Soma Sophia
The Field Body & Metanarrative
Reality is in-formed by soul's metaphorical weave of mythical narrative. Soul (anima) is an active intelligence that forms or plots our fates. Being-in-Anima (esse in anima) is to be ensouled. Soma Sophia, the Body of Wisdom is inherent dwelling within the body of
Anima Mundi.
“Wisdom has built her house; she has set up her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, and she has set her table. She has sent out her house cleaners to call from the highest places in the town …‘ come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed…live, and walk in the way of insight.’” ~ Proverbs 9:1-6
Anima Mundi.
“Wisdom has built her house; she has set up her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, and she has set her table. She has sent out her house cleaners to call from the highest places in the town …‘ come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed…live, and walk in the way of insight.’” ~ Proverbs 9:1-6
Soma Sophia,
by Iona Miller
“To me it's very obvious that consciousness is not simply an epiphenomenon, not a byproduct of the brain; it's something that's pervading the whole universe. . . . Consciousness is not simply produced by a complex set of neurons. It's there, in the whole body, and in all of existence.” ~Ervin Laszlo, Philosopher
Sometimes we have to address the external realities of a situation and sometimes its spirit or essential nature. The same is true for our bodies and souls. Significance is extracted from the experiential responses of our whole being -- soma significance, the felt-sense wisdom of the bodymind, which we can personify as Soma Sophia.
We can use the wisdom of the bodymind to face stress, pain, loss, illness, even catastrophe. Creative transformation of our instinctive reactions produces the gold, whether we call that essence health, art, flow, or inspiration. Psychic sustenance is found within. Once the mindbody connects with Source, all of our self-expression becomes soulful. We truly embody spirit.
That Source is the source of psychic energy, our libido, which becomes available for negentropic or entropic expression. Its tangible root lies within our very energy/matter as the plenum that science calls the vacuum fluctuation or zero-point energy, the groundstate of existence. It is a bit of the cosmos, of the universe that lies within our bodies, which are composed of elements cooked within the stars.
The body itself is the Hermetic vessel for the transformation of instinctual drives. That creative process can take place through trance, art, or meditation, or any combination of them. There are many techniques, which help us process pain, stress, trauma, or depression. Often therapies address higher levels of organization, often at the conceptual level, rather than reordering the physical core of distress, which inhibits our well-being.
A dynamic combination of focus, concentration and flow undergirds our conscious existence and how we relate to others and the world. In meditations such as biofeedback, Tai Chi or Yoga, we intentionally create dynamic changes in our psychophysiology. We temporarily drop our identification with the body only to reinhabit it with even more awareness or mindfulness. This is the artful life; creative fulfillment of our collective destiny.
The Field Body
“The interaction of our mind and consciousness with the quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us, as well as with the biosphere of the planet. It "opens" our mind to society, nature, and the universe. This openness has been known to mystics and sensitives, prophets and meta-physicians through the ages. But it has been denied by modern scientists and by those who took modern science to be the only way of comprehending reality.” Laszlo
We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory -- physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment.
We are each a temple of living light. We arise from and are sustained by field phenomena, waves of biophotonic light and sound, which form our essential nature through acoustic holography (Miller & Miller), which is similar to the formation of matter via sound in cymatics. Cymatics is the science that describes how sound creates forms via resonance phenomena. Bioholography is thus a form of cymatics -- acoustic holography.
Holography is the artform of producing virtual 3-D spatial images of objects. Its artifact is an ephemera, though the holographic plate which records the interference pattern is not. Projections are most compelling when they converge on the viewer. Virtuality is the condition of pure potential, non-actualization. Virtual images are created from diffracting lightwaves and reading the interference patterns.
But virtual particles from the vacuum potential (ZPE) pop in and out of our reality perturbing, even creating actual particles. Cybernetic virtuality involves interaction with a computer system to render certain potentialities actual within certain rules. In holographic systems, a body of fiction can potentially trigger future facts, opening new windows of reality. For example, rituals of quantum biofeedback, can manifest as nonlocal healing, whether through tangible interaction or the power of suggestion and placebo effect.
Our bodies are created from the virtuality of scalar field interactions with our 4-D reality of this spacetime. The mechanism is by projection via our DNA by biophotons or coherent light produced within the body. This coherent light transduces itself into radio waves, which carry sound as information that decodes the 4-D form as a material object, such as ourselves.
The study of this phenomenon of light and sound forming an organism using DNA as a holographic projector is called quantum bioholography (Miller). This process is true not only of formation of the body but also extends into its maintenance, a continual process of creation and renewal.
Light and sound carry the information that shapes us and our environment. In a sense we are essentially “frozen” light. Universe congeals within us each moment in a unique way, never to be repeated. Science now tells us this is so, that each of us extends nonlocally far beyond the skin boundary through our embedded field body (Pribram/Bohm, Wan-Ho).
Nature works through self-organization at the creative edge of chaos (Gleick, Peat), and so do we. Complexity is the fine line between chaos and order, "a chaos of behaviors in which the components of the system never quite lock into place, yet never quite dissolve into turbulence either" (Waldrop, 1992, p. 293). The creative edge of chaos is a transition phase.
Self-reinforcing, autopoeitic morphogenesis creates specific forms. Yet a meta-theory eludes us. We still don’t know exactly how that works; there is currently no consensus in quantum physics at the level of the unified field, but we have many working theories, which help us grope our way toward understanding. Likewise, there is no generally accepted paradigm in consciousness studies. Ambiguity surrounding our psychophysical Mystery also shows up in the split between conventional allopathic and energy medicine.
Mystics suggest even more subtle connections of soul and spirit through time and space, evolutionary intelligence. Even without a mystical approach, we can rest and refresh ourselves by aligning our intentionality with the very fabric of spacetime. Consciously participating in this universal process helps heal and integrate our mindbodies, psyche and matter. We can learn to self-soothe cumulative daily irritations by practicing self-regulation.
Cosmos resonates within each of us, but we have lost touch with that due to electromagnetic pollution and the distracting demands of modern life. But we can rediscover this integral context in which we are embedded as a field of timeless, radiant abundance. It is plausible that spacetime is a plenum rather than an empty vacuum. It abides not just outside us in the depths of space but within the fabric of our being. We are pulsating dynamos of cells, organs, and dynamic systems.
We can learn to wrap our minds around this quantum reality that we are not separate from the ongoing process of creation, even if an energetic field of information defies detection. The source of creation always flows through rhythmic pulsation or waves of energy/matter, perhaps even dark matter. The manifestation of each so-called particle of our being is orchestrated through a self-organizing process (Penrose/Hameroff).
This dance is a harmonic continuum from the smallest to the largest scales, permeating all domains of assembly and observation -- subquantum, quantum, molecular, chemical, even cultural, global, and cosmological. The evolution of our dynamic system obeys universal laws. Likewise our behaviors flow into manifestation from our beliefs, thoughts and emotions, including our self-image.
By opening to system dynamics we can reorganize away from the entropic, reductionistic, destructive habit patterns that plague our species. We can make stress-reducing negentropic choices for structural and psychological adjustment, which improve our quality of life. Integration is a synergistic process rooted in primordial bodymind consciousness.
The brain is not confined to our skull, but permeates our whole being through the intracellular matrix and sensory system, as well as the strong EM fields generated by the beating heart. Research suggests activities in the brain may be pre-conditioned by the DC field of the organism (Oschmann; Becker). Our molecular system extends beyond the nervous system and is the bedrock of intuitive, subconscious and unconscious processes.
Hypnosis suggests the fabric of the body also helps store our memories, embodying our triumphs and traumas. Ideomotor signaling (Rossi) can elicit revelations about ourselves not available from our conscious minds. There is a reciprocal action between our inchoate perceptions, thoughts and the chemistry of our bodies, and therefore our current and future states.
Jung (1932) identified at least five kinds of drives: hunger, activity, sexuality, creativity, and reflection. But he gradually came to conceive of "libido as a psychic analogue of physical energy,” a more or less quantitative concept, which should not be defined in qualitative terms, though libido includes drives, love, desire, aspirations. The important point is that this energy is never destroyed, but flows throughout the psyche activating now this part and now another.
Psychology describes psychic contents, including the role of the body, with psychic means. Psyche -- the realm of soul -- is subject and object, medium and message, source and goal; there is no relative point of observation outside the human psyche. When we get down to it, we find only unprovable but assumed beliefs, which seem to work and therefore seem meaningful. We tend to have experiences that confirm our view or perspective of the world.
Physics, by contrast, pursues material reality both via and, to the greatest degree possible, beyond the human experience, but it also uses the mental medium in both its conceptions and inventions. All models of reality are “soft” technologies, but our beliefs and worldview condition the reality we experience. Just as matter is in a constant process of redefinition, so too must psyche and spirit be continuously redefined.
The psychic energy that directs and motivates the personality is called libido, which is simply a generic form of psychic energy which can be redirected or "canalized" into both sexual and non-sexual activities. Psychic energy balances the energy flowing between spirit and instinct. This non-specific energy can consciously be deployed and channeled for self-transformation.
Go with the Flow
Research has shown (Csikszentmihalyi) that self-teaching is strongly correlated with quality of life and the ability to experience refreshing concentration and flow in ordinary activities. Maslow called this quality self-actualization, first as an emergent property which can becomes a stabilized steady-state of personality. The “good life” is not only enjoyable and growth promoting, it reduces the sum total of entropy in the world.
Yet finding flow in our busy lives can be elusive. Flow is neutral, as a source of psychic energy, focusing attention and motivating action. It can be used for constructive or destructive experiences. The more we allocate to the negative, the less we have available for the positive. So we need to become jealous of our spare energy, spending it wisely as our psychophysical organism tells us through bodytalk and feelings.
The amount of energy available to our consciousness and will varies. We can respond to stress by being active rather than reactive. Self-regulation means scanning, listening to, and intentionally recalibrating the mindbody. It requires focusing and concentration our attention, then “letting go”, seemingly releasing all effort-- self-accepting, non-striving mindfulness.
Some suggest there is a Platonic field (Symposium) that restores our energy. It is compatible with the description of stages of pure consciousness described by the Yoga Sutras and other Eastern traditions (Buddhism, Taoism, etc.). The secret of the universe lies within “empty” space, which turns out to be a virtual plenum of potential. It is a nourishing essence, which feeds our psychophysical being.
Non-locality is regarded as accepted fact by physicists. They say that the twin photons are aware of each other instantaneously even if they are at opposite ends of the Universe. Laszlo says this new concept has primacy over matter. Puthoff says that matter is driven by this energy source (ZPE). And so is our matter. The interconnections among EM fields are not the external interactions described by Maxwell's four equations, the interconnection is "in the deep" inside those interacting fields, our own fields.
Inexhaustible psychic energy is the single most distinguishing trait of self-teaching individuals. Most creative people are self-taught, often achieving breakthroughs by investing surplus energy playing with the apparently trivial. No matter the subject, each of their new little discoveries parlays into excitement at the moment of discovery, in a self-reinforcing reward. These rewards build motivation to continue.
Have the “creatively gifted” learned a subtle secret for drawing on the essence of the cosmos by investing in their curiosity and delight? Some learn how to draw this surplus energy from the psychic well early in life and drink deeply through their attempts to understand, invent, express and solve problems. They manifest a determination to participate as fully as possible in life.
Self-actualizers pay more attention to what is going on around them with surplus energy to invest their attention in things or people for their own sake, rather than for strokes or gain. Most people hoard their attention in self-absorption, material or emotional advantage rather than growth, empathy and compassion.
