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BLACK MADONNAS
Article by Cassandra
Eason
Women, Spirit and healing:
Black Madonnas are found all over Europe, especially in France, the most
famous ones being at Chartres in France, Czestochowa in Poland and
Montserrat in Spain.
The Black Madonna, the Earth Mother in the Christian tradition
The Black Madonna is the alter ego of the Virgin Mary, they are Queen of the
Earth as Mary is Queen in Heaven and fertile and sensual as Mary is icon of
the Immaculate Conception and Incorruptibility. The Black Madonna is the
Virgin who belongs to no man or deity, since all life emanated from her as
Mother Nature. In contrast Mary received the seed of God in the form of the
Holy Spirit (see the chapter on the Virgin Mary and Sophia).
Some Black Madonna figures are pregnant rather than holding a baby,
representing the fertile mother of the Earth. The symbol of the Goddess with
the swollen belly dates back to Palaeolithic times. At Lozere in France in
the cathedral Notre-Dame de Mende, the fecund Madonna made of walnut or
apple wood, both fertility trees, was brought back from the Holy Land by
Crusaders in 1253. Sometimes shrines of Black Madonnas are inscribed with
the words from the Song of Songs referring to the Queen of Sheba whose
wisdom was greater than that of Solomon I am black but beautiful
Sheba, like the Black Madonna, was linked with wise Sophia.
The Black Madonna as a Christianised Mother Goddess
The Black Madonnas in Europe for centuries provided a bridge between the
old and new ways. The Mediterranean region was culturally influenced by
Egypt and North Africa through the Moorish conquest as well as being
geographically close to Africa and the Middle East.
Black Madonnas are most frequently associated with the Egyptian Mother
Goddess Isis, depicted with the infant Horus in her lap, the original Mother
and Child. icon.
Other sources of her identity may be Isis, Cybele or Diana of Ephesus, all
black goddesses who were still worshipped in France and the Mediterranean
coast from Antibes to Barcelona during the later centuries of the Roman
Empire.
Cybele was during the 3rd century the supreme deity of the town of Lyon
that was capital of a vast area of South-eastern France. Isis gave her name
to Paris (par Isis)
Ceres, the Roman goddess of agricultural fertility, another black goddess is
yet another fertility icon associated with the Black Madonna.
In the Middle Ages when the majority of the Black Madonna statues were
created, often modelled on older statues that were lost or destroyed, there
was still a strong undercurrent of the old ways. This secret paganism was
given impetus by Madonna-like Isis images brought back by the Crusaders
from the Middle East; other statues survive from the Moorish occupation of
Spain that did not end until the late fifteenth century.
Further evidence of the Black/Madonna pagan association is the fact that
Black Madonnas were frequently discovered hidden in trees in France and
Spain as late as the seventeenth century These may have been representations
of the pagan goddesses who were still worshipped in groves, especially the
woodland Goddess of the Hunt Artemis in her black eastern form, known also
as Diana of the Wood or the Golden Bough.
Legends grew up that suggested these statues had magical powers. that called
the chosen finders to hiding places sometimes deep in undergrowth. For
example at Heas in the Hautes-Pyrenees region of France in the 16th
century, shepherds were led to the wooden Madonna by two doves, symbols of
the Goddess in her form of Sophia. This statue like so many survived the
destruction of its church, it was believed by magic ,in this case by an
avalanche in 1915.
Indeed, as Ean Begg who has researched the subject extensively says: `Again
and again in the stories of the Black Virgin, a statue is found in a forest
or a bush or discovered when ploughing animals refuse to pass a certain
spot. The statue is taken to the parish church, only to return miraculously
by night to her own place, where a chapel is then built in her honour.
Almost invariably her cult is associated with natural phenomena, especially
healing waters or striking geographical features’.
Black Madonnas are also associated with and found close to caves symbols
of the womb of the Earth Mother. In churches too right through Christian
times the statues were kept in a crypt or subterranean part of a church or
cathedral, usually near a sacred spring or well. In this sense the Black
Madonna links with the winter aspect of the Corn Goddess Demeter whose
daughter Persephone remained in the underworld for three months, thus
causing winter on earth.
Both mother and daughter were linked with the ancient mystery religions
whose rites were practised in subterranean places.
Mary Magdalene and The
Black Madonna
Mary Magdalene, who it was said became the wife of Christ and mother of his
son, is (especially in parts of France) believed to be the true Black
Madonna.
It is known that the Merovingians in France worshipped Cybele as Diana of
the nine fires and in 679 Dagobert II, who became Saint Meroginy,
established the cult to the one which today receives the name of Our Lady
and who is our Eternal Isis.
They incorporated this into the identification of the Black Madonna as Mary
Magdalene and through her the Merovingians claimed to be the rightful Kings
of France with descent from Christ’s son by Mary Magdalene, the infant in
her arms in the Black Madonna statues.
According to the folklore and mythology of Provence, Mary Magdalene migrated
with her son, from the Middle East to Saintes Maries de-la-Mer, a small
village on the French Mediterranean, thirteen years after the Crucifixion.
She reportedly spent the last thirty years of her life in seclusion at the
cave of St. Baume in the French Alps. Although the literature in the
monastery that is currently at St. Baume contains this story, it has never
entered mainstream Christian doctrine.
Black Madonna statues are also found in places associated with the Grail
pilgrimages. The Grail guardians were female and the original Grail cup was
the Celtic Cauldron of nourishment that symbolised the womb of the Earth
Mother. Mary
Magdalene is in one tradition believed to be the original owner of the
Grail Cup in which she collected the blood of Christ after the Crucifixion
and took it to France with her.
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