The Black Madonna, ‘Holy Fools’, and ‘The Mother of God’: A ‘Punk Prayer’ for the New Year - Neela Bhattacharya Saxena

Yuletide scenes are all around us despite the scarily warm solstice in New York. Bells are ringing, malls are crowding, and in some quarters Christmas caroling can be heard.  The US media is agog with serious problems such as whether Santa Claus was white and the even more troubling problem that Jesus might not be a blue eyed blonde man.  In India a benighted Supreme Court upheld a British colonial law against homosexuality.  In the Emirates of Russia, Putin the Vlad may need to rethink his anti LGBT laws since Billy Jean King and other openly gay athletes will represent the US in the Winter Olympics.  

But there is reason for hope; under protests, the Indian government has asked the court to review the law because it "violated the principle of equality".  India’s brilliant mythologist Devdutt Puttnaik upset a lot of Hindus by declaring that homophobia is not a part of India’s religious heritage. http://devdutt.com/blog/hindu-not-homophobic.html. And there are good tidings from Moscow:  Nadia and Masha, the two jailed members of the Russian feminist punk group have been released.  It seems this is a good day to write ‘a punk prayer’ for a New Year that will have the 100 year anniversary of the First World War. So this Christmas season when the birth of a divine child is being celebrated, this lover of Kali invokes ‘the Mother of God’ in her dark incarnation as the Black Madonna of Europe.  I dedicate this blog to my dear Greek friends George and Toula Harlampoudis.

I had recently watched the Sundance documentary film, Pussy Riots: A Punk Prayer about the Russian case. Not knowing much about the controversy, I was struck by the scene when these women touched the ground and invoked Maria, the Mother of God as they prepared to ‘storm’ the Christ the Savior Church in Moscow. I was puzzled that they were imprisoned due to their supposed ‘religious hatred,’ and yet they were calling out to the Virgin. By the end of the film, it made perfect sense to me that these ‘holy fools’ would invoke the Mother of God to protest against Putin’s dictatorial rule in a patriarchal church that condones it.  After all the original Mother of God, Egypt’s Isis, whose image with Horus on her breast was the model for Madonna and Child, was a benefactor of the downtrodden.

Isis, the first child of Geb and Nut, was a friend of the “slaves, sinners and artisans” among others.  Her story bespeaks of the pain woman endures for her right to give birth and nurture. It is significant that the image of Nut, her mother, is one of those rare portrayals of the sky as feminine that envelops the world and protects Geb, the masculine earth, destabilizing easy gendering of father sky and mother earth.  In ancient times the Mother power that presides over birth and death and renews life in cyclical understanding of time was venerated in myriad forms, and there was no spiritual rivalry between men and women.  She inhabits the mystery of interiority and makes our lived life numinously real.  

Having grown up in India with Kali and myriad goddesses of every shape and hue, I know in my blood that the Divine Mother cannot be ensconced within any national or religious border, and cannot really be destroyed because she represents the mystic river flowing deep within all religions. Hence, I had haunted many a European land in search of the lost Mother God of the West. I had found her hiding in plain sight although patriarchal monotheism had erased the Name of the Woman from the exoteric space of the Divine.  Church authorities deny the existence of the Black Madonna who is not under the power of patriarchy.  In 2006, led by China Galland’s book Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna, I visited the Einsindeln monastery outside of Zurich and had the darshan of a magnificent Black Virgin with black Jesus in her arms.  The Carl Jung institute nearby invokes her to lead people to wholeness out of their modern neurosis. 

For me, this mysterious figure experientially attested to the Gnostic lore of a different Christianity.  Elaine Pagels studied the Nag Hammadi manuscripts and wrote her 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels.  Now innumerable feminist theologians are recognizing the role the discredited Mary, Mary of Magdala, played in early Christianity.  In my physical travels, textual studies and inner journeys, I had begun to suspect that the dark Mary is a remnant of ancient mother goddesses of Europe, and somehow in the Black Virgin, the Biblical white and black Maries merge beyond dichotomies. I regularly teach the transformational text the Gospel of Mary in my “The Goddess in World Religions” class along with the Song of Songs of the Hebrew Bible and pay homage to the hard work of feminist theologians and seekers.  

