12 juin 2007
Black virgins, file without pdf
“I am Nature, mother of the things,
mistress of all the elements, origin and principle of the centuries, supreme
divinity , queen of the Manes, first between the inhabitants of
the sky, standard uniform of the gods and the goddesses. It is me whose
will controls the luminous vaults of the sky, the salubrious breaths of
the ocean, the lugubrious silence of the hells. Single power, I by the
whole universe am adored in several forms, with various ceremonies,
thousand different names.
The Phrygian ones, first born on
ground, call me the goddess-mother of Pessinonte; the Athenians
autochtones name me Minerve Cécropienne; among inhabitants of the
island of Cyprus, I am Venus of Paphos; at Crétois armed with the arc,
I am Diane Dictynna; in the Sicilians who speak three languages,
Proserpine Strygienne; at the inhabitants of Eleusis, the Cérès
antique. The ones call me Junon, other Bellone; those Hécate, these the
Ramonte goddess. But those which, the first, are lit by the rays of the
incipient sun, the people of Ethiopia, from Asia and the Egyptians,
powerful by their antique knowledge, these return my true worship to me
and call me my true name: the Isis queen.”
Apulée “Metamorphoses XI”
And if Apulée had not lived in IIth century before our era, it would have
been
able to add “and the Christians name me the Virgin Mary…” The Black
Virgins come from the civilization of the Middle Ages, of XIIth and
XIIIth centuries. This civilization results from an effort conscious
of various men, who led it to his apogee.
A small elite knew the
secrecies which enabled him to make progress the culture of this time.
The Virgin Mary takes a disproportionate place, Saint Bernard being the
first to give him this place. All the cistercians monasteries are
dedicated to Notre-Dame, all the Gothic cathedrals are devoted to
Notre-Dame, the orders cistercians and templiers are dedicated to the
virgin… The worship marial is the rebirth of the paramount worship to
the large goddess… As for saint Michel, it does not represent a person,
but incarnates a principle, a prototype, a symbol. Thus it will be
necessary to call upon the symbolic system to explain of them the
direction, occult but universal.
BLACK VIRGINS
Initially, it should
well be known that the authentic black virgins are not numerous: hardly
forty, for those which arrived to us. They always have thirteen common
characteristics:
1 - They are carried out in XIIeme and XIIIeme centuries
It is the apogee of the civilization of the Early middle ages
2 - They are always represented in majesty
The
virgin sat in an aristocratic and princely installation, but its seat
is only a cathèdre (rather sober seat, without file or with a short
file) In the ancient representations, Isis it had also sat on this kind
of seat. The large churches of the time are called cathedrals since the
same etymology (Latin: cathedra=seat) and moreover, is cathedrals
“Notre-Dame”…
3 - the face does not reflect any tenderness, nor compassion
It is noble, sovereign, hieratic…
4 - The face of Jesus is less neat
As
if most important were the representation of the mother… The exercise
of the worships of the ancient religions was accompanied, for some of
between they, what one called the “mysteries”. During secret
ceremonies, initiation was conferred on the “myste” that after having
tested it the different ones açons (ground, air, water, fire) in order
to ensure itself of its force of character and its spiritual faculties.
Teaching was lavished only the night, in the middle of the temples or
in the crypts, where obscure undergrounds appeared the meanders in
which the heart would be projected after death. The night symbolized of
this fact death, not only with the physical direction, but also death
in the profane world. Black virgins mothers and goddesses were the
mistresses of initiation.
The symbolic system is double: died then
rebirth with the state of initiate. The two aspects are complementary
to the same esoteric reality which wants that darkness (ignorance) is
born the light (knowledge).
This is why it was necessary that
Christ was born the Christmas night at midnight, at the blackest hour
of the longest night, within a cave (image ground-mother) and not of a
crib as that is improperly translated. The child does not represent
only Jesus, but the “myste”, which, by initiation, becomes the black
gossamer threads.
This is why he is black like her. He is his child,
by the knowledge of the mysteries and figure in his bosom to render
comprehensible literally that he leaves the entrails of his mother as
of the entrails of the ground (see it “I greet you Marie).
She holds it in a protective gesture which is not without pointing out certain Egyptian representations where
Pharaon is accompanied by his guardian divinity. There is no sentimentality expressed in this couple bus
it is not a family scene. The bonds which link them are those of the spirit, not those of flesh.
5 - Clothing is blue, white, red with gilded trimmings
Not to forget that for the craftsmen of the Middle Ages, the colors are not randomly selected, each one
having
an impact symbolic system. In the alchemical operations, the raw
material (materiae PRIMA) changes by colouring various ways. Three
colors dominate… work with the black, works with the white and work
with the red. Blue night is compared to the black (putrefaction), the
white, following phase (purification) and the red (rubification, action
of secret fire). To the gilded color the transmutation of vulgar metals
corresponds into gold (symbol of the initiatory perfection). Many other
alchemical symbols are related to the black virgins, like the “milk of
the virgin” (mercurielle water) and there we find saint Bernard with the
allegory of lactation (it drank within a black virgin three milk
drops). Often the dress of the virgin is decorated with rhombuses
forming a network of meshs of net. At the time of the phase
“coagulated”, the matter takes the shape of a puff pastry (wafer of the
kings) on the surface of which a squaring in the form of rhombuses
appears.
