance, his covering even in distinction and revelation. In brief, while the Son’s activity is divided between the constitution of the physical human form as such and the constitution of the universal body of the Cosmos as a human form, The Virgin is in fact the Weaver, constituting the spiritual being of souls in distinction and the life of the Cosmos as a whole.
The details of this can be seen in the myths themselves. For example, taking a specific triadic interpretation of Genesis One, we see the El the Speaker, the Spirit as Medium of speech, and YHWH the Word/Light Himself. The “Spirit” here is the same “Wisdom”[4], and She is the intermediary for all the logoi of the Logos that is the eternal Fiat Lux. Beyond that brief description, She doesn’t appear explicitly in the sequence of days. However, in Genesis 2, we see her appear once again, as the “breath” that animates Adam and as the “cool breeze” that brings in YHWH. We should not be mistaken, it is She that is the very breath of breaths and the very breeze of the mythical space being described. The Lord’s breath is alive and independent of Him, She blows where She wills. In Genesis 2 we see her cosmic roles quite clearly: While YHWH gathers and forms, She fills and completes. Even in this case, where the Soul is not sensible soil and the “form” of Adam is not sensible form, we can still say that the disparate elements that will make up Adam as a “living soul” will not hold together as an independent unity qua ontology without the gift of breath from Breath herself, from the Goddess who separates to unite. Without her, the disparate elements of that Soul, the “ideas” which we might see as the “grains” of the soil, simply disintegrate, returning to an indifferentiation reflective of the subsuming universality of the Demiurge in that aspect. In this case, we are seeing Adam as Universal Man, not really a particular man among others. The perspective that animates this aspect of the theology is the perspective of the human form as “archetype”. Thus the highest living Soul, the First Psychic God, is described as the first “Man”.
This is even so “after” the transgression, where “Adam” is given “garments of Skin”, here interpreted as Adam’s own “emanation” activity into the Cosmos within the World Soul – here thought of as the “Sword which turns every which way” – and thus constituting a multiplicity of Souls after his own image, the details of which will have to wait for another post. What is important here is that the unity of the logoi themselves depends on the wholeness The Virgin supplies, for She gives “breath” to each living being while it is YHWH that gives them form.
Another aspect of these activities requires us to look at the symbolisms of the Sun and the Chariot, considered together as one object. While the imagery of “breath” describes the vivific aspects of Her activity, the imagery of the Solar chariot describes the discriminatory aspects of Her activity, and it does this in several interconnected ways. The first is seen in the way the Sun reveals the world in its splendorous multiplicity, such that the Sun’s light inhabits the world in order to do this, thus Isaiah can say “the World is full of His Glory”, the “Glory” being the Spirit Virgin Herself. The Intelligible light of the Solar Chariot-Throne does this intellectually, revealing the world’s multiplicity in its very formation of the world, according to the will of YHWH as Demiurge, but according to her insight as his very power to bring the world into existence. El speaks, but the air he speaks with is The Virgin, and the Word is YHWH, who himself speaks, but can only do this also through The Virgin. However, there is a difference between The Virgin as prior to her Son and The Virgin as posterior to Him. Prior to Her Son, She is Mother, Unified, as the intellective Whole, pregnant with the intellective All, who is first born as the Son who “escapes” the Dragon’s watery abyss by his intellectual existence. Posterior to Her Son, however, She is not “Mother”, although we will refer to her as that as we deem necessary. As She is posterior, She is Chariot-Throne and Heavenly Jerusalem. The Common theme of both is a unified but differentiated entity. As Chariot-Throne, She is at once the many Cherubim as She is the Throne Herself. As Heavenly Jerusalem, She is the projected Paradigm of the Cosmos in its intellective Glory. This brings out the peculiarity of The Virgin in this theology, where She is also Paradigm, an aspect explained in an earlier post. While, indeed, it would be important to discuss both extensively, we are focusing here on the former, as that is more relevant. The latter is already discussed – without direct reference to the Heavenly Jerusalem – in the aforementioned post on Sophia as Paradigm, and so this post can be seen as an extension of that, continuing a theme. However, much of what I say will pertain to both, as the posteriority of both is the same in some respects.
