THE BLACK MADONNA IN POPULAR LITERATURE
“DANCING IN THE FLAMES: THE DARK GODDESS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS” by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson
ORIGIN OF THE DARK GODDESS
In previous accounts, I have traced the origins of the Black Madonna/Dark Goddess from pre-historic times to 12th Century Europe.
In her book, “Dancing in the Flames”, Jungian analyst Marion Woodman presents several challenges for modern women (and men) connected to the Black Madonna (dark goddess).
But first,
Woodman presents an interesting historical account in the following passages:
“Beginning in the eleventh century, the Crusades unleashed immense slaughter and plunder across the ancient world. Something of Kali’s energy was manifested in the passion and excess that accompanied this well-intentioned but ill-fated campaign. The goal was to release Jerusalem from the captivity of the Muslim hordes. Although the goal was, in the long term, not achieved, the Crusades were to have far-reaching consequences, both for Europe and for the rest of the world.(1)
“Along with a vastly expanded vision of life, the Crusaders brought back to Europe many treasures of the East. Among them were exquisite statures of the Black Goddess, Isis. These were enshrined as the Black Virgin. Devotion to her spread from cathedrals to small shrines dotted over the countryside is settings natural to the goddess of fertility. Literally hundreds of shrines to the Black Virgin sprang up throughout Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.(1)
“One reason for the Black Virgin’s great popularity during this period was the growing adoration of the chaste Virgin Mary. Courtly love, the legend of the Holy Grail, the veneration of the Virgin, the ascendancy of the idealized woman, were balanced by the compensating adoration of the Black Virgin. She was an underground figure: much of her so-called paganism is still adhered to her [fertility, nature, earth]. She was revered in an underground way–the blessing of the crops in the field, the blessing of pregnancy and childbirth, the dark excesses of sexuality and delight in the mysteries of the body, and the wisdom that can be experienced in lovemaking. She it was who in the most intimate experience possible to the soul, opened herself to the Holy Spirit, was impregnated, and bore God, a son. In her aloness she was independent–a liberated image of the feminine.(1)
“The Age of the Black Virgin, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was followed by the Black Death of the 14th century. In 1347 the Black Death devastated Europe. It had an enormous effect on the psyche and future development of the Western world. Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they suffered. Minds that opened to admit this reality could never be shut again. Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight: the turn to individual conscience. To that extend the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man.”[1]
We are faced with a similar challenge today with the worldwide Covid-19/Omicron pandemic.
“The underground Black Madonna is surfacing again to be the cathedra of the creative mind.”(1)
How is Covid ushering in the principles that the Black Madonna represents?
(1)Dancing in the Flames, Woodman and Dickson, Pgs. 28-30, 1996, Shambala Publications.
