Thinking Allowed - Jane Caputi, PhD

You can read the entire transcript of this interview

between Drs. Caputi and Mishlove here.

Lilith, Eve and The Black Madonna

(Image from here - click to enlarge)

I just finished the Virgin a Day meme that Rebecca was hosting.  It was a great experience for me focusing on The Black Madonna and Her many representations.  It made me stretch because I still instinctively recoil from patriarchal religions and "their" images and "their" interpretations of those images. Writing about The Black Madonna finally forced me to take Her out of the Catholic church and reclaim and interpret Her for myself - I had to find my voice about Her and say what I felt, what I thought.  And put it down in writing, not just let it float around aimlessly in my little brain.  And then let anyone who was interested read what I had written.

I would be exposed.

Writing does that.

And now I have to go a little further with my interpretation of The Black Madonna.

She is The Earth.  And Earth, to me, is Female.  She is how Life is manifested here as human on this planet.  I don't like the word God or even Goddess; I prefer Life - Infinite and Eternal in all its expressions everywhere.  It's one of the reasons I like the term Tao.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Mary, The Black Madonna, The Goddess (insert name here), are the human faces of Earth, who has many, many faces or facets, not just the human one. She is here to teach us about Life via Her prism, Her Being - just as Life projects itself through Her, perhaps as our Star-Sun, teaching Her about itself. Our direct experience of Her gives us a glimpse of and some knowledge of Life. And, hopefully we gain Wisdom.  Others' interpretations are not mine, but may lead me to the direct experience of Her.  I have to remember this because, otherwise, I tend to get exasperated and start rolling my eyes when I read some of those interpretations.

The "official story" of Lilith and Eve is one of those interpretations that really gave my eyeballs a workout.  Now that I've found an alternative to the "official story," it has opened the door to other ways of perceiving these two women/female archetypes.  Humor has always been a good door to open when I find myself in that place of impatience and judgment. That is how I found the following article.  I enjoyed it and the entire thing is worth reading.  I've only excerpted the final part of it.

Lilith, Eve and The Black Madonna - One and the Same (not the name of the story).

...

Having failed in the attempt to reconcile the original pair God then provided Adam with a new mate in the form of Eve whom God fashioned from one of Adam’s ribs. This would make Eve the first trophy wife.  ** 

Lilith however, like most maltreated wives wasn't about to let the matter end there.  According to the original version of the story, Lilith was said to have returned to the Garden of Eden in the form of a snake.  A spokesman for snakes however denied that any snakes had been involved and in a subsequent version of the story Adam claimed that Lilith had returned in the form of a serpent instead. Seeing how it is that even to this day people cannot agree on exactly what a serpent is, this version of the story is the one that has stuck.  

The story goes on to say that Lilith took Eve aside and that Lilith persuaded Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge which then awakened Eve to the realization that what was going on in the Garden of Eden was all an illusion.  A modern version of events would probably have it that Lilith persuaded Eve to take a women’s studies course at the local community college which awakened Eve to the realization that she shouldn’t be accepting less pay as a woman for doing the same job as a man. Either way, the party was over and God voided Adam and Eve’s lease, casting them out of the Garden of Eden and into the wilderness where Lilith was already homesteading. 

Which is supposedly how we all ended up in the mess we find ourselves in today; it was the woman's fault. 

Ever since this eviction from "Paradise" the patriarchal churches have vilified and defamed Lilith as demon and pariah, but what exactly was Lilith's crime? Undiplomatically, Lilith had asserted the claim she and Adam were created equally and should be treated equally, thereby challenging outright the male hegemony on which these churches have based their authority.  

Lilith is the primeval free spirit and to some, the first feminist, an idea that still does not go over well today. The message in the story of Lilith, the "screech-owl", is about having a voice and using it. Lilith continues to speak and sometimes even scream against the continued misogynistic calumny that is railed against her. 

This Goddess refuses to go quietly away.

