The Cult of the Black Madonna
We have touched upon the subject of the Black Madonna before on this thread. Although many may perceive the cult of the Black Madonna as a Medieval one, it is still widespread in many countries in Europe and South America today. One only has to think, for example, of the
Black Madonna of Częstochowa in Poland, an icon which draws thousands of Polish Catholics to make a pilgrimage to Częstochowa every year.
Black Madonna of Częstochowa with a crown
However, what are the roots of this veneration and could these roots conceal an older veneration to the mother goddess in the form, for example, of Isis. Please do not misunderstand me here, since I do not for one moment believe that devout Roman Catholics and members of the various Orthodox Churches are praying by mistake to Isis rather than the Blessed Virgin Mary when they venerate the icons and statues of the Black Madonna, as many detractors today readily propose. The Catholic Church has made a practice down the centuries of subsuming older pagan shrines and deity images by Christianising them, as we saw earlier on this thread with the way in which the cult and shrines of the Tuatha de Danaan goddess Brigid were converted into the cult and shrines of the Christian Saint Bridget in Ireland. This practice was widespread in Europe, particularly in the Dark Ages and would continue up to the Medieval period.
The Templars and the Spread of the Black Madonna Cult
During the fourth century A.D., St. Helen, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, brought the Madonna known as Our Lady of Częstochowa to Constantinople from Jerusalem at a time when there were formative debates and explorations on the meaning of Christ and Christianity. By the end of the fourth century, the basic tenets of Christianity had been formed, primarily from the work of St. Augustine, (354-430 AD), and Black Madonnas began to appear in various parts of Europe.
The largest number of Black Madonnas was brought to Europe through Crusader or Templar hands during the time of the Cistercian Abbott Bernard of Clairvaux, the Crusades, the building of the cathedrals, and the flowering of the great Mystery Schools, particularly of Chartres. In legend, St. Bernard received his inspiration from the Black Madonna at Chatillon, where three drops of milk flowed from the Black Madonna's breast into his mouth. He credited this experience for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Upon this foundation, he preached the intimacy of the human soul with the Divine. He and his Cistercian monks sought to form a culture that could be a vessel for Christ. Thus, they carried Black Madonna images throughout the Continent of Europe as a force for creating a civilisation founded on love. However, given the gnostic influences that affected the Knights Templar during their time in the Middle East, did the Templars introduce the Black Madonna into Christianity as a means of reviving a disguised veneration of the Earth Mother or Mother Goddess, especially in the form of Isis? Like other Black Goddess figures, Isis was viewed as the life-giving and healing goddess of the Earth. Indeed, in pre-Christian times, the city of Paris had been devoted to Isis.
The Black Madonna as the Sorrowful Mother and the Mother of Compassion
The word “compassion”, meaning to love together with, is derived from the Latin “con”, meaning “with”, and “passus”, meaning “patient” or one who suffers. In Biblical Hebrew, the word for compassion is “riḥam”, which is derived from “reḥem”, which means the mother, womb, or to show mercy. The Arabic word for compassion, “rahmah”, also translates as “womb”. The meaning of the name Isis is “throne”, as the Egyptian word for Isis, “Ast” or “Aset”, means “Throne” or “Seat”. Isis is an onomatopoeic Asianic word, “Ish-ish”, meaning she who weeps. The Black Madonna thus provides the maternal lap where all creatures who sorrow may gather to receive her compassion. The Black Madonna is thus the Throne of Compassion. In Christian terms she also becomes the ‘Mater Dolorosa’, the ‘Mother of Sorrows’, to whom all Christians can bring their sorrows and troubles to lay them in her maternal lap.
