Customer Reviews

The Cult of the Black Virgin (Arkana)

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The book is very detailed and most informative when it comes to the black madonna cult. It deals with almost everything, if not all, of the ancient goddesses, and some of the gods - from Egypt to Greece. I also got very eerie when I was reading about some of these Goddesses activities. I liked very much the summary on the relevance and relationship of The Templars, Cathars to the Black Goddesses cult! The author also touches the crux of Gnosticism and shows how it relates to the above three Orders. Its conclusion regarding why the statues of the virgin are black, is not that explicit, but during the whole text the author does inform the reader of all the reasons as to its blackness, and indeed you will draw your conclusions! All in all, a very good book on the subject. Get it!

If you are fascinated with the goings-on of early Christianity and have been following the growing litany of books - both semi-serious (Holy Blood, Holy Grail) or fanciful (Da Vinci Code) - this book belongs on your reading list.

Make no mistake about this work. It is a serious treatise, with a focus on the historical sources of the cult of the Black Virgin. The author notes that many of the more than 500 images of the Black Virgin found in Western Europe in general and France in particular were created around the time of the Crusades (1100-1300). He draws some interesting parallels between Catharism, the Knights Templar, and the quest for the holy grail. He also discusses the Mergovingian dynasty and even the Abbe Sauniere (who is featured so prominently in current fiction). But the general thrust and importance of this work is to identify the locations and possible origins of the Black Virgin icons. Begg's writing is dense, dispassionate, and frankly tough going in many spots. His gazeteer and maps are of great importance for those interested in this aspect of religious history, whether or not you're a believer.

I was disappointed that this short book (the text is only about 150 pp) was more about the myths concerning everything from Sumerian goddesses to Marian apparitions than about history and fact concerning the Black Virgin (BV) sites. The author mixes myth and fact so much that is hard to tell what he believes to be true and real. There is nothing wrong with exploring myths, but it makes difficult reading trying to constantly separate them from any kernels of fact that may be there.

I was looking for more on reasons and history of the BV sites in Europe. Maybe their origins are so obscured in history as to make this an impossible task.

The bulk of the book is a gazetteer of the BV sites in Europe. For anyone who plans to travel in Europe -As I plan to soon, this would be valuable to have along.

There is some information concerning the Templars, Mary Magdalene, Bernard de Clairveaux, and others, but there are many better books on these subjects. I would recommend: Holy Blood, Holy Grail; The Woman With the Alabaster Jar, and The Second Messiah for starters.

Christian Europe's ancient artistic interpretations of the Mother of God and the infant Son of God as dark fleshed is vastly too little known. Fortunately, despite the countless loss of such images through the natural ravages of time, church fires, numerous religious wars, revolutions, and also intentional discolorings passed off as "restoration," there are still quite enough of these paintings and statues left to discern that Europe's devotion to a Mary fashioned as a black woman is as ancient as it was widespread. From Spain to Sicily, hundreds of these sacred tools of worship can still be found quietly preserved in churches, shrines, museums and in numerous private collections. In the interest of preserving as much knowledge as possible regarding mankind's most ancient representation of the Deity, Ean Begg has created a priceless volume which dutifully fulfills a most necessary purpose.

It was astonishing to learn how numerous the sites dedicated to the Black Madonna are. The maps of France and Iberia reveal a widespread & dense network of shrines, especially in France. Neither historians nor theologians have investigated the matter in any detail although literary & historical interest has surged over the last century. Most people are at least familiar with the Black Madonna of Czestochova, the "queen" of Poland.

Begg approaches the subject from the angle of psychological archetypes. He recommends the following as the most useful sources:
Etude sur l'origine des Vierges Noires by Marie Durand-Lefebvre;
Nos Vierges Noires, leurs origins by Emile Saillens;
L'Enigme des Vierges Noires by Jacques Huynen.

In the Merovingian period (500 - 750) many Black Virgin shrines were revived. Then in 888 the Dark Madonna of Montserrat was discovered in a mountain cave. But it was in the 12th century that the Black Madonna really came into her own as part of the Gothic renaissance. In the literature, mention of the phenomenon has been traced to 1255 whilst many place names imply considerable antiquity.

