Muses.

I'm compiling a list of women who are symbolically powerful for me. It took me a long time personally to get comfortable with my womanhood-- for some reason, I didn't think I was "enough" of a woman for a while... not pretty enough, or thin enough, or seductive enough, I don't even know. But now I'm finding myself drawn to these figures that represent, to me, true female power and strength. I'm particularly interested in historical information/speculation on these women and artistic interpretations of their likenesses. So far, they're all Judeo-Christian religious figures. I think anything linking to Christianity has an underlying power in our society, and of course I was brought up Roman Catholic (although I am currently "on the market") so there's a familiarity entwined with a newfound mystery in these figures, for me.


First on the list is the Black Madonna.







I first saw her in a cathedral in Italy at age seventeen. I wasn't entirely prepared to appreciate the fact that I was in Italy and should have probably been, hmm, paying attention to the breathtaking artwork and architecture and history and life of all those buildings and statues and museums, but alas, I was too busy crouching down in the back seat of a rental car listening to KoRn (yes, with a capital R) and eating gelato three times a day. At any rate, I do remember the Black Madonna, because my aunt was so taken with her presence that she teared up (the only time in her life I've ever seen her cry). Then, a few years ago, I read the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I know some people who read and disliked the book, but I absolutely loved it. The imagery of the Black Madonna Honey... something about dark wood and honey just sounds breathtaking to me. I'm a very visual person. Of course, though, there was the character herself-- a beacon of strength, hope, and power. She still possesses that mystery that draws people to her.


I found a fascinating passage written about her by a fellow Blogspotter, a Gnostic priest:

The Black Madonna is Dark and calls us to the darkness. Darkness is something we need to get used to again "the Enlightenment" has deceived us into being afraid of the dark and distant from it. Light switches are illusory. They feed the notion that we can "master nature" (Descartes' false promise) and overcome all darkness with a flick of our finger. Meister Eckhart observes that "the ground of the soul is dark." Thus to avoid the darkness is to live superficially, cut off from one's ground, one's depth. The Black Madonna invites us into the dark and therefore into our depths. This is what the mystics call the "inside" of things, the essence of things. This is where Divinity lies. It is where the true self lies. It is where illusions are broken apart and the truth lies. Andrew Harvey puts it this way: "The Black Madonna is the transcendent Kali-Mother, the black womb of light out of which all of the worlds are always arising and into which they fall, the presence behind all things, the darkness of love and the loving unknowing into which the child of the Mother goes when his or her illumination is perfect." She calls us to that darkness which is mystery itself. She encourages us to be at home there, in the presence of deep, black, unsolveable mystery. She is, in Harvey's words, "the blackness of divine mystery, that mystery celebrated by the great Aphophatic mystics, such as Dionysisus Areopagite, who see the divine as forever unknowable, mysterious, beyond all our concepts, hidden from all our senses in a light so dazzling it registers on them as darkness." Eckhart calls God's darkness a "superessential darkness, a mystery behind mystery, a mystery within mystery that no light has penetrated."


Note to self: figure out what Gnosticism is, exactly, especially since it's so very unlike anything Christian I've ever experienced or encountered. Maybe I'll ask the priest.


Edited to add: I believe that section posted above was not written by the blogger, but was quoted from this article by Matthew Fox. My error! I really recommend reading the Fox article, though... it's fascinating.


Anyways.


I have also developed an obsession with artistic depictions of Eve.





This one above is, by far, my favorite out of all the paintings I've seen. It's the only one I know of in which Eve doesn't look evil, manipulative, or weak. I also like that the serpent is included in the imagery, but not directly as a puppeteer; nor is he hovering above her in a position of power.

We all know the story... Adam was a good boy, Eve gave him the apple, Adam was weak and he ate it and they were naked and God was pissed and now childbirth sucks. I'm a big Tori Amos fan, and she put a new spin on Eve that I'd never encountered or even considered before in a number of her songs on her 2005 album The Beekeeper. She describes the album concept really well in this interview:

"Maybe being a mom has pushed me to [speak and write about things in a way that I haven't before], without it being a studied sort of exercise. It changes your place in the tribe and in the structure when you're protecting a young voice, instead of being a young voice. So, maybe realizing that I needed to protect a young voice, I knew it was important. Because those voices won't have an opportunity to speak unless we give them access to certain information and civil liberties. So the beekeeper is really crawling inside and maybe creating another garden for people to walk into. Not just the Garden of Eden, or the Garden of Gethsemane- not the garden of original sin, but the garden of original "sinsuality." God's mother's garden Sophia, who is wisdom, who encourages Tori to eat of the forbidden fruit, from the tree of knowledge- And only then will she be able to see what's truly going on in her own life, much less the outside world.


"... a lot of women have had a hard time with holding the archetype of mother and mistress. In clearer terms- holding the sexual and the sacred. Sacred sexuality, which the honeybee represented in the ancient feminine mysteries. And that's one reason why (the album) is called The Beekeeper, because this is a record holding all aspects of women and trying to pull it together piece by piece- which is a reflection of the book.

"... Women have had to choose, even within the Christian story, either the Mary Magdalene path, or the Mother Mary path. The Mother Mary, as I have said, having been circumcised of her sexuality, and Mary Magdalene being stripped of her spirituality. So women have either gravitated towards an archetype of the sensual woman, or the nurturing mother. And it's been very hard to hold both within the being, because there's been an archetypal division. There hasn't been a place where you have a woman who holds both."


I love the feeling of that whole album-- it's this soundscape that feels like an actual place you can go to, mentally, and sometimes I need to be there. I want to embrace this concept of Eve as a real, rounded woman. Stepping back and really understanding who I am is something I've only just started to do, sadly, now in my mid-20's and I'm starting to love myself this way, so this image of Eve is very powerful for me.

Note I included some thoughts on "the Marys" as well. The Black Madonna is already listed above, but Mary Magdalene is next on the list.

Mary Magdalene is the "whore" of the Bible. We all got to "know" her a little better by watching The Da Vinci code, in which (don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to) she is revealed to be the secret wife of Jesus. Now, I imagine it had to be difficult to follow a suspected religious wacko around from town to town spreading the word about his alleged deeds and greatness for anyone, much less a woman back then... so I suppose it's no surprise she got slapped with the hussy label. After all, women weren't supposed to be bold back then! I'm a little irritated that I didn't know until now that there was a Gospel of Mary, a fifth gospel completely left out of the Bible. I feel like I should have been told! Argh. But again, I shouldn't be surprised-- apparently she broke some of the rules in writing it.

I don't know exactly who she was or what she's done. I do know, though, that she must have been someone amazing to have done what she did, and I think there's a lot to know about her that may have just been lost to history. I can't imagine anyone will ever know (or admit) the impact she may have had on early Christianity. That's huge.

And finally... there's Dinah.

Have you read this book? That's all I can say for a description. Read it. You'll get it. Essentially, I feel like she's the first woman to tell "the woman's story," and I think anyone who grew up horrified by some parts of the Old Testament will feel a bit better to "hear" another perspective. I don't even know why it makes me feel better. It makes it more real, at the very least. But I feel so connected to her.