Dear Heart of the Black Madonna Blog Subscribers and Friends!
It has been a good long while since I posted anything. It was not for lack of trying or desire. The Pandemic upended my existence on numerous levels, and it has taken me this long to find gainful employment and housing in order to create the opportunity to share my discoveries regarding The Black Madonna and The Divine Feminine. To my utter joy and immense satisfaction (mixed in with a good measure of relief for what it signifies) I am finally able to create and post a Podcast. Available through the Anchor podcast platform. As I am for all intents and purposes a one middle aged tech impaired lady that has to figure everything out via Youtube and Google search, the Podcast should soon be available wherever one finds such things.
As a taste for my readers, I am posting the transcript of the first official The Black Madonna Speaks Podcast. At the end of this post, there will be a link to the Anchor platform, where you can listen and download to your hearts content. Please subscribe and if you are so moved, you can support the endeavor through Patreon as a sustaining patron, or through a one time donation at paypal.me/BlackMadonnaHeart. For those who donate over $20 through PayPal, you will receive transcripts and Black Madonna monographs on upcoming episodes for one year.
Welcome back to The Black Madonna Speaks with me your host, Stephanie Georgieff. Thank you so much for sharing your valuable time with me, and for those who have subscribed, thank you and a special thanks to my patron supporters, especially Linda Rheinschild, Jerrilyn Brusseau and Hettienne Grobler and Jennifer Johnson Lee whose sustained generosity and patience these past several years has made my writings as well as this podcast possible. For those of you who would like to support the podcast, please visit Patreon at The Black Madonna Speaks https://www.patreon.com/join/TheBlackMadonnaSpeaks?for more information on how to do that, and also please spread the word, share with your friends whom you think would benefit from this timely and nourishing exploration.
For the next few weeks, The Black Madonna Speaks will cover the history, lore, artistic presentation and narratives surrounding the Black Madonna as an artistic genre. In the coming months, I will be honored to share with you some of our modern day artists and authors surrounding the Black Madonna. There are various websites, institutions and such that celebrate and document the Black Madonna as well as numerous studies and personal reflections on the subject. For me, it has been this marvelous journey, a tandem experience of deepening my relationship with the Spiritual World through a feminine context, but also a fascinating journey as to the origins of Christianity as reflected through art. The goal of my work is to share and inspire. In no way do I claim to be the expert on anything other than how to make a delicious omelette, and my presentations are from my conclusions based on my research with a bit of intuition and imagination mixed in. My hope is that our explorations will spark in you a desire to delve more deeply into the mysteries of The Black Madonna yourself. The only “wrong “ way to understand the Black Madonna is that she might be an agent of oppression, which honestly I have yet to see any sort of utilization of this image to oppress anyone. If anything, an image of Divinity presented with dark skin seems to be quite liberating to all who would witness such a gesture.
The main tenet of my study of the Black Madonna comes from Rudolf Steiner, philosopher and clairvoyant, who for me has opened up a cosmic tableau as to how to contextualize and comprehend the Cosmic Christ.
In a lecture cycle entitled The Influence of Spiritual Beings on Man, Steiner states that “Art is the creation of organs through which the gods are able to speak to humanity.”
If this is true, and I personally accept it as truth, then what specifically are these Black Madonnas conveying to us, not only at the time of their creation but in our modern times?
So how do we decipher what these images are saying to us? Obviously, one can, but one’s own prejudices as well as cultural and spiritual spins can influence perceptions on what the gods are trying to say to us through The Black Madonna. I officially have always stated that I am unabashedly biased towards mystical Christianity. I am also a scientist, and somewhat of a historian. My scientific background informs how I seek answers to questions. I honestly think being trained in natural medicine, specifically Naturopathy and Chinese Medicine, creates quite a method for looking at correspondences as well as the etiology of any subject. Obviously, correlation does not always mean causality, but in many instances it really is quite revealing and cause for reflection when one looks at the timing of certain events, where they are happening and also who is involved.
I was asked years ago to speak on The Black Madonna at a local workshop at the Anthroposophical Society of Los Angeles community center. I had recently written a paper on the subject for a program I was enrolled in, on Spirituality and Culture, which included numerous interviews and literature searches at the time. What fascinated me in my original study was why these obviously non-European looking images were all over Europe, especially when the bulk of the population was Caucasian, and not what one called global travellers, in fact much of the population never went more than a few miles from their villages or cities.
At the time I was doing my initial research, the internet was just forming. One of the few online options to study the Black Madonna was the University of Dayton Ohio, Marian Library page. In the introduction section, the page stated that many Black Madonnas in Europe made their way to the continent in the hands of returning Crusaders and Knights Templar. I found this absolutely fascinating, and noticed my other academic, art history and spiritual research did not focus on this particular thread.