6 - They have all same dimensions
Differences
being due to details like the height of the cap or the base. 70 cm in
height, 30 cm broad and 30 cm of depth at the base. The statue is thus
carried out in a proportion from 7 to 3, two of the numbers in charge
of a significance particularly crowned for the old ones. 3 evokes the
various trinities: druidic triads and templars, 3 aspects of the
matter, while the 7, another prime number, corresponds for example to
the duration of creation, the wonders of the world, the trivium and
quadrivium taught in the abbeys. Often the hands are disproportionate.
The hand was always magic because it accounts for the 5 which is the
medium in the series from 1 to 10. It is the union of unequal, the sum
of the 3 which is the male principle and of the 2, female principle.
The hand thus marks the reconciliation between these two contrary and
complementary principles. For the majority of the old crowned accounts
of humanity, all, in the universe, was born from the meeting of a male
principle and female. Thus the virgin land was fertilized by the rays
of the sun and it is thanks to this beneficial action that it could
give the life. Consequently, the old ones made ground, the large
goddess, the notation symbolic of the great female principle, and sun,
the male principle. This is why in all the religions where a
goddess-ground is venerated, a solar worship is always associated for
him.
In the case of the black virgins, this solar presence appears
sometimes in an indirect and subtle way: for example, the virgin is
directly placed in a place formerly devoted to Belen (Celtic equivalent
of Apollo). Or the presence of a bull in the legend of the miraculous
discovery of the statue. The bull is the virile and solar animal par
excellence. Sometimes it is replaced by other animals having however
the same value symbolic system (stag, lion…). Even solar indication
which allotted the manufacture of
certain statues with saint Luc (emblem: the bull…) 
7 - The place where they were placed was known since antiquity
One
celebrated the ground-mother there (proximity of a source, a well, a
crowned tree or a stone). It is of the places blessed by nature where
the man, informed by the “magic” science of his initiates, will go to
receive there benefits as well physical as spiritual. Undoubtedly was
it to help by a discipline in the form of steps, of dances
spell-bindings, rounds… These places are placed on the telluric veins
of forces that the man sacrilized. These forces can join the
hydrographic currents. The layout of these lines on the chart of France
reproduces a squaring of lines which intersect, repeating the
establishment of the black virgins. (Out of Gallic ground and Galicia,
one will find two courses: Finistere and Finisterre, marking the end of
two underlined telluric veins (I was going to put neat…) by the
establishment of menhirs and dolmens) Often, cosmic energy is also with
go… In our Roman and Gothic churches, the crossing of the two
currents, one collected by the well and the other by the bell-tower,
meet with the site of the furnace bridge.
A place crowned, before
being used by the man, functions in a natural state like terminal point
between forces of the sky and ground. The ritual human ones do nothing
but reinforce the process and place it at the disposal of the alive
ones. The place can do without the man and of the apparatus, the temple
cannot do without the place, nor of the men for his maintenance. The
men can use the place while doing without the apparatus. They can do
without the one and other starting from a certain stage from evolution.
The conjunction of the three allows sometimes miracles, which do not
exist, being reflections of natural laws intelligently implemented.
8 - An Eastern element is associated each black virgin
The
legends often have this Eastern aspect: statues carved in the East by a
prophet or saint Luc , offered in homage to crossed or saint Louis by
some roughneck soldier of Egypt. There one finds a dimension which is
added to the contribution Celte and Christian.
9 - The black virgin is an important place of pilgrimage
with the Middle Ages.
The
pilgrimages follow the telluric veins (often taking again the direction
of mountainous crumplings and the faults). The man followed these
tension fields which acted on him like a determinism, leaving with each
sanctuary a testimony of his faith, a mark of his knowledge and its to
make. It is the contribution to the first architectural achievements.
Often the road was made naked feet for better collecting particular
energies.
10 - In the history of their sanctuaries, one finds
always the presence of bénédictines abbeys, cistercians
or templars.
What
thus appears, it is a certain initiatory protection which surrounds the
statue. What confirms that the Benedictines, cistercians and templars
were well the enlightened continuators of the druids whose science
naturalist had been found, included/understood and practised. Its
symbolism of initiation explains also the veneration of saint Bernard.
11 - In spite of the mutilations and the restorations, the buildings in which
they were with the Middle Ages, when they remain, preserve
signs and indices in matter esoteric and initiatory.
The
black virgins marked places privileged for the initiates. Near their
sanctuaries or even inside this one, they met. It was a point of
rallying for all those which walked on in their” search of Graal”,
indicating that there, they would be sure to find other” knights of the
round table” with whom they could in full safety make contact. 
