Customer Reviews

Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna A Ten-Year Journey

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Chna Galland's account of her spiritual odyssey, Longing For Darkness, is absolutely riveting. Her journey from her disappointment in her male-centered Roman Catholic tradition through Buddhism with its strong female Deity,Tara,only to find that feminine spirit inspiring the Black Madonnas of her own faith.By blending the two traditions, Ms.Galland found a spirituality that satisfied her longing for a feminine aspect of God. Her complete honesty about her inner being makes this book unique. Wherever she wanders, she connects with people of deep faith and learns from every tradition. This book is worth your effort.It may start you on your own spiritual journey, as it did for me.

China Galland began her pilgrimage at a time of inner turmoil. Alcoholic, a single mother, and addicted to perscription drugs, her story would seem something for us to pity. Actually, we never get the chance to pity her, because of her great strength of character. At one time a devout Catholic, she found that the old ways could not serve to nurture her spirit. She found the bureaucracy of the Church an obstacle, rather than a source of assistance. Its conception of an exclusively male divinity did not nurture her spiritually. Turning to Zen opened a door for her, but she needed a concept of divinity which embraced femininity. A chance meeting changed her life, revealing to her two avenues to investigate: the Tibetan goddess Tara, and the cult of the Black Madonna. Her quest became her new lease on life. Pursuing information about "The Goddess," with the vigor that Arthur's knights sought the Holy Grail, becomes an epic task. Every sojourn becomes a lesson in humility; her own hardships pale in comparison to the hardships of others, and the strength which they can exhibit. With determination, she seeks answers in Khatmandu, Chestochowa, Medjugorje, and many other places. The intensity of her presence apparently matches the intensity of her writing; people everwhere empathize, and help her. She convinces those in Dharmasala to allow her to speak with the Dalai Lama. In Gdansk, she persuades members of the Solidarity party to allow her to meet with Lech Walesa. She draws everyone into her pilgrimage, especially the reader. China Galland presents a feminine way of seeing, without pushing a Feminist agenda. Her words have great potency, and will have great meaning for most people, women and men. Although she succeeds in her quest to find spiritual meaning, the emotional weight of what she conveys requires that one read it slowly, in many sittings. When finished, the reader will also feel as if at the end of a long pilgrimage, and likely gain in personal insight.

Journey to Sobriety: Journey to God the Mother

China Galland is a writer, a mother of three, an alcoholic and a pilgrim, and "Longing for Darkness" is an account of her pilgrimage toward wholeness and healing.

This book is firstly an account of China Galland's spiritual journey toward sobriety. Secondly it is an account of her journey to and through Buddhism, of both Tibetan and Zen flavors, to the recovery of her own Catholic spiritual heritage, abandoned in the wake of patriarchal authoritarianism and misogyny, only to discover through the former's female deity, Tara, the strong, resilient, resisting feminine spirit inspiring the Black Madonnas of her own ancestry, blending the two traditions.

China Galland found a spirituality that satisfied her longing for the female face of God. "Longing For Darkness" is an absolutely compelling work, impossible to set down once one has begun the journey with the author. Her complete honesty about her inner being, her wllingness to place herself in a position of total vulnerability, to live in the moment, makes this book unique. Wherever the author journeys - whether to the Shrines of the Black Madonna in Poland, Switzerland, and southern France or to the temples of the Green and White Taras in Himalayan fastnesses or to the Temples of Kali, the Black Mother, in Delhi, she encounters people of deep faith and learns from every tradition, discovering that all of these variant images of God the Mother are but collateral descendents of a common ancestor and synthesizing her own way, a path strewn with flowers but without a name.

Though this is by no means a scholarly work on the historical derivations of the Maternal God (nor does it wish to be), it does provide a large amount of useful and interesting data, elaborating the dynamic interchanges between East and West since ancientmost times. Could Tara, Durga, Kali and the Blessed Virgin Mary and the host of Mother Gods of pre-Christian Europe all trace their ancestry to Astar/Astarte/Ishtar of ancient Persia, and could she herself be but a later manifestation of Isis, the black Mother God of the ancient Egyptians?

It is a possible, if not probable, thesis, but that is not the point of this book. Its work is not the elaboration of her Divine ancestry, but of her availability and her universality. There is a wonderful Sanskrit hymn translated in "Longing for the Darkness," which I quote here:

"Alas I do not know either the mystical word or the mystical diagram, nor do I know the songs of praise to thee, nor how to meditate upon thee nor how to welcome thee, nor how to inform thee of my distress. But this much I know, oh Mother: that to take refuge in thee is to destory all my miseries."

I have no wish to take the author to task for leaving undone something she's not undertaken to do, but I would have loved to have read something in this work dealing with the many images of the Dark Mother existing in various Afro-American traditions, particularly the treatment of Ezili Danto (or Danto, as she is more commonly known in the Voodoo/Voudoun tradition) whose ancestry is directly traceable to the Madonna of Czestochowa; indeed, the image of Danto re-presents exactly the two scratches on the face of the Polish icon left from a vandal's sword attack in 1430 and in Haiti attributed to Ezili's battles with her rival deity, Freda.

If you are aware that you are on a personal journey, then it will touch you that China Galland shared hers with us. This book allows the reader to accompany her on this journey that spans more than a decade through many continents and countries on a quest.

China Galland tells us the story of her recovery and reveals herself in a very human, intimate way.

