Mary Christmas card
Mary at the Manger as inner creativity
If you declare “Mary is Divine;” then, forget the same capacity lives inside you — you have missed what Mary at the Manger can teach you.
This entire “Mary Christmas card” is a paraphrasing from Emil Bock’s Threefold Mary lectures of 1950-’51. I’ve revised, excerpted, adapted and expanded Emil’s exact words here. This effort would not exist without Emil’s original contribution.
This is my second “collaboration” with Emil Bock. The first was Rudolf Steiner’s Fifth Gospel in Story Form, produced in 1991, available on Amazon-Kindle or from me in other digital formats. The success of my earlier collaboration with Emil encouraged me to try this second one.
If any reader sees a way to make Emil’s ideas and legacy more accessible, please contact me. I’m happy to list any contributors in future editions.
For those who know about the TWO Jesus children and the TWO Marys, the question arises…
Q: Which of the two Marys are we concerned with here?
A: One answer is ALL May facets we can learn from. Another answer is, we are primarily interested here in the mother of the Adam-Jesus baby. The other Mary, who lived on after the Crucifixion, the mother of the Solomon Jesus child, is more significant to the topic of whole-brained Christianity and how women lead in this.
Emil’s original audience was the Anthroposophic (Rudolf Steiner) Christian Community. This Xmas card has a wider audience:
- Cultural Creatives,
- those looking for useful rhetoric for the Divine Feminine going forward; and
- those looking for more rhetoric and insights into the right brain as characterized by Iain McGilchrist (2009, et al) .
No restrictions on sharing this. Okay to edit, revise, adapt, excerpt this. New, useful language is not meant to be owned or restricted.
Peace on Earth to men and women of goodwill,
Bruce Dickson, Pasadena CA, December 2021
Summary
In the Christian world, Mary at the Manger is a yearly reminder of every person’s capacity, to connect inwardly, and stay connected, with Spirit.
How often do you re-connect with your own inward creativity?
When our Child Within
is reacting less to the outer world,
more receptive to inner worlds,
the more safe and trusting we feel, of higher frequencies,
states of being above trauma-drama.
The more purified our gut brain and internal parts become,
the easier it is for our Self to conceive-receive, cognize and contribute to new creation.
Mary was receptive; Mary was permeable to Soul and Above, all the way down to the egg in her womb.
Marian devotion
Mary was not worshipped immediately after the Crucifixion. Centuries after Jesus left physically, to renew public interest in the church-as-social-institution, the Catholic church acknowledged the ancient mother goddess, put her back into the heavens, thru the cult of Marian devotion. This came in the heights of the Middle Ages, the time of gothic cathedral-building. From then on, the Madonna has been worshipped as Divine.
A word of caution ~ If we set Mary — or anyone — on a pedestal above us and set ourselves below, we can fall prey to projecting our inner creativity onto Mary and forget to claim this capacity within our own Self, in our own life.
If we make no effort to perceive-conceive of spirit inside ourself, making too little effort — don’t blame Mary. Mary at the Manger points to our dormant, un-exercised, living potential of healthy receptivity and healthy yin. Until you make it a priority in your Inner Games of Life to experience both your inner YANG and inner yin, these remain mysterious potentials just out of reach.
If you declare Mary at the Manger “divine” and do not exercise her potential inside you — you have missed what she points to. Mary at the Manger points to honoring and developing our Inner Game of Life.
Martin Luther and his fellow reformers perhaps sensed the problem of projection when they decided against making Marian devotion part of Protestantism. They maintained human beings, no matter how great the mysteries they may embody, should not be put out of reach, declared as gods.
In these essays, we explore Mary at the Manger as a lovely, accessible representation of the Mood of Birth in the best sense, reminding us of a capacity, born in far-distant ancient Paradise, alive and active in us today.
Let us reverently approach the divine mysteries in the life of the Virgin Mary, using all the faculties of modern awareness.
