The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln - An Ancient Image for Our Present Time

Preface

Thirty-six years have passed since I first visited the Black Madonna at Einsiedeln Switzerland and twenty-nine years since the first publication of this book. In the long history of ideas, this constitutes a short time though, typical of our present age, world events have accelerated beyond what was imagined half a century ago. During this time, we witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demise of apartheid in South Africa, and the emergence of previously unheard of advances in the world of technology that has united the world through the World Wide Web and e-mail. At the same time, and painfully the world has witnessed two Iraq Wars, a devastating 9/11, Katrina, a tsunami that captured the world heart, the continued deterioration of the world environment and the eschatological threat of global warming.

There are so many ways to look at these events, so many lenses to peer through to try to understand what has happened and what possibly lies before us as a world community. My study and this writing has been but one such lens chosen because of its neglect and an intuitive awareness that she represents a compensatory perspective to the westernized world especially that seems driven to excess by profit margins, religious and political fundamentalism and indifference to the place of human beings in the natural order of life.

The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln as well as the dark Goddesses throughout the world stand in direct opposition to this way of life or rather to the excessive degree to which they go. When the first edition of this book came out years ago, the gender climate of that time placed the notion of a black Madonna securely in the realm of the feminist movement. Though I understood this historically at that time, I also knew this was not about women alone, nor was it only about men. Rather, it involved both genders and their mutual relationship to our planet Earth. I also vaguely knew that the survival of our planet, the ability to make world peace based on respect for human and cultural diversity, the elimination of world poverty and hunger, and the move away from fundamentalism and sentimentality to a world of open eyes and hearts to the truth of things, depended on our ability to integrate what the dark Goddess means for our times.

There are many Black Madonnas or Goddesses throughout the world. The one at Einsiedeln, which this book is about, is a representation of these things. Whether a statue like at Einsiedeln or Monserrat Spain, or a painting as is Guadalupe in Mexico City or Czestochowa in Poland, the truth is they remain only that in the literal concrete sense if we do not strive to imagine our way deep into what they represent. In such a way, they become icons of our age and, like an icon, they are meant to carry us past their literal image to another world where the possibility of greater perspective, renewal and transformation can be experienced. Or, to say it another way, they act as a bridge for a soulful understanding of the interconnectedness of all things in the vast web of life. It is like looking out into a dark but starry night and realizing how wonderfully small we are and being aware of the miracle of our own existence as part of it all. There is no room here for heady piety, for exclusive religiosity, or political insensitivity.

I am convinced despite the chaos and violence that exists in the world today that human consciousness is striving to evolve to a day when the unnecessary and excessive sufferings we all too well know will not only be of the past but also a memory to hold near as a reminder of what we never want to have happen again. I am also convinced this is not automatic but is dependent on how quickly consciousness can be achieved on both an individual and especially collective level. Collective consciousness is like a huge sleeping giant that is just beginning to stir and stretch. As has been stated, world dramas move quickly in our times. The Black Madonna and all her world wide parallels hold a powerful key in helping to bring in a more just world. Where another thirty-five years will bring us is yet to be seen. But not to believe and strive for the conscious possibilities behind the Black Madonna as icon to another world means we have already arrived at our own immediate and tragic end. This book is meant as one small contribution to prevent such a demise as well as to stir the imagination of the reader regarding the dark feminine.

F.G., February, 2009

Introduction

A number of years ago, shortly after moving to Switzerland, I visited the Benedictine Monastery in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, where, for the first time, I saw the statue of the Virgin Mother popularly known as the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln. I remember how it struck me then as a curiosity, interesting, something I had never seen before. Only later did I find out that she was one of several hundred such black-hued madonnas throughout Europe. Looking back, I recall just how unconscious I was of her significance at first, though I did know something profound was touched within me. This something only later became clear.

The Black Virgin of Einsiedeln is not an isolated entity, but the product of many collective psychological forces that have influenced European history for hundreds of years. In his recent book, The Cult of the Black Virgin,¹ Ean Begg provides a thorough and succinct analysis of these many forces, both real and speculative, which have produced and sustained the Black Madonna phenomenon. Begg also presents a gazetteer of the some four hundred Black Madonnas throughout the world, and at the same time, questions why, being so spiritually powerful, they seem so little known.

Today the archetype of the feminine is coming to the fore worldwide, and with it a renewed interest in the Black Virgins. At Einsiedeln alone, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visit the shrine of the Black Madonna every year. Her specific historical roots go back a thousand years and are deeply embedded in Swiss history. Yet, pilgrims from all over the world are touched by her, by an aspect of the feminine embodied by her yet not normally acknowledged. This darker aspect of the feminine has throughout history been both feared and sought after, both hated and admired. The 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.

The larger repercussions of the Black Madonna phenomenon became clearer as I read Heinrich Zimmer’s book, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization,² in which he provides a very sensitive description of the Indian goddess Kali, who is greatly loved, terribly horrific and entirely black. I immediately made the connection with the Black Madonna at Einsiedeln – a connection that unlocked a host of questions regarding the dark side of the feminine within myself and within the culture around me.

