Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group

The Assumption of the Virgin Mary,

As you know, Jung gave a great deal of attention to this image.

He discusses it much more extensively in ”Answer to Job,” where he speaks of the dogmatization of the Assumption as “the most important event in Church history since the Reformation,” but in our material tonight (paragraph 237) he says this:

“For a long time there had been a psychological need for …

[the Trinity to become a quaternity], as is evident from the medieval pictures of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin; it was also responsible for elevating her to the position of mediatrix, corresponding to Christ’s position as the mediator ….

The recent promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption emphasizes the taking up not only of the soul but of the body of Mary into the Trinity, thus making a dogmatic reality of those medieval representations of the quaternity which are constructed on the following pattern [figure 10-6].

Only in1950, after the teaching authority in the Church had long deferred it …. did the Pope, moved by a growing wave of popular petitions, feel compelled to declare the Assumption as a revealed truth.

All the evidence shows that the dogmatization was motivated chiefly by the religious need of the Catholic masses.”

Behind this stands the Archetypal Numen of Feminine Deity. ~Edward F. Edinger, The Mysterium Lectures, Page 132