In 2007 in Cyprus, I gave a paper on the Black Madonna at a conference and then visited Ephesus in Turkey where the third Ecumenical Council in 431 CE upheld that a “mere woman”, human mother of Jesus will continued to be venerated as Theotokos, the Mother of God.  The newly created creed needed its own version of a maternal figure since the entire area worshipped Isis and other powerful mother goddesses like Demeter.  The nascent patriarchal church did not know what it was letting loose; after all the utterance, the Mother of God is a rather uneasy reminder of the primacy of the Mother Principle.  Later, leaders of the Reformation abolished the feast of Assumption and other such festivals to purge patriarchal Christianity of anything feminine, so called Mariolatry.  

As I walked the ancient streets of Ephesus strewn with Greek goddesses, I recognized the archetypal significance of the place.  Ephesus was the home of Artemis who was originally created out of a black meteor and might have been first worshipped by the famed Amazons.  I had a glimpse of the birth place of Aphrodite in Paphos, Cyprus, who was the alchemical goddess.  On the streets of Nicosia, I met my dear friend Lazaro Soteri, a brilliant healer and shaman.  I witnessed the power of Athena in Athens as I stood on the Acropolis on a clear crisp summer day.  I descended into a cave shrine of the Virgin Mother in the island of Samos and also felt the power of the Delphic womb in Delphi.  I understood why the Greeks call the Virgin, Parthena which was another name of Athena.  The original meaning of virgin was connected to the word parthenogenesis; as in Hindu Kaumari, it represents the autonomy of the feminine principle, not sexual repression. 

Last year I witnessed the unveiling of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora, Częstochowa; my Polish friend Marzenna told me the meaning of her name– often hidden one.  She remains hidden within patriarchal monotheisms; it is internalized patriarchy even within women that is now forcing her to reemerge.  Sue Monk Kidd who wrote about her awakening in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine acknowledged how the word goddess created anxiety in her.  She and many others are now “redeeming the snake” in their psyches because “Eden is a wounded geography within women’s lives.” My friend Suzanne Ironbiter has written about her encounter in her book Devi: Mother of My Mind.  China Galland wrote how dark and female Kali had “turned her Catholic upbringing inside out” and how “the darkness of these female gods comforted” her.  “It felt like a balm on the wound of the unending white maleness that we had deified in the West.”

And yet, there have always been ‘holy fools’ within Christianity.  Mystics such as Saint Francis, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Avila could not really be contained by the institutional system. Accused of heresy, Meister Eckhart when asked what God is doing in heaven had answered: “He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth forever. The Father being in labor, as a woman giving birth to a child, in every virtuous soul.” Today his namesake and wildly popular Eckhart Tolle is called by some a “looney feminist” because he gives primacy to the feminine principle and even dares to say that gay people’s “uncertainty about their sexuality” may force them “to dis-identify from socially conditioned patterns of thought.” 

In India the veiled Madonna cohabits with many goddesses; oral tales of resurrected Jesus visiting there with Mary Magdalene abound, and there is even a tomb of Issa in Kashmir.  Some of you may like my friend Jayana or Jay Clark’s intriguing book about Jesus and Mary Magdalene in India called The Ultimate Love Story.  Oral traditions speak of many mystical tales of St Thomas who brought Christianity to the shores of Kali saturated Kerala.  It must be remembered though that Eastern, Russian, Coptic, and other Orthodox traditions or Syrian Christianity in India, although colored by Christianity’s imperial history, do not embrace aggressive proselytizing ideologies.  But Western Catholicism that wants to “harvest souls” and very wealthy American Evangelism out to convert the world by hook or by crook can be dangerous power mongering systems.  