Christians as “revolutionaries”
In our inner life, if we are to mature beyond “blind faith” we wish to base our convictions on direct, personal experience. This is the best basis for our freedom as Christians, to follow Christ out of choice, preference and conviction, as much as possible.
What about faith? Faith is good, blind faith may be needed at times. When available, do prefer knowledge and understanding.
We maintain-sustain our freedom as Christians two ways:
- Gestating-nurturing inwardly our connection with Christ and truly human values; and
- Outwardly by demonstrating our convictions thru service to our self; and, service to others.
Thru these we understand more of the Christian approach to self, others, the world and our own Divinity.
In this, we continue as the “free thinkers” Christians have been from the beginning. We strive for an inner life continually reborn, quickened by insights from healthy rational Thinking and healthy rational Feeling. We support each other as adults, to be set free from the limitations of taking our beliefs on the authority of others and the limiting cords of “imitative thinking.” Slaving our thinking to how others think is workable for children 7–12 — after puberty — critical-indepdendent thinking is supposed to over-lay earlier developmental stages.
Mary at the Manger is wordless
In pre-Christian times, a mystery was known. It was a mystery causing earliest Christians, up to 1,000 A.D., not to speak about Virgin Mary at all. They preferred to keep a tactful silence on her. Nor was Mary ever portrayed in public paintings. There are no Western depictions of Mary prior to 1,000 A.D. Not until the height of the Middle Ages, after the Church had initiated Marian devotion, was she ever depicted in public paintings. Why?
What reasons did early Church Fathers have for not depicting the Madonna at all?
The answer is, inwardly alive Christians still equated Mary with the inner side of Christianity, the Inner Game where we come close to the Christ, “up close and personal,” “Christ born inside me,” Mary as “the bride of Christ,” myself as Bride of Christ.
This inner game is 100% devotional, 0% intellectual, it’s wholly inner. It’s only outer manifestation is humility and service to others, “Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord.” If with your eyes closed and listening inwardly, you have no direct inner experience of this — words are a poor substitute.
Then and now Mary represents perceiving, sensing, and conceiving Spirit inwardly with your eyes closed: inner Light, inner Sound, inner Being. Nothing at all to do with the outer world.
Enuf early Christians were inwardly alive to set a norm against idolatry, against making mere 2D external images. Direct inner perception of Light and Sound were what they sought. These inner experiences were too deep, too refined, to put clumsy words on and speak about. For the earliest Christians, inner contemplation of the Virgin Mary and Mary at the Manger was sacred. She was the Bride of the Beloved, a contemplation, an inner experience. Why even pretend outer representations could substitute?
Mary at the Manger
Mary, Mother of the Adam-Jesus infant, kneeling humbly and devotedly, in the Manger scene, reminds us today of the inwardness of healthy introverted creativity. Mary conceives within herself a new frequency, brings it thru her, and manifests it thru the birth canal into human affairs. Mary is a portal for a new Being who is timely and needed in human history, for human evolution.
For both male and female readers, please imagine the Mary aspect inside, able to conceive of a spiritual being, higher in frequency than our own ego, and bringing it down and inside us to become active in local culture.
The “fruits of the Spirit” are not limited to baby bodies. Any smile, with love behind it, can be a gift of the Spirit. Kind words, words of Love-Wisdom, can be a gift of Soul and Above. Men and women, but especially women now, have capacity now to conceive, gestate and give birth to beneficial, useful, timely ideas and beings, whose contributions benefit the 99%. This is an invisible human capacity Mary reminds us of, each year at Christmas.
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Each of us, growing into our own Second Coming
The Christmas festival acts as a focal point in the yearly calendar. Children sing Christmas carols like, “The Christ Child Comes to Us Every Year.” Children prior to puberty, more than adults, sense what happened long ago — lingers as a potential inside them, is highlighted again at Christmas; even if, the HOW escapes both children and adults.
Too often Christmas merely commemorates an event in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. Why is the nostalgic mood of a child’s Christmas more and more difficult to sustain, 2001–2020?
