Mission Statement:

For the past two thousand years or so our culture has been dominated by the image of a masculine god – a Creator who is transcendent to the Creation, a spirit which is superior to matter. Stella Maris would like to challenge this platonic temptation to denigrate the physical world associated with the feminine, and to provide an open forum for discussion seeking to redress this imbalance. In adding the Virgin Mary as a fourth to the platonic trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Jung hoped to provide a model for a psychological reality that did add Creation to the Creator. In support of this Stella Maris presents a case for the celebration of matter – ways in which the physical and spiritual, the tangible and intangible can be complementary. The alchemists for instance found matter to be alive with spirit and Teilhard de Chardin saw the divine to radiate from the depths of matter. In a way worthy of these thinkers, Stella Maris – Star of the Sea and ancient name for the Virgin Mary, with water as its central image depicting the feminine and embodiment, would give status to a sadly neglected though dynamic archetype which is naturally fluid, and to the inner voice of an active psychology essentially in touch with each individual’s collective instinct.