<p>The Christian season of Advent, covering the span of about four weeks prior to Christmas, is rich with religious and psychological significance. In the darkest, shortest days of the year, people turn their thoughts to rebirth and the creation of new light. It is a time for psychic birth guiding us toward wider consciousness and a heightened experience of life. This yearning in human beings goes back to the primal roots of civilization. The prayers and liturgies of the Advent season echo the myths of winter solstice festivals and the ancient desire of people to return to the nurturing chaos of unformed matter. Advent prayers parallel the efforts of alchemists who strove to turn base metal into higher and more noble elements. Advent expresses a fundamental longing for transformation.</p>

Advent and Psychic Birth

Burke, Mariann

Religion & Spirituality

Paulist Pr

<p>Artists plumb the depths of soul which Jung calls the collective unconscious, the inheritance of our ancestors' psychic responses to life s drama. In this sense the artist is priest, mediating between us and God. The artist introduces us to ourselves by inviting us into the world of image. We may enter this world to contemplate briefly or at length. Some paintings invite us back over and over again and we return, never tiring of them. It is especially these that lead us to the Great Mystery, beyond image. Re-imagining Mary: A Journey through Art to the Feminine Self is about meeting the Cosmic Mary in image and imagination, the many facets of the Mary image that mirror both outer reality and inner feminine soul. Jungian analyst Mariann Burke explores symbolic meanings of paintings and sculptures by several famous artist from the renaissance period on up to our modern age including: Fra Angelico, Albrecht Durer, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicolas Poussin, Parmigianino, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and Frederick Franck.Aspects of Mary explored include: Mary not only as Mother of God, a title from the Judeo-Christian tradition, but as Mother God, a title reaching back to an ancient longing for a Female Divinity. In western Christianity this Mary bears the titles and the qualities worshipped for thousands of years in the Female images of God and Goddess. These titles include Mary as Sorrowful One and as Primordial Mother. Recovering Mary both as light and dark Madonna plays a crucial role in humanity s search for a divinity who reflects soul. Also discussed is Mary as the sheltering Great Mother that Piero della Francesca suggest in the Madonna del Parto and Mater Misericodia. Frederick Franck s The Original Face and the Medieval Vierge Ouvrante also suggest this motif of Mary as Protector of the mystery of our common Origin. Franck s inspiration for his sculpture of Mary was the Buddhist koan 'What is your original face before you were born?'</p>

Re-Imagining Mary: A Journey Through Art to the Feminine Self

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Fisher King Press

The Christian season of Advent, covering the span of about four weeks prior to Christmas, is rich with religious and psychological significance. In the darkest, shortest days of the year, people turn their thoughts to rebirth and the creation of new light. It is a time for psychic birth guiding us toward wider consciousness and a heightened experience of life. This yearning in human beings goes back to the primal roots of civilization. The prayers and liturgies of the Advent season echo the myths of winter solstice festivals and the ancient desire of people to return to the nurturing chaos of unformed matter. Advent prayers parallel the efforts of alchemists who strove to turn base metal into higher and more noble elements. Advent expresses a fundamental longing for transformation.

Christian Books & Bibles

Catholicism

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