This dissertation recovers the ancient figures of Anna and Joachim, who meet and embrace at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. Vigorously ignored by guardians of Western and Christian history, the embracing couple offers a vision of loving partners in which transcendent power irrupts through human intimacy. Metaphorical as much as they were physical, Anna and Joachim are not just personifications of spiritual wisdom or representations of religious ideation, mere spokespersons for a theological message. This they are, and much more. Erotically speaking, they represent a fertile moment in human history, foremost in the birth of Mary, who gives birth to God incarnate, altering the course-of Christian life. Now, millennia later, as a poetic trope, their union is a template of healthy relatedness, helping individuals reach their potential for fulfillment and joy—an ancient prefiguring vision of heaven that makes modern, healthy loving comprehensible, step by laborious step.

The approach of this dissertation is not only archetypal, but also involves biblical and historical matters psychologically, making the hermeneutic of imaginal theology indispensable for analyzing the couple's embrace. Inherited from the deep Christian tradition—most especially from Augustine's philosophy, which strongly influenced Jung's depth psychology—and expanded significantly by David Miller, imaginal theology is a collaborative sensitivity between theological ideas and ancient mythic themes, genuinely addressing the transcendent dimensions of human experience. Tripartite in its structure, this study undertakes the three steps of imaginal theology— remembering, contemplating, and loving—holding the embrace of Anna and Joachim against the deep psyche that it might be known once again.

Investigating not only Christian but also hermetic and alchemical traditions and practices, even early Greek notions of the "sacred marriage" or hieros gamos, this dissertation redresses the essential idea of the mystical union or coniunctio, an ancient theme experienced and articulated in Anna and Joachim's embrace. A return to this deep religious mystery imparts initiatic clues of its eternal and metaphysical character to present-day onlookers, a new kind of gnosis for our modern era, not uncommon in the ancient world.