Marion Woodman: Death and life meet at the threshold of birth.
And again Joseph turned himself about and saw her laughing, and said unto her: Mary, what aileth thee that I see thy face at one time laughing and at another time sad?
And Mary said unto Joseph:
It is because I behold two peoples with mine eyes, the one weeping and lamenting and the other rejoicing and exulting.
The “two peoples” Mary sees are aspects of herself, the one “weeping and lamenting” at the sacrifices foreshadowed through the child within, the other “rejoicing and exulting” at the imminence of new life. Death and life meet at the threshold of birth.”
It is this paradox of the virgin that speaks naturally to the woman who felt rejected as a child.
If she can empathize with her own pregnant mother, she may experience her gazing out the window, dreaming of the music she no longer plays, the picture she no longer paints, the world she no longer inhabits.
She may see in her mother the creative artist or crusader who was always outside society because, before motherhood, she too was a “virgin,” receptive to the creative imagination.
The mother’s betrayal of her own creativity made her a “bondwoman.”
Outcast and alone, mother and daughter both carry the potential energy represented by the Black Madonna.
The woman who unexpectedly finds herself with a child in her womb is like Mary.
Mary, who had been a virgin in the temple, initially responded to the angel with, “Be it unto me according to thy word.”
During the ensuing months, however, her task was not only to accept the child but to release herself into her own creative destiny.
Similarly, a modern woman who feels trapped in motherhood must come to realize that the child is part of her destiny.
It is the negative mother complex in the woman that makes her resent the unborn child because she fears it will interfere with her own creative dreams.― Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation, Page 124