[N.B. Much of the material expressed above is sourced from an article by Dr Karen Rivers titled: The Black Madonna a Divine Mystery Veiled in Blackness]
Sobek-Nofru-Re - Queen of Egypt
My starting point in delving into the potential links between Isis and the Black Madonna is the work of Andrew Collins and his research into the ancient Egyptian Queen, Sobek-nofru-re, who he discovered had been linked with a stellar cult focused on the darker virtues of the Egyptian goddess Isis. We have, of course, encountered Sobek-nofru-re before when considering Collins’ article on the Goddess of the Seven Stars: The Rebirth of Sobekneferu, which I posted as part of my own article on Bram Stoker and the Jewel of the Seven Stars. The Irish novelist famous for his vampire novel Dracula, had written a book called The Jewel of the Seven Stars, which featured the attempted resurrection of an ancient evil priestess called ‘Queen Tera’ who had worshipped the seven stars of Ursa Major (the Great Bear). Evidently, Bram Stoker had, either consciously or unconsciously, based his Queen Tera on the historical figure of Sobek-nofru-re. But why? The answer may lie in his close association with the acclaimed occultist J.W. Brodie-Innes, who in 1913 founded two offshoot temples of the Order of the Golden Dawn known as Alpha and Omega, which practised ancient Egyptian rituals.
Sobek-nofru-re appears to have succeeded the Pharoah Amenemhet IV circa 1789 B.C., who according to the Egyptian historian Manetho, may have been her brother. How she came to be the ruler of Egypt is not recorded. However, it was a very unusual occurrence for a woman to reign, especially one who believed that she was not so much a queen but a female king, a bodily incarnation of the sun-god Re as denoted by her chosen name ‘Sat-re’ – daughter of the sun-god (Sat-re being the feminine form of ‘Sa-re’, which would not have been used by a female ruler.
[Note, however, how close the name Sa-re is to ‘Sara’ or Sarah, the name of Abraham’s wife, who the C’s have confirmed was Nefertiti the wife of Pharoh Akhenaten. Is this just coincidental, bearing in mind that Nefertiti was a deep level punctuator from the underground civilisation and that the C’s said she was primarily responsible for Akhenaten’s sun worship?
Q: If the Levites were the Hittite Moon worshipers, how come Akhenaten, who hung out with Nefertiti, instituted Sun worship? That doesn't make sense.
A: Future Ho into.
Q: Future what into?
A: Ho. [
MJF: probably Jehovah which is another version of Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews or Israelites]
Q: HO must stand for something. I don't understand. Was Nefertiti responsible for Akhenaten's Sun worship?
A: Mostly.
Q: Well, why did it turn into Sun worship instead of Moon worship?
A: Future honour of Ra. Go 353535. Deity.
Q: So, in other words they were laying a foundation for future layering of other concepts?
A: Yes.
Sa-re is equivalent to Sa-ra, since Re and Ra are just different versions of the Egyptian sun-god’s name.]
Sobek-nofru-re meant ‘the beauties of the crocodile-god (Sobek) and the sun-god (Re)’, although it was often shortened to just Sobek-nofru. She was also known by the name Meryt-re, ‘beloved of the sun-god’, whilst as king of Upper and Lower Egypt she was known by the name Sobek-ka-re. You will note the similarity between Meryt-re and Meritaten, the latter meaning ‘beloved of the Aten’, where the Aten would eventually replace Re as the principal sun-god during Akhenaten’s reign. This may be significant, given what I shall say later about the link between these two Egyptian princesses and queens.
Very few traces of Sobek-nofru-re’s three year reign exist today. Her short reign would bring to a close the prosperous 12th Dynasty, which would be succeeded by a succession of weak, inconsequential pharaohs who would constitute the 13th and 14th Dynasties. Their power would be usurped by the Hyksos or Shepherd kings who invaded the Egyptian Empire and became its overlords around the year 1700 B.C. The Hyksos were Semites, and they would adopt the worship of Sobek the crocodile-god who they likened to their principal Semitic deity, Baal. However, they fused the attributes of Sobek with the deity’s father, Set, the Egyptian god of chaos, destruction and chaos. This new composite deity was referred to either by his original name Set, or by the new name, Sutekh. The Hyksos were finally driven out of Egypt by Ahmose the first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty (Akhenaten’s dynasty) around 1575 B.C. However, even after the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders, their main centre of power at Avaris in the Nile Delta remained the cult centre for the worship of Set, which had many links with the priesthoods of Amun – who would be the main opponents of Akhenaten’s Aten worship. Hence, it is intriguing to find that after the reign of the four Amarna period pharaohs, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun and Aye, the dictator Horemheb helped to re-establish Set worship. His successors Ramses I and Seti I also became initiates of Set.