Most guard their energy for immediate role or stress responses, or become bound by those factors, numb or apathetic. Those less concerned with themselves actually have more psychic energy to experience life. Everyday giving is an antidote for self-obsession and negativity.
It’s a free-floating type of attention pursued without recognition or support, easily captured temporarily by any subject or interest, rather than strictly tied to goals and ambitions. Wonder, novelty, surprise, awe, and transcendence are boundary breaking allowing us to move beyond ignorance, fear and prejudice. Often this experience becomes a valuable element of later full-blown realizations -- new synthesis.
We can cultivate this quality and it’s intrinsic reward by 1) doing whatever needs to be done, even the routine, with concentrated attention and skill, rather than inertia, and 2) approaching them with the care it takes to make a work of art.
Instead of using our leisure energy wastefully we can learn to direct it from passive activity toward new experiences, which only become interesting once we devote attention to them. Time management and husbanding of psychic energy can be directed to create increased enjoyment of life, here and now. In flow we forget ourselves, rather than wallowing in the apathy, worry and boredom of unmet personality needs. Life is too short to remain depressed or exhausted.
We need time and psychic energy to pursue our curiosity. So, we have to be alert for those issues and people who would negatively feed on us, draining, subverting, or sabotaging our creative flow. We can complain, reflect on our stuckness, or actively invest our psychic energy in harmonious relations and goals, creating positive feedback. Having clear goals helps us focus and concentrate, whether we achieve them, or not.
Owning our own actions helps us focus desires and priorities for an improved life.
The self-motivated individual can concentrate more or less at will. Interest leads to focus and focus leads to interest. We take over ownership of our lives by learning to direct psychic energy toward our intentions. There is more consistency between inner desires and outer experience. When we learn to love what we have to do, the vector or arc of our development shifts.
When we learn to control attention, we learn to control experience, and therefore the quality of our lives. We invest less psychic energy in painful events and draining resentments, and more in self-affirming and rewarding activities, enjoying them for the control we acquire over our own attention. This simple process can lead to great leaps in transformation, and is also the basis of mystical practice simply for its own sake.
If you learn to love your fate, it reduces entropy not only in your own consciousness but for those you contact. In contact with source, you don’t have to feed on their energies in a negative way. We feel even better when creatively connected to something greater or more permanent than ourselves; it gives us energy. We can even find joy fighting a losing battle for a good cause.
Being in THE ZONE
Folklore has it that artists and sportsmen such as Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird can enter a state of consciousness where they are actively entangled with their surroundings and perhaps even the future. In tennis, the body must be in motion somehow anticipating trajectories even before the serve in order to return the volley. Surfing or boarding are also good examples. Gamers report a similar flow for their virtual states.
Likewise, artists enter a flow state in both inspiration and artistic production or performance. Artists, too, are often accused of anticipating expressing a symbolic change in collective culture, whether they are consciously aware of it, or not. They seem to have an uncanny knack for symbolizing the zeitgeist of the time.
Musicians speak of their own kind of telepathy among one another, especially when jamming or improvising. Someone playing a spirited fast musical break knows the flow is rolling on and at the same time they are aware of the details, although they couldn’t consciously decide each action.
Sudden alarm experiments explore how dominant field dynamics can happen faster than consciousness can respond, using purely internal physical mechanisms. Part of the role of consciousness as an overseer is to allow the conscious periphery to have immediate access in the case of a threatening signal.
We all know we can react with lightning speed automatically while only dimly aware of it. We are aware of it sufficiently to anticipate and react to save our lives. The critical advantage of subjective conscious comes in, even if it is almost subliminal and not consciously thought through.
The BITZ experiments explore the existence of entanglements beyond the human body. Books have been written on 'Being In The Zone' (BITZ). Most of us cannot repeat these super-athletic experiments. But, then, how many of us can smash an atom? We must trust the honesty and ethics of atom-smashing scientists. We just need a measure of BITZ that is not too subjective.
All of these examples are, in some sense direct verification of entanglement on a conscious level. But in practical terms we can still learn what qualities and practices lead to the flow state. In this subjective sense, BITZ has already been experimentally verified; indeed, we are all entangled with our environment, some more actively than others, but only a few can intentionally exploit it, though many have experienced it by accident or intent.
What we need to learn is how to deploy this capacity for creativity and/or healing. Anyone can learn through practices that require concentration in one area to translate that capacity to other areas, such as creativity. Certain orientations and qualities are involved and most of these can be adopted or developed. Many of them include the body, through kinesthetic muscle memory or other physical expressions that take learned behavior and put it on “auto-pilot”, making it seem virtually effortless.
Many activities elsewhere described as BITZ are actually products of a light trance state, such as flow state people report while driving a car. Others, such as sports and music, explicitly require skill development to achieve fluency.
We can most easily apply ourselves to those things, which inspire a passion in us -- those things we cannot help but do because the drive is strong, so motive and opportunity are there. But if a person has no passion, creative flow will remain elusive.
With passion you can always learn the techniques to accomplish your creative goals. Still, many wrestle with the experience of trying to maintain vitality, passion, and inspiration while getting caught up in the daily grind of paying the bills and other mundane necessities
Reports of solutions include:
“It's a matter of intention. I try to make a conscious choice every day to do everything the best I can. For me, this has been a self sustaining and exponentailly growing energy sorce. The harder I work at doing things well, the better I do things, the better I feel about doing things, the more energy I have to work on doing things well, and so on, and so on.”
“For me, it's a matter of being Present, no matter what my external circumstances are. The loss of vitality comes not with the grinding work, but from the fact that we resist Life while doing that work. The only solution is to surrender to the moment, be present with what you are doing, and accept whatever comes as a result. Sometimes what comes won't be so pleasant, but as long as you accept that, then more and more often it will be pleasant things that come your way. “
“I feel like we can get through anything if we assert that it's only temporary. It's too easy to get dragged down by the slave paradigm, especially when you've got a higher mission you'd rather be tending to. We need to be that much stronger and clearer about our Great Work on this planet to get through the daily grind and seemingly endless servitude to the inane.”
There are two ways of looking at our predicament, one crippling, one liberating:
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: psychospiritual reality and mundane patterns are at odds with each other, bringing stress and a feeling of self-betrayal. This splits intent and energy, divides and conquers by lack of wholeness. Thwarted by a feeling of not living in sincere harmony with your true self Power (psychic energy) leaks away.
METANARRATIVE: realize that mundane activities are a result of will or intentionality, and that you are manifesting the mundane patterns that you see before you, either by conscious will or by default. The life you've created can manifest as a song, a poem, an art project, a great disovery. When you chose to make it surface, your full power and as a manifestation engine emerges.
Flow in intellectual and spiritual processes emerges from removal of blocks to creativity (such as competing activities and focus; poor self-image; poor judgment, thinking and work habits; conventionality, mediocrity; numbness; intolerance of complexity or solitude) and certain positive attitudes and behavior patterns, such as commitment to vision.
The most often cited examples facilitating creativity include the following: fluency, flexibility, sensitivity to problems, problems, originality, curiosity, openness to feelings and the unconscious, motivation, persistence and concentration, ability to think in images, ability to toy with ideas, ability to analyze and synthesize, tolerance of ambiguity, discernment and selectivity, ability to tolerate isolation, creative memory, background of fundamental knowledge, incubation, anticipation of productive periods, ability to think in metaphors, aesthetic orientation, etc.
If your desire to be creative is strong enough, nothing will prevent you from applying yourself if you have passion. Can the flow state be far behind? It is a form of transcendence, whether it comes through the physical flow of the body, the conceptual high of the A-ha state, the absorption and aesthetic satisfaction of the artistic process, or any conditions, which promote emotional flow.
The latter might range from love, to the high encountered learning from one’s mentors, to the perception that Cosmos is facilitating your intention in a given direction, though the latter is a synchronicity -- flow with the environment.
In trance states the process is largely automatic and unconscious; no “learning” is required. Trance possession and ‘white line fever’ arise from the same level, while the former includes a transpersonal experience. In artistic fervor the doors of the subconscious swing wide and there is mixing of the inner subjective world with the object world of tangible expression.
In pure creativity, including nonlocal healing and the bliss of meditative states, focus and concentration are consciously applied directly with intent. Trance, art and creativity are all forms of transcendence of the ego and connection with deeper than conscious levels of existence.
Exercising one’s talents helps remove the blocks mundane life would like to introject. Fluency, a creative ritual, a workstation, and making time available help increase the drive needed to carry a project to completion.
Intentionality and a conducive environment increase the probability creativity will emerge.But the secret is that connections or open channels to primordial SOURCE tend to provide a degree of flow, self-realization, or illumination. So, the real key to creativity in all its forms seems to be an enhanced capacity to connect tangibly with source bringing back some material or immaterial boon from that inspiration.
In so many conversations with creative masters I've discovered their Truth in the creative details. It has been said that “God is in the details”. In these details--no matter how much trouble they take or how much one is to be paid for them--there arises the resolve to excel and to do the job better. I see this kind of resolve as a "glow" in people, a one-tracked sense of personal pride that results in focus and purpose.
Purpose-driven individuals tend to develop an advanced proficiency that makes them stand out. Purpose-driven people--while they may be laden with humility--are often also loaded up with a sense of righteousness about their work. Simply put, they believe in it. And purpose-driven people, healers, artists and scientists, have often taken a circuitous route to get that way. Each is Unique.
Conclusions
There are many plausible ways that quantum theory can help with these profound mysteries of the groundstate of energy/matter, consciousness, awareness and flow. It will likely be many decades before some understanding of the actual mechanisms are finalized. So, despite the pluses and minuses of existing quantum theories of mind, these kinds of theories should be encouraged. If consciousness is or is related to quantum effects then scientists will have to think in these directions to figure it out.
"Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfill other physical functions of which, perhaps, we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present-is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation.”, says Maxwell.
Most natural philosophers hold, and have held, that action at a distance across empty space is impossible. In other words, that matter cannot act where it is not, but only where it is. The question "where is it?" is a further question that may demand attention and require more than a superficial answer.
Arguably, every atom of matter has a universal though nearly infinitesimal prevalence, and extends everywhere; since there is no definite sharp boundary or limiting periphery to the region disturbed by its existence. The lines of force of an isolated electric charge extend throughout illimitable space.
No ordinary matter is capable of transmitting the undulations or tremors that we call light. The speed at which they go, the kind of undulation, and the facility with which they go through vacuum, forbid this. So clearly and universally has it been perceived that waves must be waves of something, something distinct from ordinary matter.
Faraday conjectured that the same medium, which is concerned in the propagation of light, might also be the agent in electromagnetic phenomena, and he called it “the ether”. Now we speak of it as the zero-point domain of virtual photon fluctuation. Romantically, we refer to it as the plenum, since it is infinitely full of potential.
Some philosophers have reason to suppose that mind can act directly on mind without intervening mechanism, and sometimes that has been spoken of as genuine action at a distance. But, in the first place, no proper conception or physical model can be made of such a process, much less how that deploys intentionality in distance healing.
Nor is it clear that space and distance have any particular meaning in the region of psychology. The links between mind and mind may be something quite other than physical proximity. Since we don’t know how it works, in denying action at a distance across empty space we are not denying telepathy or other activities of a non-physical kind. Brain disturbance or mindbody healing are plausible physical correlate of mental action, whether of the sending or receiving variety.