The author provides a long list of reasons given to explain the dark hues of the icons. There is little doubt that early images of the Madonna & Child are based on that of Horus & Isis. Begg points out the correspondences with St Mary the Egyptian and Mary Magdalene plus the Merovingians, Holy Grail, Templars, Cathars - all those Da Vinci Code puzzles - and the ominous promise of a second Constantine or Charlemagne.

With the victory of Constantine Christianity, Caesaro-Papism established itself as orthodoxy. In the same century in Edessa, Mary mother of Jesus was declared "Theotokos," mother of God. From there the concept entered the West, merging with ancient goddesses in Europe, thus re-establishing the Mother Goddess religion that must be about 30 000 years old.

The author calls the 12th century an era of riddles & puzzles. In his opinion, the popularity of the Black Goddess was a response to an intense yearning for the feminine principle. One of her devotees was Bernard of Clairvaux, a friend of St Malachy of the famous papal prophecies. Bernard opposed Abelard - one of the very few friends of the Jews in church history - in whose theology reason & fact were given their rightful place.

Bernard was a strange type who in 1096 launched the first crusade & the resultant Kingdom of Jerusalem & he had strong ideas of the role of the Emperor & the Pope in Christendom. Another oddity about him is the, uh, sensual way he expressed his love for Christ, as if he could not distinguish different types of love.

Begg does not mention it, but the first crusade started out with the massacre of Jews. These atrocities were especially widespread in the Rhineland. It was in this time that anti-Jewish passion in the Christian world markedly intensified. To the theological calumnies were added the blood libel, the ridiculous notion of the desecration of the host, poisoning of wells and causing the plague.

In the Christian imagination the Jew became the symbol of evil. Such perverse scapegoating does not derive from the history of ideas. It resulted from pressures on the Christian psyche exerted by the theological shift to the suffering & the blood of Christ, a change that induced guilt, repression & projection. The Passion Plays were born in this period and Christian art underwent a morbid transformation. William Nichols examines this issue at length in his brilliant book Christian Antisemitism.

Begg compares the Black Madonna to a most exhausting list of female archetypes including every obscure goddess in the Gnostic, Celtic, Teutonic, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Hindu and Sumerian pantheons, and with reference to the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and the daughter of Pharaoh who adopted Moses. He observes that the dark side of the BV is Lilith, a demon of night and storms, an image that occurs in Isaiah where it is called a screech-owl; it is also found in the Kabbalah and in the scripture of the Gnostic Mandaeans. One of her names is Lamiah, which bears an association with witches.

The 12th century saw the construction of the great gothic cathedrals and the popularity of pilgrimages, like that to Santiago de Compostela. Begg makes a solid case for an intimate connection between all these phenomena and the cult. He discusses a long list of saints of the "hidden order" all the way back to John the Baptist. He refers to the book Mammon and the Black Goddess by Robert Graves.

Discussing the symbolic meaning of the BV, Begg mentions the romantic aspects of the Templars, Troubadours & Cathars, endorses the view that men must relate consciously to the power of the feminine principle and stresses its importance in what he sees as a crumbling patriarchal society. Astrology, the Tarot, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the hidden stream in Christianity and alchemy as precursor to modern depth psychology are examined, with reference to Jung's The Undiscovered Self. He seems very positively disposed to the resurgence of the cult.

My main problem with the book is that Begg only goes back to the Sumerians. Besides a short sentence or two, he completely ignores the millennia when the BV was worshiped in Eurasia. Not even the statues of Malta get a mention - those famous images of the goddess with the grotesquely enlarged reproductive organs. Nothing on the Neolithic evidence, Altamira, Lascaux or the prehistoric statuettes carved from mammoth ivory. He moreover regards the apparitions at inter alia Lourdes, Fatima & Zeitoun in a favorable light. I find them sinister and I doubt they have anything to do with Mary the wife of Joseph. I agree with him that they will become more frequent but I dread the potential for mass hysteria & fanaticism.

The book contains a massive Gazetteer of sites worldwide where the BV was and still is venerated. The book contains photographs, a bibliography lacking Marija Gimbutas and index.

I have the kindle edition of this book. It has no text to speach so I can't set it up to read to me when I'm cooking or in the bath tub. The text is really snall and I have to srtain to see it. Ihe information is great, I just recomend buying the papperback not the kindle version.