Black Madonna
Black Madonnas in Art & Transformation
The Archetypal Divine Mother
According to Carl G. Jung, the "Mother Archetype" is dual in nature. ...
The Black Madonnas perpetuate the pre-Christian symbolic blackness of the goddesses ...
"This goddess may take many forms [in our dreams]. Usually she is black or oriental or simply dark. She may appear as a proud gypsy, a dancer in a tavern, a sacred prostitute, a Mary Magdalene. Always she is outside the collective value system of the dreamer's conscious world...and carries immense potential for new life." - Marion Woodman
The Archetypal Divine Mother
According to Carl G. Jung, the "Mother Archetype" is dual in nature. ...
The Black Madonnas perpetuate the pre-Christian symbolic blackness of the goddesses ...
"This goddess may take many forms [in our dreams]. Usually she is black or oriental or simply dark. She may appear as a proud gypsy, a dancer in a tavern, a sacred prostitute, a Mary Magdalene. Always she is outside the collective value system of the dreamer's conscious world...and carries immense potential for new life." - Marion Woodman
BLACK MADONNA: Symbolic & Literal
The Black Madonna embodies a great Mystery. To say she is only this or that, literal or symbolic, is to impose a false limitation on her transcendent being, the immanence of the sacred. The Black Madonna phenomenon is a continuing enigma in the study of Medieval life. They appear in churches from Eastern Europe to Spain, no different than other statues of the Madonna and Child except that they are inexplicably made of black or dark brown material.
But this Madonna is also a mystagogue - one who initiates others into mystic beliefs, an educator or person who has knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries. Another word is Hierophant. In ancient mystery religions, a mystagogue was responsible for leading an initiate into the secret teachings and rituals of the cult. The initiate would often be blindfolded, and the mystagogue would literally "guide" him into the sacred space. The Black Madonna guides us through our inner darkness.
In alchemical lore Nicolas Flamel’s definitive pilgrimage found him traveling to a site in Spain where one of the icons of the Black Madonna is venerated. The origins of these icons abound, from the mundane idea that these are merely standard depictions of the Madonna having lost their original patina, or that were simply carved from materials that were black and left as is, to a whole host of esoteric explanations regarding secret cults and heterodox visions of the Divine.
https://theartoftransformations.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/the-black-madonna/
We can view the Black Madonna both symbolically and literally. There is genealogical evidence of Black lineage in the Petran/Aethiopian lines of Mary Magdalene (ref. Hugh Montgomery) that parallel and supersede purely symbolic interpretations of cultic worship of the Black Madonna, as dark goddess and divine mother, or the "original Mary", Isis -- immortal life. Some researchers refer to Mary Magdalene as the Black Madonna. She had a cult following in France. They believe that she came to the shores pregnant. When they say the Holy Grail, they mean the Holy Blood, the Blood Royal in her body, Jesus’ baby and subsequent lineage. Some scholars believe this.
http://www.topix.com/forum/news/weird/TPV52DDV51ODP4N1N
According to legend, soon after the crucifixion and Resurrection, Mary Magdalene and her family were expelled from the Holy Land, set adrift on the Mediterranean Sea and made their way to this region, particularly the area around Southern France and Northern Spain. At this time in history, aside from the already established Celts, many Greeks, Arabs, Jews and others lived and travelled in this area. There was even a Jewish city known as Glanum Levi whose ruins can be found today in Provence.
In the midst of this cosmopolitan confluence of cultures, along with the exchange of goods there must have been an exchange of philosophical and religious ideas. It is very possible that during this period many spiritual and symbolic links were discovered between these diverse peoples and their traditional belief systems that stretched back to the temples of Egypt. Before her arrival in Les Saintes Marie Sur Les Mere, France was riddled with Isis cults. The name Paris etymologically can be linked to the pre-Celtic ParIsis, the grove of Isis. Clearly this region was fertile ground for Mary Magdalene’s mission.
