The Black Madonna and Child of Europe - Mary Mother of Christ.

**franksterr** · 11-28-2014, 03:11 PM

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1st World Congress on Matriarchal Studies
Luxembourg 2003
Selected Papers

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Center for the Study of the Gift Economy

International Academy Hagia

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum

Dark Mother, Dark Others, and a new World
Case of Sardinia

After publication of Dark mother. african origins and godmothers in 2001, I have been taking students to on-site exploration of its themes, and have come to realize the importance of cultural and political phenomena on african migration paths in Europe. I have also been struck by the significance of return migrations of semites for understanding world history. My research has encompassed Sicily, Sardinia, and Tuscany in Italy, Andalucia in Spain, and the south of France, places where I have found a similar pattern: *african migration paths marked by menhirs and dolmens; *signs (color ochre red and pubic V) of the african dark mother;* stone images of the dark mother after 25,000 BCE; * images as black madonnas and other dark woman divinities in the common epoch. *african healing water rituals,, *great prehistoric art remembered in modern art, and *early heresies which are remembered in contemporary transformative cultural and political movements.
This essay, focusing on Sardinia, is part of a book in progress, The future has an ancient heart. Legacy of african migration paths in Sicily, Sardinia and Tuscany in Italy, Andalucia in Spain, and the south of France. The book is intended to stimulate others to consider my hypothesis of the significance of african migration paths in other places in the world.
My work on the legacy of african migrations to islands and countries of Europe is based on the consensus of world scientists that *modern humans, homo sapiens sapiens, emerged in south and central Africa 100,000 BCE. * L. Luca Cavalli Sforza and other geneticists of the world have proven in the DNA that africans, after 50-60,000 BCE migrated to all continents, taking their beliefs with them. This research converges with the *work of archeologist Emmanuel Anati on the rock art of the world and on the *scholarship of feminist scholars that major signs of the african dark mother were the color ochre red and the pubic V, pointing to women's generation of life. My work also converges with the scholarship of Marija Gimbutas' confirmation of many images of women divinities in Europe, and of world studies of Heide Goettner-Abendroth on matriarchy, referring to the original meaning of the word – mothers in the beginning. This essay is particularly indebted to Emmanuel Anati's discovery of the archeological site at Har Karkom, where africans in 40,000 BCE created the oldest sanctuary we know at Mt. Sinai, origin place of the world's dominant religions, a sanctuary characterized by dolmens and menhirsincised to look like humans.
(1)
Sardinia

Geologically, Sardinia is the oldest part of Italy. Africans in migration probably arrived in Sardinia before 50,000 BCE, moving inland from the seacoast about 4300-3000 BCE. They engaged in the obsidian trade (the black gold of antiquity), and sculpted figurines of their divinity, who may be seen today in the national museums of Cagliari and Sassari. Early on they developed art depicting the woman deity and animals such as bulls and rams as sacred.. In Sardinia we visited some of the 140 collective burial places that are associated with dolmens. When our study tour visited Pranu Mutteddu we were hushed into silence viewing the rows of sixty menhirs converging on underground burial tombs at Goni.
After african migrations to Sardinia, the other significant migrations were of semites, originally african, in return migrations. After 2300 BCE semites (a language group) from Ur in west Asia called "peoples of the sea," or the shardana, swept through Europe carrying images of a nurturant dark mother (offering her breasts), settling in Sardinia. After 1500 BCE canaanites (called phoenicians by the greeks) from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon took icons of the dark mother all over the "known world," in a peaceful trading empire whose base was Carthage in Africa, and whose hub was Sardinia.
Although the dark mother was subsequently subordinated, and whitened by greeks, romans, and the christian church, the memory of the african dark mother continued to be transmitted in the common epoch by subaltern classes not only in images of black madonnas and other dark women divinities of the world, but in other folklore- - crafts, art, stories, rituals, dance, and song – conveying her values – *justice with nurturance/compassion/healing, *equality of all her children;*transformation.........

