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| "Whitening" Of The Black Madonna |
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Many White racist "authorities" and their non-White sympathesizers say the Virgin Mary is White. But found throughout Europe today are more that 150 images and at several major shrines which portray the Madonna as Black. The most famous is the statue of Notre Dame du Pilier in Chartres cathedral. Excuses for the question: "Why a black-faced Virgin?
are "from the materials of which it is made" or "the manner in which it is painted" or "on account of age." Specifically, Panati (Sacred Origins p28) says: "in most of the images studied, the facial color seems to be an accident of art. For instance, age and a patina of soot account for some darkening. In other cases, silver plate or paint has oxidized; or the ripened wooden surface beneath the painting has discolored and bled through.... Mary may have lived in Ephesus, and it is known that Greek artists often depicted the moon goddess Artemis of Ephesus as Black, as Roman painters occasionally colored their own huntress Diana of Ephesus black-perhaps for the superstitious reason that black females were thought from ancient times to be more potent miracle workers. The cult of Mary is thought to spring from the cult of Diana, and it's possible that early worshipers of the Blessed Virgin Mary felt that a black-faced Madonna would bring them better luck." Panati, a former physicist and for 6 years a science editor of Newsweek, is the author of 13 fiction and nonfiction books. In the forward of one book, the writer says that Panati "has an obsession with getting to root of things-and has made a career out of it." From my perspective, more fundamental than the root is the "seed" and searching for the "seed" is not, in my experience, what European writers do on topics related to Black people. In general, the credibility of White female historians is less far from the truth in reporting on Black history than that of White males. The above mentioned answer to: "Why a black-faced Virgin?" is a typical kind of explanation used by ignorant, lazy, and/or racist authorities. By not giving credit to Africans, it is easy to falsely attribute things of significance to Europeans. Note in Panati's discussion that no mention was made that the Madonna could have actually been Black. Note the multiple excuses given as to why the Madonna was not Black-and some of that is useful information but it simply does not apply to this case. No mention was made that most of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greek and ancient Rome were taken directly from Africa. Ashby (African Origins p261) states: "Thus we are informed by the Greeks themselves that they derived most of their gods and goddesses from Ancient Egypt, and we are also informed that their most important spiritual philosophers studied in Egypt." One would think that a historian of note like Panati would have done the research to discover that the reason the Greeks painted Artemis the color black is because she was the Black African Bast-and this has nothing to do with superstition. Apparently Panati did not bother to find out that the Roman goddess Diana was the same as the Greek Artemis which was the same as the African Bast. Walker stated (p233): "Roman towns all over Europe habitually called the local mother goddess Diana, as later Christian towns were to call her Madonna." It was at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD when Mary, a non-African, was declared the Mother of God (Blavatsky, Theosophy p77)-and thereafter the African Madonna and Child were "whitened" into Europeans!
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D. |
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