About Stella Maris by Clark Strand
One of the most beloved names of Our Lady reminds us that She stands ready to guide souls through difficult or dangerous times. Stella Maris, which means “Star of the Sea,” refers literally to Polaris, the pole star that sailors once used to chart their course across the ocean. If you go down the rabbit hole of researching the name and where it came from, you will quickly begin to feel that you are “being played.”
In her book The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara Walker notes that “Star of the Sea” was a common epithet for Isis, Ishtar, Aphrodite, and Venus long before it became a title for the Virgin Mary. She cites Jerome, with whom she believes the Latin name to have originated, as “the first to steal the title from the old Goddesses and bestow it on Mary.”
Since the Middle Ages, Stella Maris has been associated with Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. The story goes like this: The prophet Elijah was doing his best to convert Israel to monotheism, which mostly involved leading a genocide against the followers of a queen named Jezebel. Jezebel was a polytheist in principle, although she was married to a Jewish king. Really, she was a believer in the hieros gamos—the divine marriage of a male and female divinity.Specifically, Jezebel worshiped Baal and Asherah. If you recognized the name Asherah, that is because she was Yahweh’s wife in early Judaism before all references to his married status were scrubbed from the Hebrew scriptures. Which would make Baal…well, you get it.
The whole biblical narrative involving the struggle between Elijah and Jezebel is about erasing the goddess and establishing Judaism on a firm patriarchal footing. The murder of Jezebel, which was real and gruesome, was also a symbolic murder of the Jewish goddess.So where does a medieval apparition of the Virgin Mary come into all of this?The war between Elijah and Jezebel occurred for the most part on Mt. Carmel, an ancient cave-riddled mountain in northern Israel. At one point, Elijah predicts an end to the drought that Yahweh has cursed the kingdom with because of its goddess-worshipping ways. He climbs to the top of Mt. Carmel and waits for a sign that Yahweh will bring rain. Finally a little cloud “the size of a man’s hand” appears on the ocean horizon and he knows the drought is at an end.
According to Carmelite tradition, the cloud rising from the ocean was none other than Stella Maris Herself, thus attributing to Elijah the first apparition of Our Lady, nearly a thousand years before Mary’s birth. A nice rehabilitation of the man who crushed the last traces of Jewish goddess culture in order to create the approach to religion we call monotheism today.
And yet, it kind of works. I would like to make a case for the idea that Our Lady is never defeated or destroyed—and that even Her greatest enemies end up furthering Her cause in the end. How can they not? Unwittingly, the Carmelites did more than any other Catholic order to preserve devotion to Mary under one of her oldest and most powerful pre-Christian titles: Our Lady Star of the Sea.
September 19 – September 27, The Feast Day of Stella Maris
Chaplet
A medal of Stella Maris or Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, three beads on the pendant, an optional centerpiece, twelve beads on the main loop, one for each of the stars on Our Lady’s crown
To recite the Stella Maris Chaplet:
On the medal recite: O, Most beautiful Flower of Mount Carmel, Fruitful Vine, Splendor of Heaven, Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity. O Star of the Sea, help me and show me herein you are my Mother.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and Earth, I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart, to succor me in this my necessity; there are none that can withstand your power.
On the three beads of the pendant say one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory Be, respectively.
On the twelve beads of the loop, recite one Hail Mary, followed by the words: Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Help and Protect us! Sweet Mother, I place this cause in your hands.
End with the Sign of the Cross.