© 1991 Mary Daly
© 1991 The Fellowship for readers of The Urantia Book
By Mary Daly, Garretson, SD
¶ Origin of the Divine Minister
(UB 6:1.2) When a/projected universe.
Genesis 1:1-2
Proverbs 8:22-35
¶ Nature of the Divine Minister
The local Universe Mother Spirit is, like the Infinite Spirit in the Trinity, the minister of mind in our local universe. Much of her work of carrying out the loving and merciful plans of our Sovereign is done in the realm of mind.
To realize the importance of mind, we should reflect that spiritual realities cannot directly affect material realities; therefore, a purely spiritual being cannot change anything in the material world. Sometimes, when we receive material answers to prayer, intermediate personalities have been mobilized to serve us. This is done because our prayer is consonant with the will of their supervisors, even with the will of the Father himself. But most often, the gap is bridged by mind, the mediating reality between matter and spirit. On certain levels, mind can directly affect the physical world, and it can also respond to spirit. Sometimes, therefore, our material prayers are answered through the spirit-led unification and mobilization of our human minds, allowing them to operate more effectively in the material world.
The Infinite Spirit of the Trinity, the source of all mind, is also the “The God of Action,” the member of the Trinity who carries out the plans and purposes of the first two Persons. Our local universe Mother Spirit is such an active mind minister within this creation. Even nonpersonal and prepersonal levels of mind are her province, although here she works indirectly through seven adjutant mind spirits. Five of these adjutants work both in the animal world and among men. The last two, worship and wisdom, work only among those who have the potential of personality. …
¶ Adjutant Ministry
The ministry of the Mother Spirit to an individual human person begins with the work of her adjutants who make contact with developing mind as soon as it is possible. There are seven adjutant mind spirits and they must be hard at work even prenatally, since the individual already has a separate mind system. The first one to make contact with a new mind is the spirit of quick intuition, simple responsiveness. The second is the spirit of knowledge, the gift that makes learning possible. Various games of response, including prenatal games, are evidence of its function. Next come courage and curiosity and loyalty. These five types of mind function we share with the animal world.
Sometime between the ages of four and seven, the adjutants of worship and wisdom become able to contact the developing mind. Adjutant worship is the foundation of the deeper gift which our Father initiates in the indwelt personality, but even the initial movements of awe and piety separate human from animal thought. Finally, under the guidance of the spirit of wisdom, the work of all the other adjutants, intuition, knowledge, courage, curiosity, loyalty, and worship, becomes unified. At this time, the child is included in the circuit of the Mother Spirit, endowed with the Spirit of Truth, and indwelt by a spirit gift of the Father. It is a real entrance into the life of the Trinity.
The Mother Spirit does not indwell her children as does the spirit of the Father who guides our thoughts from so deep within. Nor is she the same as the truth teacher we have in the spirit of Jesus. But inclusion in her spiritual circuit is a precondition for the personality focus that makes these ministries possible, and she remains involved in them. The Spirit of Truth is focalized in her presence, and the worship initiated by the Adjuster is registered in her presence before going on to Paradise. In addition, during this dispensation when all contacting personalities are able to perceive her personality, it would seem that a child would be able to recognize her from this time forward. That such recognition is rare proves nothing. Recognition of the Father himself is rare when it is not anticipated by faith… Personal Ministry
Little is said about the personal ministry of our Mother, only that she includes us on her circuit and that she is recognizable as a person. I think there is much we can learn, but first of all, we need to know God as Father.
The Urantia revelation remarks that even its teachings about the Father will not become generally accepted until there are improvements in family life. This is an important point. Many believe that the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God cannot be taught because it is not meaningful to people who do not have good fathers. What they fail to realize is that there is no substitute for a good father. God as mother or friend is not the answer. Improvements in family life are essential to the revelation.
If teachings about a Mother Spirit are to be properly understood, they too must await such developments or they are likely to be offered in competition with Father relationships. In practical terms this runs directly contrary to the doctrine of one God.
