Essay number 36 from a collection
Beyond Religion III
Special Edition 2004
(INHOUSEPRESS)

Virgin Islands are glorious. Warm, curvilinear, seductive, inviting, on occasion––steaming. Not all virgins are like that. Some rather than being verdant, consume all that's green in their diet. The Egyptian nature goddess Isis, is a case in point. This virgin mother of the god-son Horus, is symbolized by a cow which, by the way, is sacred in India.

It's a small world.

And then, there had been ten virgins carrying lamps with and without oil who went to meet the bridegroom. We all know the story… How forgetful of five of them. Still, the wise virgins could have shared at least some of their oil with the foolish ones. Don't you think? Look up in Matthew. And taking of oil, have you tried the double and even triple virgin oil? And à propos wedding, I am sure that the priestesses, known as caryatids, straining under the weight of the entablature in Diana's temple, also never tasted the joys of Eros. Too bad... But when all is said and done, it is the maternal virginity that became sine qua non for the tales and myths of yesteryear.

In fact, virginal mothers abound in ancient religions.

The Hindû Holy Nari and the Egyptian Isis, correspond exactly to the Holy Mary known to us as the Holy Virgin. The Mother of Christ corresponds to the Hindû Mother of Krishna, and the Egyptian Mother of Horus. The litany of the Roman Catholic Virgins mirrors both the Hindû and the Egyptian beliefs. According to H.P Blavatsky, the list consists of seventeen individual titles bestowed on the Virgin Mary by later worshippers. Makes one wander if the early Christians did not borrow the list and merely reassigned it to a later version of the original.

The list is impressive.

There are titles corresponding to the Mother of God, Mother of Christ, Virgin of Virgins, Mother of Divine Grace, Virgin most chaste, Mother most pure, undefiled, inviolate, amiable and admirable; Virgin most powerful, merciful and faithful; Mirror of Justice, Seat of Wisdom, Mystical Rose, House of Gold, Morning Star, Ark of the Covenant, Queen of Heaven, Mater Dolorosa and Mary conceived without sin. Phew...!

The important thing is that every single title, mother or not, in all three religions, is a 100%, fully certified Virgin. By fully certified I mean that the titles are confirmed by either infallible scriptures which are invariably regarded as the indisputable and immutable Word of God, or by equally infallible successors to the original Divine Incarnation. I will not bore the reader with the Hindû and Egyptian original lists. Trust me, they exist, and if you don't, check with Blavatsky.

But that's not all.

The Holy Virgins had their own, presumably less holy, virgins. Just as the Virgin Mary claims a great number of nunneries or convents whose members swear virginal chastity till the last breath of their life; so did the Hindû Nari, as did Egyptian Isis, as did Vesta, a little later, in Rome. All Virgins worshipped by dedicated virgins. For life.

As my Sergeant Major would say... what a waste! With all the due respects, of course. But, let's face it, there must have been thousands of them, millions throughout the course of history.

What a terrible shame that all those wonderful virgins, ladies if you will, so greatly dedicated yet so greatly misunderstood the meaning of their real or assigned chastity. First of all, in our Bible, the Hebrew bethulah, almah, and the Greek parthenos are all translated into English as virgins. Well, they might have been, but the words, both in Hebrew and Greek, mean separation, concealment, unmarried female, one put aside, as well as a virgin. Obviously, under the Hindû and the Egyptian influence, virgin won hands down.

Secondly, though I have few reports of the virility assigned to Isis or Nari––the Mother of Christ, later in her life, had at least four (other) children, which stretches the concept of virginity to the limit. But only if you take the Bible literally, of course, as all the good fundamentalists are bound to do.
And this brings us the third point, the essence of the matter.

The Bible, and I strongly suspect all the other Scriptures, have been written in a symbolic language. The Sufis claim that the Koran has no less then seven levels of understanding. In our case, let us settle for just two.

Virginity, in biblical symbolism, means never having been unfaithful to God. The only intercourse that the virgin had never entertained was with evil. It means never having willingly nor knowingly strayed from the straight and narrow, never having compromised in matters of her relation with her own Higher Self––with the Indwelling Christ or simply with the Spirit within her. This, my friends, I firmly believe is a thousand times more difficult than maintaining physical virginity for any length of time, let alone for a lifetime. This is what made the Virgin Mary a Holy Mary. What made her Whole.

Finally, presumably suspecting that people might smell a rat, this is probably why Pius IX, having declared himself infallible, promptly elevated the Virgin Mary to the status of Immaculate Conception in 1854. It is interesting to note how uninformed was the angel Gabriel who, in his ignorance, failed to greet Mary as a goddess, let alone a Mother of God, not to mention by any other illustrious title assigned her by her worshippers, but simply: "Blessed art thou among women" he said. Just among women, he said, not even among virgins...
Apparently even angels make mistakes. Anyway, as I've already illustrated, and to quote the expert on mythology himself, Joseph Campbell: "Images of virgin birth abound in the popular tales as well as in myth."

***

And if you don't believe any of this, then just try the "Milk of the Celestial Virgin," also known as the Water of Phtha, Anima Mundi and under some other esoteric names. I heard nothing about its gustatory titillation, but it is said to have magical powers.

Good luck.