According to Collins, Sobek-nofru-re could well have been instrumental in the revival of the god of chaos, destruction and disorder. For him, it showed, perhaps, that she may have had an unsavoury and very dark side to her nature. Collins at the time he wrote The Seventh Sword found he could not take the matter further from an historical point of view to link Sobek-nofru-re with an Isis rebirth cult or the worship of stellar bodies, such as the seven stars of Ursa Major. However, he did find such a connection in the unorthodox views of the English occultist Kenneth Grant, which clearly linked Sobek-nofru-re not just with the worship of Set and Sobek, but also with a stellar cult focused on the darker virtues of the goddess Isis. In one of Grant’s books, entitled Cults of Shadows (published in 1975), Grant referred to a dark stellar cult, which once existed in ancient Egypt. It allegedly centred on the worship of deities who had strong associations with the seven stars of Ursa Major and the dog star Sirius. These were seen as representations of the goddess Isis in respect of her mythological associations with Set. This reference to Sirius makes me think of the C’s statement concerning Sirius in the session dated 4 October 1997:
Q: I also noticed that the word 'Osiris' could also be slightly modified to say 'of Sirius.' Comment, please.
A: Sirius was regarded highly in your "past".
Q: What was the foundation of this regard for Sirius?
A: "From whence cometh, is seen that which knows no limitation."
Q: Could you elaborate on that?
A: Could but will not.
Q: Why?
A: Because you can!
It is perhaps significant that this exchange was followed by a reference to the Rosteem who were the forerunners of the modern Rosicrucians:
Q: In reading the transcripts, I came across a reference to a 'pact' made by a group of STS individuals, and it was called 'Rosteem,' and that this was the origin of the Rosicrucians. In the book 'The Orion Mystery,' it talks about the fact that Giza was formerly known as RosTau, which is 'Rose Cross.' Essentially, I would like to understand the symbology of the Rose affixed to the Cross. It seems to me that the imagery of Jesus nailed to the Cross is actually the Rose affixed to the Cross. How does Jesus relate to the Rose?
A: No, it is from the Rose arose the Cross.
In an earlier session with the C’s they had said:
Q: Now, supposedly, this area, Giza, was originally called Rostau. It took me awhile to realize that this is, literally, Ros-Tau, or Rose-Cross.
A: Yet another connection, but why?
Q: Well, I don't know! Rostau! That was even before it was called Giza. That is ANCIENT!
A: Yes.
Moreover, elsewhere the C’s had said that “
Isis was a 'vanguard”. But a vanguard for what? In addition, the Giza plateau seemed at one stage to have been a centre for star worshippers who subsequently moved to Harran (a city connected to
Abraham in the Bible and the mysterious
Sabians – see my earlier posts) in what is now Turkey:
Session 22 August 1998:
Q: One of the things I noticed in this book was that they said that there was a colony from the city of Harran in what is nowadays Turkey, and that this colony formerly resided on the Giza plateau. Is there any connection between this colony they mention and the fact that you said that the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ were composed in Turkey by an ‘Aryan’ source?
A: Yes.
Q: What relationship is there?
A: One and the same.
Could this colony from Harran have been related to the Rosteem, who today manifest as the Rosicrucians?
According to Matthew Levi Stevens in his article Typhon Rising: The Magical Legacy of Kenneth Grant, Grant, although a student of Aleister Crowley, drew on the self-taught Egyptologist Gerald Massey as the primary source for his three ‘Typhonian Trilogies’, Typhon being a monstrous entity from Greek mythology, a leader of the Titans, who made war against the gods of Olympus. Quoting from Steven’s article:
[As the Mother of Set] Grant does not hesitate to appropriate this gigantic, multi-winged and snake-limbed chthonian monster, Primal Typhon, as an avatar of The Great Mother, i.e., ‘Mother Nature’ Herself, and boldly asserts:
She typified the first parent at a time when the role of the male in procreation was unsuspected. Because she had no consort, she was considered to be a goddess without a god, and her son – Set – being fatherless was also godless and was therefore the first ‘devil’, the prototype of the Satan of later legends.