The imagery of the Chariot is important because of what it depicts. A chariot moves by the will of the Charioteer and the power of the “chariot beasts” themselves. This illustrates an important theme in what may be termed “polycentric polytheism”, where “the totality of henads [Gods] is the potency of each [God]”[5]. Gods can be deployed as “powers” of another God, in this case, The Virgin deployed as powers of YHWH. This is not a strange notion, in truth. We often measure the “potency” of a polity – or more specifically, a polity’s leader – by the number and skill of those under his employ. Even when it comes to physical power, quantities of various types are important for measuring the relative potency of objects. It suffices to say that “power” is intimately tied up with multiplicity, and divine power is manifest as co-operation and communion rather than coercion. Thus, The Virgin as Chariot is not here as the centre of the perspective, but the middle, the means by which the perspective is deployed according to the will of He who deploys it. She is depicted as a unified multiplicity of elements, which includes “beasts” such as Cherubim, or the rare “Seraphim” of Isaiah 6. Indeed, The Virgin is intimately connected with “Angels” and particularly the “Cherubim” and “Seraphim”. These entities are entities associated with division. The Cherubim guard the way to the Tree of Life – Wisdom herself – along with a flaming sword that cuts “every which way”, an activity that is very “priestly”, since it cuts and burns. In this case, where the flaming sword itself is the World Soul, the Cherubim may be considered independent entities. In the case of the Chariot-Throne however, we should consider them powers prefiguring the Cherubim’s actual independent existences. In keeping with the symbolism of Cherubim as priests, we should see them as powers of division and distinction – no, I am not naming the Cherub themselves – projected into the world. We can explain it this way: The Cherubim represent the power to project YHWH himself, his intellectual substance, the paradigm he sees and his will for it, into the world. The entire chariot is The Virgin as his power to do so, a power established “prior” to Him. This is can explain the “Sexual” aspect of this coupling[6], in that this Chariot/Rider relationship is the other way of explaining The Virgin as Consort.
This power brings into focus the last important dimension of The Virgin’s activity, for She is the Weaver, it is her servants that weave the garments of the priests, the “white clothing” that symbolizes the indestructible unity of their spiritual selves. This dimension brings together the vivific and the discriminatory. The Virgin herself is said in Revelation 12 to be “clothed with the Sun”. Her threads are rays of intellectual light. As an arche of wholeness, She connects the disparate elements of entities into wholes. She is thus in charge of the spiritual end of souls, as their lives are all to end in the resurrection to Spiritual life. Her light divides us from the death of undifferentiated nothingness and constitutes together the elements divided within us. What is death but the shadow of resurrection? What is physical demise but the putting off the “garments of skin”, to be “cut apart” and “burned” by the endless cycles of Time and its flaming sword? What is departure from the world below if not ascent into the world above? Are we not returning to the garden we walked out of in dark coverings?