To be honest, as an American protestant, I had only been exposed to mostly Renaissance religious art through famous painters of the era; Michelangelo, Rafael and Da Vinci to name a few. Modern Madonnas ran the gamut of racial expression, but were usually dependent on where they were created, say Mexican Madonnas looked Mexican and so on. The color of the skin of a Madonna never was in my consciousness. Since the historical mother of Jesus was from Palestine during the Roman occupation, as well as being a Jew, I always thought that she probably had brown skin, dark hair and eyes typical of the people of her region. Since I am European American, skin color for me never meant anything, meaning I never gave a second thought to images of pale, pink cheeked, blond, blue eyed Madonnas. There was also an undercurrent that Christianity was something Europeans “Did” to other continents, meaning, Christianity was brought with explorers and colonizers and forced upon locals populations, further justified with European depictions of Christian divinity placed in churches and schools across Asia, Africa and the Americas.
With my research, and again what I will be presenting are my findings and discoveries, obviously there may be other perceptions as well as discoveries, much of what I assumed to be true in terms of the history of Christianity as well the evolution of art, was deeply challenged by the genre of The Black Madonna. So many threads, so many aspects, so many delightful digressions in terms of the evolution of the mysteries, the Divine Feminine, ancient Christianity and even science and astronomy.
So many questions, and the answers for me just keep coming, it truly is the never ending story as to humanity’s purpose in the cosmos in relation to the spiritual world.
So what is a Black Madonna specifically? The term Black Madonna is a label of an artistic genre applied to dark skinned and black images of the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus, a dark Madonna in Europe to be specific. Some groups find the term offensive, making a point to identify skin color, no one says “white madonna” when referring to such works of art, why just Black when the Madonna is not European, they are all Madonnas. Obviously on one level this is true, but I am not in charge of academic nomenclature regarding genre’s, so apologies extended to those who feel excluded by the title Black Madonna. Since it is currently the title of this genre, I will use it for the foreseeable future.
One of my first “discoveries” concerning the Black Madonna was a paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science on December 28th 1952. While there were many Black Madonnas in Europe, it was a curiosity as to what they were representing. A study was commenced regarding about 100 Black Madonnas in Europe. The study categorized these works of art into three groups.
First Category: Madonnas who were created by artists in North Africa and resembled the physiognomy of their creators. The Coptic monks of North Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia started their migrations to Europe in the 4th century and brought their art with them. Starting in the 7th century, when Islamic incursions began in earnest in the Arabian Peninsula as well as Africa, the migrations of clergy increased.
Second Category: Images of the Madonna and Child that were centuries old, and darkened by candle smoke and grime of the centuries. I like to say, a thousand years on an altar does something to a gal’s skin.
Third Category: There is no known reason why the images are black or dark.
The kicker is that the last category has the most Madonnas in it. This fact, coupled with the relationship with the Knights Templar I found quite intriguing.
When I planned my original presentation, my initial thesis was to see when these madonnas were created, by whom and what the stars were saying during the time of their creation. I wanted to explore Astrosophy, which is spiritual in nature, not predictive, emotional or qualitative such as Astrology, or materialistic which is Astronomy. Astrosophy conveys what the angelic world is relaying to humanity at a certain time, I have found it quite profound in terms of understanding historical events, what was going on during the American Civil War for instance, or what were the stars saying whilst Rafael was painting the Sistine Madonna. In my book on The Virgin of Guadalupe, I have a section on the Astrosophy of the apparitions of Guadalupe, absolutely fascinating, so I thought I would study a couple of famous Black Madonnas and do the same thing.
What I found out was that few if any Black Madonnas have any artist associated with them. If there is an artist, it is the author of the Luke Gospel, the Evangelist Luke. In fact, there were only guesstimates in terms of the dates of the creation of the images, and many of the Black Madonnas who were not brought by the Crusaders or Knights Templar have stories of discoveries. In future podcasts, I will present the narratives of many Black Madonnas, and you will come to see what I am talking about.
So we have several “migrations” of Black Madonnas to the European Continent.
Some Black Madonnas were discovered by St Helen of the Cross, the mother of Constantine the Great, who went on Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 4th Century. Helen is a fascinating character, whose story we will also explore in future segments. For now, what we need to realize is that Helen was one of the first Christian patrons of art and architecture. She is credited for “discovering” all the sites of Christ’s life and deeds, as well as where Mary, Mary Magdalen and certain Old Testament characters lived or experienced miracles in Israel, Egypt and Palestine. The famous Polish Black Madonna, our Lady of Czestachowa is reported to have been discovered by Helen and brought back to the Byzantine Court.