Following her arrival in France, she was said to have travelled the land, preaching the authentic Gnostic gospel of Jesus, which had been directly transmitted to her during his time on Earth and in mystic visions after his return to the more subtle dimensions of light. French religious literature from the Middle Ages is filled with legends and stories of the life of Mary Magdalene from this period until her death. Tales abound of her miraculous healings, her performance of the ritual of baptism, her aid in fertility and childbearing and even her ability to raise the dead. There are even reports of a secret tradition of the healing arts that exists today in France and traces its roots back to Mary Magdalene. Besides being a fundamental symbol of French (and later British) monarchy, the fleur-de-lys is one of the central symbols found in the Church of Mary Magdalen at Rennes-le-Chateau.
http://www.gnostic.info/rose_Mary%20Magdalene.html
“The details of the separate kingdom of Septimania were erased from history books; but the descendant bloodlines were apparently the “heretical Royal Bloodlines”as : Dukes of Aquitaine, Dukes of Lorraine, Dukes of Guise; Counts of Barcelona, Counts of Toulouse, Counts of Auvergne; Counts of Razes. (HBHB, pp 368-371) And it was precisely a Duke of Aquitaine who founded Cluny! Thus, Septimania now becomes extremely important, for now Urban II, descendant of the Eudes of Septimania and Cluny Prior, is the pope who will call the first Crusades resulting in the crowning of a direct lineal descendant of Guillem de Gellone, named Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine , as King of Jerusalem! Aquitaine is so-named on maps of Second Century Roman Empire and comprised then, the whole area from Languedoc, South France, to Poitou and Anjou. Septimania was the area that was later known as the Languedoc.
Gnostic Cult of the Black Madonna
Several researchers speak of an "Underground Church of Mary Magdalene," which existed in the South of France at the time of the Cathars and Gnostics. No one has specified with certainty what these cults were about or how they came to be. We do know that they had been condemned as heretical and eventually eradicated by the Crusaders
and the Roman Catholic Church, but studies show that indeed an important cult of unorthodox character dedicated to Mary Magdalene and the cult of Black Madonna's existed in the Middle Ages in the South of France, and still today, Mary Magdalene has a considerable cult following in the South of France. Many of the finest Gnostic writings are of Alexandrian inspiration or origin. Alexandria is also the main source of Gnostic works linking Jesus with Mary Magdalene.
The Cosmic Cycle is incorporated in the Christian Holy Trinity though in completely masculine terms, with God as heavenly father, heavenly Holy Spirit and the divine son made of earthly matter. This was enabled through the coupling of the male Holy Spirit and the “living” Virgin Mary. In Egyptian mythology, the living Isis only conceives her son Horus after the death of Osiris. He procreates from the spiritual world, when he becomes God of the Underworld.
This can be explained in alchemical terms, with the masculine Osiris, the black virginal prima materia and fixed male, uniting with the black, volatile, female, spirit of Isis his wife, conceiving and producing the Divine child Horus, the Earthly representative of his father Osiris. The serpents have devoured one another, the Ouroboros is realized and so the Cycle continues. The Black Virgin is, like Osiris, the father and the divine, male essence. The Black Mother is, like Isis, the mother and the divine, female essence, and the product of their union is the Ouroboros, Horus – the Christ. The Black Madonna could be another representation of the All, the trinity – and an esoteric Christian symbol of the Cosmic Cycle.
The Black Madonna, the womb of divinity, is always pregnant with multidimensional numinous meaning. The dark mother is both a living reality and an archetypal construction. Jung defined archetypes as primal patterns of human behavior. Jung said, "Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside, awakens." The pregnant virgin symbolizes a process of change akin to the metamorphosis of caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly -- an awakening to a transformed state and an inspirational symbol for restoring the lost hands of women's spirituality. The image of the Sacred Prostitute and the Royal Marriage, the image of the Black Madonna holds a key to the integration of the feminine and a feminine historical narrative anchored in the heart, gnosis or Knowledge -- "The Woman Who Knows All."