There is no consensus in physics, nor in consciousness studies, though there is a correlating theory for nearly every one proposed in physics. Spontaneous healing may bypass all of these suggested metatheories. A field becomes a nearly inaccurate term in the subquantual domain or metaphysical level of observation.
According to Hameroff, “Everything (matter, energy, you, me) is part of the hidden geometry of spacetime, of which the Platonic is one aspect. Smells and colors and melodic tunes are complex assemblies of fundamental qualia embedded as configurations in fundamental spacetime geometry.
The qualia in spacetime geopmetry *out there* caused qualia *in here* within us because there is spacetime geometry within our mindbodies as well. Because spacetime geometry is inherently nonlocal it could be that *out there* and *in here* are connected, or actually the same. Only in the classical world is there a spacelike distinction. Pure consciousness is the experience of a total lack of phenomenal content while still awake and alert, and thus able to remember there was nothing.
[Some theories alledge] cognitive functions reflect consciousness which exists in the universe. I am saying that quantum processes in the brain (related to cognitive processes) are connected to protoconscious quantum information inherent in the universe. The connection results in OR which is a moment of consciousness (the protoconscious/unconscious quantum information becomes conscious) But remember the universe/spacetime geometry out there is also in our heads.” Hameroff
Several Vedic and Taoist texts (and perhaps other traditions as well) suggest that, with proper refinement of consciousness, the “outside” world can be cognized holographically, in a superposed, interpenetrating state where everything is experienced in everything else. If evidence can support such claims, perhaps the human mechanisms of perception have the capacity to directly experience an uncollapsed universe in which what is normally unconscious is merged into consciousness (or vice versa). Its like a dream.
But somehow consciousness is; somehow creativity emerges; somehow healing works; somehow we are, and are interrelated. Perhaps real meaning comes from our struggle to try to understand how these things work, to struggle toward wisdom in both the material and spiritual realms. There is meaning in the struggle to create, to heal, to know, to be.
by Iona Miller
“To me it's very obvious that consciousness is not simply an epiphenomenon, not a byproduct of the brain; it's something that's pervading the whole universe. . . . Consciousness is not simply produced by a complex set of neurons. It's there, in the whole body, and in all of existence.” ~Ervin Laszlo, Philosopher
Sometimes we have to address the external realities of a situation and sometimes its spirit or essential nature. The same is true for our bodies and souls. Significance is extracted from the experiential responses of our whole being -- soma significance, the felt-sense wisdom of the bodymind, which we can personify as Soma Sophia.
We can use the wisdom of the bodymind to face stress, pain, loss, illness, even catastrophe. Creative transformation of our instinctive reactions produces the gold, whether we call that essence health, art, flow, or inspiration. Psychic sustenance is found within. Once the mindbody connects with Source, all of our self-expression becomes soulful. We truly embody spirit.
That Source is the source of psychic energy, our libido, which becomes available for negentropic or entropic expression. Its tangible root lies within our very energy/matter as the plenum that science calls the vacuum fluctuation or zero-point energy, the groundstate of existence. It is a bit of the cosmos, of the universe that lies within our bodies, which are composed of elements cooked within the stars.
The body itself is the Hermetic vessel for the transformation of instinctual drives. That creative process can take place through trance, art, or meditation, or any combination of them. There are many techniques, which help us process pain, stress, trauma, or depression. Often therapies address higher levels of organization, often at the conceptual level, rather than reordering the physical core of distress, which inhibits our well-being.
A dynamic combination of focus, concentration and flow undergirds our conscious existence and how we relate to others and the world. In meditations such as biofeedback, Tai Chi or Yoga, we intentionally create dynamic changes in our psychophysiology. We temporarily drop our identification with the body only to reinhabit it with even more awareness or mindfulness. This is the artful life; creative fulfillment of our collective destiny.
The Field Body
“The interaction of our mind and consciousness with the quantum vacuum links us with other minds around us, as well as with the biosphere of the planet. It "opens" our mind to society, nature, and the universe. This openness has been known to mystics and sensitives, prophets and meta-physicians through the ages. But it has been denied by modern scientists and by those who took modern science to be the only way of comprehending reality.” Laszlo
We can return to Nature and our nature, collectively preparing a paradigm shift for a new shared reality and trajectory -- physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual coherence. The silent frictionless flow of living intelligence is beyond words and conceptual constructs. We are a process of recursive self-generation. This continuum, which is our groundstate or creative Source, is directly discoverable in the immediacy of the emergent embodied moment.
We are each a temple of living light. We arise from and are sustained by field phenomena, waves of biophotonic light and sound, which form our essential nature through acoustic holography (Miller & Miller), which is similar to the formation of matter via sound in cymatics. Cymatics is the science that describes how sound creates forms via resonance phenomena. Bioholography is thus a form of cymatics -- acoustic holography.
Holography is the artform of producing virtual 3-D spatial images of objects. Its artifact is an ephemera, though the holographic plate which records the interference pattern is not. Projections are most compelling when they converge on the viewer. Virtuality is the condition of pure potential, non-actualization. Virtual images are created from diffracting lightwaves and reading the interference patterns.
But virtual particles from the vacuum potential (ZPE) pop in and out of our reality perturbing, even creating actual particles. Cybernetic virtuality involves interaction with a computer system to render certain potentialities actual within certain rules. In holographic systems, a body of fiction can potentially trigger future facts, opening new windows of reality. For example, rituals of quantum biofeedback, can manifest as nonlocal healing, whether through tangible interaction or the power of suggestion and placebo effect.
Our bodies are created from the virtuality of scalar field interactions with our 4-D reality of this spacetime. The mechanism is by projection via our DNA by biophotons or coherent light produced within the body. This coherent light transduces itself into radio waves, which carry sound as information that decodes the 4-D form as a material object, such as ourselves.
The study of this phenomenon of light and sound forming an organism using DNA as a holographic projector is called quantum bioholography (Miller). This process is true not only of formation of the body but also extends into its maintenance, a continual process of creation and renewal.
Light and sound carry the information that shapes us and our environment. In a sense we are essentially “frozen” light. Universe congeals within us each moment in a unique way, never to be repeated. Science now tells us this is so, that each of us extends nonlocally far beyond the skin boundary through our embedded field body (Pribram/Bohm, Wan-Ho).
Nature works through self-organization at the creative edge of chaos (Gleick, Peat), and so do we. Complexity is the fine line between chaos and order, "a chaos of behaviors in which the components of the system never quite lock into place, yet never quite dissolve into turbulence either" (Waldrop, 1992, p. 293). The creative edge of chaos is a transition phase.
Self-reinforcing, autopoeitic morphogenesis creates specific forms. Yet a meta-theory eludes us. We still don’t know exactly how that works; there is currently no consensus in quantum physics at the level of the unified field, but we have many working theories, which help us grope our way toward understanding. Likewise, there is no generally accepted paradigm in consciousness studies. Ambiguity surrounding our psychophysical Mystery also shows up in the split between conventional allopathic and energy medicine.
Mystics suggest even more subtle connections of soul and spirit through time and space, evolutionary intelligence. Even without a mystical approach, we can rest and refresh ourselves by aligning our intentionality with the very fabric of spacetime. Consciously participating in this universal process helps heal and integrate our mindbodies, psyche and matter. We can learn to self-soothe cumulative daily irritations by practicing self-regulation.
Cosmos resonates within each of us, but we have lost touch with that due to electromagnetic pollution and the distracting demands of modern life. But we can rediscover this integral context in which we are embedded as a field of timeless, radiant abundance. It is plausible that spacetime is a plenum rather than an empty vacuum. It abides not just outside us in the depths of space but within the fabric of our being. We are pulsating dynamos of cells, organs, and dynamic systems.
We can learn to wrap our minds around this quantum reality that we are not separate from the ongoing process of creation, even if an energetic field of information defies detection. The source of creation always flows through rhythmic pulsation or waves of energy/matter, perhaps even dark matter. The manifestation of each so-called particle of our being is orchestrated through a self-organizing process (Penrose/Hameroff).
This dance is a harmonic continuum from the smallest to the largest scales, permeating all domains of assembly and observation -- subquantum, quantum, molecular, chemical, even cultural, global, and cosmological. The evolution of our dynamic system obeys universal laws. Likewise our behaviors flow into manifestation from our beliefs, thoughts and emotions, including our self-image.
By opening to system dynamics we can reorganize away from the entropic, reductionistic, destructive habit patterns that plague our species. We can make stress-reducing negentropic choices for structural and psychological adjustment, which improve our quality of life. Integration is a synergistic process rooted in primordial bodymind consciousness.
The brain is not confined to our skull, but permeates our whole being through the intracellular matrix and sensory system, as well as the strong EM fields generated by the beating heart. Research suggests activities in the brain may be pre-conditioned by the DC field of the organism (Oschmann; Becker). Our molecular system extends beyond the nervous system and is the bedrock of intuitive, subconscious and unconscious processes.
Hypnosis suggests the fabric of the body also helps store our memories, embodying our triumphs and traumas. Ideomotor signaling (Rossi) can elicit revelations about ourselves not available from our conscious minds. There is a reciprocal action between our inchoate perceptions, thoughts and the chemistry of our bodies, and therefore our current and future states.
Jung (1932) identified at least five kinds of drives: hunger, activity, sexuality, creativity, and reflection. But he gradually came to conceive of "libido as a psychic analogue of physical energy,” a more or less quantitative concept, which should not be defined in qualitative terms, though libido includes drives, love, desire, aspirations. The important point is that this energy is never destroyed, but flows throughout the psyche activating now this part and now another.
Psychology describes psychic contents, including the role of the body, with psychic means. Psyche -- the realm of soul -- is subject and object, medium and message, source and goal; there is no relative point of observation outside the human psyche. When we get down to it, we find only unprovable but assumed beliefs, which seem to work and therefore seem meaningful. We tend to have experiences that confirm our view or perspective of the world.
Physics, by contrast, pursues material reality both via and, to the greatest degree possible, beyond the human experience, but it also uses the mental medium in both its conceptions and inventions. All models of reality are “soft” technologies, but our beliefs and worldview condition the reality we experience. Just as matter is in a constant process of redefinition, so too must psyche and spirit be continuously redefined.
The psychic energy that directs and motivates the personality is called libido, which is simply a generic form of psychic energy which can be redirected or "canalized" into both sexual and non-sexual activities. Psychic energy balances the energy flowing between spirit and instinct. This non-specific energy can consciously be deployed and channeled for self-transformation.
Go with the Flow
Research has shown (Csikszentmihalyi) that self-teaching is strongly correlated with quality of life and the ability to experience refreshing concentration and flow in ordinary activities. Maslow called this quality self-actualization, first as an emergent property which can becomes a stabilized steady-state of personality. The “good life” is not only enjoyable and growth promoting, it reduces the sum total of entropy in the world.
Yet finding flow in our busy lives can be elusive. Flow is neutral, as a source of psychic energy, focusing attention and motivating action. It can be used for constructive or destructive experiences. The more we allocate to the negative, the less we have available for the positive. So we need to become jealous of our spare energy, spending it wisely as our psychophysical organism tells us through bodytalk and feelings.
The amount of energy available to our consciousness and will varies. We can respond to stress by being active rather than reactive. Self-regulation means scanning, listening to, and intentionally recalibrating the mindbody. It requires focusing and concentration our attention, then “letting go”, seemingly releasing all effort-- self-accepting, non-striving mindfulness.