©2010 John Reder “Spirit Walk Ministry”  

(Image from here)

And lastly, a poem (h/t Hecate) which is perfect for the image at the top of the page.  

Fearful Women

Arms and the girl I sing - O rare

arms that are braceleted and white and bare

arms that were lovely Helen's, in whose name

Greek slaughtered Trojan. Helen was to blame.

Scape-nanny call her; wars for turf

and profit don't sound glamorous enough.

Mythologize your women! None escape.

Europe was named from an act of bestial rape:

Eponymous girl on bull-back, he intent

on scattering sperm across a continent.

Old Zeus refused to take the rap.

It's not his name in big print on the map.

But let's go back to the beginning

when sinners didn't know that they were sinning.

He, one rib short: she lived to rue it

when Adam said to God, "She made me do it."

Eve learned that learning was a dangerous thing

for her: no end of trouble would it bring.

An educated woman is a danger.

Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger

like Darby's Joan, content with church and Kinder,

not like that sainted Joan, burnt to a cinder.

Whether we wield a scepter or a mop

It's clear you fear that we may get on top.

And if we do -I say it without animus-

It's not from you we learned to be magnaminous.

Carolyn Kizer

Note:  I happen to love Lilith.  On my old blog, I posted about Her and many years ago, I wrote a long poem about Her (you can find the link to the poem in the post).

** I think Lilith could be the Founding Mother of the First Wives' Club.

Virgin a Day - #12

(Image and text from here)

His (George Yepes) recent Virgen doesn’t shy away from exploring the sensual side to this iconic figure. He leaves it up to us to decide what moment in the life of Mary he is portraying: 

“Is it when she learns she is with child?  Or when she sees her son suffering on the cross. Perhaps she is carrying the pain of her people – or the pain of mothers whose children are in distress.”

(Image and text from here) 

“Tonantzin” is thought by some to be a generic term for any Aztec goddesses.  Others think the word refers to one goddess who has many aspects, each with a different name.  (For example, the goddess of childbirth, of war, of corn, etc.)   

The image of the brown-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe is thought to be a synchronized (note ~ I think she means syncretized) version of Tonantzin and the Virgin Mary, used by early 16^thcentury missionaries to convert  the indigenous people to Catholicism. 

There is some debate about the missionaries’ motivation:  did they want to destroy the notion of the female diety or were they willing  to co-exist with it? 

While we may not know their intention, we can see that the image they used of the Virgin of Guadalupe ( Catholic teaching say it was revealed by God) is one of a gentle, compassionate, self-sacrificing woman. 

Artist Lalo Garcia (link to article) says it is significant that the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in Mexico without her infant son. Unlike European depictions of the Virgin Mary, she appears as a being in her own right.

“When you look at the scripture,” Garcia says,  ”Mary vanished until the crucifixion. Mary of Nazareth is a nobody. In the Americas, she is the boss.  Anything related to Christianity you’ll wind up with her.” 

By contrast, renditions of the Virgin Mary by European artists portray her as an almost-characterless figure (“an empty vessel”) who bows in submision to her own son.    

(Collette) Crutcher turns that notion on its head.  Her Tonantzin stands front and center, a powerful diety making no apologies for who she is.  She looks like she woke up from a 500-year nap and, disliking what she saw, is ready to set things straight. 

Crutcher puts  the Virgin of Guadalupe in the middle of Tonantzin’s forehead.   

The Virgin stands like a watchful third eye in the spiritual center of the goddesses’ body. 

The Yepes image also adorns Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes' current book, Untie the Strong Woman. This blurb is from her website:

Call her Our Lady, La Nuestra Señora, Holy Mother—or one of her thousands of other names,” says Dr. Estés. “She wears hundreds of costumes, dozens of skin tones, is patroness of deserts, mountains, stars and oceans. Thus she comes to us in billions of images, but at her center, she is the Great Immaculate Heart.” With Untie the Strong Woman, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés invites us to reconnect with “the fierce and loving Blessed Mother who is friendly, but never tame—she who flies to our aid when the road is long and our hearts are broken, ever ready to rekindle the inner fire of our creative souls.”

