"When Mary Becomes Cosmic: Powers for us and in us"

"Our life of  prayer can be first a move toward the Beloved; then we are with the Beloved; finally, we are the Beloved.  We move from dialogue, twoness to a oneness in which all divisions are revealed as illusory. 

All our young lives, we loved Mary as our mother in heaven. We were supplicants who asked for her graces. This corresponds to a movement toward her while she was above us. As we matured in faith, we began to see that, the mysteries of her life were exemplars of what we were meant to be. We then felt her beside us. Finally, we dared to recognize ourselves in her and experienced her energy within and as her own souls. We saw that she is the feminine reality of what we are.  This is a progression correspond to the stages of contemplative prayer. We now love her in the  core of our souls as the core.  Before we loved a picture, but now we love the  motherly, virginal, royal reality of our own humanness that boasts such a powerful Source within and ever enfold us. Mary is the new Eve because she is the new potential of divinity in the cosmos and in all humanity. 

The mystic philosopher, Pythagoras, reflected that the threefold goddess represented the phases of a woman's life: virgin, mother, wise old woman gaining power that is queenliness. The great goddess was simultaneously the mistress of the underworld (virgin), the earth (mother), anance d the heavens (queen). The three dimensions reflect the phases of the moon, new, waxing, and dying in preparation for renewal. We begin to see the cosmic implications of the goddess energy and the divine feminine. For instance, in some traditions, the earth was considered to the Great Mother. 

Mary, on the archetypal/metaphorical level, can be seen as a container of the ancient threefold energy that characterized the great goddess.  The excesses of devotion over the past two millennia regarding Mary become understandable once we see them in the light of the perennially venerated threefold goddess, rather than to the Mary of the Gospels. What may seem like idolatry when applied to the woman from Nazareth is, however quite understandable when applied to her spiritual meaning in spiritual consciousness. In fact, no one has yet praised her enough. There can be no excesses for the Source of and the guide to the mystery of the divine life in us and in all the cosmos.  Mystically, Mary is the "yes' by which the timeless divine life entered into time. (This book) examines "each of the three qualities of the divine feminine- virgin- mother, queen- both in ancient pagan times and in the Litany of Loreto. "   pp. 37-39, When Mary Becomes Cosmic, by David Richo