Some suggest there is a Platonic field (Symposium) that restores our energy. It is compatible with the description of stages of pure consciousness described by the Yoga Sutras and other Eastern traditions (Buddhism, Taoism, etc.). The secret of the universe lies within “empty” space, which turns out to be a virtual plenum of potential. It is a nourishing essence, which feeds our psychophysical being.
Non-locality is regarded as accepted fact by physicists. They say that the twin photons are aware of each other instantaneously even if they are at opposite ends of the Universe. Laszlo says this new concept has primacy over matter. Puthoff says that matter is driven by this energy source (ZPE). And so is our matter. The interconnections among EM fields are not the external interactions described by Maxwell's four equations, the interconnection is "in the deep" inside those interacting fields, our own fields.
Inexhaustible psychic energy is the single most distinguishing trait of self-teaching individuals. Most creative people are self-taught, often achieving breakthroughs by investing surplus energy playing with the apparently trivial. No matter the subject, each of their new little discoveries parlays into excitement at the moment of discovery, in a self-reinforcing reward. These rewards build motivation to continue.
Have the “creatively gifted” learned a subtle secret for drawing on the essence of the cosmos by investing in their curiosity and delight? Some learn how to draw this surplus energy from the psychic well early in life and drink deeply through their attempts to understand, invent, express and solve problems. They manifest a determination to participate as fully as possible in life.
Self-actualizers pay more attention to what is going on around them with surplus energy to invest their attention in things or people for their own sake, rather than for strokes or gain. Most people hoard their attention in self-absorption, material or emotional advantage rather than growth, empathy and compassion.
Most guard their energy for immediate role or stress responses, or become bound by those factors, numb or apathetic. Those less concerned with themselves actually have more psychic energy to experience life. Everyday giving is an antidote for self-obsession and negativity.
It’s a free-floating type of attention pursued without recognition or support, easily captured temporarily by any subject or interest, rather than strictly tied to goals and ambitions. Wonder, novelty, surprise, awe, and transcendence are boundary breaking allowing us to move beyond ignorance, fear and prejudice. Often this experience becomes a valuable element of later full-blown realizations -- new synthesis.
We can cultivate this quality and it’s intrinsic reward by 1) doing whatever needs to be done, even the routine, with concentrated attention and skill, rather than inertia, and 2) approaching them with the care it takes to make a work of art.
Instead of using our leisure energy wastefully we can learn to direct it from passive activity toward new experiences, which only become interesting once we devote attention to them. Time management and husbanding of psychic energy can be directed to create increased enjoyment of life, here and now. In flow we forget ourselves, rather than wallowing in the apathy, worry and boredom of unmet personality needs. Life is too short to remain depressed or exhausted.
We need time and psychic energy to pursue our curiosity. So, we have to be alert for those issues and people who would negatively feed on us, draining, subverting, or sabotaging our creative flow. We can complain, reflect on our stuckness, or actively invest our psychic energy in harmonious relations and goals, creating positive feedback. Having clear goals helps us focus and concentrate, whether we achieve them, or not.
Owning our own actions helps us focus desires and priorities for an improved life.
The self-motivated individual can concentrate more or less at will. Interest leads to focus and focus leads to interest. We take over ownership of our lives by learning to direct psychic energy toward our intentions. There is more consistency between inner desires and outer experience. When we learn to love what we have to do, the vector or arc of our development shifts.
When we learn to control attention, we learn to control experience, and therefore the quality of our lives. We invest less psychic energy in painful events and draining resentments, and more in self-affirming and rewarding activities, enjoying them for the control we acquire over our own attention. This simple process can lead to great leaps in transformation, and is also the basis of mystical practice simply for its own sake.
If you learn to love your fate, it reduces entropy not only in your own consciousness but for those you contact. In contact with source, you don’t have to feed on their energies in a negative way. We feel even better when creatively connected to something greater or more permanent than ourselves; it gives us energy. We can even find joy fighting a losing battle for a good cause.
Being in THE ZONE
Folklore has it that artists and sportsmen such as Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird can enter a state of consciousness where they are actively entangled with their surroundings and perhaps even the future. In tennis, the body must be in motion somehow anticipating trajectories even before the serve in order to return the volley. Surfing or boarding are also good examples. Gamers report a similar flow for their virtual states.
Likewise, artists enter a flow state in both inspiration and artistic production or performance. Artists, too, are often accused of anticipating expressing a symbolic change in collective culture, whether they are consciously aware of it, or not. They seem to have an uncanny knack for symbolizing the zeitgeist of the time.
Musicians speak of their own kind of telepathy among one another, especially when jamming or improvising. Someone playing a spirited fast musical break knows the flow is rolling on and at the same time they are aware of the details, although they couldn’t consciously decide each action.
Sudden alarm experiments explore how dominant field dynamics can happen faster than consciousness can respond, using purely internal physical mechanisms. Part of the role of consciousness as an overseer is to allow the conscious periphery to have immediate access in the case of a threatening signal.
We all know we can react with lightning speed automatically while only dimly aware of it. We are aware of it sufficiently to anticipate and react to save our lives. The critical advantage of subjective conscious comes in, even if it is almost subliminal and not consciously thought through.
The BITZ experiments explore the existence of entanglements beyond the human body. Books have been written on 'Being In The Zone' (BITZ). Most of us cannot repeat these super-athletic experiments. But, then, how many of us can smash an atom? We must trust the honesty and ethics of atom-smashing scientists. We just need a measure of BITZ that is not too subjective.
All of these examples are, in some sense direct verification of entanglement on a conscious level. But in practical terms we can still learn what qualities and practices lead to the flow state. In this subjective sense, BITZ has already been experimentally verified; indeed, we are all entangled with our environment, some more actively than others, but only a few can intentionally exploit it, though many have experienced it by accident or intent.
What we need to learn is how to deploy this capacity for creativity and/or healing. Anyone can learn through practices that require concentration in one area to translate that capacity to other areas, such as creativity. Certain orientations and qualities are involved and most of these can be adopted or developed. Many of them include the body, through kinesthetic muscle memory or other physical expressions that take learned behavior and put it on “auto-pilot”, making it seem virtually effortless.
Many activities elsewhere described as BITZ are actually products of a light trance state, such as flow state people report while driving a car. Others, such as sports and music, explicitly require skill development to achieve fluency.
We can most easily apply ourselves to those things, which inspire a passion in us -- those things we cannot help but do because the drive is strong, so motive and opportunity are there. But if a person has no passion, creative flow will remain elusive.
With passion you can always learn the techniques to accomplish your creative goals. Still, many wrestle with the experience of trying to maintain vitality, passion, and inspiration while getting caught up in the daily grind of paying the bills and other mundane necessities
Reports of solutions include:
“It's a matter of intention. I try to make a conscious choice every day to do everything the best I can. For me, this has been a self sustaining and exponentailly growing energy sorce. The harder I work at doing things well, the better I do things, the better I feel about doing things, the more energy I have to work on doing things well, and so on, and so on.”
“For me, it's a matter of being Present, no matter what my external circumstances are. The loss of vitality comes not with the grinding work, but from the fact that we resist Life while doing that work. The only solution is to surrender to the moment, be present with what you are doing, and accept whatever comes as a result. Sometimes what comes won't be so pleasant, but as long as you accept that, then more and more often it will be pleasant things that come your way. “
“I feel like we can get through anything if we assert that it's only temporary. It's too easy to get dragged down by the slave paradigm, especially when you've got a higher mission you'd rather be tending to. We need to be that much stronger and clearer about our Great Work on this planet to get through the daily grind and seemingly endless servitude to the inane.”
There are two ways of looking at our predicament, one crippling, one liberating:
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: psychospiritual reality and mundane patterns are at odds with each other, bringing stress and a feeling of self-betrayal. This splits intent and energy, divides and conquers by lack of wholeness. Thwarted by a feeling of not living in sincere harmony with your true self Power (psychic energy) leaks away.
METANARRATIVE: realize that mundane activities are a result of will or intentionality, and that you are manifesting the mundane patterns that you see before you, either by conscious will or by default. The life you've created can manifest as a song, a poem, an art project, a great disovery. When you chose to make it surface, your full power and as a manifestation engine emerges.
Flow in intellectual and spiritual processes emerges from removal of blocks to creativity (such as competing activities and focus; poor self-image; poor judgment, thinking and work habits; conventionality, mediocrity; numbness; intolerance of complexity or solitude) and certain positive attitudes and behavior patterns, such as commitment to vision.
The most often cited examples facilitating creativity include the following: fluency, flexibility, sensitivity to problems, problems, originality, curiosity, openness to feelings and the unconscious, motivation, persistence and concentration, ability to think in images, ability to toy with ideas, ability to analyze and synthesize, tolerance of ambiguity, discernment and selectivity, ability to tolerate isolation, creative memory, background of fundamental knowledge, incubation, anticipation of productive periods, ability to think in metaphors, aesthetic orientation, etc.
If your desire to be creative is strong enough, nothing will prevent you from applying yourself if you have passion. Can the flow state be far behind? It is a form of transcendence, whether it comes through the physical flow of the body, the conceptual high of the A-ha state, the absorption and aesthetic satisfaction of the artistic process, or any conditions, which promote emotional flow.
The latter might range from love, to the high encountered learning from one’s mentors, to the perception that Cosmos is facilitating your intention in a given direction, though the latter is a synchronicity -- flow with the environment.
In trance states the process is largely automatic and unconscious; no “learning” is required. Trance possession and ‘white line fever’ arise from the same level, while the former includes a transpersonal experience. In artistic fervor the doors of the subconscious swing wide and there is mixing of the inner subjective world with the object world of tangible expression.
In pure creativity, including nonlocal healing and the bliss of meditative states, focus and concentration are consciously applied directly with intent. Trance, art and creativity are all forms of transcendence of the ego and connection with deeper than conscious levels of existence.
Exercising one’s talents helps remove the blocks mundane life would like to introject. Fluency, a creative ritual, a workstation, and making time available help increase the drive needed to carry a project to completion.
Intentionality and a conducive environment increase the probability creativity will emerge.But the secret is that connections or open channels to primordial SOURCE tend to provide a degree of flow, self-realization, or illumination. So, the real key to creativity in all its forms seems to be an enhanced capacity to connect tangibly with source bringing back some material or immaterial boon from that inspiration.
In so many conversations with creative masters I've discovered their Truth in the creative details. It has been said that “God is in the details”. In these details--no matter how much trouble they take or how much one is to be paid for them--there arises the resolve to excel and to do the job better. I see this kind of resolve as a "glow" in people, a one-tracked sense of personal pride that results in focus and purpose.
Purpose-driven individuals tend to develop an advanced proficiency that makes them stand out. Purpose-driven people--while they may be laden with humility--are often also loaded up with a sense of righteousness about their work. Simply put, they believe in it. And purpose-driven people, healers, artists and scientists, have often taken a circuitous route to get that way. Each is Unique.
Conclusions
There are many plausible ways that quantum theory can help with these profound mysteries of the groundstate of energy/matter, consciousness, awareness and flow. It will likely be many decades before some understanding of the actual mechanisms are finalized. So, despite the pluses and minuses of existing quantum theories of mind, these kinds of theories should be encouraged. If consciousness is or is related to quantum effects then scientists will have to think in these directions to figure it out.
"Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfill other physical functions of which, perhaps, we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present-is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation.”, says Maxwell.
Most natural philosophers hold, and have held, that action at a distance across empty space is impossible. In other words, that matter cannot act where it is not, but only where it is. The question "where is it?" is a further question that may demand attention and require more than a superficial answer.