Many Black Madonnas had their origins either in Byzantium or Asia Minor and North Africa, and traveling through Byzantium before going into Eastern and Western Europe.
As we said before, the Monks of North Africa started their migrations in the 4th through the 7th Centuries and brought their art with them.
Many of the Byzantine and North African Madonnas adorned churches and shrines throughout Europe, but were hidden as the Muslim incursions spread through Europe. This is quite evident in the Iberian Peninsula, what is now modern Spain, and somewhat true in the South of what is now Modern France.
With the Crusades, there was a large group of Black Madonnas which both returning Crusaders as well as the Knights Templar brought with them to the Continent. This happened in the 12th through early 14th centuries. From the time of the 9th Century through to the French Revolution, Dark Madonnas became quite the draw for Pilgrims. It is of note, and we will explore this theme quite thoroughly in future programs, that both personal Black Madonnas as well as famous ones in Shrines and Cathedrals, are placed along sacred sites on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. There is a remarkable correspondence between the location of the shrines, cathedrals, and churches where there are Black Madonnas and star networks, say the Virgo constellation or the Milky Way.
What does the French Revolution have to to with Black Madonnas? Quite a bit. While the rallying cry of Freedom Equality and Fraternity was the theme of the revolution, what was also true was a violent reaction occurred against the institutionalized church at the time. Ordinary people called the revolution the reign of terror, where mob and military frenzies created pop up instant courts with Justice and executions instantaneously and randomly applied to everyone. The Napoleonic soldiers had a strange fondness for burning Black Madonna statues in the middle of towns where their shrines were located. It seems that the terror inspired the re-hiding of many images until cooler and less violent heads prevailed. Black Madonnas who were burnt include the silver gilt statue at Chartres Cathedral as well as the Black Madonna of Le Puy en Velay. The Black Madonna at Einsiedeln was hidden so that the invading soldiers would not burn her. Luckily, there were many copies as well as drawings of the original Black Madonnas that enabled artists of the day to create similar images for future generations to venerate. In the case of the Madonna at Einsiedeln, she was one of the Madonnas that was dark due to age, and was painted white before being placed back in the shrine. The locals had a fit and the monks painted Einsiedeln very black, and she is venerated to this day as the Black Madonna of the Germanic peoples.
The Black Madonnas went with Spanish and French colonists to the Americas and beyond. These Madonnas have interesting stories of survival, of shipwrecks, storms and such.
In the 1980’s there was a resurgence in awareness of Black Madonnas across the world. While Europe had always treasured these Madonnas, the political situation in Eastern Europe, specifically Poland highlighted their presence. Lech Walensa of the Solidarity movement was inspired by Our Lady of Częstochowa and she became a focal point of resistance to the communist government. Pope John Paul the Second was a Polish Pope, and he was also dedicated to The Black Madonna of Poland, Częstochowa. China Galland wrote Longing for Darkness, and Ean Begg wrote the Cult of the Black Virgin, both books are classics in the Black Madonna literature awakening the West to what the East and the South always knew regarding these Madonnas. In the Secret Life of Bees, there is a remarkable story of a Black Madonna entwined in the narrative, while the Black Madonna adorns the jars of Honey of the heroine of the story.
As our era is one of reckoning on many levels, The Black Madonna is becoming a healing image for the marginalized, specifically those who suffer the devastating consequences of racism. In my own journey, I have found that these images are healing to everyone as they portray divinity as dark. Such images convey the inclusive and universal quality of Divinity, that often gets lost in materialism and politics. For me, as I have said before, I find these images as a portal to a deep message from the spiritual world, that we are treasured and encouraged, that we are to participate in the cosmic unfolding of the universe, the universe of agape.
I hope my reflections warm your soul and inspire your spirit as we delve into the many mysteries of the Black Madonna. Make sure to follow me on twitter @BlMadonna, like me on Facebook at The Heart of the Black Madonna, Instagram of the same name and subscribe to this Podcast. If you are so moved, please become a patron, either sustaining or a one time donation, every penny is appreciated and goes towards helping to create this podcast.
Tune in next time, where we will explore the artistic presentation of The Black Madonna and possible meanings of her many symbolic gestures regarding the timing of the discoveries, migrations, the placements and the images as a whole. Since art is the method by which the Gods are speaking to humanity, what a message the Black Madonnas are sharing!
Until next time: This is Stephanie Georgieff wishing you many blessings on your journey
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