Gnosticism placed primary value on the feminine qualities of receptivity, intuitive perception, visionary experience and the art of healing. It was a teaching of love, selflessness, harmony and communion. The mystic experience of, and communion with, the essential grace and majesty of Divinity, lay at the heart of Gnostic transmission. Like a brilliant flash of light arising from the darkness, this understanding arises in the individual as a bright lucid awareness – an intuitive realisation of the pure essence, nature and energy of Divinity as it flows within oneself, the luminous realms and all of creation. From the Gnostic viewpoint, the answers to all of life’s mysteries can only be found when one “opens oneself to this divine current and allows oneself to be penetrated by it to the point where one is fully transformed and illuminated by it.”.
DARK MOTHER, DARK MATTER
The Black Madonna is the manifestation of God in Matter -- the healing power of Earth. At this time of huge global upheaval "Our Lady of the Dark Forest", the Black Madonna is appearing in many dreams and body/soul rhythms, perhaps even genetic memory which is embodied in our structure. Like the virgin forest, she is full of the seeds of possibility, utterly in touch with nature. At the point of wounding, the Black Madonna may appear in our dreams and take the rejected soul in her arms and rock her with her head against her heart. This “Black Madonna” archetype symbolizes the matriarchal soul, and it is related to the fate of the earth itself. It also represents our own virginal souls subject to the experiential sorrows of embodiment, dying into soul. It has alchemical overtones:
So what is the rose in the fire all about? It is about perceiving the soul's suffering in the fire of physical pain and passion. It is about the anguish of spirit descending into physical limitations and opaque matter ascending toward spiritual aspirations and the conflict of those two opposing realms producing consciousness in the soul, which belongs to both time and timelessness. It is about perceiving light in matter. Most of us try to let our bodies and psyches function instinctively until we are ravaged by disease or neurosis. Then we realize that the body/psyche cannot function naturally in the concrete, concretized world in which we live. Metaphorically the body becomes a machine to be driven or a garbage dump to be avoided. At the same time, the magnificent Mother in whose womb we live is mindlessly poisoned and raped. Surely our insane denial has to be perceived and acted upon. The Great Mother is sending us many messages warning us that her immune system is breaking down. If we are to save her, we must first embrace our own soul in our own flesh. What we are doing in body/soul work is contacting her light in our own depths, becoming aware of our own subtle body (the body perceived through imagery). Dreams make it quite clear that, until the subtle body is connected at the deepest instinctual level (the base chakra), and until it is strong enough to act as a conscious container, the spiritual energy related to the third eye (the spiritual centre in the forehead) must remain veiled. Body/soul work is preparation for the divine marriage in which the light of soul opens to the light of the spirit. The rose burns in the fire of love, a love that pierces to the very heart of our own self-destruction and self-creation. There we can weep for what others have done to us and for what we therefore have done to ourselves and others. There we meet the others in our mutual imperfections and forgive. At the heart of matter we find the mystery, the presence in which we are all one.
http://www.humanehealthcare.com/Article.asp?art_id=263
She guides and advises and acts with absolute clarity, often with a startling sense of humor that delights in play. These moments in dreams or active imagination are filled with her compassion for our human situation. She is blunt, neither indulgent nor sentimental. She demands embodiment. Living in the creative intercourse between chaos and order, she calls us to enter into the dance of creation, "her love in her living body." She speaks to men as clearly as to women. Men, too, are working to find their own feeling values, values that are not dependent on pleasing or hating Mother and Father and all they represent. The archetype of the Black Madonna, or Lilith, or Mary Magdalene may be a way to freedom for both -- the mythological unconscious. The sensuous feminine power of the body knows instinctively how to be born, give birth, and how to die.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37977053/Dark-Goddes-in-the-Transformation-of-Consciousness
It was through the Black Madonna that Christianity retained Sophia’s connection with nature. The Black Madonna was sometimes called the lady of the caves where her statues were often hidden. The blackness there may have been related to the fact that she had been rescued by the locals after being burned as “pagan” by the church. Her darkness, however, could reflect earlier times, for Isis and Cybele were black of skin. The Black Madonna is sometimes known to worshippers as 'Our Lady of the Underworld'.