In her first book in more than a decade, Dr. Estés illuminates Our Lady through blessings, images, and narrative, including:

• Stories of connecting with the Blessed Mother, including “Meeting the Lady in Red,” and “Untie the Strong Woman”


• Blessed Mother’s many images from around the world, including “Litany of The Mother Road: A Chant of Her Incandescent Names;” “A Man Named Mary;” and “The Marys of Mother Africa”


• The wild side of her love, including “Massacre of the Dreamers: The Maiz Mother;” “Holy Card of Swords Through the Heart;” and “Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven”

“The Blessed Mother is often ‘Friend to the friendless one’ and Mother to all—yet too many of us have been estranged from her for far too long.” Untie the Strong Woman opens a channel to this sacred and nurturing force—“breaking through walls that have held us back from her presence, and instead, inviting us to shelter under her starry green mantle.”

Both of these images are so powerful to me - they are part and parcel of how I experience The Big Lady, as I call Her.  Real and metaphor.  Actual and archetype. She is sensitive, compassionate, strong, powerful.  

And most importantly, available.  

Any time.  

Any place.  

Available.  

To anyone. 

Anywhere.  

In any form.

Any shape.

Any color.

Any element.  

She's there.  

She's here.

Available.  

And waiting.

At the beginning of this meme, I wrote that I wasn't sure I was going to participate because I didn't think I had anything to say.  Obviously, I was wrong!  I'm so glad that I had a change of mind and heart.  I have enjoyed this experience and loved visiting all of your blogs, reading your stories about Her and especially seeing your artwork about Her and reading your homages to Her. I thank you for allowing me the privilege of seeing a piece of your Soul.

Rebecca - thank you for hosting this Life affirming meme.  I cannot express how much I appreciate your generosity.  Thank you so much.  It's been a fabulous birthday present to myself thanks to you!  xoxo

“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.” 

                                         ~Terry Tempest Williams, Leap

Please visit Rebecca, who is hosting Virgin a Day for these first 12 days of December.

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From Matthew Fox's essay on the Black Madonna.  You can read the entire essay here.

12. The Black Madonna calls us to reinvent education and art. The goddess also ruled at the university—she was “Queen of the sciences” and “mistress of all the arts and sciences” who was “afraid of none of them, and did nothing, ever, to stunt any of them.”[29] All learning was to culminate in her. She was about wisdom not just knowledge. The renaissance that the Madonna represented was both religious and educational.

Often the headdress of Isis depicts the full moon between curved horns and has the shape of the musical instrument that the Egyptians played in her honor called the sistrum. Plutarch stated that the purpose of the sistrum which is a kind of rattle was that “all things in existence need to be shaken, or rattled about…to be agitated when they grow drowsy and torpid.” [30] The Black Madonna shakes things up. Is this not an archetype for our times? Is she not a forebearer of a renaissance, one who comes to give new birth to a civilization, a birth based on a new sense of spirituality and cosmology and learning—a learning that reawakens us to our place in the universe? How will work in the world become wise as opposed to exploitive without wisdom? How will the human soul move from knowledge to wisdom without the kind of effort the goddess can bring? Without a balance of male/female, heart/head, body/spirit truly happening at all levels of education from childhood to professional degrees? How will a renaissance happen if education is left behind? What role will art play when the artist too lets go of the internalized oppression of the modern era and recommits himself/herself to serving the community and to serving the larger community of ecological sustainability? [31]

These are some of the questions raised by the return of the Black Madonna in our time. They beg for response. They beg for listening ears and attentive institutions. They beg for self criticism of nation-states, governments, corporations, academia, religion, law, professions of all kinds which are called to something new (and very ancient): a new relationship between earth and humans. One of mutuality, not mastering. One of joy and wonder, not boredom. One that honors all our relations. For this to come about some rattling of our modern cages and mindsets is in order. The Black Madonna provides such a shake-up. Still. After all these centuries.