My Vajrayana Buddhist and Shakta tantric guru, Kulavadhuta Satpurananda who is also a Sufi and an initiated master in Gnostic Christianity speaks of the mystic chalices and Mother Teresa’s practices in Dakshineswar, the haunt of Kali lover Ramakrishna.  For tantrikas that permeate all the dharma traditions, the shunya and purna, emptiness and plenitude, merge in Kali whom I have described as ‘pregnant nothingness’. It is no accident that Gnostic Teresa chose Kolkata as her abode.  Khepababa also speaks of the basil plant (we call tulsi in India) found at the spot of Christ’s resurrection and therefore the name Basilica.  And this Christmas in case you are drinking Chartreuse liquor, made by Carthusian monks, Baba says, pay close attention to its history.  The Black Madonna may speak to you in ways you may not anticipate. 

Mother Principle is not necessarily about women who may or may not want to be mothers, and there are enough messed up mothers who fail to nurture their wanted or unwanted babies.  But collectively women inhabit the mystery of interiority we call Shakti in India.  The Great Mother, at once One and Many, also presides over all diversity of life and resists homogeneity.  This Christmas and New Year let us remember all the ‘laboring’ bodies of both men and women.  Perhaps in this coming time, the psychic trauma of sexism and racism that creates what Eckhart Tolle calls our ‘pain body’ will be purged.  May we descend into the mystic body and become conscious of our subliminal psyches so that we can stop consuming ourselves and the earth’s limited resources. Or the cycle of violence will continue as children will inherit the suffering. This is my punk prayer to the Black Madonna for helping us face and dissolve all those pain bodies as we usher in a new dawn around the world in 2014.

‘Witching Hour’: Of Women, Power, and the New Yoginis- Neela Bhattacharya Saxena

Imagine this scenario: a lone woman in a small tent in the wilderness of Tanzania on a river’s edge with ‘twittering sounds of nightjars, owls, baboons, and water’.  Then she hears the roaring of lions and smells one very near her tent. The lion stretched his body against the tent pushing her into a tiny spot inside; the woman’s left hand under his bulk! Trying to keep panic away, she falls asleep with her unmoving hand in strange communion with the lion.  She awakens to a bright sunlit day; wondering if she dreamt it all, she walks outside and sees a lion’s tracks on the sand! 

No, this is not a tale told by old folks while children basked in the warmth of a hearth fire.  My eighty eight year old mother, who is an avid reader of world news, pointed out this piece in the latest issue of the National Geographic.  You can read Amy Dickman, a wildlife biologist’s account of her encounter there or hear her speak at their website. As I imagined Amy and the lion in the darkening night, I thought of the expression ‘witching hour.’ There was a time in Europe when women seen alone after midnight could be accused of witchcraft and hence the term. These days witching hour also refers to all kinds of stuff, including some Stock market events, nefarious or not.

I visualize Amy and the lion asleep in that bewitching space beyond time, and I marvel about a new generation of women that have come to redefine some of our notions about gender.  European and American women have also come a long way since the days of witch burnings, thanks to courageous women who refused to be defined one way or the other by their culture.  Or have such women always existed, just not in the public space within the purview of the media or curious onlookers? Courage is usually defined as a masculine virtue; I wonder what name we can give to this woman’s strength and her meditative sleep beyond the fear of horrific death. I also evoke another pioneering primatologist in Tanzania, Jane Goodall and her meditative observation of our closest ancestors that changed forever some of our notions regarding animals. Such calm, such fearlessness, and such acute powers of the mind -Is that a manifestation of that force, energy, and power, lovers of the Mother Principle call Shakti? A power that does not dominate others; it helps gain power over oneself. My mother thought of Amy as a lion riding Durga.