But this departure is neither the forsaking of the world, neither is it the total rejection of embodiment, for they who ascend assume the unity of more, and the higher you go, the more you cover. Whether the “death before death”, or the dissolution that comes at the end of our world line – both perspectives on one event – we assume the centre of the Cosmos, for all things are in us at that moment, in that “beyond eternal” state. In the company of the Gods, each of us is a centre around which a unique perspective of the all finds its unity. In short, ascent through the spheres is to assume the spheres, and all in it, as our body. We do not abandon body, but assume more of it. The communion thus constituted is a divine communion, in and with the Gods and each other, where there is no overarching world apart from the communion of perspectives on the world so constituted by each perspective. Insofar as we are tied by a limited frame, this communion of perspectives seems imposed on us, although we still have some determination on it. Freed from a limiting frame, in this life (through “Theurgy” perhaps) and ultimately in the next, the world is not imposed, but chosen, by us, in unity with others. This unity, this wholeness, for us limited beings, is the gift of The Virgin, and so it is not accidental that She herself goes through this process, as the establishment of the process itself, embodied as the mother of the Son who himself takes on her flesh; sinless flesh, yet mortal flesh. While, temporally, She was prior as Mother, She was posterior in his words and actions, for whatever her son knew as a man, was as a result, at least partly, of the care of his mother, who did teach him the ways of righteousness. She was, in a very real sense, his first disciple, and in this capacity, his first “vehicle”. As the prime “disciple”, She is thus exalted over all other disciples. No one comes to the Father but through the Son, but no one comes to the Son except through his Mother, who provides him as the bread of life, and as the Ark. She is the flesh of his flesh, the bones of his bones. She reverses Eve by birthing the “Second Adam”. As Prime “disciple”, She is image of the “Church”, for the church takes her form, the body of her Son in a bride. Like her Son, her ascent to heaven is “bodily”, insofar as She is establishing the very ascent. She is his advance guard in life and rear guard in death. He divine cycle of embodiment is not complete without her. So She does for each of her children. The wholeness of our flesh is hers, and She weaves our lives into hers, so that we might also ascend, establishing in the garden of the heart the eternal embrace of Christ as our beginning, an embrace eternally complete with the indwelling of The Virgin as our end.
Hail Mary!
[1] “Psalm 89:10 You Crushed Rahab like a Carcass; You Scattered Your Enemies with Your Mighty Arm.,” accessed October 17, 2022, https://biblehub.com/psalms/89-10.htm.
[2] “the Syrian Christian Jacob of Serug (died 521 CE) could compose a homily ‘On that Chariot that Ezekiel the prophet saw’ and say that the chariot throne was an image of The Virgin Mother.” - Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord: Volume 1: The Lady in the Temple (A&C Black, 2012).
[3] “One of the names which the Litany of Loreto gives to the Blessed Virgin is Sedes Sapientiae, “Throne of Wisdom”; and indeed, as was noted by Saint Peter Damian (11th century), the Blessed Virgin “is herself that wondrous throne referred to in the Book of Kings”, namely, the Throne of Solomon the Prophet-King, who, according to the Bible and rabbinical traditions, was the wise man par excellence. If Mary is Sedes Sapientiae, this is first of all because She is the Mother of Christ, who, being the Word, is the “Wisdom of God”; but it is also, quite obviously, because of her own nature, which results from her quality as “Spouse of the Holy Spirit” and “Co‑Redemptress”; that is to say, Mary is herself an aspect of the Holy Spirit, its feminine counterpart, if one will, or its aspect of femininity, whence the feminization of the divine Pneuma by the Gnostics. Being the Throne of Wisdom—the “Throne quickened by the Almighty” according to a Byzantine hymn—Mary is ipso facto identified with the divine Sophia, as is attested by the Marian interpretation of some of the eulogies of Wisdom in the Bible. Mary could not have been the locus of the Incarnation did She not bear in her very nature the Wisdom to be incarnated.” - Frithjof Schuon, “The Seat of Wisdom” 14 (2004): 1–6.
[4] Margaret Barker, “Wisdom: The Queen of Heaven,” Scottish Journal of Theology 55, no. 2 (2002): 141–59, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930602000224.
[5] Edward P. Butler, “Damascian Negativity,” Dionysius 37, no. December (2019): 114–33.
[6] “what is perhaps more subtle for the untrained reader is that Wisdom has an obviously sexual relationship to God. As Michael Coogan points out, the image of God “delighting in” or, really in Hebrew, “laughing with” Wisdom is a sexual image, drawn from parallel texts like, for example, Sarah’s “laughter” in Genesis 18:13-14, or Isaac and Rebekah “laughing” together in the field in 26:8, revealing to King Abimelech that they are husband and wife, not brother and sister. Wisdom is God’s spouse, whose sexual relationship with him is integral to the creation of the world order. As Philo says, “God is Wisdom’s husband” (De cherubim 14.49)” - David Armstrong, “The Goddess Wisdom: Sophia, Shakti, and The Virgin,” A Perennial Digression, March 25, 2022, https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/the-goddess-wisdom?s=r.