Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers [Paperback]

Lucia Birnbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2002

Bringing a feminist perspective to contemporary findings of geneticists and archeologists, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, cultural historian, points out that the oldest veneration we know is of a dark mother of central and south Africa, whose signs-ochre red and the pubic V-were taken by african migrants after 50,000 BCE to caves and cliffs of all continents. The oldest sanctuary in the world was created in 40,000 BCE by african migrants in Har Karkom, later called Mt. Sinai, foundation place of judaism, christianity, and islam.Lucia documents the continuing memory of the dark mother and her values in prehistoric images of the dark mother, in historic black madonnas and in other dark women divinities whose sanctuaries are on african paths. She tracks the memory in rituals and stories of her sicilian grandmothers, in persecution of dark others in patriarchal Europe and the United States, in the rise of nonviolent dark others since the 1960s,in the banners of the 1995 world conference of women at Beijing, and in art. She finds the dark mother's values-justice with compassion, equality, and transformation-in everyday and celebratory rituals of the world's subaltern cultures-and suggests that the image and values are in the submerged memories of everyone.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Ph.D, has written Liberazione della donna. Feminism in Italy. And Black Madonnas. Feminism, religion, and politics in Italy. Both received awards in the United States and in Italy. She is Professor of Women's Spirituality, California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (January 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059520841X
• ISBN-13: 978-0595208418
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #274,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A groundbreaking work of staggering importance, March 7, 2002

By 

Mary Saracino (Denver, Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers (Paperback)

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum's most recent book, Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers, carves new passageways into the collective unconscious of human spirituality. Her premise-that the oldest veneration known to humankind was of a divinity both African and female-shatters the dominant paradigm. Drawing on the scholarship of archeologists, geneticists, and cultural historians Birnbaum crafts an intricate thesis and supports it with impeccable research. Her words lead us back to our most ancient origins. She brings an astute awareness and reclamation of her roots as a Sicilian American woman to her analysis. In doing so, Birnbaum takes readers on a serpentine journey through time and place and memory where the essence of the Dark Mother resides-in art, in ritual, and in the stories and the ethos of the subaltern peoples of the world. Dark Mother is deeply moving and provocative. Ultimately it is a book that will transform the way we think about gender, race, class, spirituality and cultural legacy. The Dark Mother's values of justice with compassion, equality, and transformation are as vitally necessary today as they were in 50,000 BCE when migrants out of central and south Africa carried them to the wider world. This book is an important contribution to the scholarship of women's spirituality. It is an equally invaluable record of mother-loss and a treatise on humankind's cellular longing for a reunion with the feminine principle of divinity. As intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally compelling, Birnbaum has written a groundbreaking work that challenges and delights.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Courageous!......, April 20, 2002

By 

Matomah Alesha (Tucson, AriZona USA ...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers (Paperback)

I have read many books on the Black Goddess and have been disappointed that the most obvious fact about the dark Mother the world over is not recognized. People cannot grasp the meaning of any dark Mother until one connects Her to Her original home and perception. When books don't do this, the document is left in endless speculation "on what these icons could possibly mean." They are African women....no mystery there. Lucia Birnbaum's book does not involve itself with speculation or fanciful tales about the dark Mother. She bravely goes to the source;....to Africa, to Kemet, to Carthage, to West Asia, to Sicily, to the folktales and readings of native Southern Italians, to the dreams and theories of dark others and to her own wise knowing. Her book does not just connect the dots clearly to Africa and beyond but she also unites herself with people all over the world who dream of a more humane and just world. This work represents for me the next level. It is not womanism, humanism, environmentalism, new age or anything else. It is the gradual maturity and transcendence of everything. It is the bubbling forth of basic truths laying dormant for generations. Wonderful Wonderful Wonderful work.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Out of Africa -- Our Source Mother, April 9, 2002

By 

Joan Levinson (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers (Paperback)

As a young girl I liked to read encyclopedia articles on people or countries or history. Though comprehensive and informative they were always linear, lacking the unexpected and unusual. But here is a book that gives us the meandering trail of the DARK MOTHER, the astounding story of the primordial earth diety first worshipped in Africa and subsequently spread by African people to every continent. It is a new understanding of why so many traditional peoples, especially those who live in rural/agrarian areas, still revere female deities transmogrified into "black" virgins in the Catholic and Eastern churches, adopted by Latin American indigenous cultures, and found widely in Asian religions as well. Lucia Birnbaum provides the evidence for an understanding of the depth and ferver of emotion around what appears to be a deeply unconscious connection with a fecund female earth that has always and still provides for life on earth. Starting from memories of her Sicilian grandmothers' stories and practices, she weaves genetics, archaeology, art, geography into a rich and fascinating story of global religious practices that, surprisingly, makes the whole of humankind one literal family. A great read!!