Arguably, every atom of matter has a universal though nearly infinitesimal prevalence, and extends everywhere; since there is no definite sharp boundary or limiting periphery to the region disturbed by its existence. The lines of force of an isolated electric charge extend throughout illimitable space.
No ordinary matter is capable of transmitting the undulations or tremors that we call light. The speed at which they go, the kind of undulation, and the facility with which they go through vacuum, forbid this. So clearly and universally has it been perceived that waves must be waves of something, something distinct from ordinary matter.
Faraday conjectured that the same medium, which is concerned in the propagation of light, might also be the agent in electromagnetic phenomena, and he called it “the ether”. Now we speak of it as the zero-point domain of virtual photon fluctuation. Romantically, we refer to it as the plenum, since it is infinitely full of potential.
Some philosophers have reason to suppose that mind can act directly on mind without intervening mechanism, and sometimes that has been spoken of as genuine action at a distance. But, in the first place, no proper conception or physical model can be made of such a process, much less how that deploys intentionality in distance healing.
Nor is it clear that space and distance have any particular meaning in the region of psychology. The links between mind and mind may be something quite other than physical proximity. Since we don’t know how it works, in denying action at a distance across empty space we are not denying telepathy or other activities of a non-physical kind. Brain disturbance or mindbody healing are plausible physical correlate of mental action, whether of the sending or receiving variety.
There is no consensus in physics, nor in consciousness studies, though there is a correlating theory for nearly every one proposed in physics. Spontaneous healing may bypass all of these suggested metatheories. A field becomes a nearly inaccurate term in the subquantual domain or metaphysical level of observation.
According to Hameroff, “Everything (matter, energy, you, me) is part of the hidden geometry of spacetime, of which the Platonic is one aspect. Smells and colors and melodic tunes are complex assemblies of fundamental qualia embedded as configurations in fundamental spacetime geometry.
The qualia in spacetime geopmetry *out there* caused qualia *in here* within us because there is spacetime geometry within our mindbodies as well. Because spacetime geometry is inherently nonlocal it could be that *out there* and *in here* are connected, or actually the same. Only in the classical world is there a spacelike distinction. Pure consciousness is the experience of a total lack of phenomenal content while still awake and alert, and thus able to remember there was nothing.
[Some theories alledge] cognitive functions reflect consciousness which exists in the universe. I am saying that quantum processes in the brain (related to cognitive processes) are connected to protoconscious quantum information inherent in the universe. The connection results in OR which is a moment of consciousness (the protoconscious/unconscious quantum information becomes conscious) But remember the universe/spacetime geometry out there is also in our heads.” Hameroff
Several Vedic and Taoist texts (and perhaps other traditions as well) suggest that, with proper refinement of consciousness, the “outside” world can be cognized holographically, in a superposed, interpenetrating state where everything is experienced in everything else. If evidence can support such claims, perhaps the human mechanisms of perception have the capacity to directly experience an uncollapsed universe in which what is normally unconscious is merged into consciousness (or vice versa). Its like a dream.
But somehow consciousness is; somehow creativity emerges; somehow healing works; somehow we are, and are interrelated. Perhaps real meaning comes from our struggle to try to understand how these things work, to struggle toward wisdom in both the material and spiritual realms. There is meaning in the struggle to create, to heal, to know, to be.
by leilah39 on 10/09/2013 at 6:31 am Lost Christianities: The Black Madonnas
© 2013 Joshua Seraphim Leilah Publications
All rights reserved.
http://leilahpublications.com/madonna/
“Wisdom has built her house; she has set up her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, and she has set her table. She has sent out her house cleaners to call from the highest places in the town …‘ come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed…live, and walk in the way of insight.’” ~ Proverbs 9:1-6
Isis the Virgin of the World, is inextricably linked with alchemy and is often depicted in Medieval iconography with the Black Madonnas of Catholic Europe. The ankh, or Crux Ansata, which Isis carries as primeval initiatrix accounts for some of the imperial scepters carried by Black Virgins who, like Isis, represent to the Neophyte the beginning of the opus whose alchemical secret is found in the iconography of ancientof Isis. Àuset, Iset, or Isis is the seventh member of the pantheon of Ànnu; the wife of Àusar, or Àsar {Osiris}, and mother of Heru {Horus}. The woes of Isis over her slain mate are chronicles by Greek and Egyptian scribes.
Ànnu was called On by the Hebrews {Genesis XLI., 54, 50: XLVI., 20} and Bêth-Shemesh {Jeremiah XLIII., 13}. The city designated per Rā means “house of the Sun,” a sacred space where Isis and Her divine family were worshipped along with the Sun in prehistoric eras. The body of the Aged One, an epithet of Osiris had its final repose in Ànnu, where Isis laid the Eye of Osiris and resurrected him. Isis usually is depicted in the form of a woman with a headdress in the shape of a seat, the hieroglyph where her name is inscribed. She frequently was seen depicted with horns of the cow, which is sacred to her, accompanied by plumes and feathers.
Most commonly, Isis is represented as a matronly goddess suckling her child Horus. The figures of this motif exist in the thousands and have been emulated in the depiction of the Black Madonna. To many Christians Mary, as the redeemer of Eve’s grave sin, is the Heavenly Mother of all, she seeks to meet all the needs of her children. Especially as the Black Madonna whose adorants project their hopes, desires, and needs to her, only to draw them ever deeper into divine mysteries. There are black Madonnas and Black Madonnas. The term applies generically to any dark skin pigmented iconography of Mary. The term used frequently to designate these images is acculturated Madonnas, meaning artwork by Spanish, African, or African-American artists.
Black Madonnas are generally medieval, or copies of medieval motifs, and are found in Catholic areas. There are at least 180 Vierges Noires in France, Spain, and Portugal. A few are in museums, most are in churches or shrines, and are venerated by Catholic religious. The iconography of the Black Madonna figures is associated with miracles and some attract substantial numbers of pilgrims.
Of the hundreds that presently, exist at various shrines, some of the better-known images is: Our Lady of Altötting {Bavaria, Germany}; Our Lady of the Hermits {Einsiedeln, Switzerland}; Our Lady of Guadalupe {Mexico City}; Our Lady of Jasna Gora {Czestochowa, Poland}; Our Lady of Montserrat {Spain}; and Our Lady of Tindari {Sicily}. Black Madonna is the ancient earth goddess converted to Christianity. Note that many goddesses were pictured as black, among them Artemis of Ephesus, Isis, Ceres, and others. Ceres, the Roman goddess of agricultural fertility is particularly important in the Roman pantheon. The best fertile soil is black in color and the blacker it is, the more suited it is for agriculture.
Black Madonnas clearly reveal the artist’s intention to portray a darkly pigmented mother commonly suckling Her ebon child. Their faces and hands of both are black, while the clothes are brightly painted as if in celebratory intonation. It is possible the faithful of the Black Virgin proclaimed her ‘black’ quite independent of artistic intentions. Byzantine icons of the Madonna commonly have dark complexion, approximately in accordance with the actual skin color of Semitic tribes of Canaan and Palestine. Certain Madonna statues are dark because they are sculpted out of dark wood or cast in a dark metals; skin and clothes are all the same dark color, though the statues are often draped in bright cloth clothes, which accentuates the pigmentation. Important early studies of Black Madonna icons in France were done by Marie Durand-Lefebvre {1937}, Emile Saillens {1945}, and Jacques Huynen {1972}. These studies reached three primary conclusions about the complexion of the images:
• dark brown or black Madonnas with physiognomy and skin pigmentation matching that of the indigenous population.
• various art forms that have turned black as a result of certain physical factors such as deterioration of lead-based pigments; accumulated smoke from the use of votive candles; and accumulation of grime over the ages.
• residual category with no ready explanation.
The medieval custom of bathing statues with wine would also have contributed to the darkening of Romanesque Madonnas. {Francois Graveline, Vierges Romanes ed. Debaisieux, p. 26} The Catholic Church recognizes Madonnas are intentionally portrayed as black, connecting her to the bride in the Song of Songs 1:5-6, who says: “I am dark but beautiful, o daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Salma. Do not stare at me because I am black, because the sun has burned me.” Monastic communities such as the Benedictines view the Shulamite bride in the Song of Songs as the Bride of God, i.e. the Kabbalistic Shekinah the divine feminine in the human soul that longs for union with God.
The Virgin Mary, who takes up the role of interlocutor between the Logos and Mankind, is seen as a reintegration of Eve, as tikkun for a damaged race. Saint Teresa of Avila says in her Meditations on the Song of Songs chapter 5 v. 8: “O Blessed Lady, how perfectly we can apply to you what takes place between God and the bride according to what is said in the Song of Songs.” The bride’s blackness in the Song of Songs represents the promiscuity of Semitic and Nubian women, viewed by the Orthodox Rabbinic men of ancient Palestine as loathsome.
Religious and sexual yearning between King Solomon and the Shulamite bride in the Song of Songs, and between the Christ and Magdalene in John 20 represents the intolerable ache and incurable wound of the soul. The Song of Solomon ends with the call to the Beloved: “Flee my love, make yourself like a gazelle, or like a young stag on the mountains of spices!” {Songs 8; 14} In John 20, the Christ anointed with spices retracts himself from the touch of the Magdalene with a dynamic of bodily renunciation and intimacy of the resurrection. The Church identified the Magdalene as the sinful woman whom cleaved to the resurrected Logos, hindering him from the Ascension. In this way, the proto-orthodoxy creates a persona of a sinful Mary from the Marian figures in Luke 7 and 8, and John 20 that fit into the gender dichotomy of Woman as virgin or harlot.
However, many Hebraic hygienic and marital laws vilified sexually sovereign women, the Song of Songs celebrates eroticism. New Testament scriptures foresee the Christian Church as the virginal bride of the Christ {II Corinthians 11; 2, Ephesians 5; 23-32} or the New Jerusalem of the apocalypse {Revelations 21} as the virginal bride of the Hebrew Messiah. A puritan Christianity modeling its religious infidelity to a jealous God exploits the passion of the Madonna.
Black Madonnas express an empowerment not fully conveyed by a pale-skinned Mary, who seems to symbolize gentler qualities like obedience and chastity. This idea can be discussed in Jungian psychoanalytic terms. The sexual power, ‘eros’ approach may be linked to the Madonna and female sexuality repressed by the medieval Church. In France, there are traditions affirming that some statues are of Mary Magdalene and not of Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, but these related theories are generally rejected by Church theologians. The suggestion that Black Madonnas represent sexual equality and empowerment corresponds to fertility and agricultural goddesses attributed to the archetypal ‘great mother’ {Isis} who presides not only over fertility, but also over life and death.
Isis had many faces, colors, and functions {from birthing life to resurrecting, and imparting the secrets of Amentet to the Pharaohs} so the iconographies of Mary too fulfill many roles. The iconographies of the Black Madonna are unlimited, found in various religious memes celebrating the Magna Mater, or the Alma Māter. Theologians and religious alike should not fall into racism by accepting black Madonnas as “politically correct,” subscribing to one Church interpretation over another, or by refusing to see Eve’s pale countenance weeping before Lilith. Undoubtedly, the Black Madonna, in all her colors, is the heir to the thrones of all the matrilineal goddesses.