The Black Madonna became the Mary of indigenous people and is still found in Poland, Spain, Mexico. While Christianity basically ignored nature, or saw it as sinful, it is important to recognize that some mystics of the Christian church retained the integration of nature and spirit: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and Jacob Boehm (1575-1650) spoke of their love for the beauty and importance of the natural world as an expression of God. They believed our spirit’s journey was vitally intertwined with the earth. Many writers also felt that the Sophianic message went into the essential teachings of Jesus. Jung wrote in “Answer to Job” that Sophia softened the Old Testament Yahweh and helped the Old Testament God remember compassion.
The fundamental challenge of Sophia and our relationship to nature , however, resurfaces in recently discovered esoteric texts. Of particular note is the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, written in the 2nd century but not found until 1896 (with fragments published in the western world in 1996). Mary Magdalene is described here as an intimate of Christ, mentored by Him and recognized as one who supported and taught the apostles. Early tapestries illustrate this prominence and relationship. This gospel records further teachings of Christ, such as:
“All that is born, all that is created and all the elements of nature are interwoven and united with each other.” And then Christ goes on to say: “all that is composed will be decomposed.” This is the fundamental Sophianic challenge: to view ourselves as a process unfolding within nature. Such a view places us beyond religious dogma, and opens us to on-going Creation.
What wisdom awaits us here? Man’s deep fear of illness and death informs his pervasive need to control nature. The Black Madonna is the Mother of Death. Certainly, our innate intelligence is here to cure illness and provide palliative care for the dying. What we have not done is penetrate further into how fundamentally we are interwoven and united with nature, and how she provides the cog-wheel of our evolution.
We honor the Black Madonna's historical and mythopoetic aspects necessary for feminine initiation from a Jungian Psychological perspective. Jungian analyst Marion Woodman suggests that the Black Madonna is the new myth for the coming age, a female redeemer. Living within, she speaks in archetypal dreams, intuition and the wisdom of the body.
The image of the black virgin holds a prominent place in alchemical symbolism - the dark mother giving birth to Christ child - equated in alchemy with the solar gold. Hence 'out of darkness commeth light'. Jungian, Marion Woodman does an excellent job of contemporizing the archetype of Black Madonna in her two-part audio set, "DREAMS: Language of the Soul".
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=810&Itemid=40
Symbolically, he Black Madonna is one facet of the chthonian Goddess who images the maternal paradox of She who can remake what, as 'dis-integrating' Nature, she has destroyed through death: so Isis remakes Osiris. Persephone, the Greek mirror of the Black Madonna, is sometimes imaged as monstrous in form, with fangs and Gorgon eyes, like the Hindu Kali, but she is also nurturing Dark Mother to the depths of soul, an underworld aesthetic that's soulful in extremis. The myth of Psyche also comes to mind, since her journey reflects soul's painfully initiating and endlessly returning path -- renewing the wasteland.
'She is black because she is the gateway and symbol of everything we could know in the apparent blackness beyond visible sight; because she represents all those forces that surround us which are not perceived (by our senses), but which extend from the visible spectrum into unexplored modes of being. She is also black because she is the goddess of clairvoyance and the second sight. The Black Madonna has been called Notre Dame de Lumiere - she is black light, Mary Lucifer - Mary the Light Bearer.'
http://www.greenspirit.org.uk/resources/BlackMadonna.shtml
Some Black Madonnas clearly reveal the artist's intention to portray a pitch black mother and child: the faces and hands of both are black, while the clothes are brightly colored. With others it is not at all clear whether someone wanted to craft a "Black Madonna". Often it seems that the faithful proclaimed her "black" quite independent of the artist's intentions. Some are Byzantine icons whose complexion is usually dark, approximately in accordance with the actual skin color of Palestinian Jews of the 1st century. Some statues are dark because they are sculpted out of dark wood or cast in a dark metal; skin and clothes are all the same color, though the statues are often draped in bright cloth clothes, which accentuates the darkness of the material.