It is not my purpose to discuss at any length the process of my own individuation as far as integrating the feminine principle is concerned, let alone its dark side. It is enough to say that I am male, white and of a Protestant background to suggest to most readers why the dark goddess would have some appeal to me. At the same time, the profoundly personal dimension of this study found parallels in the lives of people with whom I worked as an analyst and pastoral counselor, both men and women from a wide range of backgrounds.

It is not easy to quickly or simply answer the question of what the Black Madonna actually represents. One answer leads to more questions which in turn demand more explanations. A possible reason for this turmoil lies in the difficulty our culture has always had in consciously integrating the feminine side of life, and especially its dark side. Another reason is the nature of the dark feminine itself, which defies attempts to give eternally fixed limits to what she represents.³ Still, she reflects herself in our personal and collective lives and gives intimations of her most essential meaning through images, myths, dreams and fantasies. If we are willing to receive and be open to such phenomena, we stand a chance of not only knowing in part what she might represent but, more so, experiencing the healing force she embodies in our time.

Much has been said about our modern society being far too rational and masculine in its behavior and view of life. Because I believe this to be fundamentally true, it is necessary to point out that I am not writing as a male on behalf of woman, but as one person who happens to be male who has grown increasingly fatigued and weighed down with this cultural lopsidedness, which has distorted not only our understanding of the feminine, but of the masculine as well. One of the difficulties I have encountered in many attempts today to make room for the feminine is that they are made according to masculine guidelines and definitions, and this on the part of men and women alike. The feminine is all too often still forced to dance her seductive dance before our masculine view of things rather than dance her own dance, and in the end herself rejoice for our rejoicing. We repeatedly glorify her according to our biases, and so dig ourselves still deeper into our lopsidedness.

The dark feminine resists all attempts at idealization. Like the masculine, the feminine is archetypal, and it is the dark side of this archetype that alerts us to its autonomy. In the end, both the masculine and the feminine are sacred mysteries. In terms of myth, we are speaking here of the gods and goddesses, unknowable but ever-present.

It is my belief that the dark feminine as incarnated in such places as Einsiedeln represents a phenomenon that transcends local boundaries and relates to Western spirituality in general. The psychological force behind her – the dark nature of the feminine – is clearly seen not only by those who stand before her at Einsiedeln but also by those who do not know her name, yet clearly feel her effect within them. An analysand once told me that her ten-year-old son said he knew how people could start seeing God in a new way. How? his mother asked, to which her son replied, As a woman and black. A similar reflex to balance the lopsidedness is evident in a minor anecdote involving the United States space program. An astronaut, upon returning from outer space, was asked by a cynical reporter if he had seen God out there. The astronaut answered, Yes, and she’s black. Such responses are not accidental, but reflect the need of the soul to individually and collectively balance itself. Again, in the movie, O God, the befuddled protagonist finds himself chosen by God to remind the world of His message. One day when the man (played by John Denver) is working at the grocery store, God appears to him and they begin talking. The conversation becomes heated, and, to the protagonist’s embarrassment, a woman walks into their aisle; he turns to the customer to explain that this is indeed God and, turning back to point God out to the lady, discovers that God is now a hefty black woman.

Archetypal material is not possible to explain with a this or that response. Such material reveals itself though symbolic imagery in everyday life throughout individual and collective history. The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln is not just an isolated entity, but carries a religious and psychological significance with archetypal grounding. She is one of hundreds of other Black Madonnas throughout the world. Most renowned among these are Our Lady of Czestochowa in Jasna Gora, Poland, and Notre Dame de Monserrat in Spain. These Black Madonnas speak to that very deprived area of the soul which hungers for value and hope in the midst of the indefinition and incomprehensibility of life. Each is unique among her white counterparts. Each of these Black Madonnas carries the missing dark pole of the feminine archetype in our times.

It is possible to look at the Black Madonna in relation to several great goddesses in world religions, namely Kali of India, Hecate and Medusa of the Greeks, Isis of Egypt, as well as the ancient moon mysteries involving the feminine, the Eleusinian rites as essential to the Greeks and, to a great extent, the alchemy of the Middle Ages. Such a grounding gives her spiritual and psychological substance, and thus raises her to a level of importance and significance for the modern Western mind – an import that ought not to be ignored. It is my hope that, as she is enriched through such amplification, the Black Madonna will take on clearer focus regarding her value for the spiritual maturity of the Western world.

In North America there is very little knowledge or living experience of the Black Madonna phenomenon. Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico is the closest we come, geographically and spiritually. The long evolution that produces a Black Madonna like the one at Einsiedeln has just not happened on North American soil. As will be seen, however, the archetypal roots of the dark feminine have already manifested in our history and are emerging ever more consciously in our individual and collective lives. Yet, the dark feminine is rooted in the American soil itself, insofar as she represents the bounty and in particular the wisdom of the land. Native American cultures have traditionally understood this as have many indigenous peoples bound to the land by complex systems of ritual and attitude. There is, however, no call for sentimentality or idealizing when speaking of the dark feminine, for what she represents is at once beautiful and potentially horrifying. The traditional Native American knows this intuitively, the relationship between the giving and taking, the coming and going, the nurturing and the murderous.

Western culture, in its often