The image of the Dark Mother, the Black Madonna, in the Christian tradition, is surfacing for increasing numbers of Euro-Americans. She swims up through dreams, poetry, and narratives, through academic research in anthropology, through the history of cultures, world religion, psychology, mythology, art history, and the arts. She is woven into the very fabric of the European Catholic tradition. She can be traced back until at least the 8th century. In the English-speaking world, books began to appear on the Black Madonnas in the 1980's. Despite many years of Catholic education, I had never known of them. I first began to be aware of European Black Madonnas in 1983, in particular, the Swiss Black Madonna, when I was shown a photograph of her in an anthropology text. In Switzerland, her shrine is enclosed within a large, venerable, centuries old, Benedictine monastery outside of Zurich in the village of Einsiedeln (Appendix, figure 1). But before going further, let me provide some context.

I had left the Catholic Church by my early 20's, having taken the Church at Her word about being our mother. As in the case with one's own mother, a time comes when it is important to leave the house. I went first into the wilderness, then East to study Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition, where I was able to find an image of the fully empowered feminine, the female Buddha Tara, who vowed only to be enlightened in a woman's body. Tara is one of several female Buddhas that can be found in the Tibetan tradition. The central Tara, the Green Tara of the Khadirivani Forest, is traditionally believed to have twenty-one forms, at least three of which are fierce, dark blue, blue-black, or black. In this Eastern tradition, I found a dynamic, positive image of dark female divinity - the reverse of everything I had been taught about God. And though I had never seen these deities before, I immediately recognized them and understood that they carried what was so often lacking in Western culture an empowered image of the dark female divine. Tara was not only the Bodhisattva of Compassion, a saint, but the Goddess of Compassion, and a female Buddha, a Buddha considered "the Mother of All the Buddhas."

While on a trip to India to interview His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, I went through the ancient city of Banaras. There, when I was taken to a Hindu Temple to the god, Shiva, I was drawn into a smaller shrine room where I found myself face to face with a beautiful, peaceful, coal-black statue that my guide explained was one of the forms of Kali, one of the wives of Shiva and the Hindu Goddess of the Void. Devotees had placed a garland of yellow marigolds around her neck. As I stood before her, I suddenly realized that though I might study Buddhism for the rest of my life, there were aspects of Tibetan Buddhism that are cultural and belonged to Tibetans; I would always be an outsider, looking in. The same was true of Hinduism, which I knew even less about. I would never be Tibetan; I would never be Indian. I understood for the first time how I had left my own culture behind and turned my back on the first twenty-five years of my life. Now, I knew it was time to turn back to my own traditions, I did not have to be an outsider. I remembered the photograph of the Black Madonna in Einsiedeln, and the darkness of the deity in front of me suggested connections across cultures that I had never dreamed of.

In that moment, I resolved to view the darkness of the Black Madonna as a way to re-examine my own tradition. From India, I went to Europe, to the shrine of the Black Madonna at Einsiedeln. There I discovered that the Patron of Poland is a Black Madonna, Our Lady of Czestochowa; as is the Patron of Spain, Our Lady of Montserrat; the Patron of Sicily, the Black Madonna of Tindari, the patron of Italy; the Black Madonna at Loreto, great miracle workers one and all, powerful healers, and national patrons.

There are also Black Madonnas in Austria, Belgium, Russia, Finland, and the former Yugoslavia. Some of the "Black" Madonnas come out of the Byzantine icon tradition and are not actually black in color, but "cosmic red," the dark, red-brown earthy color of the Madonna's face often used in Byzantine icons. There are Black or Dark Madonnas in South Texas as well as in the American Southwest; in Mexico, in Central America, in South America, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

There are also cross-cultural parallels found in other mainstream traditions, including the indigenous, earth-based cultures such as the Native American Hopi's tradition where the black Crow Mother comes to preside over weddings. There is Yemaja, the Orisha of the ocean in the Candombl6 tradition of Brazil, there is Ezili and Lasyrenn in the Vodou tradition; the Pachamama of the Andes.

The Dark Mother is a figure found in culture after culture. She may also be the Great Earth Mother of the pre-IndoEuropean tradition when black was considered the symbol of life and fertility, and white indicated death. Of the Black Madonnas in Europe alone, anthropologists determined that at least thirty were intended to be dark or black. It is surprising to still find entries in respectable art and religious art history books that claim these statues have darkened because of candle smoke. How is it that none of the other statues in the Church darkened, only the Madonna? Could racism have anything to do with our ignorance of this figure?

Estimates of the number of Black Madonnas to be found in Europe alone, range from thirty to over three hundred. Of these, the thirty that were intended to be black, are statues that were not black because of tarnished silver, or pigment in paint, or wood that darkened over time, but because it is their proper color. In southern France, the story of the Black Madonna is intertwined with that of Magdalene, and Isis, who originated in Egyptian Africa. In the Camargue, where the Rhone river pours out into the Mediterranean, I found Saint Sara, the Patron and Queen of the Gypsies, who is also called "Sara-Kali." My intuition at Banaras, that these dark feminine divinities were connected cross-culturally, was wonderfully being affirmed. The Gypsies migrated into europe from India centuries ago.