The point at hand for mediterranean, sardinian, sicilian, italian , and world history, is that the shardana, in Sardinia, an island which archeologists regard as a museum of the prehistory of Europe, venerated a dark mother, whom Melis calls Mater Mediterranea. The connection with african beliefs is suggested in that menhirs and dolmens were central icons of nuragic communities. Figurines of women in nuragic communities hold the solar disk, symbol of african veneration of the sun; hold their breasts in an african nurturant gesture, and there is evidence that they engaged in african water rituals. . Nuraghi of Sardinia resemble sanctuaries in Zimbabwe in Africa.
In Sardinia, the belief in the dark mother and her values appears to be continuous from prehistory to the present. Ancient caves where early african migrants lived were later called domus de Janus by the romans; today these caves are popularly considered dwellings of women with supernatural powers. In Sardinia the early christian church at Saccargia was originally megalith in form . Inside the church at Saccargia (rebuilt in the middle ages),we saw two black madonnas.
Semitic canaanites

Canaanites in Sardinia (whom the greeks called phoenicians) arrived after the shardana, mixed with them, and shared the belief in the dark mother that characterizes sardinian history. Sardinia during the presence of the canaanites was the hub of a peaceful trading empire based at Carthage in Africa. Reaching the Spanish Levant in the west, Cyprus in the east, and Tuscany and Sicily in Italy, the mediterranean network was characterized by a shared belief in the dark mother.(4)
Who were the canaanites once millennia of slurs(5) are cast aside? Semites, they came (after the expansion of the shardana) to Sardinia from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon., founding coastal settlements where they enjoyed good relations with the ancient originally african peoples of the interior as well with the semitic shardana.(6) Semitic canaanites offer a dramatic case of how defeated peoples are treated by chroniclers who write history for the winners. Defeated earlier by the israelites, vanquished later by the romans, maligned in judeo/christian scriptures, canaanites have been disparaged ever since by historians who mindlessly repeat spurious libels.(7) What happened to the canaanite belief in the dark mother after canaanites were vanquished by the israelites? My research in submerged beliefs suggests that the memory of the dark mother remained in suppressed beliefs of Palestine and Israel, as well as in beliefs of subaltern classes of Europe whose genetic and/or cultural inheritance held a memory of early african migrations and later semitic migrations, beliefs that are suggested in the values associated with early icons of the dark mother and with the folklore of black madonnas- - *justice with nurturance/healing, *equality, and *transformation..
Italians, in an 1988 exhibit under the direction of Sabatino Moscati, took the lead in revisiting the canaanites, displaying a stunning collection of sarcophaghi, jewelry, scarabs, amulets, ivory and bone articles, bronzes, metallic cups, glassware, ceramics, and many figurines of a nurturant woman divinity offering her breasts .(8) The historic exhibit and catalog edited by Moscati support my hypothesis that belief in the dark african mother is accompanied by great art. The exhibit did not address the issue of african origins, the shared canaanite ancestry of both palestinians and israeli, and their shared suppressed belief in the dark mother.
Recent research has uncovered the pervasive presence of icons of a woman divinity in early Syria and Palestine.(9) The University of Pennsylvania Museum has produced a postcard book, Facing Antiquity.Canaan and Ancient Israel, illustrating canaanite artefacts found in Israel- - notably figurines of women offering their breasts, the pubic V, and mother and child figurines. These artifacts are very like african and canaanite art found in Sardinia, Sicily, Spain, and elsewhere in the ancient canaanite network. Western historians, perhaps blinkered by the unscientific notion of a white race,(10) try to differentiate characteristics and cultures of west asian canaanites from those of african carthaginians. For Moscati (and for me) this is an impossible task- - the artefacts are alike. (11)
Canaanite Astarte, whose west asian antecedents were Cybele, Inanna, and Anat, easily melded with african Isis and Tanit. Semites worshiped these icons of the dark mother along with her male consort.. In the case of Isis this was a trinity of Isis, her husband Osiris, and their son Horus, a trinity that differs from the father/son/holy ghost of christian doctrine. It is the african version of the trinity - - mother, father, son- - that has persisted in vernacular christian beliefs of italians, the french, the irish, and others, a popular trinity of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