The Egyptian Mysteries very much form the core of the Western Magical Tradition and were certainly the basis for the mythos and rituals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where Crowley had learned most of what he needed for his later development. Ancient Egypt as a source of supernatural power sanctioned his role as Prophet, and as much as Grant built on Crowley’s Aeon of Horus and The Book of the Law, the primary source for his Typhonian Gnosis was the controversial work of self-taught Esoteric Egyptologist, Gerald Massey.
In monumental works such as Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, Massey set out in no uncertain terms what he claimed was the Afrocentric and physiological basis of Gnosis: “The oldest symbols and religions originate in Africa.” He conceived of Typhon as equivalent to the Egyptian Tauret, or Ta-Urt, the hippopotamus “Mistress of the Birth-House.” She was the Goddess of the Seven Stars of the North, and Her son was the Dog Star, Sothis or Sirius (equated with Set), whose heliacal rising appeared above the horizon just before the inundation of the Nile. ‘Typhonian’ referred to those who worshipped this Primal Goddess, and members of Her Stellar Cult had fled East, taking their wisdom with them, when the Solar worshippers gained the ascendancy. In many ways, Kenneth Grant’s major innovation was in linking this Typhonian Tradition to Modern Occultism.
Was this stellar cult that fled east, who worshipped the Goddess of the Seven Stars of the North, linked in some way with the Rosteem, and also with the colony that went to Harran [(H)arran], as referred to by Laura (see above), who the C’s say manifest today as the Rosicrucians (recalling here that the Golden Dawn were in essence a Rosicrucian offshoot)? And was the role of the dog star Sirius (linked with Set), as the Goddess of the Seven Stars of the North’s son, the reason why the C’s said: Sirius was regarded highly in your "past"? You will note that the C’s put the word “past” in brackets, which seems to indicate that this may have a direct connection to Laura and her own past?
Andrew Collins adds that according to Kenneth Grant, the Egyptian star cult originally died out during the third millennium B.C. in favour of the more obvious worship of the solar, lunar and zoomorphic god forms (think here of Anubis the Jackal god linked with the dead). However, he then adds that the cult was revived at the very end of the 12th Dynasty by Sobek-nofru-re, or Sebek-nefer-ra, as Grant referred to her (MJF: “nefer” you will note being part of Neferititi/Sarah’s name), and although her reign was short, the profound influence of her cult spread widely among the Set and Sobek worshipping Pharaohs of the 13-17th Dynasties.
Apparently, the star cult in the name of Sobek-nofru-re and Isis had, according to Grant, thrived alongside the cult of Set until the beginning of the 18th Dynasty. For the part she had played in this unprecedented worship of the stars, Grant considered Sobek-nofru-re probably the most important individual in the whole of Egyptian history. However, Collins adds that exactly why Grant should have felt so strongly for what on the surface appeared to be an insignificant Egyptian female king, was not made clear in any of his books.
Grant’s material led Collins to research the apparent links between Isis and Sirius. He discovered that the appearance of the star in the morning skies of Egypt at the end of July (marking the proverbial “dog days” of summer) announced not just the commencement of a new year, but the annual life-giving inundation of the Nile. This brought renewed wealth and prosperity to the desert lands and was seen as the return of the goddess Isis. Indeed, so strongly was Isis associated with Sirius that her temple at Denderah (where the famous zodiac is located) had been specifically positioned so as to allow Sirius’s light to pour through its entrance corridor as the star rose on the first day of its heliacal rising each year.
This event raised a serious connection for Collins with his colleague Graham Phillips’ purported raising of the dead queen Sa-re (Sobek-nofru-re) to life again, since the first rising of the Dog Star was given by many sources as 23rd July, which coincidentally just happened to be the first sunrise after Phillip’s alleged resurrection of Sa-re in his flat in Wolverhampton, which I described in my article The Megalithic Builders and the Order of Meonia. I am not asking people to believe this actually happened [MJF: although I would not necessarily rule it out either, as Phillips was clearly acting in a possessed state, given his actions, and he also had the Green Stone with him, which may have acted as a TDARM or resurrection device if it truly was a cutting from the Grail] but the presence of Sa-re in this episode spurred Collins to investigate this forgotten Egyptian queen [MJF: he has just released a new book on her, which I have yet to read]. Hence, it is Collins’ research that I wish to concentrate on here. Indeed, it was the story of Sare which led Collins to look closely at the world of Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, which is a tale of an undead vampire count.