The answer is simple. We are currently in a gap between, on one hand, a nostalgic approach to the Christmas season. On the other hand, to a renewed, future Christmas, no longer primarily looking backwards to events of long ago.
Let’s see if we can connect-the-dots.
I propose we start here. For those alive today, the significance of the Manger scene, is hope for our own individual “second coming,” for those ready, willing, able and wanting this.
The future Christmas, the future Second Coming, we are individually and collectively growing towards, cannot be reached thru nostalgia. The future potential of each individual’s future second coming is what is pulling us forward.
These essays, inspired by Emil Bock’s first two 1950 lectures from his booklet, Threefold Mary, support new understandings (p. 10) of our own second coming.
A: Will the Second Coming be Christ himself returning to Earth, to human affairs?
A: Maybe. I don’t’ know. I can imagine the 2030s as a good timeframe. While we’re waiting, what we can put time and attention on, is conceiving of our own second coming, not passive, no external Savior; rather, as more consciously, awake and inner activity, connecting with the Loving Heart center, our heartfelt connection with Self and heartfelt interactions with others. Whether Christ Jesus returns in the flesh or not, it is towards a second coming of this kind we are all growing inwardly.
Today every corporate mass media news cycle reports on the Apocalypse. Rehearsed over and over, 24/7, the Apocalypse is foreign to the Christmas spirit, destroys its peace, desecrates what is trying to be born inside humanity, making us look sadly upon the Christmas altar, where it says: “Peace On Earth and to people of good will.”
The apocalyptic shocks of the present day do suggest the struggle, confusion and violence many experience attempting to bridge the gap between themselves and their own second coming The good news is, they intuit correctly this is an inner capacity we never lost. The bad news? Only personal practice with methods for connecting with the Kingdom Of Heaven Within can bridge the gap.
Christmas past, present and future
Before the shepherds and Wise Men arrive, the ordinary three human figures gathered in the manger scene, embody universal principles. Old Joseph, the father, brings the past, what has been, to the scene. The child personifies the future. What great mystery is then represented and expressed in the figure of Mary? How does she, the virgin mother, complete the past-present-future triad around the Manger? Which inner mysteries does she reflect back to us and point to?
We will try to show how Mary has much to teach us, about the far-distant past; as well as, a future trying to be born, wishing to be born, even in us today.
Mary at the Manger: the Mystery of Death
If we are familiar with esoteric history, which can be read in Akashic Records, in the Astral realm, reported to us by gifted clairvoyants, we hear humanity stands midway between two poles of salvation. Much earlier in human history, each human was inwardly joined with the divine world, in Oneness and union with an encompassing Spirit.
On the path to individuation, collective humanity gradually gave up a connection-focus-union with inner Oneness. To individualize further, we gave up our hard-wired inner connection with Paradise in all forms. We agreed to practice and gain experience making healthy choices today, as an aware individual.
Mary at the Manger reminds us of at least two meanings. One is the Mystery of inward conceiving and how it leads to gestation; and finally, to a new physical body for a new incoming soul. We return to the Mood of Birth shortly.
Mary at the Manger reminds us of a second thing: where we came from.
Our current earthly journey completes itself inevitably. We all wish ourselves and each other a contented, re-emergence back into spirit after our final physical breath here.
Mary at the Manger honors those coming into birth and those now leaving human life, one portal leading away from Paradise, towards and into the human experience. The other portal leading away from human experience, back into Paradise, however conceived.
Mary reminds us of both, the spiritual worlds we came from before physical birth; and, the spiritual worlds we return to after our last breath.
Mary at the Manger: the Mystery of Birth
Before any god comes down from heaven to Earth, taking on human form, to die and be resurrected, another being has to come down first, the purified woman, able to conceive within herself and/or receive from spirit, a spark of higher frequency, which she nurtures and brings to term, as a vehicle for a new incoming soul.
