The feast of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary celebrates a hierogamy: the wedding of Heaven and Earth, an indispensable premise for the Sun God (Christ) to be reborn on the day of solstice.
The Madonna’s feast (our Lady or Virgin Mary) has its origins in the East, precisely in the Byzantine church, where in the eighth century, at the beginning of December, nine months before the Nativity of Mary, the memory of Anna’s conception was solemnized. According to James’ apocryphal Gospel and Luke’s Gospel, she was Mary’s mother, that is Theotokos’ mother (mother of God). In fact, between the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century, a feast of Anna’s conception began to be celebrated in the East (certainly in Constantinople), on December 9th. That feast did not have as its main purpose the exemption of Mary from original sin, but the prodigious event narrated by the Protoevangelium of James, according to which Joachim and Anna, sterile all her life, miraculously conceived their daughter by the grace of God.
Annunciation by Giotto at the Scrovegni Chapel – By Giotto – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15884067
From the East the feast passed to the West according to known paths, including the settlements of Eastern monks in Italy and the intense relations of Byzantium with southern Italy, as attested by the Neapolitan calendar.
Anyway the feast, born in Palestinian monasteries, almost immediately gained great favor: in the 9th century we find it included in the Nomocanon of Photius and in the monumental Calendar of the church of Naples, then under Byzantine influence. At the beginning of the 10th century, Emperor Leo VI the Philosopher (896-903) extended it to the entire empire and, in 1166, Emperor Comnenus included it among the holidays to be celebrated with abstention from work.
Triumphal Chariot of the Immaculate Conception in Torre del Greco – By Fiore Silvestro Barbato from Naples (NA), Italy – Torre del Greco (NA), 2005, Feast of the Immaculate Conception and transport of the triumphal chariot., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57295820
Virgin Mary’s feast was inserted into the calendar of the universal Church by Pope Alexander VII with the bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum of December 8, 1661. The Catholic Dogma was officially proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854 with the bull Ineffabilis Deus, which establishes how the Virgin Mary was preserved immune from original sin from the first moment of her conception.
As mentioned, the origins of the feast are undoubtedly linked to the Byzantine history in the period of Christianity’s expansion into the eastern Mediterranean regions, where religious iconography was widespread and, in connection with the Madonna, we find numerous images of the Black Virgin, which represents a fundamental link between the Christian female world and the numerous female deities who populated the pantheons of proto-Christian civilizations from the Neolithic to the Greek Olympus.
The Black Madonna of Jasna Góra in Częstochowa in Poland – By Kancelaria Sejmu / Krzysztof Kurek – 31. Pielgrzymka Parlamentarzystów na Jasną Górę, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87143103
The color black is associated with the Earth, its dark depths and its fertility, always considered the Mother of the human race, a chthonic world center of primordial cults dedicated precisely to the Great Mother, often hosted in temples or underground caves.
The Black Madonna is the symbol of her incarnation in all the female deities that preceded her, in particular Isis, whose “Black” representation is well known.
Isis, the Mother Goddess, with Horus – By Anonymous (Egypt) – Walters Art Museum: Home page Info about artwork, Public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18798188
“I am she who is, who has always been and always will be, and no mortal has ever lifted my veil.”: the cult and mysteries of Isis are an interesting dimension of Mediterranean religious history, from Egypt to ancient Rome, through the process of transformation of polytheism to monotheism, a process that has not only a religious value but also a socio-cultural and mass psychology value.
Today it could be said that the history of the Western world is marked by the path taken from the matriarchy of the cults of the Great Mother to the monotheistic Judeo-Christian-Muslim patriarchy.
The Great Mother of Taranto By Miguel Hermoso Cuesta – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46435895
The interesting aspect is that, although the current center of reference is a unique divine figure with implicit and clear male connotations, the entire divine feminine world continues to exist through the figure of the Virgin Mary, whose icon in the “black” version can bring us back uninterruptedly to the chthonic world of 4-5 thousand years ago and to the many female deities connected to it (for example Ishtar, Cybele. Gaia, Demeter, Mater Matuta, Venus …).
With the help of Taoism we can bring this male-female dialectic (which for the Western world still implies deep conflicts both individual and collective) to a “peaceful” universal balance according to the law of the Tao, and apply it in our homes, in order to arrange them with a greater harmony to host people and energies in the upcoming period of the end-of-year festivities.
The moon rises at 12:56 on December 8, 2024 at 100° azimuth from the north in the southeast sector of the Chinese compass in conjunction with Saturn; therefore the arrangement of Moonstones in this direction (also available in black) is highly recommended as an extraordinary special care, given the unfavorable and limiting presence of Saturn.
Adularia Moonstone – By Didier Descouens – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7642744
Particular attention should also be paid to the feminine energy connected to this astral configuration which also activates Venus, in critical opposition on the north-west-southeast direction to Mars: it is absolutely appropriate and advisable to increase the feminine energy with a statuette of Isis, very suitable for improving the celestial Yang energy that is welcomed by the earthly Yin energy on this special day, when masculine energy is not arranged so harmoniously.
This Image is a representation of the Egyptian Goddess Isis spreading her wings as she was depicted in The Tomb of Seti I, 1360 BCE – By EternalSpace1977 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123167668