Let me read a portion of my new book, The Bond Between Women, A Journey to Fierce Compassion, at this juneture. What follows is from the chapter on the Black Madonna of Brazil.

"Venerated for centuries in vast cathedrals, the Black Madonnas have always been held to be powerful miracle workers and healers. Yet few have commented on the darkness of her face. Some say she is darkened from candle smoke; others say she has survived fires that destroyed all but her. I say that it is because she has entered so many lives on fire, because she absorbed so much suffering.

Some say that she is black for no reason, that her darkness means nothing. Others say she is a symbol, an archetype, psyche's shadow. I say she is all these things and also that she is a black woman, a woman of color, a brown woman, a red woman, and more. She is not white. She is more, she includes all colors. She is dark because we come in so many colors, hues, and shades, and no one is to be left out.

Like a river, her darkness comes from numerous sources, a multiplicity of streams. She surfaces in European and Near Eastern sites where black meteorite stones fell out of the sky and were then venerated. She rises by healing waters, streams, rivers, and deltas. In some places, she is associated with storms, lightning and thunder. Her waters are fed by streams of a tradition where black symbolized Wisdom. The Womb of God. The world of medieval mystics. The Womb of Enlightenment from the East. From Africa. The Root. Wisdom herself. She is rising to remind us that what we call darkness is invisible light. That ninety percent of what is, is invisible. That darkness matters, is to be valued, treasured."

The image of the Black Madonna, this Dark Mother, is appearing in the human psyche now because we need her. She has been standing in churches for hundreds of years. Except for a handful of anthropologists in the 1940's and 50's, few have noticed her until the 1980's.

Images are sacred vessels and they contain information, they reflect and magnify our own capacities. They function as portals, doorways, porous membranes through which the unseen world can pour, because part of the information that we need now, is the awareness of the indivisibility of our relationships with each other, with people of all races, nationalities, ethnicities, classes, and with the earth and all her creatures. We suckle and feed upon this earth like a child does its mother. We are completely dependent upon our relationships and this is what we are dying to leave out-our relatedness to the earth and to each other. We cannot live for more than five minutes without air, and yet we imagine we are self-sufficient.

In addition to the racism that our country labors under, Black Madonnas may be so little known within the United States because they are Madonnas of the people, beloved by her lay followers. The clergy I spoke with in Europe could give no reason why she was dark. In contrast, in Brazil, where the Patron of the country is also a Black Madonna, Our Lady of Aparecida, the Mother of the Excluded, the Archbishop told me that she is black because she is the Mother of all people, we all belong to her. She is the dark one who champions all that is left out and symbolizes what must be included now. (Appendix, figure 2)

Again I will read from The Bond Between Women.

"This positive, dynamic, powerful, dark Mother weaves a bond that reaches beyond cultures and across time, a bond that gives us back our history with one another. She provides a bridge across cultures. She gives us back not only the connection between the sacred and the world of nature and the body, but she gives us the very ground of being, the world's body in which we all live with all creatures. She gives us earth, water, air, and fire. Her creation then goes beyond. She helps us cross over. She is the other side, both the river and the shore.

Whoever this dark one is, whether she appears as Virgin, Mother, Crone, Goddess, or Queen, she is found underneath tradition after tradition: the Aztec Goddess Tonantsin, at whose site Guadalupe, the Patron of all the Americas, appeared; the Pachamama, the source of life for the Andes people; the AfricanEgyptian Goddess, Isis, whose worship continued to spread and flourish throughout Europe during the second and third centuries after Christianity began; the Hindu Kali, carried from India to France by the Gypsies on their migrations; the Orishas, brought from Africa to Brazil and then to the Americas. There was an indigenous, Black, Caucasian goddess of regeneration and fertility, the earth mother of pre-Indo-European Europe.

She is the ground, the earth herself, and the root below. She gives us our depth, the darkness we need to grow. The taller the tree, the deeper the root system needs to be. She is also the Tree of Life, this little dark one, and our mother. We need only examine our own traditions, whatever they may be, and go beneath the surface. She has been there all along, just under our feet."

How long will we whitewash the fact that the woman, who appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 in Mexico, was dark skinned? That she spoke Nuahtl, the Aztec tongue, and that she appeared at the site of Tonantsin, the Aztec Earth Mother, who clad herself in snakes, hearts, and hands?

And as I wrote in Longing for Darkness, Tara and the Black Madonna, Eduardo Galeano tells us that was the Catholic Bishop, Zumarraga, who called this apparition of Juan Diego's "Guadalupe," the dark Madonna from Estramadura, Spain, the part of Spain that had been ruled by the Moors. Zumarraga was the same Bishop who had the Aztec temples torn down and set on fire, destroying twenty thousand idols. Zumarraga, the Indian's protector, was the church's shepherd who kept the branding iron that stamped the Indian's faces with the names of their protectors. This is Guadalupe, the Patron of All the Americas, and one of the many dark or Black Madonnas in our hemisphere.

