The Cult of the Black Virgin
- ISBN-10
- 1888602392
- ISBN-13
- 9781888602395
- Category
- Black Madonnas
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006
- Author
- Ean Begg
Description
There are many icons of Mary that show black faces and hands. In France, these are called Vierge Noires--Black Virgins. Elsewhere, may be called Black Madonnas or the "other Mary." Jung called her Isis, while others claim she is the symbolic remains of a prehistoric worship of the Earth Mother. She is generally connected with Cybele, Diana, Isis, and Venus, as well as with Kali, Inanna, and Lilith. Historically she is connected with the Crusades, the Islamic occupation of Spain, the Conquistadors, as well as the Merovingians and Knights Templars, who viewed her as Mary Magdalene. Why are more than five hundred of the world's Madonna images black or dark? Why is so little known about them? Black Virgins--a resurfacing of the powerful pagan goddesses of sexuality, the underworld, and earth wisdom--they are symbols of power and majesty, the other side of the traditional Madonna's virginity or tender maternity. They personify the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant in a quest for lost feminine wisdom and the search for soul. Ean Begg's fascinating book investigates the pagan origins of the phenomenon as well as the heretical Gnostic-Christian underground stream that flowed west with the cult of Mary Magdalene and resurfaced in Catharism at the time of the Crusades, especially with the Templars.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Black Madonnas: Feminism, Religion, and Politics in Italy
By Lucia Chiavola BirnbaumIn a vernacular version of the church doctrine of the assumption of Mary to heaven, men carry a heavy iron construction, the Varia, on which the girl personifying the black madonna ascends. The ritual implies, heretically, ...
-
The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln
By Fred GustafsonThe Black Madonna of Einsiedeln stands among the many Black Virgins that seem to imagistically express this dark side of the feminine in a creative transformational manner for both the individual and the collective.
-
Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna : a Ten-year Journey
By China GallandWith this book, China Galland brought increased attention to the spiritual traditions of the Black Madonna and other cross-cultural expressions of the feminine divine.