¶ A Mother, Not a Goddess
The queen of heaven, the co-sovereign with Jesus, is our mother. She is not a warrior queen even as Jesus is not a war- rior king. She neither seeks nor exercises power over any person, but serves all as their loving mother. Although her presence is strong enough to define a universe, it is so gentle and self-effacing that many never notice it or distinguish it within their general consciousness of the presence of one God. Our Divine Mother is a creative spirit, a mercy minister, a mind minister, a mother, a humble spouse, and queen. At least these are some of the ways we may describe her. But she does not experience these callings in the conflicted way we might. She is divine and the characteristic of divinity is unity.
Our Mother in heaven is not to be confused with mother nature whose local space she defines, whose patterns she has filled out, but whose powers are indifferent to the choice of eternal love. Nor is she to be confused with mother earth, our physical home, whose beauty is her creative gift, given in cooperation with our Creator-Father, but whose primal energies are sometimes the focal study of mere pantheistic systems of religious consciousness. Finally, although she is a mind minister, she is not to be confused with the feminine aspects of the subconscious nor with any merely archetypal image of woman. She is a living spirit being with a unique presence and a loving will.
With these thoughts in mind, we may look at the traditions that have fed into the mother cults of the world and distinguish three types of influence.
First, there are the historic influences, primarily Eve and Mary the mother of Jesus. Eve was in fact a supermortal woman with a revelatory mission which contributed much to family life and home arts, beginning thirty-five thousand years ago in a garden home near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Because she and Adam defaulted in the face of temptations stemming from the Lucifer rebellion, their influence was diminished and the memory of their lives appears purely mythic, but they were real people. The Cretan worship of the Great Mother is described in The Urantia Book as an exaltation of Eve’s memory.
Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus has, in the Catholic tradition, become thoroughly entwined with the doctrine of spiritual motherhood. Scripture’s every word about her has been symbolically interpreted as part of the portrayal of the perfect and understanding companion of Jesus. Sometimes she is hardly perceivable as a human being, but by the same token her story has become the historic focus of devotion to the Mother of Mercy who labors for our salvation by the side of Jesus.
The second great influence in the development of mother cults is the overwhelming psychic mystery of gender difference. Men are awed and frightened by woman’s superior intuitive skills which so startlingly undercut the raw power of either politics or muscle. Men and women both have evolved all sorts of ways to enhance their respective realms of power and protect themselves from each other. Mother cults represent a cultural enthronement of certain female traits and values and a system for encouraging their development. Sometimes this is merely done in the conservative manner natural to women and mothers; sometimes it is done in defensive opposition to masculine power. In our own time there is a new and powerful interest in these cults. In evaluating these matters, those who know Jesus should recognize that a modern religion which ignores Jesus is not the same as an ancient one, for the ancients had no opportunity to be taught by his Spirit of Truth.
A few years ago, I asked a fellow reader, a former Catholic, how much thought she had given to the Divine Minister as representing the feminine aspect of Deity the way the Blessed Mother does in Catholicism. “Oh, I guess I never got into the goddess thing”, she responded. Nor had I, but it made sense to check into this effort to restore gender balance to western religious thought.
Well, the “goddess thing” isn’t much like the Catholic teaching, and it isn’t much like the Divine Minister, either. In fact, it’s like the Lucifer rebellion.
One might sum up the Lucifer Manifesto (UB 53:3.1) in three statements: “I will not worship; I will not serve; I will not be held accountable.” Similarly, “the goddess thing” is anti-Father, including the Fatherhood of God and the privilege of being drawn back into his worship. It rejects many forms of service as subjugation, including every form of service that begins in submission to the will of another. It evades accountability by enshrining the role of intuition without distinguishing between the primitive and prelogical work of the first adjutant mind spirit, and the development of the soul and superconscious which rightfully make claims that transcend logic (but do not contradict it).