It was the marked similarities between Sa-re and the character of Queen Tera in Stoker’s book The Jewel of the Seven Stars, who in the story worshipped the seven stars of Ursa Major, that really made Collins sit up and take notice. In the story, Tera’s spirit compels the Egyptologist hero to steal the Canopic jars containing her preserved vital organs in an attempt raise her back to life. To achieve this, he had to use the Jewel of the Seven Stars, a fiery red stone originally discovered in the queen’s severed hand, which had been transported with her mummy and sarcophagus to Great Britain. This aspect of the tale has a strange resonance with Graham Phillips supposedly being possessed by the spirit of Sa-re and his use of the Green Stone, allegedly discovered in the tomb of Akhenaten, to bring about her resurrection. Moreover, Phillips would subsequently go on a further quest to find a red stone (both stones had once apparently been on the hilt of the sword of a long dead British Celtic warrior queen, Gweveraugh), with the same psychic team that helped him find the Green Stone, a quest which would place members of the team in extreme danger, as described in his book The Eye of Fire, which at times provides a terrifying account of the dangers involved when good, well-meaning people become involved with the occult. The parallels between Stoker’s story and Graham Phillips supposedly true-life experiences involving Sa-re are uncanny. However, Collins was sure that Graham Phillips was unaware of all of this when he began receiving dreams concerning the Egyptian female who had given her name as Sa-re. But what may you ask does Sa-re have to do with the Black Madonna and Meritaten?
Sarah the Egyptian
Collins admits that the name Sa-re had been the final aspect to confuse him. He asked himself why Sobek-nofru-re should have only given her name as Sa-re, the male variant of the title Son of Re. He wondered if it had simply been Phillips’ ability to get her name right, or did this epithet have some deeper meaning. Thus, he began to wonder whether Sa-re had ever been worshipped by unsuspecting worshippers under some other guise. This made him look at books on Christian mythology with particular references to any divinities connected with Isis and Egypt.
His enquiries were rewarded when he found a reference to a saintly woman known as Sarah the Egyptian, who was venerated at a place called
Les Saintes Maries de la Mer (The Holy Marys of the Sea) in France. According to tradition, she was
a black serving maid who had accompanied her mistress to this age-old Christian shrine dedicated to St. Mary of the Sea. Interestingly, Sarah or Sara became a revered divinity sacred to the Gypsies, who descended upon the coastal town from across to Europe to offer up prayers to what was an insignificant Egyptian saint. As Collins reminds us, many Gypsies claim descendancy from ancient Egypt, the title Gypsy merely being a corruption of the word Egyptian. Quoting from Wikipedia:
Saint Sarah, also known as Sara-la-Kâli ("Sara the Black", Romani: Sara e Kali), is the patron saint of the Romani people. The centre of her veneration is Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a place of pilgrimage for Roma in the Camargue, in Southern France. Legend identifies her as the black, Indo-Egyptian servant of one of the Three Marys (usually Mary Jacobe), with whom she is supposed to have arrived in the Camargue. Saint Sarah also shares her name with the Hindu goddess Kali who is a popular goddess in northern India from where the Romani people originate. The name "Sara" itself is seen in the appellation of Durga as Kali in the famed text Durgasaptashati.
Though the tradition of the Three Marys arriving in France stems from the High Middle Ages, appearing for instance in the 13th century Golden Legend, Saint Sarah makes her first appearance in Vincent Philippon's book The Legend of the Saintes-Maries (1521), where she is portrayed as "a charitable woman that helped people by collecting alms, which led to the popular belief that she was a Gypsy." Subsequently, Sarah was adopted by Romani as their saint.
