Although Jesus had only one Mother, and there is only one Virgin Mary, tracing her mundane faces and varieties of her devotion across the centuries and continents has led us to the conclusion that there are as many Marys as there are people and nations who are devoted to her. Along with the spread of Christianity, her role through the ages has become more central, her presence more visible, and her voice more audible.
With the help of mass-media communication, new forms of transport, and the ever-growing ease of mobility in the twentieth century, She, as the Mother of Jesus, has become the leading figure of global missionary activities, captivating the world with her public and globally addressed messages (Chapman 2000). Her popularity at the beginning of the twenty-first century is sometimes compared to those of pop-culture ‘megastars’ (Hermkens et al. 2009, p. 1).
From a strictly scientific point of view, the Virgin Mary, being herself a transcendent entity, cannot be traced. Anyhow, we can trace her based on her mundane ‘imprints’ in the ‘real world’ and human lives. Thus, we can talk to people and seek testimonies of those who believe in her direct interventions in the world, causing, for example, miraculous healings and other miracles. We can follow statistics of how many people in the world are on the move because of Mary. We can explore how her messages impact the Church, including the popes and the highest clergy elite. We can examine the ways people believe in her potential to share her sacrum with shrines, statues, images, and other devotional objects. We can explore how her devotion has changed the symbolic map of the world, giving importance to the places which were formerly considered nowhere. We can trace the ways of her enculturation by local people, being venerated as a European, Indian, African, Asian, or Roma woman, or the intriguing ability of people to accommodate her in nearly every place, time, condition, or circumstance. Therefore, tracing the implicit faces of Mary mirrored in the mundane world, we also trace the faces of the people who believe in her as the Divine Mother of Christ and ultimate Love.
‘The Virgin Mother’: The Conceptual Roots of Tradition
Her person is veiled with the mystery of being both the Immaculate (ever) Virgin and the human Mother of Jesus, who is also the Son of the Celestial Father (God). The enigma of her being both a Virgin and a Mother has compelled scholars of religious studies to make multiple phenomenological comparisons with other pre-Christian and non-Christian female deities of the Great Mother Goddess type.
In this context, it is also interesting that the Third Ecumenical Council (431 A.D.) was held at the Church of Mary in Ephesus, Anatolia, the former important centre of the cult of Artemis. The council condemned the teachings of Nestorius on the Virgin Mary for being only the Christotokos [Gr., ‘The Christ-bearer’] and proclaimed her to be the Theotokos [Gr., ‘The God-bearer’]. Some scholars believe that Mary was declared the Mother of God and was allowed to be venerated as such because of the urgent need of the post-Hellenistic world for a heavenly feminine principle as a compromise with pagans so that Christianity could become acceptable.
In her study, M. Rigoglioso (2010, pp. 51–65) noted that various female deities of Graeco-Roman antiquity were conceived as Virgin Mothers in the earliest layers of their cults. The Christian idea of Mary as the Virgin Mother of God has many similarities to the Graeco-Roman concept of the Great Goddess as the simultaneous embodiment of three female aspects—the Ever-Virgin, Holy Bride/Wife of the Father (God), and the Great Mother of the Son of God—unified in one divine person.
The figure of the Virgin Mary has also been explored in the post-conquest Maya context as a hybridised form of the pagan concept of ritual sexuality, as well as the Christian formulation of virginity prescribed by colonial Spanish Catholicism. In this context, P. Sigal (2000) explored how the Moon Goddess of Yucatec Maya was culturally conflated with the Virgin Mary, thus becoming a hybrid Christian symbol. Sigal speaks about conceptual translation and describes how the Maya Moon Goddess lost her original meaning and how the Spanish Virgin Mary was reformulated into the final hybrid Goddess figure—The Unvirgin Virgin.
On the European continent, the Virgin Mary has flexibly absorbed the elements and ritual functions of many local female pre-Christian goddesses; just to mention the cult of Baba [Srb., ‘the Great Mother’] in Serbia (Petrović 2001), or the connection of Mary with the so-called Boldogasszony [Hung., ‘Blessed Woman’] in Hungary, which is a special Hungarian denomination of the Virgin Mary and also the alleged Mother Goddess of the ancient Hungarians (Kis-Halas 2019).
The Traditional Virgin Mary
Traditionally, Mary was perceived to be a powerful Protector and Healer, mediating celestial protection and miraculous healings. In this respect, She is connected ...