Death and life meet at the threshold of birth. — Marion Woodman
Connecting to this archetypal image may result in dreams of a huge serpent, mysterious, coldblooded, inaccessible to human feeling.
Seen as an appendage of the negative mother, it is the phallus stolen from the father and used to guard inviolate purity.
Yet this same snake, when seen in relation to the moon, symbolizes the dark, impersonal side of femininity and at the same time its capacity to renew itself.
The daughter who can come out from under the skin of the negative mother will not perpetuate her but redeem her.
The Black Madonna is the patron saint of abandoned daughters who rejoice in their outcast state and can use it to renew the world.
Although not to be found in “authorized” versions of the Bible, the Apocryphal New Testament contains much material on this “dark” side of the Virgin.
The Book of James tells how Joseph, after a long sojourn “building his buildings,” returned to find his sixteen year old virgin wife six months pregnant.
He was both heartbroken and afraid:
[He] called Mary and said unto her. . . . O thou that wast cared for by God, why hast thou done this? thou hast forgotten the Lord thy God. . . . But she wept bitterly, saying: I am pure and I know not a man. And Joseph said unto her: Whence then is that which is in thy womb? and she said: As the Lord my God liveth, I know not whence it is come unto me. And Joseph was sore afraid and ceased from speaking unto her, and pondered what he should do with her. And Joseph said: If I hide her sin, I shall be found fighting against the law of the Lord: and if I manifest her unto the children of Israel, I fear lest that which is in her be the seed of an angel, and I shall be found delivering up innocent blood to the judgement of death. What then shall I do? The judgment referred to here meant being stoned to death as an adulteress. There follows a long description of the dream in which Joseph is reassured by an angel that the child in Mary’s womb “is of the Holy Ghost.”18 Then he and the Virgin have to undergo humiliation and “testing” at the hands of the priests. As the story unfolds Joseph takes care of Mary, but both are confused and alone 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. — Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin, Page 122-124