Some authors have drawn parallels between the ceremonies of the pilgrimage honouring Saint Sarah and the worship of the Hindu goddess Kali*(a form of Durga - a major Hindu goddess worshipped as a principal aspect of the mother goddess Mahadevi), subsequently identifying the two. Ronald Lee (2001) states:
“If we compare the ceremonies with those performed in France at the shrine of Sainte Sara (called Sara e Kali in Romani), we become aware that the worship of Kali/Durga/Sara has been transferred to a Christian figure... in France, to a non-existent "sainte" called Sara, who is actually part of the Kali/Durga/Sara worship among certain groups in India.”
Similarly, author
Ashwin Sanghi in his novel
The Rozabal Line puts forward the notion that
Sara-la-Kali refers to the three Hindu goddesses –
Saraswati,
Lakshmi, and Kali – the goddesses of Knowledge, Wealth and Power – symbolizing the trinity of female power (a triple goddess theme that may be a disguise for the Grail). What intrigues me about this though is that the goddess
Saraswati has been linked to the Celtic goddess
Brigid, Bride or Brigantia, who is triple goddess figure too. And, of course, I believe Brigid, of Tuatha de Danann fame, may be linked to Meritaten/Hagar/Helen (see more on this link below).
The shrine of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Collins learned from more than one source that the cults of Sara the Egyptian and St. Mary of the Sea – whose symbol curiously is the seven stars – are but latter-day remnants of a European Isis cult which predated Christianity. As I suggested at the beginning of this article, this may be yet another example of the Christian Church absorbing a former pagan cult by transforming it into a cult of two Christian saints. To back this up though, Collins points out that St. Mary of the Sea’s annual feast date just happens to be 22nd July, the eve of the ancient Egyptian Isis-Sirius festival.
St Mary Magdalene
Collins also wondered whether the cult of St Mary Magdalene, which was, and is, especially strong in France, could also be added to this Christian form of disguised Isis worship, as she too celebrates her annual feast day on 22nd July. Many of you may see a certain resonance with the mystery of Rennes-le-Château here, since Abbe Berenger Saunière seemed to have a deep reverence for St Mary Magdalene (his church was dedicated to her), which the authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln in their book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail interpreted as being a disguised devotion to the Sang Real or sacred royal bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (the San Graal or Holy Grail). In fairness, Collins looked into the Magdalene cult much more closely in his later book Twenty-First Century Grail and reached the conclusion that the idea of the Holy Grail as the Sang Real or sacred royal bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene cannot be substantiated and he also viewed the idea that Mary Magdalene may have come to France as nothing more than a medieval subterfuge on the part of French clerics who profited from the cult.
St Mary the Egyptian
However, Collins noted that there was also another saint, who like Mary Magdalene was a considered to be reformed harlot, and that was St Mary the Egyptian. Although he provides no background for her, quoting here from Wikipedia:
Mary of Egypt (c. 344 – c. 421) is an Egyptian saint, highly venerated as a Desert Mother in the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Churches. The Catholic Church commemorates her as a patron saint of penitents.
Mary of Egypt, also known as Maria Aegyptiaca, was born somewhere in the Province of Egypt, and at the age of twelve ran away from her parents to the city of Alexandria. There, she lived an extremely dissolute life. In her Vita it states that she often refused the money offered for her sexual favours, as she was driven "by an insatiable and an irrepressible passion", and that she mainly lived by begging, supplemented by spinning flax.
Mary of Egypt, also known as Maria Aegyptiaca, was born somewhere in the Province of Egypt, and at the age of twelve ran away from her parents to the city of Alexandria. There, she lived an extremely dissolute life. In her Vita it states that she often refused the money offered for her sexual favours, as she was driven "by an insatiable and an irrepressible passion", and that she mainly lived by begging, supplemented by spinning flax.