Virgin a Day - #11

Statue of Isis

Considering Herbert Hoover's Quaker upbringing, you might be wondering why there is a statue of Isis, "the Egyptian goddess of Life", sitting on the grounds of his birthplace. This bronze, seven and a half foot tall statue is the work of Belgian sculptor Auguste Puttemans, and was a gift from the children, refugees, and soldiers of Belgium in gratitude for Hoover's famine relief efforts on their behalf during the First World War.

The Statue of Isis faces the Herbert Hoover Birthplace, and provides a visual connection between his upbringing and his later achievements.

NPS PHOTO

NPS PHOTO

"Isis, Goddess of Life" by Auguste Puttemans

When the Belgians shipped the finished statue to California's Stanford University in 1922, it remained on campus until the President and Mrs. Hoover brought it to West Branch in 1939. Both of them wanted it to be placed in a position where it was "contemplating the house," which is why Isis sits in her throne-like chair facing the Birthplace Cottage.

Look closely, and you'll notice that her veil, a symbol of the mysteries of life, cannot hide the strength of her features. Her right hand carries the torch of life-its three flames represent the past, present, and future-while her left hand holds the key of life.  (emphasis mine)

An Egyptian goddess and an American President. It's an unlikely pairing, but one that provides a powerful visual link between Hoover's childhood and his life's dedication to the welfare of others.

Text is from the National Park Service.

Please visit Rebecca, who is hosting Virgin a Day for these first 12 days of December.

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From Matthew Fox's essay on the Black Madonna:

11. The Black Madonna Calls us to a renaissance of culture, religion and the city. Isis often wears a regal headdress that symbolizes her name as meaning “throne” or “queen.” Erich Neumann has written about Isis as “Throne.”

As mother and earth woman, the Great Mother is the ‘throne’ pure and simple, and, characteristically, the woman’s motherliness resides not only in the womb but also in the seated woman’s broad expanse of thigh, her lap on which the newborn child sits enthroned. To be taken on the lap is, like being taken to the
breast, a symbolic expression for adoption of the child, and also for the man, by the Feminine. It is no accident that the greatest Mother Goddess of the early cults was named Isis, the ‘seat,’ ‘the throne,’ the symbol of which she bears on her head; and the king who ‘takes possession’ of the earth, the Mother Goddess, does so by sitting on her in the literal sense of the word.[28]

The twelfth century renaissance was especially conscious of the role of “throne” and the goddess. In Latin the word for “throne” is “cathedra.” The medieval church gave birth to cathedrals—over 125 were built the size of Chartres—and every single one was dedicated to Mary with such titles as Notre Dame de Chartres, Notre Dame de Lyons, Notre Dame de Paris, etc. Over 375 other churches the size of these cathedrals were built dedicated to Mary also. In many of these cathedrals a statue to the Black Madonna can be found even to this day. A cathedral by definition meant the throne where the goddess sits ruling the universe with compassion and justice for the poor. Anthropocentrism, clericalism and sexism have co-opted the invention of cathedral to mean the “place where the bishop has his (usually his) throne.” This is false. The cathedral is designed to be the center of the city, it is bringing the goddess to the center of the city to bring the city alive with goddess energies and values. Cities were birthed in the twelfth century with the breakup of the land-based economy and religious and political system of the feudal era. The youth fled to the cities where religion reinvented itself apart from the monastic establishment that ruled for eight centuries and where education invented itself apart from the rural monastic educational system in the form of universities. Worship reinvented itself in the Cathedral in the city and apart from the monastic liturgical practice in the countryside.

Today for the first time in human history more than 50% of humans are living in cities; By 2015, over two-thirds of humans—a great proportion of them young people—will be living in cities. The Black Madonna and the “throne as goddess” motif contribute to the resurrection of our cities. They give us a center, a cosmic center, a synthesis and unity and a life-energy by which we can redeem our cities and take them back from lifelessness and thanatos. Artists gather in a city. Celebration and ritual happen in a city. Nature and human nature congregate in a city. No wonder Meister Eckhart and other medieval mystics celebrated the human soul as city and the city as soul. It is the task of a renaissance to bring soul back to city. We might even define renaissance as a “rebirth of cities based on a spiritual initiative.”