If we look at the holy potential of Mary’s gut brain and internal parts, we can start to imagine how the holy potential of every female reproductive system is watched over, by spiritual beings. Each womb has the potential to conceive inwardly, and manifest outwardly, a physical body for an incoming soul.
The more purified a female gut brain is, the higher the frequency of a woman’s reproductive organs, a soul of a higher frequency can be conceived of and gifted with a physical body.
Q: How do I raise the frequency of my gut brain, internal parts and reproductive organs?
A: Primarily by acknowledging, attending to and resolving, excess reactivity, excess liking and disliking. This is everyone’s biggest block to a more purified waking awareness, men too. The methods of Internal Family Systems are useful and timely here.
About 2000 years ago, at the turning point of human history, the awesome inner capacity of inward conception and gestation, leading to the birth of something new in culture, comes to us in the humblest image of a young mother with a child in her arms, a mother scarcely out of girlhood, who journeys far from her native Nazareth, to bear her child in a grotto in Bethlehem.
Mary at the Manger represents the hopeful, expectant Mood of Birth, more clearly than any other symbol in Western culture. Mary at the Manger is a touchstone for personal prayers and efforts — baby steps — to conceive of, to gestate inside ourselves, and give birth to, a spark of greater wholeness and humanity — each according to our own uniqueness.
At the same time, each of us eventually chooses to be Father, Mother and midwife of a more enlightened version of ourself. Our own past-present-future triad is represented around the Manger.
Two mysteries confront us here. One is the child in the manger, destined to grow up, go out into the world, and thru, His resurrection, vanquish what mystery temples called the mystery of death.
The other figure, Mary, personifies the mystery of birth.
She is the goddess able to conceive within herself — or with the help of Divine intervention, remaining innocent of the negative aspects of sex. Thus, the mother and child reflect the two mysteries at opposites poles of a human experience.
The mother is a portal for a soul to come away from non-physical worlds, into Earthly birth. The child is a portal pointing towards re-union with spirit for those embodied in flesh, pointing towards more connection, cooperation and inner support from higher beings.
Mary and Christmas Carols
Almost unique in corporate-consumer culture, the frequency of Mary at the Manger, inwardly conceiving her heart’s desire, of a higher Being, for Earth’s healing, still echoes in some beloved Christmas Carols.
A few famous Xmas carols still encourage us to resonate with Mary’s healthy, introverted creativity. “Silent Night” is one such carol, “Oh, Holy Night” is another. If you wish to identify more such carols, listen for the appearance of quiet introverted, inner creativity. This is what Mary at the Manger reminds of of primarily at Xmas time.
Is this a Mary carol or a lullaby?
In writing this, I learned to distinguish between songs of inner creativity, Mary carols, and lullabies
Tho as a child I liked all the carols, as an adult today I perceive “Away in a Manger” as a lullaby sung to an infant, NOT as a Mary carol.
“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” I perceive as a lullaby to and for adults, not a Mary carol.
How Mary conceives inwardly
If we ask what words to put on how Mary conceives inwardly, on all levels, physically, imaginally, emotionally, mentally and mythologically, this takes us to the limits of English language, the language of the world’s male businessmen.
Mary at the Manger encourages us to renew our capacity of inner creativity — which is where exactly? Inner creativity is more than Thinking and Feeling — but what else?
It’s one or two levels deeper than what we normally call Thinking and Feeling. Mary’s inward creativity, women’s genius, is not limited to Introverted Thinking and Introverted Feeling.
In People Patterns type and Temperament, MBTI observes four ways people can be inwardly creative:
Introverted iNtuition
Introverted Sensing
Introverted Thinking
Introverted Feeling
Q: When Mary conceives of the Adam soul, draws it in, gestates and manifests her conception, into the world of human affairs, which “flavor” of Introversion is she using?
A: I suspect all four together. Why exclude any one?
Two qualities missing in the MBTI system are the quality of “receptivity;” and, the quality of “willingness.” Mary conceives of a new spirit; then, is receptive to this spirit; then, is willing, able and wanting to nurture it thru pregnancy and after birth.
