The Divine Feminine in Christianity

Abstract

The role of the Virgin Mary in biblical texts is insubstantial. In fact, except for the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Mary never returns as a central figure of any other biblical story. This was one of the reasons for the appearance of the Apocryphal books. They calmed the insatiable curiosity of popular devotion and filled in the gaps of the gospels related to the life of Mary and the infancy of Jesus, which aroused such interest in believers, who were hungry for details. Nevertheless, over centuries, the Virgin cult has reached incredible dimensions. Indeed, today, Mary has many roles in the Catholic Church: Mother of God, perpetual Virgin, immaculately conceived and ascended to heaven in body and soul, where she will reign forever. From being a humble servant of God, she has passed over to being the Queen of Heaven, receiving divine status. This transcendence of the Virgin Mary figure in the Catholic religion is because, more than an historical character, the Virgin is presented as a theological symbol which has filled a deep need of the psyche to balance the excessively masculine in the Judeo-Christian tradition with the feminine aspect.