Stephen Benko argues: “the Black Madonna is the ancient earth goddess converted to Christianity” noting that many goddesses were pictured with dark complexions, among them Artemis of Ephesus, Isis, Cybele, and Sekhmet. Artemis of Ephesus was one of the most celebrated goddesses of the Greek pantheon. She is daughter of Leto and Zeus, and the twin of Apollo. Artemis is the goddess of the wilderness, the hunt and wild animals, and fertility {a goddess of fertility and childbirth mainly in Aegean cities}. Like Isis, Artemis was often depicted with the crescent of the moon above her forehead and was sometimes identified with Selene {goddess of the moon}. Artemis’ main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds, and stags. Artemis guarded their well-being moreover, reproduction. She was armed with a bow and arrows that were made by Hephaestus and the Cyclopes.
Her presence inundated the atmosphere of Ephesus {now modern day Turkey} providentially also the city where Mary lived after the crucifixion of Jesus. Auspiciously the Council of Ephesus held in this ancient city in A.D. 431 proclaimed Mary “Mother of God.” Brigitte Romankiewicz reports that at the time of the council many shrines to Isis and Cybele had been abandoned by decree of the Roman empire. The Council of Ephesus to christened 48 Black Madonna icons into shrines to the Virgin Mary {Die Schwarze 71 Madonna: Hintergruende einer Symbolgestalt, Patmos Verlag, 2004, p. 50}.
Cybele arose not far from Artemis, as the Phrygian Alma Māter {Lat. ‘nourishing mother,’ now providentially the form of address by graduates to their respective Universities!} and as another fertility and agricultural goddesses of Asia Minor. Her iconography reaches back to the Neolithic period of the Stone Age where Her depictions are seen in Neolithic caves. These are fitting depictions because Cybele is represented by a black meteor. Peter Lindegger {cited in China Galland’s Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna, p.145} links Cybele to Ishtar, the Sumerian- Babylonian Queen of the Skies, whom the Phoenicians and Canaanites worshipped as Asherah much to the loathing of Hebrew prophets. Cybele is closely linked to death and the underworld and is portrayed as a Black Madonna with dark facial complexion.
Isis truly embodies the iconography of the Black Madonna. She is one of the many masques Lilith puts on, the Hermetic sign Isis Mourning in the L.V.X. formula of Golden Dawn ceremonial magic represents Her Crone aspect of the Triune Goddess. The Black Madonna corresponds to the following Tarot Trumps: II High Priestess, III Empress, XVII The Star, and XVIII The Moon. These Trumps interconnect the formula of the Triune Goddess ~ of Maiden-Mother-Crone averse, or rather, Virgin-Whore-Crone.
Artemis-Maria Immaculata-Cybele-Isis is the Eternal Virgin, the Black Madonna clothed in the luminous veil of the Stars. Initiation into the mysteries of Isis lead the candidate to that Light is not the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit; She is the supernal light that veils matter and form. She is the luminous idea of spirit acting through matter, descending through the Abyss to annul the space between generation and sexual instinct.
Alma Māter consoles and protects, yet she also punishes and condemns. Mary Beth Moser in her book Honoring Darkness: Exploring the Power of Black Madonnas in Italy {see Bibliography} dedicates a whole section to the Madonna’s “Punishing Miracles” {pp. 68-76}. Her divine acts of justice avert the desecration of her countenance and ensure earthly respect for the Alma Māter. Alma Māter is not heir to the thrones of all the matrilineal goddesses, if She is limited to one sexual nature or one colour. Black Madonna guards the lost, derelict, and those maddened with love and lust, She not only births the incarnation of the Sun to us, but also guards the secrets of death. Hence one of Her Catholic titles: Our Lady of the Good Death.
The Black Madonna’s link to death is evidenced by the title of the Black Virgin of Clermont-Ferrand, and that many of her icons were venerated in subterranean burial chapels {crypts} of the great medieval Cathedrals. Consider Our Lady from Under the Ground {Notre Dame de Sous Terre}, the Black Madonna in the crypt of Cathedral Chartres, whose poetic title “Our Lady of the Underworld” is befitting of her custodianship over the spirit at the moment of death. Catholics venerate the Black Madonna profoundly, as a custodian and guide after death. Her prayer, the Ave Maria, ends thusly: “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” This is a mantra repeated repeatedly when praying with her rosary.
Convents, statues, cathedrals, even confraternities are named after Our Lady of the Good Death, ever placing a mantle of mystery and adoration upon the Black Madonna. In 19th century Brazil a Confraternity of Our Lady of the Good Death, made up of African slaves, was instrumental in synthesizing African and Catholic traditions into what came to be known as ‘Candomble,’ and ‘Santeria.’ To this day, there exists a Confraternity of “Catholic” Women of Our Lady of the Good Death in Cachoeira, Brazil, who are responsible for the survival of indigenous folklore in the form of Candomble and Santeria.
Black Madonna icons often measure 70 centimeters in height, 30 cm in width, and 30 cm in depth. The 7:3 ratio echoes sacred numerology that goes back to pre-Christian history. In the Christian context, the 7:3 speaks of Trinitarians {the 3 mystic complements of the trinity} and the seven mystic days for Genesis, the creations of the known archetypal worlds. Black Madonnas were enshrined at places that were sacred even before Christianity, pagan holy sites and natural vortices of biorhythmic energies.
Legend recounts that Saint Eusebius {martyred 371 A.D.}, led by divine inspiration, found the Our Lady of Oropa icon in Jerusalem, buried under ancient ruins. Eusebius brought her to Italy and enthroned her in a grotto sacred to Ceres, Roman goddess of the earth, in order to end the local pagan rituals. The woods around it were consecrated to Apollo and the large rocks to Ceres and Diana. Our Lady of Oropa became quite attached to this grotto. A group of Benedictine monks tried to move the icon to a new location a thousand years after Eusebius’ relocation of it. Yet after a few miles, the statue grew too heavy for the monks to transport, and they had to return it to the grotto.
Shrines to the Black Madonna all have a connection with the Benedictines, the Cistercians, or the Knights Templars. All three of these orders were strongly influenced by Saint Bernard {1090- 1153}, who was instrumental in establishing a pervasive and fervent popular cult of the Virgin. Vatican scholars list less than 50 of early ‘pagan’ Black Madonnas whose faces and hands are often painted a dark brown or black pigmentation. American scholars at the University of Dayton, Ohio report at least 450 Black Madonna icons in Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Switzerland.
In the Jungian school of psychology, the Black Madonna represents the archetype of the dark feminine: the unexplored, unpredictable, and inexperienced in humans and in the Godhead. She represents the existential terror one succumbs to in the St. John of the Cross-’ “dark night of the soul” in order to achieve gnosis. Cedrus N. Monte calls the Black Madonna a “lethal force” to Man’s ego. Monte explains that when the ego is lethally wounded, the true self experiences the crisis of rebirth, a form of transient death often experienced in ceremonial initiations.
The Black Madonna, Isis the Black Virgin, represents a continuity of life, a heritage of blood that binds nature and Man together. There is no breach between space and dark matter; the ancients worshipped the Great Goddess of the Earth as the primordial Alma Māter who nourishes all Life. The virginal Alma Māter is the perfection of Nature and miracle of generation.
Concealed in the very Mystical Memory of Woman and Genesis, is the beginnings of the pagan agrarian period with its fertility rites and matriarchal adorations; the worship of Isis, the Holy Mother proceeded by the Christian Age with patriarchal worship of Man and solar-phallic worship with the religious legends of the Dying God Slain and Risen; seen in the stories of Osiris, Mithra, and the Christ.
Through a regeneration of the esoteric principle of Death,, an antinomian undercurrent of the Lilith mythos breaks down all psychosexual ideologies and matrices initiated by previous eons. Uninhibited explorations of sexuality in recent history {via the enlightened research of Wilhelm Reich, Julius Evola, Carl Gustav Jung, Sigmund Freud, Barbara Black Koltuv} indicates a return to a more comprehensive and enlightened Understanding of sex. Each era and procession of the zodiacal eon begins a new prospect of human sexuality and eroticism in religious motifs, with new psychotechnology as the brain adapts to new interpretations of cultural and religious memes.
The function of initiates into the mysteries of the Black Madonna and Isis is to bear the Holy Grail and its secrets. The radiant blood of the Sangréal infers a rebirth from the ashes of severe psychological trauma {such as ceremonial initiation}. The witches, nuns, Gurus and Gurujis, Bishops, Deacons, warlocks, Scarlet women, and Magi whom have pasted the tests of evolution and reached into the depths of their primacy inherit the royal blood. The sanga-lugal was the priest-king in ancient Sumer, from whence comes the French Sangréal, the ‘blood royal.’ Thus the legendary Holy Grail, popularly ascribed to be the metaphysical womb of the Magdalene, existed contextually long before Jesus Christ.
In context of antiquated rites of mystical marriage, the hierodule {Greek, hierodulous}served as a female acolyte, often in connotation with religious prostitution. This sacred prostitute referred to as the Scarlet Woman, allegorized as the Whore of Babylon in Revelations, was the holy aspect of ancient bridal rituals of the orient. her sacred hieroglyph was the Rosi-Crucis, a cross within a circle found in many ancient religious sites and Roman coinage. The ceremonial robes of the heirodulai, the sacred prostitutes were scarlet red, and in lieu of the Madonna’s sacerdotal role, many medieval artists such as Luca Signorelli and Caravaggio portray Mary in red garments. The Song of Inanna reciprocated by the New Testament Song of Solomon indicates an antiquated ritual of mystical marriage. The Christ and Magdalene epitomize the Hieros Gamos, a mystical marriage that often reconciles and obscures the borders between sexuality and religion.
Isis is the dance of Life itself. She is constantly sashaying and writhing in ecstasy, as all the primal possibilities of Nature and sex are enjoyed under the phantom shadow of space and matter. All of Nature and the procession of the eons are harmony and beauty to the Black Virgin; her sacred words are perfect love and perfect trust. The Black Madonna is swathed in the shawl of secrecy, vaporous because She is occult; She is the sphinx whom delegates the Secret yet is without secrets. She is the Graal, the container of the ethereal waters, which are blood, oil, sperm, and menses. Her ethereal waters are the Great Sea of Binah, the manifestation of maternal wisdom in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Heaven itself is a veil of the immaculate starry Madonna. Often associated with Isis is Venus, represented by the obtuse and acute Heptagram.
The Black Madonna is the vaporous guardian over the threshold of life and death, “Our Lady of the Good Death,” recall is the Goddess many Christians invoke upon death and is often invoked in the Last Rites. She is all mysterious, all nourishing, all enticing, all intoxicating, ever immaculate, and diaphanous. Recall that, as Isis the Black Madonna is the nourishing Alma Māter, she also is the Lady of Sorrows for she is the Alma Māter and Nature is Her name. As the trumpets of the zodiacal processions and their mythic apocalypses blare forth the fearful glories of Isis, at the end is the deathly silence of the Black Madonna.
Conceived without sin, sin is not restriction, it is an offence to the deathless and its unfathomable maker, the creator of the universe. The prayer beseeches her mercy, a refuge for those whom have sinned against themselves thereby causing ruin in the spheres of humans and the environment around them. Mercy = Binah beseeched, the “grace of perfect sorrow” ~ one of the most beautiful and elegant verses of liturgy to the Immaculate Virgin. Only in the grace of perfect sorrow does one come to sinful lament for transgression against personal & divine Will, obscuring the fatality of the negative Light.
To the Madonna, perfect sorrow equals perfect penitence…and Love. Mother of the dying…we are all shells, hosts and “inheritors of a dying world” thus our Mother ever laments for the children she has not borne, the children {earth, Man, God} she has lost. The outcast, murderers, thieves, the forlorn and forsaken, prisoners, madmen, and the insane, the refuges of Love and Lust, these are Her true children. Again, she is beseeched to forsake not the despondent ‘at the hour of their death,’ for death is the relief of the soul and the transience of the will.. at least for those who believe in destiny..the merging of wills and fates between Soul and flesh.