In sum, the goddess thing is competitive, sly, irresponsible, and thoroughly earthbound. It is the ultimate confusion between the psychic and spiritual realms, enforced as a doctrine and enshrined in practices that ridicule the possibility of giving analysis a wholesome place in religious thought. It is the corruption, not the re-awakening, of an evolutionary religious experience. It has nothing helpful to say about spiritual motherhood and much to suggest that is damaging to gender harmony and, consequently, to the advance of family life.
The confusion generated by goddess religion impels me to digress a little further.
Getting right down to it, is it sexist to call the First Source and Center, “our Father?” If so, The Urantia Book can hardly be called a revelation. 1933 is not so long ago that the revelators could not have seen the feminist movement gathering momentum. I think they did, but to understand their response we need to be clear about the feminist trends in contemporary thought and be willing to enter spiritually into our revelation.
Feminism has two faces. One face claims equal dignity for women and men and seeks fairness for women in the public sphere along with the continued development of protection and care in the realm of the family. The Urantia revelation endorses this program only remarking that full social equality must await the end of war because women cannot compete in this endeavor without sacrificing their gains in the family realm.
The other face of feminism seeks to bolster the claims of gender equality with spurious assertions of sameness that have no basis in either science or spirituality and that frequently run contrary to the best interests of the family. About this face The Urantia Book has strong words: Woman has finally won recognition, dignity, independence, equality and education; but will she prove worthy of all this new and unprecedented accomplishment? Will modern woman respond to this great achievement of social liberation with idleness, indifference, barrenness, and infidelity? Today, in the twentieth century, woman is undergoing the crucial test of her long world existence. (UB 84:5.10)
The Pope could have used that line in his encyclical Humanae Vitae!
Before returning to the Deity identity, let me say a positive word about patriarchy. At the time a child is born, it is always perfectly obvious who his mother is. It is not so clear who the father is. He can always skip out. Patriarchy is the social order in which men agree to take responsibility for their children. As such, it is the most significant advance toward monogamy with all its unique potentials for home life. Grave misfortunes occur when the father’s claims are not accompanied by respect and care for the mother. Progress lies in the proper negotiation of that relationship. Not in a return to matriarchy.
The Fatherhood of God and in particular the Fatherhood of the first person of Trinity, is a basic tenet of revealed religion. God has freely entered into a personal and life-giving relationship with us, even calling us to perfection. Deity is also maternal, brotherly, sisterly, friendly, shepherding, and merciful. It is also policing and judging.
The First Source and Center must be conceived of as masculine — and therefore fatherly — because feminine primacy is contradictory, and neuter primacy, being impersonal, exalts force over person. Yet the revealed three-way polarity of the Trinity affirms the mystery of a primacy which is coequal with apparently “subordinate” persons. It is, at the very least, more complex than sexism!
Nevertheless, spiritual truths can only be understood with the help of the Spirit of Truth. It is inevitable that the unaided material mind will fall back into sexist interpretations. The only way of progress lies in the thoughts of the soul, developed in prayer.
Third, and most important in understanding the cult of the Blessed Mother, is the influence of spiritual reality. We have a true mother in heaven. Deity is not just masculine in character. The sovereignty of our local universe is dual, a simplification of the trinitarian sovereignty of the whole creation. The polarity of the sexes reflects divine relationships, mutually balancing avenues of cooperative service in which the gender complements are harmonized in love.
The great error of western thought about a Divine Mother is the effort to collapse the entire issue into the outward categories of myth, memory, and gender competition. These efforts are never entirely successful because they assume a false foun- dation. Myth must yield its convictions to the march of science. History eventually fades into a shadow, and competition yields to cooperation in mature (spiritual) growth. In the end the inner experience of spiritually-minded men and women transcends all else and assures the persistence of doctrines about our Heavenly Mother. This is all the more true in the spiritual dispensation that began with Pentecost because of the deepening of our Mother’s personal approachability. We know and love her. Far beyond any rumor of a goddess in competition with the gods, she is our personal Mother, the Mother of Mercy, and the first and best friend of Jesus.