I have never read anything like it. It inspired me as I struggle through some of the most difficult parts of my journey. Sometimes we find that things are the hardest right before we have a breakthrough, when we are on the verge of something. . . Like the expression, "it is always darkest before dawn".

Next, I will re-read Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist.

This is not for the faint-of-heart, cultureless, or close-minded.

Enjoy!!!

Longing For Darkness is a beautiful, thoughtful pilgrimage to and communion with the dark, feminine facets of that which is divine. Within the pages of her book, China Galland bravely explores the depths of forgiveness, faith, devotion, loss, love and longing; a journey spanning the globe and the soul.

If you are looking for scholarly answers to the possible connection between the Black Madonnas of Europe and the Tibetan Tara and Indian Kali, this book will probably frustrate you. Galland's approach is to take us along for the ride as she explores both psychologically and physically the places of the Dark Mother. Not exactly travel writing, and not exactly spiritual memoir, her book combines some of both styles. Sometimes you may wish she spent less time describing the flowers on her walks and the twists and turns of her own anxieties and questioning. But she is a more or less pleasant travel companion, so if you want to cover the same ground, this is not a bad book.

What I enjoyed most was her description of an annual pilgrimage in Poland from all parts of the country to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. Who knew that a million people spend two weeks every year walking, praying, singing and camping as they return to the Madonna who represents their nation? Who remembered that Lech Walesa was inspired by this Madonna and that Solidarity banners were flown by these pilgrims in spite of being illegal. I was inspired to recall that a non-violent spiritual movement is what brought freedom to Poland.

I also took comfort in the fact that after abandoning her devout Catholicism and practicing first in the Zen tradition and then the Tibetan tradition, China Galland found herself also drawn to re-integrate her own spiritual heritage. Her experiences in Poland and Medjorge Yugoslavia are as important as her visits with the Dalai Lama and Tara initiations.

Though the book is a bit dated, most of the issues she raises continue to be relevant. I read this to help me understand The Secret Life of Bees better as a teacher, and it certainly does that. I wonder if Sue Monk Kidd may have read it too.

This book by China Galland has opened my mind to various questions about my own spirituality and about the sources of iconic and archetypal figures in religions. I've become thirsty for more knowledge due to this book, and I don't know whether to be thankful, or not.

However, it is deeply involving, dragging one into this journey, this search for self or deeper understanding, under the guise of searching for the Black Madonna archetype in different cultures around the world. As always, the answer is within oneself, but sometimes you can't find that answer without dragging yourself all over heck and creation, as does China Galland. I still don't know if she really has "found" anything, or not, but I think she's gaining a great deal of other kinds of knowledge trying.

After two divorces and three children, China Galland found herself "lost in the wilderness of the single-parent family" and struggling with alcoholism. Having left the Catholic church in which she was raised, she turned to nature for solace, but eventually found that her time there simply made her need for a spiritual life more obvious.

In January 1977 she went to a monastery in New Mexico to try to reclaim Catholicism, only to find herself a stranger. The masculine terms of the mass&mdas;Our Father, His body, His blood, God the Father, God the Son--and the Virgin's remoteness, impossible goodness, and inhuman purity fills her with grief and despair. There is no place for her here.

China begins a spiritual quest for the feminine face of God. Her search takes her from the rapids of the Rio Grande River in Texas to Nepal, India, France, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and Poland--places where the goddess is still venerated today. She explores many aspects of divine femininity, acquainting the reader with the Order of the Woman in the Wilderness, Hindu goddesses Durga and Kali, the Greek goddess Artemis and more. The goddess Tara of Buddhism and the Black Madonna of Poland are the images to which she is most deeply drawn. She leads a group on a pilgrimage in the mountains of Nepal and joins the annual pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa in Poland.

Following the thread of Christian mysticism, China finds people like Meister Eckhart, the abbess Hildegarde and Julian of Norwich, who spoke of God as Mother. She discovers images of the goddess as far away as Kathmandu and as close to home as the Rio Grande Valley. She says, "The darkness of these female gods comforted me. It felt like a balm on the wound of the unending white maleness that we had deified in the West. They were the other side of everything I had ever known about God."

Some of the most appealing aspects of this book were China's encounters with other women during her search. She weaves the stories of Auschwitz survivors, visionaries of Medjugorje, French gypsies, and Mexican peasants into her own. Her book is really an adventure story set in both inner and outer worlds--beautifully written, soulfully told, and wonderfully illustrated with a number of amazing photographs.

I was inspired by China's determination to forge a spiritual life that not only included, but celebrated, her womanhood. It parallels my own search, though mine was not so adventurous or far-flung! I suspect many women yearn for feminine images of the Divine. This book supplies a wonderful array of those, presented by a woman compelled to find a vision of God that worked for her. Since her story is so deeply personal, it is much more accessible and enjoyable than many of the didactic texts available. China was born in Texas and has been a university lecturer, wilderness guide, journalist, and long-time student of Buddhism and comparative religion. She now works as a research associate at the Center for Women and Religion in California and is married with three grown children. Another work by Galland is the non-fiction book, Women in the Wilderness.

by Carolyn Blankenship
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

This is a fascinating journey of a woman trying to combine her past and present. We see a lot of spiritual journey's that men take but not the female side. This really opened my eyes!

I just heard her speak at the New York Open Center on the Black Madonna; she read some passages of this book and her new book, The Bond Between Women. Absolutely incredible! I was extremely moved. If all recovering addicts realized their anger is at the dysfunction man has suffered at the hands of man, and turned that addiction into passion for peace and justice in the world, our world would truly be a better place.