She is the heiress of the thrones of the pre-Christian goddesses. She is the bride of the Christian God, the bride in the Song of Songs, who represents all souls seeking union with the Divine and says: "I am black but beautiful." (1:5) She is a rebel against the establishment, a heavenly therapist, a spiritual guide. As the Dark Mother archetype she is a symbol of our inner shadow-self when properly integrated. As a black woman she is a friend to the oppressed and reconciler of all races. She is a healer of all dis-ease, a guide and companion at the time of death. She is the helper of Christ, turned black by carrying our sins with him. - All these roles are worth investigating. http://www.interfaithmarianpilgrimages.com/pages/blackmadonna.html
An Annotated Bibliography for Books on Black Madonnas
http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/BlackMadonna_bib.html
The Black Madonna embodies a great Mystery. To say she is only this or that, literal or symbolic, is to impose a false limitation on her transcendent being, the immanence of the sacred. The Black Madonna phenomenon is a continuing enigma in the study of Medieval life. They appear in churches from Eastern Europe to Spain, no different than other statues of the Madonna and Child except that they are inexplicably made of black or dark brown material.
But this Madonna is also a mystagogue - one who initiates others into mystic beliefs, an educator or person who has knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries. Another word is Hierophant. In ancient mystery religions, a mystagogue was responsible for leading an initiate into the secret teachings and rituals of the cult. The initiate would often be blindfolded, and the mystagogue would literally "guide" him into the sacred space. The Black Madonna guides us through our inner darkness.
In alchemical lore Nicolas Flamel’s definitive pilgrimage found him traveling to a site in Spain where one of the icons of the Black Madonna is venerated. The origins of these icons abound, from the mundane idea that these are merely standard depictions of the Madonna having lost their original patina, or that were simply carved from materials that were black and left as is, to a whole host of esoteric explanations regarding secret cults and heterodox visions of the Divine.
https://theartoftransformations.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/the-black-madonna/
We can view the Black Madonna both symbolically and literally. There is genealogical evidence of Black lineage in the Petran/Aethiopian lines of Mary Magdalene (ref. Hugh Montgomery) that parallel and supersede purely symbolic interpretations of cultic worship of the Black Madonna, as dark goddess and divine mother, or the "original Mary", Isis -- immortal life. Some researchers refer to Mary Magdalene as the Black Madonna. She had a cult following in France. They believe that she came to the shores pregnant. When they say the Holy Grail, they mean the Holy Blood, the Blood Royal in her body, Jesus’ baby and subsequent lineage. Some scholars believe this.
http://www.topix.com/forum/news/weird/TPV52DDV51ODP4N1N
According to legend, soon after the crucifixion and Resurrection, Mary Magdalene and her family were expelled from the Holy Land, set adrift on the Mediterranean Sea and made their way to this region, particularly the area around Southern France and Northern Spain. At this time in history, aside from the already established Celts, many Greeks, Arabs, Jews and others lived and travelled in this area. There was even a Jewish city known as Glanum Levi whose ruins can be found today in Provence.
In the midst of this cosmopolitan confluence of cultures, along with the exchange of goods there must have been an exchange of philosophical and religious ideas. It is very possible that during this period many spiritual and symbolic links were discovered between these diverse peoples and their traditional belief systems that stretched back to the temples of Egypt. Before her arrival in Les Saintes Marie Sur Les Mere, France was riddled with Isis cults. The name Paris etymologically can be linked to the pre-Celtic ParIsis, the grove of Isis. Clearly this region was fertile ground for Mary Magdalene’s mission.
Following her arrival in France, she was said to have travelled the land, preaching the authentic Gnostic gospel of Jesus, which had been directly transmitted to her during his time on Earth and in mystic visions after his return to the more subtle dimensions of light. French religious literature from the Middle Ages is filled with legends and stories of the life of Mary Magdalene from this period until her death. Tales abound of her miraculous healings, her performance of the ritual of baptism, her aid in fertility and childbearing and even her ability to raise the dead. There are even reports of a secret tradition of the healing arts that exists today in France and traces its roots back to Mary Magdalene. Besides being a fundamental symbol of French (and later British) monarchy, the fleur-de-lys is one of the central symbols found in the Church of Mary Magdalen at Rennes-le-Chateau.