After seventeen years of this lifestyle, she travelled to Jerusalem for the Great Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. She undertook the journey as a sort of "anti-pilgrimage", stating that she hoped to find in the pilgrim crowds at Jerusalem even more partners to sate her lust. She paid for her passage by offering sexual favours to other pilgrims, and she briefly continued her habitual lifestyle in Jerusalem. Her Vita relates that when she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the celebrations, she was barred by an unseen force. Realizing this was because of her impurity, she was struck with remorse, and upon seeing an icon of the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary) outside the church, she prayed for forgiveness and promised to give up the world (i.e., become an ascetic). She attempted again to enter the church, and this time was able to go in. After venerating the relic of the True Cross, she returned to the icon to give thanks, and heard a voice telling her, "If you cross the Jordan, you will find glorious rest." She immediately went to the monastery of Saint John the Baptist on the banks of the river Jordan, where she received absolution and afterwards Holy Communion. The next morning, she crossed the Jordan eastwards and retired to the desert to live the rest of her life as a hermit in penitence. She took with her only three loaves of bread she had bought, and once she had eaten these, lived only on what she could find in the wilderness.
In iconography, Mary of Egypt is depicted as a deeply tanned, emaciated old woman with unkempt gray hair, either naked and covered by her long hair or by the mantle she borrowed from Zosimas. She is often shown with the three loaves of bread she bought before her final journey into the desert. In Italy, she became associated with the patronage of "fallen women" much like Mary Magdalene, to whom similar traits were associated.
Collins then notes that he found these dusky Christian female figures are also connected in one way or another to the cult of the Black Madonna. He further notes that these dark, sometimes ebony statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary are, even today, found in dim candle-lit crypts in Catholic shrines or chapels. He points out that so greatly are the Black Madonna icons revered and venerated that the more obvious representations of the Madonna as the Queen of Heaven elsewhere in a church or cathedral are often ignored in preference to images of the Black Madonna. He states that in many places, such as in France and Spain, whole cults have been built up around individual statues associated with particular miracles and visions. He added that some of these statues are well over a thousand years old and may once have been statues of Isis with the infant Horus before being rededicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although the church authorities tried to suppress such unorthodox and uncanonical forms of mass veneration, these attempts were usually to no avail.
For Collins, on an occult level, the Black Madonna appeared to embody a power, a magical current far older than Christianity, perpetuating the worship of Isis as an Egyptian goddess of the night sky, whose symbols were the seven stars of Ursa Major and the Dog Star Sirius. Indeed, Collins points out that the seven stars was one of the primary symbols of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am not so sure about this, as the images of the Blessed Virgin Mary with stars around her that I am familiar with normally depict twelve stars, which represent the twelve Apostles.
Collins then claims that most important of all was the belief that Sara the Egyptian was an avatar, an earthly incarnation of her starry form. Was it possible that Sa-re, as the historical Sobek-nofru-re, had become a dark force of the goddess Isis and was now masquerading under the guise of ‘harlot’ saints such as St Mary the Egyptian and St Mary Magdalene or as Sara the Egyptian and St. Mary of the Sea, and ultimately as the Black Madonna?
However, if Sa-re had taken on the darker virtues of Isis, it appeared from Graham Phillips’ statements that Akhenaten’s daughter Meryt-aten (Meritaten) had been seen as the embodiment of the purer aspects of the ancient goddess. Sa-re and Meritaten therefore seemed to be two polar opposites, avatars who symbolised Isis’s dual nature – one black and the other white.
Conclusion
If we take Collins’s theory further, the fact that the C’s have hinted that
Hagar the Egyptian servant maid of Sarah in the Bible was Princess Meritaten and Sara or Sarah was really her mother Queen Nefertiti, this may put an entirely different complexion on things (N.B. a deliberate pun on my part). Indeed, the two polar opposites of Isis may now be seen as Meritiaten/Hagar as the white aspect of Isis and Sa-ra or Sarah/Nefertiti may be seen as the dark aspect of Isis. This might also mean that some of the more ancient statues of the Black Madonna with child could in fact be representations of Meritaten/Hagar (as an avatar of Isis) with her son, the biblical Ishmael, representing Horus. As we know from her bust preserved in the Museum of Berlin, Meritaten was darker skinned and more African in appearance than her mother. Could the person of Sarah the Egyptian, who was by legend a black serving maid who accompanied her mistress, be a long-term conflation of the real personages of Meritaten/Hagar and her mother Nefertiti/Sarah? Did the Romanies (Gypsies) from Egypt/India help to preserve Meritaten/Nefertiti’s story through the character of Sarah of Egypt and, if so, did it become the basis for the subsequent veneration of the Black Madonna in Europe?