12 - The miracles, those their origins or those which they operate, are
concordant
The
monks with the Middle Ages, by spreading these extraordinary accounts,
did not even seek probability. Their goal was not to prove miracles for
the construction of faithful, it was to graft on the worship one
legendary
environment supplementing the esoteric explanation of the hidden
direction of the statue. The miracles reveal two orders of things once
more: on the one hand the black virgin, beyond the Christian Marie, is
Eastern and Celtic, on the other hand, work of followers, it represents
the advance of initiation and the stages of the alchemical
philosopher's stone. The two directions of these accounts often are
complementary and merge.
The old texts containing the myths which
represent the acquisition of knowledge give all a report of a
“crossing”, a length and difficult maritime voyage (Ulysses, Jason…).
The alchemist, using the expressway, known as Allégorie the initiate
(cross prisoner, traveller, navigator, child), like each one, was
initially plunged in the night of ignorance (the limbs, the dungeon of
the prisoner, blindness, the sleep). He showed provisions necessary to
deserve to reach the light (he requested with enthusiasm the black
virgin, in the case of the alchemist, tried with patience and
renouncement all the operations on the raw material of work). He leaves
the night, reaches the light, is released from the chains of ignorance,
becomes a follower of knowledge. (the prisoner left the obscure dungeon
and its chains are torn off, the blind man sees and deadened awakes).
wet process, will also call “crossed” the whole of the operations to
which it will procèdera. (protective black virgins of the sailors, even
if the sanctuary is placed in top of a mountain…)
13 - Their ritual present strange similitary.
Several elements represent escape any traditional catholic religious explanation like offerings of wheels of wax, processional deposits on a stone out the church, use of the wine, candles of green color…
In conclusion:
The
black virgins come from three sources: Celtic, Eastern and monastic.
But they only one of the demonstrations limited in time and are not
located in a given geographical surface, of a spiritual phenomenon much
vaster. Of all civilizations and all
great religions having crowned
same idea and the same vision, those which venerated at the same time
the goddess-ground and the sun always ended, in forms varied with black
figurations comparable with the black and rich virgins in-depth of the
same impact symbolic system: Greeks, Romans, Hindus or Egyptians,
Indian précolombiens, Moslems integrating in their sanctuary more
crowned the black stone, gipsies founding with the country of the sun
of the sea and the bulls the worship of Sara.
Because the great crowned tradition of humanity knew regional characteristics only in its most external forms. But well beyond
these
nuances and of these details, those which, everywhere and since the
night of times, knew or endeavoured to know, were recognized, always
joined together, in the language of the symbols, by a single and
universal vision.
Small aside concerning the wheel
From
time immemorial, to celebrate crowned, civilizations knew either of the
meetings in circle, or of the rounds around a fire, a tree, a source, a
statue. The druids practised these rounds, the bishops also (I believe
that they forgot it a little…) and everyone knows the rounds of the
Jean saint… The round, the circle, the wheel thus have a quite special
crowned value… In the Egyptian or Greek Hindu representations, it is
the snake which is laid out in circle and which thus means the
universal life whose magic agent, the driving agent, is the light; it
is the snake rolled up which is with the Middle Ages called ouroboros
and, like the circumference surrounding the hermetic crosses, it
represents for the alchemists, the unit of the matter and at the same
time the universal fluid or the perpetual restoration of nature. It is
not the circle in oneself which has a deep crowned significance, it is
the circle moving, it is the round or the wheel…
For the initiates
natives of the Far East, the flower of lotus in rotation marks supreme
knowledge and Buddha is represented in the temples with at its sides of
the wheels, stylized flowers of lotus. With the Middle Ages, in Europe,
it is the same with the supposed rosettes to represent the circular
motion of the emblematic pink of the initiates. This is why the large
rosette of the cathedrals is called in the beginning “rota”, the wheel.
One returns from there to our alchemists… In the cathedrals, there are
three rosettes, at each end of the transept, and the third, most
important, decorating the frontage of the large porch. The churches
“being directed most of the time” it is found with the setting sun.
Thus, as in the colors of clothing of the black virgins, one finds the
successive colors of the philosopher's stone: first rosette in north
(black, without sun), second in the south, (the white) and third with
the setting sun (red…)
All this is only one small outline of the richness of the symbols which one can find by studying the black virgins.
And now, it would be necessary to supplement this study by another also
rich and enthralling, that of Gargan, Bellen, Apollon… heu, I want to
speak about saint Michel, archangel….
But it is another history…
Bibliography:
“the enigma of the black virgins” of Jacques Huynen
“the puy, high - place esoteric” of J. Derderian
“the Champagne mysterious” of Guy Tarade
“the holy mount Michel and the cosmic temple” of R. Raffin
“the mystery of the cathedrals” of Fulcanelli
“the cradle of the cathedrals” of Mr. Guingand
“mysteries of the cathedral of Chartres” of L. Carpenter
“our-lady of the stained glass” of O. Pactat-Didier
File carried out by Mrs Dulac.