“Receptivity” also takes us quickly to the limits of English language and rhetoric. The larger context here is yin, healthy yin. Western culture, male culture, is drowning in excess YANG expressions and behaviors. Cultivating healthy yin and receptivity don’t happen much except for those individuals with willingness to heal and willingness to practice methods-techniques of self-connection. They find methods which exercise and increase their healthy yin. The topic is beyond our scope here.
Q: Is Mary’s creativity limited to only introverted creativity?
A: No. Mary and women are not limited to only Introverted creativity. They simply have much more genius here — at the sub- and unconscious levels — than men do.
Q: Can you give me an example of introverted creativity?
A: One Xmas carol comes to mind which expresses Mary’s introverted iNtuition (Ni): “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas:”
Through the years
We all will be together,
If the Fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.
And have yourself A merry little Christmas now.
The whole song leads up to the one line bolded. When sung by a woman especially, the power of a woman’s Introverted Intuition can be tangibly felt.
The first YouTube demonstrating this I found is “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas — Nicole Markson” at min 1:55 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djkg1MJdSjQ
If you find a better video, let me know.
1940s Judy Garland as virginal innocence
Dg-Judy-Garland singing the carol in the movie
The music composed by Hugh Martin, lyrics by Ralph Blane were made for the movie “Meet me in St. Louis” (1944), the year before WW II ended.
In the 1944 movie the one line above is different, “We all must muddle thru somehow.” This is telling us about the mood at home during WW II.
More generally, in the 1930s-1940s, Judy Garland and Ingrid Bergman were wonderful representations-expressions of the Virgin Divine Feminine, the Divine Mary, the woman-as-Saintly — too often, as over-giver.
To Learn More on MBTI People Patterns
https://www.16personalities.com
Beauty and the Beasts at the Manger
The fairy tale, “Beauty and the Beast,” endures as it points to a timeless truth: When the inner Beast is purified thru acceptance, understanding, forgiveness and love, only Beauty, harmony, connection and love remain.
The original French tale remains popular as an image of reconciling conscious waking Self with our Child Within — no matter how many damaged or animalistic habits-behaviors surround our Inner Child.
They thought differently in the 1700s than in the Disney version. As first written down in the 1700s, Belle represented the eternal-immortal soul in each person. In fairy tales from the 1700s and earlier, the soul is often the active part, the focus. In original fairy tales, the hero or heroine was often not the conscious waking Self but the eternal-immortal soul.
Since the great expansion of logical-sequential thinking, occurring in the 1800s-1900s, we assume all heroes in stories represent the reader, us, conscious waking Self. Few readers before the year 1800 would have made this assumption.
The crux of “Beauty and the Beast” reconciles soul with the judged, damaged yet potentially magical, basic self.
If Mary at the Manger is Beauty, where is the Beast in the manger scene? He is in the cattle lowing, sheep and goats in the stable.
Q: The Beast represented by farm animals in the Manger scene tells us what exactly?
A: The Adam-Jesus baby is free of animalistic habits; he is purified of animal habits, or nearly so. The animals look at him from outside. In the “Beauty and the Beast” fairy tale, our Inner Child is projected out of us and looks back at us thru a mask of animal passions and unresolved hurts.
At the end of “Beauty and the Beast,” Belle overcomes her fear and judgments of the animalistic mask of behaviors, sees past it, to the purified, lovable, magical Child Within. Behind the outward grossness and negativity of the Beast, the Christ Child is always shining.
The purified Christ Child inside the Beast prefers not to live in the human experience at all if he must wear the mask, body and behaviors of his unpurified, unredeemed state, living only with self-hatred and ugliness. Belle reaches the Beast thru her kindness, gentleness and patience.
Any conception of a living spirit inside or above us will always be primarily an inner conception, a creative employing of our inner Mary capacity for conceiving.
The genius of Female intelligence, is towards wholeness, expanding awareness, perceiving connections and similarities apart from differences.