Virgin a Day - #10

Please visit Rebecca, who is hosting Virgin a Day for these first 12 days of December.

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From Matthew Fox's essay on the Black Madonna. 

10. The Black Madonna calls us to our Divinity which is Compassion. Compassion is the best of which our species is capable. It is also the secret name for Divinity. There is no spiritual tradition East or West, North or South, that does not exist to instruct its people in how to be compassionate. “Maat” is the name for justice, harmony, balance and compassion among the African peoples. The Black Madonna calls us to Maat. To balance, harmony, justice and compassion. Grieving and Celebrating and Acting Justly are all parts of compassion. In both Arabic and Hebrew, the word for compassion comes from the word for “womb.” A Patriarchal period does not teach compassion, it ignores the womb-like energies of our world and our species. If it mentions compassion at all it trivializes it and renders it sissy. (For example, Webster’s dictionary declares that the idea that compassion is about a relationship among equals is “obsolete.”) Patriarchy neglects what Meister Eckhart knew and taught: “Compassion means justice.” [18] Compassion has a hard side, it is not about sentiment but about relationships of justice and interdependence.

Because the Black Madonna is the goddess that dwells deeply and darkly within all beings, ourselves included, she brings with her our capacity for compassion. We are not whole—we are not ourselves—until we partake in the carrying on of compassion. Meister Eckhart taught that the name of the human soul properly is “Compassion” and that until we are engaged in compassion we do not yet have soul. [19]

Compassion knows when enough is enough; compassion does not overindulge; compassion does not hoard and does not run its life on addictions of insecurity and pyramid-building to overcome these addictions. Compassion trusts life and the universe ultimately to provide what is necessary for our being. But compassion works hard as a co-creator with the universe to see that a balance and basic fairness is achieved among beings. Compassion is present in the Black Madonna in her very essence for “the first outburst of everything God (and Goddess) does is compassion.” (Eckhart) To return to compassion is to return to the Goddess.

Cultural historian and feminist Henry Adams writes about the role of Mary at Chartres Cathedral in the twelfth century. “The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination—as you can see at Lourdes—was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law—justly or unjustly, by accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil.” [20] Adams understood Mary as the Buddhist element in Christianity for with her as with Buddha, compassion is the first of all the virtues. “To Kwannon the Compassionate One and to Mary the Mother of God, compassion included the idea of sorrowful contemplation.” [21] Only the Great Mother could provide the compassion needed by the sorrowful human condition.

The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could love; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any conceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodiment somewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could not be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be in the Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Mother alone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever was irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race.[22]

She was beyond the law, a friend of the outlaws who appealed to the masses who “longed for a power above law—or above the contorted mass of ignorance and absurdity bearing the name of law.”[23] This power had to be more than human. It required the goddess.

The Black Madonna, the goddess, provides the womb of the universe as the cosmic lap where all creatures gather. An ancient hymn dedicated to Isis underscores her cosmic role as sovereign over all of nature and queen of all the gods and goddesses.

I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea-breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below.[24]

How like a twelfth century poem to the Christian goddess Mary is this ancient hymn to Isis. Alan of Lille wrote the following poem about Nature in the twelfth century:

O child of God and Mother of things,
Bond of the world, its firm-tied knot,
Jewel set among things of earth,
and mirror to all that passes away
Morning star of our sphere;
Peace, love, power, regimen and strength,
Order, law, end, pathway, captain and source,
Life, light, glory, beauty and shape,
O Rule of our world! [25]

Interestingly, Alan of Lille speaks of the “Mother of things” as a “firm-tied knot” and the Thet which is an important symbol of Isis is also understood to be a knot.[26] We play in her cosmic lap, we bump up against one another there, and we work for balance, Maat, and justice there.