While gods and goddesses may manifest aspects of our human and non-human propensities, in India we also have a long tradition of yogis and yoginis who defy conventional wisdom and break the borders of normalcy to find the mystery of interiority that aligns their inner and outer worlds.  We have innumerable stories about such practitioners of yoga communing with animals and nature, recognizing harmony and unity consciousness. While our wildlife biologist may or may not like to be equated with such a nomenclature as a yogini, the figure of such a fearless woman reminds me of the monumental Chola yogini goddess sculptures I recently saw at Arthur Sackler museum in DC in an exhibition called “Yoga: The Art of Transformation.” See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gM8z8yNofw&feature=youtu.be.

The exhibition was a visual feast as we could see an extraordinary array of yogis and yoginis with all the fanfare and artistic presentation a powerful museum can muster.  Although most of the exhibit was dedicated to male adepts and their exotic tales, there was enough information about women and their yogic practices. The show also refers to India’s now mostly extinct temples dedicated to 64 yoginis and their legendary prowess.  Given that yoga as a discipline is wildly multidimensional that includes physical, mental and spiritual exercises leading to possible transformation of the human self, it is good to remember that yoginis and dakinis, or sky dancers as they are known within Vajrayana Buddhist circles, were real women. They wielded extraordinary powers to heal, to enlighten and perhaps in some cases to harm.  Khepababa, an Indian Vajrayana master and my guru, poetically calls potential dakinis, ‘Kalpita or she the dream!’ Such women with tremendous psycho-spiritual power are capable of “attaining the immovability of mind.” 

Although recent events in India could lead to despair, women and their spiritual power have always been acknowledged in old India. There is no known history of  a large scale witch hunt there and yet  enough tales about ‘dainis’ (perhaps a distortion of the word dakini) are there in the folk mind to create a fearful figure of a witch. Fortunately yoginis and women saints abound whether in the public space or not.  In this connection I want to point to another museum event, this time in New Delhi. A recent return of a stolen yogini statue led to an interesting symposium there.  While benighted men and their exploits remain on the spotlight in the Indian media, a quiet revolution has been taking place as relative prosperity is allowing women to reclaim their Shakta heritage. You can see this short video where my friend Madhu Khanna and others speak of the yoginis - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCt6KKB3-nU

Since we are invoking powerful women and the witching hour, I must speak of the barrage of new movies that focus on witches. Thanks to a young 8 year old niece of mine, I have been watching kids’ movies and have been struck by the implications of these films about wizardry and witches! I just saw one called Frozen.  Although I thoroughly enjoyed the visual extravaganza in the film, I could not help noticing once again the trouble with women and power.  It seems the unconscious American public mind cannot equate women and power in any good way.  If the woman has power, she is too weak to control it or she is evil! Something about women and power scares people, including some women because the transformation inherent in the way of the yogini undermines societal expectations. 

It is perhaps no accident that so many recent films evoke the power mongering witch. I remember seeing Oz the Powerful where women characters are split into good and powerless and powerful and wicked, a classic depiction!  These women always need the man to rescue them from themselves. Traditional fairy tale’s imprisoned princess in the castle that the hero must free represented psychological growth in the adolescent male. The young man must unlock the mystery of interiority within him and integrate the feminine into his psyche to be fully human, and be able to commune with an adult woman.  That meaning is often obscured in public representations.  Similar psychological events take place in the meditative yogic mind.

Today we are at a crossroad of new representations where return of the yogini is accompanied with the fear of the powerful witch! Yet there are new messages and feminist twists in these films. Frozen does focus on women and it is a sister’s love that eventually melts the ice maiden’s heart; the film also cautions against hasty delusory infatuation with a charmer.  There is a play with ‘ice–olation’ and a critique of cold hearted power that isolates. The film ends in the happy Disney way, with kids and parents clapping in the movie theater.

To return to our wildlife biologist and her saga with the lion, I can surely say, she gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ It is also heartening to imagine that the new generations of young girls have innumerable role models.  Witching hour or not, hopefully some of them will aspire to be yoginis by quietening their minds in perfect yogic repose beyond all fear and trembling.