By contemplating Mary, sitting by the manger in Bethlehem, we reconnect with our natural Mary capacity, first poured out over humanity, by the Holy Spirit, in Paradise. She is so indescribably ethereal, pure and virginal, embodying our heritage from Paradise, our original innocence, before the Fall and all falls.
Dg-Mary stat
Every year, if we care to connect, Mary at the Manger, shows us Paradise has not been lost — simply forgotten for eleven months. Something of Paradise remains in us, an inner creative capacity we can exercise, if we choose to exercise it.
Mary at the Manger restores our original innocence, keeps it alive for us, reminds us of our capacity for virginal innocence, each year at this time.
Here we arrive at the subject of womanhood in general. What a marvel: one human being, of flesh and blood, gives birth to another. The holy privilege of womanhood is often taken for granted. Still, can you name a more exalted miracle in the human experience?
Motherhood is a capacity harking back to the time of Paradise, of original closeness with God. We can still feel otherworldly holiness surrounding many women who lovingly hold a very young child.
dg-mother-child
Motherhood in crisis, virginity corrupted
In the 1980s, maybe you noted “virginity” and “Madonna” were re-defined by corporate-commercial media. If news to you, it’s here Madonna — Like A Virgin — YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s__rX_WL100
Some Cultural Creatives assert the holiness of motherhood has been in crisis for many decades now. Humanity does not honor nor know how to guard, and keep alive, the holy gifts we term “motherhood.” Our corporate-consumer age brought forward a thinking leading us wholly into excessive separation; therefore, into error, distortion and inner disturbance.
The mainstream view is virginity is lost in any woman who conceives, or has ever had sexual contact with a man. This overly-materialistic, women-as-male-property-view, blinds us to the fact even today, many mothers have not fully lost their virginal nature, even after bearing children.
On the other hand, countless unmarried women, who may never have had sexual contact with a man, have already lost or given up their capacity for innocent virginity.
A contrast exists between women who give at least some unconscious attention to the spiritual world, over their head; and, the greater numbers of Western women who de-feminize themselves. Mary at the Manger does not represent women who de-feminize themselves.
Coarse, crudely possessive-male-materialistic ideas, obscure our view of the positive quality of virginal innocence. An ever-timely, ever-fertile, positive archetype has been over-written by external materialist-greed-oriented culture.
Insofar as the capacity for virginal innocence developed very early in humanity’s evolution, it can still be observed in some women around us today. In movies especially, virginal innocence is very often the underlying character trait of Melissa Benoist’s Supergirl on TV and Gal Godot’s Wonder Woman. No matter how overlaid with trauma drama narrative, movie heroines often have virginal innocence as part of their inner character.
How confusing then must Lara Croft, Tomb Raider and other female butt-kickers since the 1980s be for young girls as role models. Especially in the Tomb Raider movies and games of the last six years, audiences — male audiences? — are told to empathize with the softness and humanity of Lara, her virginal innocence; and then, admire her butt-kicking, remorseless death-dealing to enemies. Thank God for recent Supergirl and Wonder Woman; where, their choices, actions and values are more aligned with an inner virginal innocence.
Q: Where does capacity for virginal innocence in women come from?
A: It originates in how invisible members of women, in and around the physical body, are in a different order from how these same bodies organized around men.
Not embedded so deeply into her physical body and waking intellect, a woman’s spirit, is more embedded into connections on all levels, physical, imaginal, emotional, mental, mythological and in soul. A man’s spirit is more deeply joined to his physical body and waking psyche.
A heightened capacity for connection in women’s unconscious, allows her to feel a part of her spiritual nature hovering above her, overhead. Women are more open inwardly, in an upward direction, than the great majority of men. Look for this. Perhaps you can perceive this directly your self.
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This completes this Mary Christmas card. Feel free to read Emil Bock’s original lectures here. Threefold Mary Translated by Christiane Marks, 94 pages. https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/Books/SearchResults.aspx?str=threefold+mary