http://www.gnostic.info/rose_Mary%20Magdalene.html
“The details of the separate kingdom of Septimania were erased from history books; but the descendant bloodlines were apparently the “heretical Royal Bloodlines”as : Dukes of Aquitaine, Dukes of Lorraine, Dukes of Guise; Counts of Barcelona, Counts of Toulouse, Counts of Auvergne; Counts of Razes. (HBHB, pp 368-371) And it was precisely a Duke of Aquitaine who founded Cluny! Thus, Septimania now becomes extremely important, for now Urban II, descendant of the Eudes of Septimania and Cluny Prior, is the pope who will call the first Crusades resulting in the crowning of a direct lineal descendant of Guillem de Gellone, named Godfroi de Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine , as King of Jerusalem! Aquitaine is so-named on maps of Second Century Roman Empire and comprised then, the whole area from Languedoc, South France, to Poitou and Anjou. Septimania was the area that was later known as the Languedoc.
Gnostic Cult of the Black Madonna
Several researchers speak of an "Underground Church of Mary Magdalene," which existed in the South of France at the time of the Cathars and Gnostics. No one has specified with certainty what these cults were about or how they came to be. We do know that they had been condemned as heretical and eventually eradicated by the Crusaders
and the Roman Catholic Church, but studies show that indeed an important cult of unorthodox character dedicated to Mary Magdalene and the cult of Black Madonna's existed in the Middle Ages in the South of France, and still today, Mary Magdalene has a considerable cult following in the South of France. Many of the finest Gnostic writings are of Alexandrian inspiration or origin. Alexandria is also the main source of Gnostic works linking Jesus with Mary Magdalene.
The Cosmic Cycle is incorporated in the Christian Holy Trinity though in completely masculine terms, with God as heavenly father, heavenly Holy Spirit and the divine son made of earthly matter. This was enabled through the coupling of the male Holy Spirit and the “living” Virgin Mary. In Egyptian mythology, the living Isis only conceives her son Horus after the death of Osiris. He procreates from the spiritual world, when he becomes God of the Underworld.
This can be explained in alchemical terms, with the masculine Osiris, the black virginal prima materia and fixed male, uniting with the black, volatile, female, spirit of Isis his wife, conceiving and producing the Divine child Horus, the Earthly representative of his father Osiris. The serpents have devoured one another, the Ouroboros is realized and so the Cycle continues. The Black Virgin is, like Osiris, the father and the divine, male essence. The Black Mother is, like Isis, the mother and the divine, female essence, and the product of their union is the Ouroboros, Horus – the Christ. The Black Madonna could be another representation of the All, the trinity – and an esoteric Christian symbol of the Cosmic Cycle.
The Black Madonna, the womb of divinity, is always pregnant with multidimensional numinous meaning. The dark mother is both a living reality and an archetypal construction. Jung defined archetypes as primal patterns of human behavior. Jung said, "Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside, awakens." The pregnant virgin symbolizes a process of change akin to the metamorphosis of caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly -- an awakening to a transformed state and an inspirational symbol for restoring the lost hands of women's spirituality. The image of the Sacred Prostitute and the Royal Marriage, the image of the Black Madonna holds a key to the integration of the feminine and a feminine historical narrative anchored in the heart, gnosis or Knowledge -- "The Woman Who Knows All."
Gnosticism placed primary value on the feminine qualities of receptivity, intuitive perception, visionary experience and the art of healing. It was a teaching of love, selflessness, harmony and communion. The mystic experience of, and communion with, the essential grace and majesty of Divinity, lay at the heart of Gnostic transmission. Like a brilliant flash of light arising from the darkness, this understanding arises in the individual as a bright lucid awareness – an intuitive realisation of the pure essence, nature and energy of Divinity as it flows within oneself, the luminous realms and all of creation. From the Gnostic viewpoint, the answers to all of life’s mysteries can only be found when one “opens oneself to this divine current and allows oneself to be penetrated by it to the point where one is fully transformed and illuminated by it.”.