The Black Madonna is the Throne of Compassion, the Divine lap. That is the meaning of the name “Isis” and Isis is the African goddess who gave us the Black Madonna both in Ephesus, Turkey and through Spain and Sicily directly into Western Europe. Indeed, certain passages of the Christian Gospels such as the birth narratives, which are clearly not historical but are stories of the Cosmic Christ, are passages taken from stories about Isis and her son, Horus. Sir Ernest A. Wallis Budge, the late keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum, writes:

The pictures and sculptures wherein she is represented in the act of suckling Horus formed the foundation for the Christian paintings of the Madonna and Child. Several of the incidents of the wanderings of the Virgin with the Child in Egypt as recorded in the Apochryphal Gospels reflect scenes in the life of Isis…and many of the attributes of Isis, the God-mother, the mother of Horus…are identical with those of Mary the Mother of Christ.[27]

Virgin a Day - #9

(Image from here)

Meet the Madonna del Tindari of Sicily.  I had never heard of Her before and through the magic of the internet (quasi telepathic transmissions from The Lady), bumped into Her today.  She wanted to participate in Virgin a Day and who am I to refuse Her that request?

A little about Her, gleaned from various sites on the web - click on the links to see where I found the information.

The Black Madonna 

The story of how the Black Madonna arrived in Tindari is the stuff that legends are made of. According to local tradition, the statue, which is certainly of Byzantine origin, was one of many works of art smuggled out of Constantinople in the 8th and 9th Centuries during the period of Iconoclasm initiated by Emperor Leo III. A storm forced the ship carrying the Black Madonna into the port of Tindari, where the sailors deposited their load at the local abbey for safekeeping. She now sits behind the altar with the inscription "nigro sum sed formosa" (black am I, but beautiful).

Another legend regarding the Black Madonna recounts how one pilgrim, on making some uncomplimentary remarks about the statue, incurred the not inconsiderable wrath of the Madonna. The lady in question turned in horror to see her child plummeting down the cliffs towards the sea. However, in an act of mercy and a demonstration of her unworldly powers, the Madonna made a bank of sand rise from the sea to cushion the child's fall. Hence the curious geographical formation of which more later.

 Q: Can you relate the story of Tindari?

A: The Sanctuary of the Madonna del Tindari in Tindari in the diocese of Patti (Province of Messina) is situated on top of a hill overlooking the sea. A Greek colony had built the city of Tindari three centuries before the Christian era, but it was later destroyed by an earthquake. According to tradition, during the time of iconoclasm (7/8 c) the effigy of the Mother of God was transported by sea to the eastern shores of Sicily. A raging tempest forced the ship to land at Tindari where the sailors entrusted monks with the image of Our Lady. This was the origin of Our Lady of Tindari. 

The sanctuary was robbed and burnt by pirates in subsequent centuries but was also assiduously rebuilt and restored by bishop and faithful. The official feastday is that of September 8. The image is that of a "Madonna Bruna," a dark Madonna. It was crowned in 1940 and attracts many pilgrims yearly.

 (#13) Madonna del Tindari, Sicily: The sanctuary of Tindari sits on a high bluff on the northern shore of Sicily. A woman from a far-away country had come to fulfill a vow to the Madonna of Tindari for saving her little girl's life.  When the woman reached the sanctuary, after a long journey, she openly expressed her disillusionment upon seeing that the Madonna's face was black. The moment she expressed her irreverence, her little girl, who had wandered away from her mother, fell from a cliff.  The woman called upon the Madonna to again save her child's life. But the miracle had already happened - the sea had withdrawn so the girl could fall on soft sand. The woman now believed in the divine powers of the Madonna she had mocked and the sea stayed at a distance permanently as a reminder of what had happened. [60]    

Personal note:  fascinating article!  This example made me think immediately of La Virgen of Guadalupe:

Miraculous Apparitions of Mary: affecting weather; seclusion; untouched

Probably the most prominent miracles are apparitions of the Madonna.  In these accounts, she appears to someone and requests or demands that sacred space (a chapel or church) be built to honor her.   She is often very specific about where she wants it to be built.  For example, according to a tradition still celebrated today, the Madonna caused snow to fall in August in Rome so she could outline where she wanted her church to be built.  It was built and became the major Roman Basilica, known as Santa Maria Maggiore in which is venerated a powerful Black Madonna, Madonna delle Neve, Madonna of the Snows. Sometimes no request is necessary, as the vision alone is sufficient to cause a place of honor to be built at that location. Other times it takes several requests or an additional sign of power, to convince an uncooperative church official, or to aid a seer whose word is not believed. (emphasis mine)

And finally, closer to my home in New Jersey:

The Black Madonna of East 13th Street, NYC

... 

Of the three chapels, the oldest and therefore the most mysterious—since the original pioneers are deceased—is that of the Black Madonna. The Madonna is a reproduction, none too well done, of an ancient statue venerated at in Tindari, formerly an ancient city in the northerneastern part of Sicily and today a small village in the province of Messina. The original Madonna which was buried in the mountains near Tindari to save it from Turkish Saracen invasions in the seventh ninth century, was black, not because it lay moldering in flames, but as homage to the biblical description "Nigra sum, sed formosa"—"I am black, but beautiful".

The festivity of the Black Madonna was celebrated for the first time in New York on September 8, 1905. The following year, 1906, a congregation of Pattesi was established and the now existing statue of the Black Madonna was constructed under their sponsorship by Santo Bucca of Barcellona, Sicily. Though the original statue was in wood (of Libano cedar of Lebanon), the present image here in New York was constructed of stucco.

The article is very interesting historically and has some other pictures of the statue of the Madonna.

Well, I have spent all morning with the Black Madonna (post written 6 Dec) - there are dishes in the dishwasher that need to be unloaded, there are dishes in the sink that need to be loaded into the dishwasher, my Thanksgiving decorations are still up and the Solstice/Christmas/Yule ones waiting patiently to show off - but I must first dust and then vacuum. And Kylie, who loves to do the laundry, has just bounded up the stairs to let me know that the dryer has commanded her to retrieve me so that the clothing can be folded. Immediately. For when this Border Collie is on a mission (and they all are!), she is relentless and resistance is futile!

I see that Matt Fox's #9 point doesn't really jibe with this post ~ maybe my meandering the paths of the web in search of the Black Madonna counts as a dance.  It's always celebratory for me to discover something new about Her!

Please visit Rebecca, who is hosting Virgin a Day for these first 12 days of December.

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From Matthew Fox's essay on the Black Madonna.

9.The Black Madonna calls us to Celebrate and to Dance. The Black Madonna, while she weeps tears for the world, as the sorrowful mother, does not wallow in her grief, does not stay there forever. Rather, she is a joyful mother, a mother happy to have being and to have shared it with so many other creatures. She expects joy in return. Celebration of life and its pleasures lie at the core of her reason for being. She expects us to take joy in her many pleasures, joy in her fruits. Sophia or Wisdom in the Scriptures sings to this element of pleasure and eros, deep and passionate love of life and all its gifts.

I have exhaled a perfume like cinnamon and acacia,
I have breathed out a scent like choice myrrh….
Approach me, you who desire me,
And take your fill of my fruits,
For memories of me are sweeter than honey,
Inheriting me is sweeter than the honeycomb.
They who eat me will hunger for more,
They who drink me will thirst for more.
Whoever listens to me will never have to blush….(Eccl. 24.15, 19-22)

Celebration is part of compassion. As Meister Eckhart puts it: “What happens to another be it a joy or a sorrow happens to me.” Celebration is the exercise of our common joy. Praise is the noise that joy makes. Joy, praise and celebration are intrinsic to community and to the presence of the Black Madonna. She did not birth her Divine Child by whatever name in vain. She opts in favor of children, in favor of life, in favor of eros and in favor of biophilia. She is a lover of life par excellence. She expects us, her children, to be the same.