I cannot help but wonder and want to see what would it be like if the Catholic churches in this country had a Black Madonna, like Einsiedeln or a Dark Madonna, like Guadalupe, alongside a fair-skinned Madonna. What would it be like if we had grown up with this multiplicity of images, images that included darker-skinned people? When will we claim this dark Mother, acknowledge and honor the terrible history that goes with her? This positive, dark Mother is thoroughly embedded in our world's religious systems. She sits waiting for us, offering us a way to restore the sacramental view of nature. She gives us a positive, dynamic image of the beauty of diverse cultures. Because there is an "ongoing reciprocity" in the world, as Merleau Ponte calls it, or as the Buddhists call it, "co-dependent arising," this image of the Great Mother comes to us now to reflect back the inseparable relationship with the earthly biosphere that we are in, a reality best expressed, as eco-theologian Thomas Berry says in Dream of the Earth, in the symbol of the Great Mother. He tells us that the Great Mother is one of the archetypal symbols that we need now, one of the primary symbols that can give us the energy we need to tap. It is one thing to know that we need to change, it is another thing to tap the energy for change.

One of the most notable developments within science is this growing awareness of the physical, psychic dimension of reality, Berry holds, an awareness that has lent rise to a new sense of the Earth and the revelation that she holds. I maintain that the Black Madonnas, and other female deities with dark forms, are signifiers of this development within the worlds' soul. At the beginning of The Bond Between Women: A Journey to Fierce Compassion, I tell the ancient story from the Hindu DeviMahatmya, the story of Durga, the warrior goddess, a story with great meaning for us now. This story tells us that once before, the world was on the verge of destruction. Rivers had dried up, plants would not grow, people were starving, war was everywhere, and many said the world was being destroyed by demons, traditionally symbols of some of our worst human failings: greed, hate, and delusion, the same ones destroying us today. The demons were so powerful that all the male gods fought to defeat them, but all the gods were defeated, one by one. They withdrew to the Himalayas, leaving the world to its own destruction.

Finally, it was remembered that this time of destruction had been foretold. The ancient prophecy held that only a goddess would be able to defeat the demons, only a woman could save the world. On hearing this, the gods shot forth streams of divine fire into a pillar of flames as high as the Himalayas themselves, and out of this fire rode Durga with ten hands and arms, riding a lion, her face blazing like a thousand suns. During the battles that followed, Kali sprang from her forehead to fight by her side. Near the end, the Lord of the Demons, Sumbha, appeared after all of his demons had been defeated, to challenge Durga to a battle for the fate of the world. Durga drew her female warriors and Kali back into herself and rode her lion out onto the battlefield. Thus began a battle that rocked the heavens and ended only when Durga finally stabbed Sumbha in the heart with her dagger. He fell from the heavens and the world was saved. The gods rejoiced and crowned Durga the Queen of the Universe. Rivers returned to their courses; singing and music returned to the world. People gathered and everyone begged the Goddess Durga to stay and rule the world. But her answer was "no," she would not stay and rule the world, but there would be no need to worry. She tells them, "If the world is ever again threatened, I will return."

The fierce, divine feminine, who comes to save the world when it is on the verge of destruction, can only return through us. The divine has no place else to reside but in and through us. We are the matrix. Love does not reside in statues, icons, or temples. There is only love in the world if we have love, and are loving, tolerant, and kind. There is only compassion in the world if we are compassionate.

I will close with a dream. In the dream, I was giving a lecture, telling people that it was time to bring forward this material on the Black Madonna because she can help us heal our fractured racial history with one another by giving us a spiritual context. This is why I stand before you now.

I will leave you with one last image. In the Gospel of Luke at the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will be able to conceive a child because "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God" (Luke 1:35).

The Black Madonna is also Mary at the moment of conception, impregnation, when she was shadowed by God. It was God's shadow that made the child holy, God's Darkness. The Black Madonna show us what it looks like to be covered by God.

China Galland The founder and Director of the Images of Divinity Research Project (IOD), an independent project sponsored by the Center for Women and Religion at the GTU, Berkeley, Galland has been a Research Associate at the Center since 1987. IOD works to reclaim living traditions of the enlightened divine feminine bring them into main

stream American culture, promote religious pluralism, dissolve the barriers of race and gender, and repair connections with earth-based, indigenous traditions where they are found. Galland has served as Lecturer at Boston College in the English Department, and has taught at the California State Summer School for the Arts. A prize-winning fiction writer, Galland has also worked as a wilderness guide. Her nonfiction work includes Women in the Wilderness, Harper & Row; Longing for Darkness, Tara and the Black Madonna, and the forthcoming book, The Bond Between Women: A Journey to Fierce Compassion, Riverhead Books, April, 1998.

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