Semitic influence in Sardinia dates from the nuragic (shardana) culture after 2300 BCE followed by canaanites in the millennium before Mary and Jesus. In the common epoch, semitic moors from west Asia and Africa returned to the islands and countries embraced by the Mediterranean. In Dark mother, I discussed the basque enclave in Spain that resisted aryan incursions; earlier the basque area of Spain extended east in Spain and into France. The basque influence came with the catalans to Sardinia, (in Spain there is a major sanctuary of a black madonna at Montserrat outside Barcelona.), re-enforcing earlier beliefs in the african dark mother (Barcelona was founded by african carthaginians) . In the 20th century the dark mother's legacy of justice and equality was re-enforced by sardinians Antonio Gramsci and Enrico Berlinguer who brought her values to italian, and world, politics.
Intuitions of D. H. Lawrence on his trip to Sardinia in 1921 have helped me trust my own, e.g., the attraction (from prehistory to the present) of men to women which led not to violent conquest in some cases, e.g., sardinians, , but to imitation, and to the political legacy of the dark mother. At a carnival Lawrence noted a man dressed in a woman's peasant costume with a "ribboned whip" and "frilled drawers." He came across male sardinians wearing phrygian stocking caps, reminding me that french revolutionaries wore this same cap that remembers devotees of the anatolian mother divinity. "(12)
In sardinian women he found "something shy and defiant and un-get-at-able," reminding me of my sense of the ancient wisdom and forza of sardinian and sicilian women when I was researching italian feminists in the 1970s and 80s. (13)Italy, and Sicily and Sardinia in particular, reminded Lawrence of something old, "so primitive, so pagan, so strangely heathen and half-savage. . . .Man has lived there and brought forth his consciousness there and in some way brought that place to consciousness. . . . Strange and wonderful chords awake in us and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness."(14)
The chords, ultimately african, can still be heard in Sardinia, resonating in carnival black masks of the mamuthone (whose smiles, after centuries of foreign domination) are contorted into twisted mouths) and in the carnival ritual that sardinians share with basques of Spain- - men wearing black masks and sheep fleeces climbing hill and dale clanging huge bells on their backs. In Sardinia, as elsewhere, the veil covering the pagan substratum of christian festivals is very thin; May lst, day of the mother, was turned by the church into a celebration of sant'Efiso. Yet in Cagliari on May lst, the ancient music of shepherd flutes, the launeddas, remember the dark mother
Sardinians are at once ancient and look to a better world. They put signs of the ancient civilization of the african dark mother into their handicrafts, producing beautiful rugs, tapestries, costumes, stunning jewelry, and arresting shapes of breads and pastas. They paint murals to convey outrage at social injustice while images, rituals, handicrafts, and politics remember the dark mother and her values: justice with nurturance/compassion/healing, equality, and transformation.
Lawrence helps us see these values of the dark mother before patriarchy tried to allocate different characteristics to men and women and separated humans from animals. Nurturance, for example. Lawrence noted a "black-gowned St. Anthony nursing a boy child. . . he looked a sort of male Madonna." He realized that sardinians held non-patriarchal views of sexuality. . . men in close breeches dancing together. . . men dressed like women during carnival, when scarlet [color of the dark mother] cloth is everywhere. He observed that in Sardinia, as late as 1921, pigs had to have tickets to travel on a bus, "as if Christian." At the same time, Lawrence helps us understand male anxiety in patriarchal cultures about women. . He admired sardinian women in scarlet and rose-pink striding along., yet, the britisher added, "I would not like to tackle one of them." (15)
Sardinia helps us understand the influence that Africa held in mediterranean regions, an african influence that lived on in descendants of africans - - in the shardana who created the high civilization of the bronze age in Sardinia, then in the canaanites, who created a high civilization and trading empire "without any of the characteristics of conquest." Until very recently, historians have repeated, and repeated, lurid and untrue tales about canaanites sacrificing infants to the nurturant goddess Tanit. Peaceful traders, canaanites sailed with their west asian divinity Astarte and african divinities, Isis and Tanit, established entrepots and settlements, yet left other people to their own beliefs, and left them alone to govern themselves in democratic assemblies.