Black Madonna Cathedrals and Chapels in Europa:
Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Regula Moeder van Regula van Spaignen
Brugge Chapelle de la Vierge Noire, Maillen Assesse, Belgium
Donji Kraljevec, County of Medjimurje, Croatia
Our Lady of Rocamadour
Saint Saveur d’Aix, Aix-en-Provence Avioth, Meuse, France
Our Lady of Altötting, Bavaria, Germany
Our Lady of Dublin, Ireland
Our Lady of Tindari, Sicily, Italia
Black Madonna of Oropa, Piedmont, Italia
Our Lady of Crea, Casale Monferrato, Alessandria
Il-Madonna tas-Samra Madonna of Samaria, Malta
The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland
Theotokos of St. Theodore, Russia
Our Lady Of Atocha, Madrid, Spain
The Virgin in the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe
Virgin of Montserrat in Catalonia, Spain
Nuestra Señora de la Merced {Our Lady Of Mercy}, Jerez de la
Frontera, Cádiz, Spain
The Virgin of the Miracles, Virgen de los milagros, El Puerto de
Santa María, Cádiz, Spain
Our Lady of the Hermits, Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Santa Maria Loretana, Sonogno, Valle Verzasca, Switzerland
Black Madonnas or important replicas in the Americas
Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil
La Negrita, Cartago, Costa Rica
Black Madonna Shrine, Missouri, United States
National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Pennsylvania, United States
© 2013 Joshua Seraphim Leilah Publications
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http://leilahpublications.com/madonna/
“Wisdom has built her house; she has set up her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, and she has set her table. She has sent out her house cleaners to call from the highest places in the town …‘ come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed…live, and walk in the way of insight.’” ~ Proverbs 9:1-6
Isis the Virgin of the World, is inextricably linked with alchemy and is often depicted in Medieval iconography with the Black Madonnas of Catholic Europe. The ankh, or Crux Ansata, which Isis carries as primeval initiatrix accounts for some of the imperial scepters carried by Black Virgins who, like Isis, represent to the Neophyte the beginning of the opus whose alchemical secret is found in the iconography of ancientof Isis. Àuset, Iset, or Isis is the seventh member of the pantheon of Ànnu; the wife of Àusar, or Àsar {Osiris}, and mother of Heru {Horus}. The woes of Isis over her slain mate are chronicles by Greek and Egyptian scribes.
Ànnu was called On by the Hebrews {Genesis XLI., 54, 50: XLVI., 20} and Bêth-Shemesh {Jeremiah XLIII., 13}. The city designated per Rā means “house of the Sun,” a sacred space where Isis and Her divine family were worshipped along with the Sun in prehistoric eras. The body of the Aged One, an epithet of Osiris had its final repose in Ànnu, where Isis laid the Eye of Osiris and resurrected him. Isis usually is depicted in the form of a woman with a headdress in the shape of a seat, the hieroglyph where her name is inscribed. She frequently was seen depicted with horns of the cow, which is sacred to her, accompanied by plumes and feathers.
Most commonly, Isis is represented as a matronly goddess suckling her child Horus. The figures of this motif exist in the thousands and have been emulated in the depiction of the Black Madonna. To many Christians Mary, as the redeemer of Eve’s grave sin, is the Heavenly Mother of all, she seeks to meet all the needs of her children. Especially as the Black Madonna whose adorants project their hopes, desires, and needs to her, only to draw them ever deeper into divine mysteries. There are black Madonnas and Black Madonnas. The term applies generically to any dark skin pigmented iconography of Mary. The term used frequently to designate these images is acculturated Madonnas, meaning artwork by Spanish, African, or African-American artists.
Black Madonnas are generally medieval, or copies of medieval motifs, and are found in Catholic areas. There are at least 180 Vierges Noires in France, Spain, and Portugal. A few are in museums, most are in churches or shrines, and are venerated by Catholic religious. The iconography of the Black Madonna figures is associated with miracles and some attract substantial numbers of pilgrims.
Of the hundreds that presently, exist at various shrines, some of the better-known images is: Our Lady of Altötting {Bavaria, Germany}; Our Lady of the Hermits {Einsiedeln, Switzerland}; Our Lady of Guadalupe {Mexico City}; Our Lady of Jasna Gora {Czestochowa, Poland}; Our Lady of Montserrat {Spain}; and Our Lady of Tindari {Sicily}. Black Madonna is the ancient earth goddess converted to Christianity. Note that many goddesses were pictured as black, among them Artemis of Ephesus, Isis, Ceres, and others. Ceres, the Roman goddess of agricultural fertility is particularly important in the Roman pantheon. The best fertile soil is black in color and the blacker it is, the more suited it is for agriculture.
Black Madonnas clearly reveal the artist’s intention to portray a darkly pigmented mother commonly suckling Her ebon child. Their faces and hands of both are black, while the clothes are brightly painted as if in celebratory intonation. It is possible the faithful of the Black Virgin proclaimed her ‘black’ quite independent of artistic intentions. Byzantine icons of the Madonna commonly have dark complexion, approximately in accordance with the actual skin color of Semitic tribes of Canaan and Palestine. Certain Madonna statues are dark because they are sculpted out of dark wood or cast in a dark metals; skin and clothes are all the same dark color, though the statues are often draped in bright cloth clothes, which accentuates the pigmentation. Important early studies of Black Madonna icons in France were done by Marie Durand-Lefebvre {1937}, Emile Saillens {1945}, and Jacques Huynen {1972}. These studies reached three primary conclusions about the complexion of the images:
• dark brown or black Madonnas with physiognomy and skin pigmentation matching that of the indigenous population.
• various art forms that have turned black as a result of certain physical factors such as deterioration of lead-based pigments; accumulated smoke from the use of votive candles; and accumulation of grime over the ages.
• residual category with no ready explanation.
The medieval custom of bathing statues with wine would also have contributed to the darkening of Romanesque Madonnas. {Francois Graveline, Vierges Romanes ed. Debaisieux, p. 26} The Catholic Church recognizes Madonnas are intentionally portrayed as black, connecting her to the bride in the Song of Songs 1:5-6, who says: “I am dark but beautiful, o daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Salma. Do not stare at me because I am black, because the sun has burned me.” Monastic communities such as the Benedictines view the Shulamite bride in the Song of Songs as the Bride of God, i.e. the Kabbalistic Shekinah the divine feminine in the human soul that longs for union with God.
The Virgin Mary, who takes up the role of interlocutor between the Logos and Mankind, is seen as a reintegration of Eve, as tikkun for a damaged race. Saint Teresa of Avila says in her Meditations on the Song of Songs chapter 5 v. 8: “O Blessed Lady, how perfectly we can apply to you what takes place between God and the bride according to what is said in the Song of Songs.” The bride’s blackness in the Song of Songs represents the promiscuity of Semitic and Nubian women, viewed by the Orthodox Rabbinic men of ancient Palestine as loathsome.
Religious and sexual yearning between King Solomon and the Shulamite bride in the Song of Songs, and between the Christ and Magdalene in John 20 represents the intolerable ache and incurable wound of the soul. The Song of Solomon ends with the call to the Beloved: “Flee my love, make yourself like a gazelle, or like a young stag on the mountains of spices!” {Songs 8; 14} In John 20, the Christ anointed with spices retracts himself from the touch of the Magdalene with a dynamic of bodily renunciation and intimacy of the resurrection. The Church identified the Magdalene as the sinful woman whom cleaved to the resurrected Logos, hindering him from the Ascension. In this way, the proto-orthodoxy creates a persona of a sinful Mary from the Marian figures in Luke 7 and 8, and John 20 that fit into the gender dichotomy of Woman as virgin or harlot.
However, many Hebraic hygienic and marital laws vilified sexually sovereign women, the Song of Songs celebrates eroticism. New Testament scriptures foresee the Christian Church as the virginal bride of the Christ {II Corinthians 11; 2, Ephesians 5; 23-32} or the New Jerusalem of the apocalypse {Revelations 21} as the virginal bride of the Hebrew Messiah. A puritan Christianity modeling its religious infidelity to a jealous God exploits the passion of the Madonna.
Black Madonnas express an empowerment not fully conveyed by a pale-skinned Mary, who seems to symbolize gentler qualities like obedience and chastity. This idea can be discussed in Jungian psychoanalytic terms. The sexual power, ‘eros’ approach may be linked to the Madonna and female sexuality repressed by the medieval Church. In France, there are traditions affirming that some statues are of Mary Magdalene and not of Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, but these related theories are generally rejected by Church theologians. The suggestion that Black Madonnas represent sexual equality and empowerment corresponds to fertility and agricultural goddesses attributed to the archetypal ‘great mother’ {Isis} who presides not only over fertility, but also over life and death.
Isis had many faces, colors, and functions {from birthing life to resurrecting, and imparting the secrets of Amentet to the Pharaohs} so the iconographies of Mary too fulfill many roles. The iconographies of the Black Madonna are unlimited, found in various religious memes celebrating the Magna Mater, or the Alma Māter. Theologians and religious alike should not fall into racism by accepting black Madonnas as “politically correct,” subscribing to one Church interpretation over another, or by refusing to see Eve’s pale countenance weeping before Lilith. Undoubtedly, the Black Madonna, in all her colors, is the heir to the thrones of all the matrilineal goddesses.
Stephen Benko argues: “the Black Madonna is the ancient earth goddess converted to Christianity” noting that many goddesses were pictured with dark complexions, among them Artemis of Ephesus, Isis, Cybele, and Sekhmet. Artemis of Ephesus was one of the most celebrated goddesses of the Greek pantheon. She is daughter of Leto and Zeus, and the twin of Apollo. Artemis is the goddess of the wilderness, the hunt and wild animals, and fertility {a goddess of fertility and childbirth mainly in Aegean cities}. Like Isis, Artemis was often depicted with the crescent of the moon above her forehead and was sometimes identified with Selene {goddess of the moon}. Artemis’ main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds, and stags. Artemis guarded their well-being moreover, reproduction. She was armed with a bow and arrows that were made by Hephaestus and the Cyclopes.
Her presence inundated the atmosphere of Ephesus {now modern day Turkey} providentially also the city where Mary lived after the crucifixion of Jesus. Auspiciously the Council of Ephesus held in this ancient city in A.D. 431 proclaimed Mary “Mother of God.” Brigitte Romankiewicz reports that at the time of the council many shrines to Isis and Cybele had been abandoned by decree of the Roman empire. The Council of Ephesus to christened 48 Black Madonna icons into shrines to the Virgin Mary {Die Schwarze 71 Madonna: Hintergruende einer Symbolgestalt, Patmos Verlag, 2004, p. 50}.
Cybele arose not far from Artemis, as the Phrygian Alma Māter {Lat. ‘nourishing mother,’ now providentially the form of address by graduates to their respective Universities!} and as another fertility and agricultural goddesses of Asia Minor. Her iconography reaches back to the Neolithic period of the Stone Age where Her depictions are seen in Neolithic caves. These are fitting depictions because Cybele is represented by a black meteor. Peter Lindegger {cited in China Galland’s Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna, p.145} links Cybele to Ishtar, the Sumerian- Babylonian Queen of the Skies, whom the Phoenicians and Canaanites worshipped as Asherah much to the loathing of Hebrew prophets. Cybele is closely linked to death and the underworld and is portrayed as a Black Madonna with dark facial complexion.