DARK MOTHER, DARK MATTER
The Black Madonna is the manifestation of God in Matter -- the healing power of Earth. At this time of huge global upheaval "Our Lady of the Dark Forest", the Black Madonna is appearing in many dreams and body/soul rhythms, perhaps even genetic memory which is embodied in our structure. Like the virgin forest, she is full of the seeds of possibility, utterly in touch with nature. At the point of wounding, the Black Madonna may appear in our dreams and take the rejected soul in her arms and rock her with her head against her heart. This “Black Madonna” archetype symbolizes the matriarchal soul, and it is related to the fate of the earth itself. It also represents our own virginal souls subject to the experiential sorrows of embodiment, dying into soul. It has alchemical overtones:
So what is the rose in the fire all about? It is about perceiving the soul's suffering in the fire of physical pain and passion. It is about the anguish of spirit descending into physical limitations and opaque matter ascending toward spiritual aspirations and the conflict of those two opposing realms producing consciousness in the soul, which belongs to both time and timelessness. It is about perceiving light in matter. Most of us try to let our bodies and psyches function instinctively until we are ravaged by disease or neurosis. Then we realize that the body/psyche cannot function naturally in the concrete, concretized world in which we live. Metaphorically the body becomes a machine to be driven or a garbage dump to be avoided. At the same time, the magnificent Mother in whose womb we live is mindlessly poisoned and raped. Surely our insane denial has to be perceived and acted upon. The Great Mother is sending us many messages warning us that her immune system is breaking down. If we are to save her, we must first embrace our own soul in our own flesh. What we are doing in body/soul work is contacting her light in our own depths, becoming aware of our own subtle body (the body perceived through imagery). Dreams make it quite clear that, until the subtle body is connected at the deepest instinctual level (the base chakra), and until it is strong enough to act as a conscious container, the spiritual energy related to the third eye (the spiritual centre in the forehead) must remain veiled. Body/soul work is preparation for the divine marriage in which the light of soul opens to the light of the spirit. The rose burns in the fire of love, a love that pierces to the very heart of our own self-destruction and self-creation. There we can weep for what others have done to us and for what we therefore have done to ourselves and others. There we meet the others in our mutual imperfections and forgive. At the heart of matter we find the mystery, the presence in which we are all one.
http://www.humanehealthcare.com/Article.asp?art_id=263
She guides and advises and acts with absolute clarity, often with a startling sense of humor that delights in play. These moments in dreams or active imagination are filled with her compassion for our human situation. She is blunt, neither indulgent nor sentimental. She demands embodiment. Living in the creative intercourse between chaos and order, she calls us to enter into the dance of creation, "her love in her living body." She speaks to men as clearly as to women. Men, too, are working to find their own feeling values, values that are not dependent on pleasing or hating Mother and Father and all they represent. The archetype of the Black Madonna, or Lilith, or Mary Magdalene may be a way to freedom for both -- the mythological unconscious. The sensuous feminine power of the body knows instinctively how to be born, give birth, and how to die.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37977053/Dark-Goddes-in-the-Transformation-of-Consciousness
It was through the Black Madonna that Christianity retained Sophia’s connection with nature. The Black Madonna was sometimes called the lady of the caves where her statues were often hidden. The blackness there may have been related to the fact that she had been rescued by the locals after being burned as “pagan” by the church. Her darkness, however, could reflect earlier times, for Isis and Cybele were black of skin. The Black Madonna is sometimes known to worshippers as 'Our Lady of the Underworld'.
The Black Madonna became the Mary of indigenous people and is still found in Poland, Spain, Mexico. While Christianity basically ignored nature, or saw it as sinful, it is important to recognize that some mystics of the Christian church retained the integration of nature and spirit: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and Jacob Boehm (1575-1650) spoke of their love for the beauty and importance of the natural world as an expression of God. They believed our spirit’s journey was vitally intertwined with the earth. Many writers also felt that the Sophianic message went into the essential teachings of Jesus. Jung wrote in “Answer to Job” that Sophia softened the Old Testament Yahweh and helped the Old Testament God remember compassion.
