[FROM THE ARCHIVE: January 16, 2024.]
The Black Madonna is an important presence for our time. Andrew Harvey points out that, in a time like ours, we should pray to her because, among other things, she is “queen of hell” because her love for the human race “makes her invincible to all demonic forces. ” Talking of the Antichrist and dealing with it requires we protect ourselves in the process.
Part of the contribution of Christena Cleveland in her book God Is a Black Woman is to invite a new appraisal of that archetype within her own community.
What the Black Madonna stands for is what MLK Jr. stood for: Justice in the face of injustice; attention to the anawim, those without a voice; love, not hatred; peace, not war; forgiveness, not retribution. An appreciation of darkness and blackness. And so much more.
Several years ago, I was invited to Morehouse University, King’s alma mater and burial place of Howard Thurman, to give a lecture on the Black Madonna.
The Black Madonna represents the cosmos—all wisdom figures do—and much of the cosmos we know is very dark.
Learning today that 95% of all matter in our universe is “dark matter” or “dark energy,” that creativity and dark holes go together, is a reminder of the creative power of darkness.
“The ground of the soul is dark,” comments Meister Eckhart. Thus darkness is about depth and the Black Madonna invites us down to our deeper selves, our truer and deepest selves.
Also, she invites us to explore that “underground river” where the God/goddess dwells.
She also represents Mother Africa from which we all derive. She is our origins therefore, the origin of homo sapiens, all of us. And knowing her gives us perspective, we all come from the same Source.
She represents grief, for she suffers with the poor and “little ones” without a voice.
In her guise as the “Brown Madonna” or Our Lady of Guadalupe, she sides with the indigenous ones, having appeared to a teen-aged indigenous man and spoke to him in his indigenous language ten years after his culture was invaded and decimated by European invaders.
She also represents Celebration, Joy and Gratitude. The bell on her headdress represents her call for institutions and individuals to Wake Up and feel the joy and the grief of living, and get on with healing and celebrating our existence.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, “The Green Man and the Black Madonna: Sacred Marriage of Nature,” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 231-244.
And Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest, p. 356.
And Fox, “Foreword: The Return of the Archetype in Times of Need,” in Alessandra Belloni, Healing Journeys with the Black Madonna: Chants, Music, and Sacred Practices of the Great Goddess, pp. ix-xviii.
Banner Image: Coretta Scott King holds a candle on the Washington Monument grounds and leading a nighttime march of 15-20,000 peaceful protestors to the White House as part of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, October 15, 1969. Photo by Washington Area Spark on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
What does the return of the Black Madonna in our times mean to you?
Recommended Reading
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
6 thoughts on “Honoring the Black Madonna and MLK Jr.”
Question – “What does the return of the Black Madonna in our times mean to you?”
It could only mean our neglect, would it not?
How would the Black Madonna truthfully answer that question without wanting to hurt our feelings?
“Well, like you know, or maybe did not want to know, that like I have been around, and you maybe chose not to come around again until now. So how can I help you?” – BB.
The return of the Black Madonna means to me the rebirth of the DIVINE FEMININE in Our personal, communal, and earthly life with our Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth/Her living creatures/Her graceful abundance, and Our living Cosmos, physical and non physical spiritual dimensions. She is a SPIRIT of Divine LOVE, Wisdom, Truth, Peace, Justice, Healing, Strength, Transformation, Freedom, Creativity, Beauty, Joy, Compassion, Diverse Wholeness~ONENESS…
within, through, among Us in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT… COSMIC CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS….
I first encountered the Black Madonna on a visit to Barcelona in the 1980s when we took the funicular to Monserrat. At the time, I was open to understanding but I wondered why a sculptor would represent Mary as a Black woman. I was a little troubled. I don’t know why. As I think about her now, I consider this. Jesus’ earthly mother might not actually have been Black, but she wasn’t the White woman I grew up seeing as Mary either. Mary was a Brown woman. Why not represent her as Black as easily as White. I’d love to see the image of Mary as a Native American woman too. I think representing her in different ethnicities shows us that the mother of Jesus and her son is for all of us and helps us birth Jesus ourselves. As Meister Eckhart said (I’m paraphrasing), “What good is it if Jesus was born in Palestine 2,000 years ago if I don’t birth Jesus myself in my own time?” I hope people do elect Kamala as our next president. I would love to be able to see her election as the return of the Black Madonna.
Janet McKenzie has painted some beautiful images of religious figures, for which she has gotten some flak from fundamentalists. https://www.janetmckenzie.com/
The Virgin de Guadalupe is a painting of a native Mexican woman as Mary, revered as THE most sacred Mexican icon. It’s an amazing painting, and proudly anti-colonialist.
The oldest Mexican cathedrals had plenty of colonialist art and stolen wealth blatantly displayed — I remember one very old church in Mexico City with huge chandeliers of Spanish galleons sailing above the heads of the worshipers — quite the political statement of power. But the continued reverence for the Virgin de Guadalupe as the sacred Mother tells of the need for Mary to come from, and reflect, the hearts of the people she speaks to, rather than from the white male elite who continue to shove their patriarchal, dualistic, self-serving male-idolatry down peoples’ throats.
Any Mystical Truth coming directly from God to the PEOPLE — the “commoners” whom Jesus called his “TRUE brothers and sisters”, is “inconvenient” to the patriarchal gatekeepers…but God keeps sending messages that bypass the white male hierarchy. Shocking how that happens.
As a registered Democrat, Episcopalian and long time admirer of your writings I wonder if you have forgotten MLK’s denouncement of the Vietnam War. The AntiChrist does not reside in one party; it resides in empire. Where is your voice for the anawin Palestinians? For women bereaved of their children and countless orphans and amputees? For the thousands imprisoned without trial, blindfolded, in diapers, fed minimal calories through a straw, not allowed to move, beaten and sexually assaulted? Does not the Black Madonna walk there? The vision of 2 equals embracing, Israeli and Palestinian, is a beautiful vision but it does not reflect the power differential: the settlements, bulldozing, apartheid, walls and mass destruction committed by an airforce armed with US bombs.