Isis truly embodies the iconography of the Black Madonna. She is one of the many masques Lilith puts on, the Hermetic sign Isis Mourning in the L.V.X. formula of Golden Dawn ceremonial magic represents Her Crone aspect of the Triune Goddess. The Black Madonna corresponds to the following Tarot Trumps: II High Priestess, III Empress, XVII The Star, and XVIII The Moon. These Trumps interconnect the formula of the Triune Goddess ~ of Maiden-Mother-Crone averse, or rather, Virgin-Whore-Crone.
Artemis-Maria Immaculata-Cybele-Isis is the Eternal Virgin, the Black Madonna clothed in the luminous veil of the Stars. Initiation into the mysteries of Isis lead the candidate to that Light is not the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit; She is the supernal light that veils matter and form. She is the luminous idea of spirit acting through matter, descending through the Abyss to annul the space between generation and sexual instinct.
Alma Māter consoles and protects, yet she also punishes and condemns. Mary Beth Moser in her book Honoring Darkness: Exploring the Power of Black Madonnas in Italy {see Bibliography} dedicates a whole section to the Madonna’s “Punishing Miracles” {pp. 68-76}. Her divine acts of justice avert the desecration of her countenance and ensure earthly respect for the Alma Māter. Alma Māter is not heir to the thrones of all the matrilineal goddesses, if She is limited to one sexual nature or one colour. Black Madonna guards the lost, derelict, and those maddened with love and lust, She not only births the incarnation of the Sun to us, but also guards the secrets of death. Hence one of Her Catholic titles: Our Lady of the Good Death.
The Black Madonna’s link to death is evidenced by the title of the Black Virgin of Clermont-Ferrand, and that many of her icons were venerated in subterranean burial chapels {crypts} of the great medieval Cathedrals. Consider Our Lady from Under the Ground {Notre Dame de Sous Terre}, the Black Madonna in the crypt of Cathedral Chartres, whose poetic title “Our Lady of the Underworld” is befitting of her custodianship over the spirit at the moment of death. Catholics venerate the Black Madonna profoundly, as a custodian and guide after death. Her prayer, the Ave Maria, ends thusly: “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” This is a mantra repeated repeatedly when praying with her rosary.
Convents, statues, cathedrals, even confraternities are named after Our Lady of the Good Death, ever placing a mantle of mystery and adoration upon the Black Madonna. In 19th century Brazil a Confraternity of Our Lady of the Good Death, made up of African slaves, was instrumental in synthesizing African and Catholic traditions into what came to be known as ‘Candomble,’ and ‘Santeria.’ To this day, there exists a Confraternity of “Catholic” Women of Our Lady of the Good Death in Cachoeira, Brazil, who are responsible for the survival of indigenous folklore in the form of Candomble and Santeria.
Black Madonna icons often measure 70 centimeters in height, 30 cm in width, and 30 cm in depth. The 7:3 ratio echoes sacred numerology that goes back to pre-Christian history. In the Christian context, the 7:3 speaks of Trinitarians {the 3 mystic complements of the trinity} and the seven mystic days for Genesis, the creations of the known archetypal worlds. Black Madonnas were enshrined at places that were sacred even before Christianity, pagan holy sites and natural vortices of biorhythmic energies.
Legend recounts that Saint Eusebius {martyred 371 A.D.}, led by divine inspiration, found the Our Lady of Oropa icon in Jerusalem, buried under ancient ruins. Eusebius brought her to Italy and enthroned her in a grotto sacred to Ceres, Roman goddess of the earth, in order to end the local pagan rituals. The woods around it were consecrated to Apollo and the large rocks to Ceres and Diana. Our Lady of Oropa became quite attached to this grotto. A group of Benedictine monks tried to move the icon to a new location a thousand years after Eusebius’ relocation of it. Yet after a few miles, the statue grew too heavy for the monks to transport, and they had to return it to the grotto.
Shrines to the Black Madonna all have a connection with the Benedictines, the Cistercians, or the Knights Templars. All three of these orders were strongly influenced by Saint Bernard {1090- 1153}, who was instrumental in establishing a pervasive and fervent popular cult of the Virgin. Vatican scholars list less than 50 of early ‘pagan’ Black Madonnas whose faces and hands are often painted a dark brown or black pigmentation. American scholars at the University of Dayton, Ohio report at least 450 Black Madonna icons in Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Ecuador, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Switzerland.
In the Jungian school of psychology, the Black Madonna represents the archetype of the dark feminine: the unexplored, unpredictable, and inexperienced in humans and in the Godhead. She represents the existential terror one succumbs to in the St. John of the Cross-’ “dark night of the soul” in order to achieve gnosis. Cedrus N. Monte calls the Black Madonna a “lethal force” to Man’s ego. Monte explains that when the ego is lethally wounded, the true self experiences the crisis of rebirth, a form of transient death often experienced in ceremonial initiations.
The Black Madonna, Isis the Black Virgin, represents a continuity of life, a heritage of blood that binds nature and Man together. There is no breach between space and dark matter; the ancients worshipped the Great Goddess of the Earth as the primordial Alma Māter who nourishes all Life. The virginal Alma Māter is the perfection of Nature and miracle of generation.
Concealed in the very Mystical Memory of Woman and Genesis, is the beginnings of the pagan agrarian period with its fertility rites and matriarchal adorations; the worship of Isis, the Holy Mother proceeded by the Christian Age with patriarchal worship of Man and solar-phallic worship with the religious legends of the Dying God Slain and Risen; seen in the stories of Osiris, Mithra, and the Christ.
Through a regeneration of the esoteric principle of Death,, an antinomian undercurrent of the Lilith mythos breaks down all psychosexual ideologies and matrices initiated by previous eons. Uninhibited explorations of sexuality in recent history {via the enlightened research of Wilhelm Reich, Julius Evola, Carl Gustav Jung, Sigmund Freud, Barbara Black Koltuv} indicates a return to a more comprehensive and enlightened Understanding of sex. Each era and procession of the zodiacal eon begins a new prospect of human sexuality and eroticism in religious motifs, with new psychotechnology as the brain adapts to new interpretations of cultural and religious memes.
The function of initiates into the mysteries of the Black Madonna and Isis is to bear the Holy Grail and its secrets. The radiant blood of the Sangréal infers a rebirth from the ashes of severe psychological trauma {such as ceremonial initiation}. The witches, nuns, Gurus and Gurujis, Bishops, Deacons, warlocks, Scarlet women, and Magi whom have pasted the tests of evolution and reached into the depths of their primacy inherit the royal blood. The sanga-lugal was the priest-king in ancient Sumer, from whence comes the French Sangréal, the ‘blood royal.’ Thus the legendary Holy Grail, popularly ascribed to be the metaphysical womb of the Magdalene, existed contextually long before Jesus Christ.
In context of antiquated rites of mystical marriage, the hierodule {Greek, hierodulous}served as a female acolyte, often in connotation with religious prostitution. This sacred prostitute referred to as the Scarlet Woman, allegorized as the Whore of Babylon in Revelations, was the holy aspect of ancient bridal rituals of the orient. her sacred hieroglyph was the Rosi-Crucis, a cross within a circle found in many ancient religious sites and Roman coinage. The ceremonial robes of the heirodulai, the sacred prostitutes were scarlet red, and in lieu of the Madonna’s sacerdotal role, many medieval artists such as Luca Signorelli and Caravaggio portray Mary in red garments. The Song of Inanna reciprocated by the New Testament Song of Solomon indicates an antiquated ritual of mystical marriage. The Christ and Magdalene epitomize the Hieros Gamos, a mystical marriage that often reconciles and obscures the borders between sexuality and religion.
Isis is the dance of Life itself. She is constantly sashaying and writhing in ecstasy, as all the primal possibilities of Nature and sex are enjoyed under the phantom shadow of space and matter. All of Nature and the procession of the eons are harmony and beauty to the Black Virgin; her sacred words are perfect love and perfect trust. The Black Madonna is swathed in the shawl of secrecy, vaporous because She is occult; She is the sphinx whom delegates the Secret yet is without secrets. She is the Graal, the container of the ethereal waters, which are blood, oil, sperm, and menses. Her ethereal waters are the Great Sea of Binah, the manifestation of maternal wisdom in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Heaven itself is a veil of the immaculate starry Madonna. Often associated with Isis is Venus, represented by the obtuse and acute Heptagram.
The Black Madonna is the vaporous guardian over the threshold of life and death, “Our Lady of the Good Death,” recall is the Goddess many Christians invoke upon death and is often invoked in the Last Rites. She is all mysterious, all nourishing, all enticing, all intoxicating, ever immaculate, and diaphanous. Recall that, as Isis the Black Madonna is the nourishing Alma Māter, she also is the Lady of Sorrows for she is the Alma Māter and Nature is Her name. As the trumpets of the zodiacal processions and their mythic apocalypses blare forth the fearful glories of Isis, at the end is the deathly silence of the Black Madonna.
Conceived without sin, sin is not restriction, it is an offence to the deathless and its unfathomable maker, the creator of the universe. The prayer beseeches her mercy, a refuge for those whom have sinned against themselves thereby causing ruin in the spheres of humans and the environment around them. Mercy = Binah beseeched, the “grace of perfect sorrow” ~ one of the most beautiful and elegant verses of liturgy to the Immaculate Virgin. Only in the grace of perfect sorrow does one come to sinful lament for transgression against personal & divine Will, obscuring the fatality of the negative Light.
To the Madonna, perfect sorrow equals perfect penitence…and Love. Mother of the dying…we are all shells, hosts and “inheritors of a dying world” thus our Mother ever laments for the children she has not borne, the children {earth, Man, God} she has lost. The outcast, murderers, thieves, the forlorn and forsaken, prisoners, madmen, and the insane, the refuges of Love and Lust, these are Her true children. Again, she is beseeched to forsake not the despondent ‘at the hour of their death,’ for death is the relief of the soul and the transience of the will.. at least for those who believe in destiny..the merging of wills and fates between Soul and flesh.
Black Madonna Cathedrals and Chapels in Europa:
Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Regula Moeder van Regula van Spaignen
Brugge Chapelle de la Vierge Noire, Maillen Assesse, Belgium
Donji Kraljevec, County of Medjimurje, Croatia
Our Lady of Rocamadour
Saint Saveur d’Aix, Aix-en-Provence Avioth, Meuse, France
Our Lady of Altötting, Bavaria, Germany
Our Lady of Dublin, Ireland
Our Lady of Tindari, Sicily, Italia
Black Madonna of Oropa, Piedmont, Italia
Our Lady of Crea, Casale Monferrato, Alessandria
Il-Madonna tas-Samra Madonna of Samaria, Malta
The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland
Theotokos of St. Theodore, Russia
Our Lady Of Atocha, Madrid, Spain
The Virgin in the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe
Virgin of Montserrat in Catalonia, Spain
Nuestra Señora de la Merced {Our Lady Of Mercy}, Jerez de la
Frontera, Cádiz, Spain
The Virgin of the Miracles, Virgen de los milagros, El Puerto de
Santa María, Cádiz, Spain
Our Lady of the Hermits, Einsiedeln, Switzerland
Santa Maria Loretana, Sonogno, Valle Verzasca, Switzerland
Black Madonnas or important replicas in the Americas
Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil
La Negrita, Cartago, Costa Rica
Black Madonna Shrine, Missouri, United States
National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Pennsylvania, United States