Network rather than empire, canaanites coming out of Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon reached Cadiz in Spain in 1110 BCE, Utica in Africa in 110l BCE, and about the same time, Lixus on the atlantic coast of Morocco. They established their base at Carthage in Africa. in 811 BCE, the same year they founded Palermo, my ancestral maternal place in Sicily. Later, in 654 BCE, canaanites founded Ibiza off eastern Spain, island with a treasure of icons and artefacts of the african dark mother. that has become the festive gay capitol of the world. Looking for silver in Spain, tin in Cornwall in Britain, and amber in the Baltic, canaanites are said to have circumnavigated Africa in their journeys taking images, as well as the just and egalitarian values, of the dark mother, everywhere in the ancient world.
Although greeks never came to Sardinia, their mother/daughter divinities Demeter and Core reached the island via north Africa. The romans brought the aryan legacy of hierarchy, violence, and subordination of the dark mother to Sardinia as well as elsewhere. . Christianity brought a mixed legacy where the new religion was interpreted differently by dominant and subordinated classes. The subaltern culture put its own gloss on christianity with a continuing memory of the pagan dark mother manifested in residues of african belief, notably in black madonnas, and in stories and rituals transmitting pagan values of justice with nurturance/compassion/ healing, equality, and transformation At Monastir today, sardinians live as primitive christians with these pagan values.
A random sampling of canaanite artefacts in museums of Sardinia includes the sign of Tanit at Nora and many figurines of women offering their breasts at Sulcis, Monte Sirai, Tharros, Castagnino, and Nora. Canaanite jewelry celebrated african Isis, as well as her husband Osiris and their child Horus. Other african themes are evident in a figurine of a woman encircled with serpents; earrings with a falcon as Horus, pendant with eye of Horus, amulet with Horus, lions, ankh at Sulcis, figurine of a woman holding a solar disk to her breast at Monte Sirai, enthroned divinity at Cagliari, winged sphinx, scarab of Isis enthroned, scarab with seated lions, scarab with ankh, many scarabs with Isis and Osiris, amulets of cats, amulets of falcons, eyes of Horus, amulet of a cow nursing a calf, amulet of Sekhmet, winged sphinx, razor of Isis and Osiris, pitcher whose spouts are hands offering breasts (16).
The legacy for Europe of african migrations in Sardinia is vividly seen in feminist precursors Eleonora de'Arborea and Grazia De Ledda . The political heresy that continues to unsettle the sleep of the dominant classes of the world to the present is the communism grounded on sardinian beliefs in the values of the dark mother of Antonio Gramsci, major marxist theorist, and of Enrico Berlinguer, communist premier of Italy in the 1970s.
Eleonora d'Arborea in the 14th century refused to acknowledge the rule of the aragonese and united sardinians in resistance to the spanish invaders. Eleonora's name, Sa Judikessa, points to the value of justice. Considered mother of Sardinia, she promulgated the Carta du Logu in 1392. Written in the sardinian language, the charter affirmed equal rights and equal legal status of all women and men. Grazia De Ledda at the age of 15 began to write down ancient customs of the Barbagia and won the Nobel Prize in 1926, first woman writer to have done so.
Antonio Gramsci, perhaps the major marxist theorist of our time, was born at Ales in Sardinia near an obsidian mountain (ancients associated the prehistoric obsidian trade with the dark mother). Founder of the italian communist party, Gramsci ‘s prison writings stress the significance of subaltern folk beliefs in justice and equality for the cultural revolution that neessarily precedes, or accompanies, authentic political revolution. Enrico Berlinguer, italian communist prime minister of the 1970s and l980s, also born in Sardinia at Sassari, offered a model of uncorrupted communism. He proposed an "historic compromise" between communism and religion, and "eurocommunism."
When our study tour viewed Santa Cristina's well in Sardinia, Trish exclaimed "Totally Tanit!." The early christian well, remembering african water rituals, is formed precisely in the shape of african/semitic woman divinity Tanit of Carthage. In the 1970s, in one of those curious upwellings of ancient beliefs, the ankh, or figure of Tanit, became the symbol of international feminism.
http://www.second-congress-matriarchal-studies.com/birnbaum.html

The Black Madonna and Child of Europe - Mary Mother of Christ.

The Black Madonna and Child of Europe - Mary Mother of Christ.

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