The Mystery Behind the “Immaculate Conception”

by Marguerite Mary Rigoglioso, Ph.D., author of The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception: Mary and the Lineage of Virgin Births and director of Seven Sisters Mystery School

“Immaculate conception.” Most of us assume this refers to Mother Mary’s virginal birthing of Jesus. But… it doesn’t. The Catholic Church meant something else entirely when it coined this term.

It’s time to take a deeper look at what it means, what it doesn’t, and how this relates to a hidden truth about Mother Mary that’s the key to a whole new understanding of her. In knowing this, our own lives can be empowered and transformed.

Immaculate conception is a doctrine of the Roman Catholic church stating that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin – “original sin” being Adam and Eve’s folly of eating the apple – from the moment of her conception.

Note that there’s nothing about Jesus in this. It’s all about Mary. “Immaculate” refers to a kind of exalted nature that she possessed from day one. And “conception” refers to the fact that Mary herself had a mother.

Mary had a mother?

Yes, most people don’t realize that although Mary’s mother is never mentioned in the New Testament, she is named in the Islamic Koran, as well as a little-known tract called the Infancy Gospel of James – little-known because the Catholic Church denied its entry into the bible in the early 6th century.

This text tells us that Mary’s mother’s name was Hannah, or, as it has come down to us in anglicized form, Anne.

Who was this Anne?

Both the Koran and the Infancy Gospel of James describe her as a very elevated holy woman, particularly favored by the Divine. This Anne possessed a special power: She was able to conceive a child without having sexual union.

The product of that sacred conception was Mary. Yes, Mary herself was divinely born.

Such history was held dear by the folk of the early church, but it went missing in Medieval and Renaissance Europe until someone relocated the once-popular gospel and translated it into Latin. Despite its obscurity and suppression, it formed the basis of Catholic feast days honoring the events in the life of Mary.

One of them was the Immaculate Conception, Mary’s own arrival on starship earth, which the church acknowledges every year on December 8.

Before we go thinking that this story about Mary must just be a quaint fable, we should consider that divine birth was a practice of specially trained holy women that was widespread over the ancient Mediterranean world.

This is what my research shows.

And what I’ve discovered is that a child conceived through a specialized holy ritual that did not involve sexual union was considered to be a higher order being. That person automatically came onto the earth plane as what we would call an avatar – a divine human. Bringing one such onto the planet was the very purpose behind this high-level yoga practiced by select priestesses.

So we see in the doctrine of Immaculate Conception that the official narrative has always acknowledged something: Mary’s own pedigree as a being who was divinely born in advance of her son. Yet, as is so often the case with Mary’s story, at the same time it has hidden this reality in a kind of a religious shell game.

I contend this is because patriarchy does not want us to peer directly at the doings of holy women – particularly when those doings involve conception technologies that place such women in the category of nothing less than high-level shamans whose very will, intention, and accomplishments can change the world.

Religious authorities will never come out and say it, but it is this very miraculous pedigree that they refer to when they call Mary’s conception in Anne’s womb “immaculate.” In other words, the process of Mary coming onto the planet was a very advanced spiritual practice that did not involve anything but Anne’s holy relationship with the Divine. We might interchange “immaculate conception” with “sovereign conception.”

Not only was Mary’s birth immaculate, but Mary herself was immaculate. That is, she was an earth-walking master, one who dwelt above the fray of most human wounding and foibles. This is referred to doctrinally as her being “free of original sin” (a debatable concept to begin with), but when we understand divine birth as an actual yoga, we can see Mary’s immaculateness as being her advanced, morally elevated, and impeccable status.

“Immaculate” from this perspective has nothing to do with sex being “wrong,” I might add. In other words, yes, Anne conceived Mary without engaging in conjugal union with a man – and later Mary conceived Jesus in this way – but that doesn’t imply that sex is a “dirty” means of incarnating a human being. It simply means that Anne and Mary were using certain body/mind/spirit technologies to bring a specific kind of being with a particular soul contract into this world.

“Immaculate” also doesn’t mean that Anne (and, again, Mary later on) had no erotic feeling when she conceived. My research shows that divine conception was a highly erotic act. How could becoming one with the creative energy of the universe so as to conceive in the womb not be an incredibly luscious and passion-filled encounter?

With the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, the honoring of Mary in her guise as the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12, and the celebrating of Mary’s birth of Jesus on December 25, December is a power-packed Mary month. In this month of the birthing of the light, we recognize Mary as avatar, shape-shifter, and divine birth priestess.

How does knowing Mary as a human-born divinity, and how does our realization that women have practiced divine birth over the millennia, change our lives? I contend these understandings open up a window onto the capacities not just of Mary and her mother Anne, but of all women.

What the doctrine of Immaculate Conception hides in plain sight is a striking history attesting to women’s womb power and womb practices. These were, as my research shows, powers and processes not just restricted to two rarified people, but mechanisms grasped by cadres of women dedicated to advancing their own souls and elevating humanity.

I believe that in our present times of trouble, Mother Mary is coming to us, speaking words of wisdom, saying: Remember, remember, women? Your wombs are magical beyond measure. Find out what hidden treasures lie there.

This holy season, let us reflect on the secret meaning of “immaculate,” the manifold nature of conception, and the hope of communing with Spirit in ever more remarkable ways. Let’s look to Mary as the mentor who is emerging anew at this moment of planetary travail to awaken women to their true nature as embodied representations of the Divine Feminine. Let us talk with Mary and walk with Mary to find out what gifts we, too, may bring from the cornucopias of our wombs to a world in crisis.

To find out more about Mary, Anne, and the history of divine birth, check out The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception: Mary and the Lineage of Virgin Births. For courses & free media on this topic and more, visit Seven Sisters Mystery School. You may also contact author Marguerite Rigoglioso directly HERE.