• Sim-seong Yeon-gu
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.45-111
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• 2023

This paper examines the apparition of the Virgin Mary revealed in Rue du Bac, Paris, France, in 1830, from a perspective of analytical psychology. To do so, it amplifies the archetypal motifs manifested in the images of the Virgin Mary of Rue du Bac by introducing the medieval alchemical picture titled "Glorification of the body portrayed as the coronation of the Virgin Mary" from Reusner's Pandora (1588). This image of the Virgin Mary is full of archetypal motifs that show the process and end result of individuation, which is the main idea of Jungian psychology. These symbols that depict the individuation process, both in Reusner's Pandora and in the Mary of Rue du Bac, are expressions of mythologems, constituent elements of the collective unconscious. Jung noted that these mythologems are the ultimate base and matrix of all religions. Through examining the archetypal motifs, which appear in the Mary of Rue du Bac, the apparition of the Mary turns out to be the revelation of the archetypal image of the Self in a space-time continuum, which is constellated in the collective unconscious. That is, an archetypal figure revealed itself to a witness' ego-consciousness to whom a space-time continuum functions as a cognitive category. The Mary of Rue du Bac represents the union of the opposites of divinity and humanity, which lacks in the symbolism of the Cross in Christianity. In this regard, she is an image of the new savior, who opens the new aeon of the Aquarius. The revealed image of Mary shows that divinity originates from the inner realm of the human psyche, that corporeal human beings are the matrix in which the divine incarnates, and that human being is the subject of psychological redemption. The image of Mary awakens us to the value of divinity in the human psyche in the times when the spiritual values Christianity has retained declines drastically.