The fundamental challenge of Sophia and our relationship to nature , however, resurfaces in recently discovered esoteric texts. Of particular note is the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, written in the 2nd century but not found until 1896 (with fragments published in the western world in 1996). Mary Magdalene is described here as an intimate of Christ, mentored by Him and recognized as one who supported and taught the apostles. Early tapestries illustrate this prominence and relationship. This gospel records further teachings of Christ, such as:
“All that is born, all that is created and all the elements of nature are interwoven and united with each other.” And then Christ goes on to say: “all that is composed will be decomposed.” This is the fundamental Sophianic challenge: to view ourselves as a process unfolding within nature. Such a view places us beyond religious dogma, and opens us to on-going Creation.
What wisdom awaits us here? Man’s deep fear of illness and death informs his pervasive need to control nature. The Black Madonna is the Mother of Death. Certainly, our innate intelligence is here to cure illness and provide palliative care for the dying. What we have not done is penetrate further into how fundamentally we are interwoven and united with nature, and how she provides the cog-wheel of our evolution.
We honor the Black Madonna's historical and mythopoetic aspects necessary for feminine initiation from a Jungian Psychological perspective. Jungian analyst Marion Woodman suggests that the Black Madonna is the new myth for the coming age, a female redeemer. Living within, she speaks in archetypal dreams, intuition and the wisdom of the body.
The image of the black virgin holds a prominent place in alchemical symbolism - the dark mother giving birth to Christ child - equated in alchemy with the solar gold. Hence 'out of darkness commeth light'. Jungian, Marion Woodman does an excellent job of contemporizing the archetype of Black Madonna in her two-part audio set, "DREAMS: Language of the Soul".
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=810&Itemid=40
Symbolically, he Black Madonna is one facet of the chthonian Goddess who images the maternal paradox of She who can remake what, as 'dis-integrating' Nature, she has destroyed through death: so Isis remakes Osiris. Persephone, the Greek mirror of the Black Madonna, is sometimes imaged as monstrous in form, with fangs and Gorgon eyes, like the Hindu Kali, but she is also nurturing Dark Mother to the depths of soul, an underworld aesthetic that's soulful in extremis. The myth of Psyche also comes to mind, since her journey reflects soul's painfully initiating and endlessly returning path -- renewing the wasteland.
'She is black because she is the gateway and symbol of everything we could know in the apparent blackness beyond visible sight; because she represents all those forces that surround us which are not perceived (by our senses), but which extend from the visible spectrum into unexplored modes of being. She is also black because she is the goddess of clairvoyance and the second sight. The Black Madonna has been called Notre Dame de Lumiere - she is black light, Mary Lucifer - Mary the Light Bearer.'
http://www.greenspirit.org.uk/resources/BlackMadonna.shtml
Some Black Madonnas clearly reveal the artist's intention to portray a pitch black mother and child: the faces and hands of both are black, while the clothes are brightly colored. With others it is not at all clear whether someone wanted to craft a "Black Madonna". Often it seems that the faithful proclaimed her "black" quite independent of the artist's intentions. Some are Byzantine icons whose complexion is usually dark, approximately in accordance with the actual skin color of Palestinian Jews of the 1st century. Some statues are dark because they are sculpted out of dark wood or cast in a dark metal; skin and clothes are all the same color, though the statues are often draped in bright cloth clothes, which accentuates the darkness of the material.
She is the heiress of the thrones of the pre-Christian goddesses. She is the bride of the Christian God, the bride in the Song of Songs, who represents all souls seeking union with the Divine and says: "I am black but beautiful." (1:5) She is a rebel against the establishment, a heavenly therapist, a spiritual guide. As the Dark Mother archetype she is a symbol of our inner shadow-self when properly integrated. As a black woman she is a friend to the oppressed and reconciler of all races. She is a healer of all dis-ease, a guide and companion at the time of death. She is the helper of Christ, turned black by carrying our sins with him. - All these roles are worth investigating. http://www.interfaithmarianpilgrimages.com/pages/blackmadonna.html
An Annotated Bibliography for Books on Black Madonnas
http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/BlackMadonna_bib.html
