A Call From the Black Madonna - A Retreat for Women

Deborah Rose & Willow LaMonte
March 2-4

Increasing, people are being drawn to the image of the Black Madonna, who may be the primordial deity worshipped by our earliest ancestors. The dark-skinned Mother re-appeared in Europe in the Middle Ages as one of the most powerful and popular icons of Christianity. Later, colonized people continue to find their own dark-skinned deities embedded in the Black Madonna. In the 20th Century she resurfaced as a symbol of liberation and resistance: the Solidarity movement drew its inspiration from the Polish Black Madonna, Our Lady of Czestochowa; Mexicans revere Our Lady of Guadalupe is an agrarian Mother with the power to transform oppression.

The re-emergence of the Dark Madonna transcends Christian devotion. She has become a messenger through dreams and symbols; a metaphor for teachings on diversity and the unlearning of racism; and a passionate and increasing focus of interest within the women's spirituality movement. She represents something new to our time: the sanctity of the dark Earth, the holiness of the body, and a spirituality that is integrated and embodied in the ordinariness of daily life.

Willow and Deborah will present images and slides detailing the historical presence of the Black Madonna, many of her sites of worship, and her indigenous origins, but the main focus of our time will be experiential: we will invoke the presence of the Black Madonna and explore who she is to each of us through guided visualization, writing, movement, humor, music, and play. A ritual will complete the weekend: owning and then dissolving the fears and negativity we have placed upon the darkness, transforming our beliefs and integrating sacred darkness into a new context of self that welcomes what once was shamed and disowned. We will honor and celebrate our own bodies, the holy Earth, and the many peoples who live upon Her. Please bring drums and percussion instruments and something for the altar.
 

Deborah Rose is an acupuncturist, founding member and past president of the Acupuncture Society of Massachusetts. The Director of the Magdalineage Project, she researches, writes, leads Black Madonna pilgrimages to southern France, and has lectured extensively on various aspects of the goddess and female spiritual traditions, from which she draws her life inspiration. She co-created a theatre piece The Three Mary's Speak and her forthcoming book is The Mystery of the Black Madonna: A Personal Exploration.

Willow LaMonte is the editor and publisher of Goddessing Regenerated, a multi-cultural international journal of Goddess expression. She lived, befriended Rowe C&CC, and gardened in the hills of western Massachusetts for 25 years before moving to the island of Malta in 1994, where she researches prehistoric Goddess cultures. A Sicilian-American, she's particularly interested in the Black Madonnas and Goddesses of the Mediterranean and their links to African and West Asian Goddesses. She loves to dream in Neolithic. During Eastertime of 2001 Deborah and Willow will lead a tour to Sicily to explore how devotion to the Christian Mary "bleeds" through from earlier goddess worship.