Mary Magdalene and the Black Madonna were images I used when teaching a course on music and psyche at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich in 1985.  These ancient images so caught the imagination of some of the students that they urged me to lead a trip to some of the Black Madonna sites in Europe.  This idea came to fruition eight years later in the form of a seminar in Provence, the site of many Magdalene legends.

After many years of study The Magdalene became for me the core figure in an expanding circle of feminine figures from the Black Madonnas to the ancient goddess.  Together these figures represent various archetypal images of one pole of what Jungians call the feminine principle, which represents the dark, hidden, made-to-seem-negative, earthy, sexual, womanly feminine, found in both men and women.  Themes that come up repeatedly in studying this material are:  caves, earth, wells, underground, hidden, cult, harlots, hearts, and miracles.  Some of the feminine figures that emerge are:  the Shekinah, Isis, Sophia/Sapientia/Wisdom, Astarte, and the Great Whore of Babylon.

From a friend I learned of a wonderfully renovated 18th century stone farmhouse in rural Provence, not too far from Marseille and Aix-en-Provence, and I made plans to offer a week-long seminar/retreat on "Redeeming the Dark Feminine."  The lectures were built on  1) historical references to the Magdalene and other ancient goddess figures that carry the same energy, 2) legend, and 3) the little Black Madonnas, richly amplified with the parallel languages of image and music, through which some of our most profound understandings arise. My conviction is that we must "hold" this other, more earthy, feminine, related energy, and try in whatever way we can to bring about more balance. 

 Our hostess, who runs the farmhouse, and has "seen it all," also became a seminar member, and told me with great appreciation, "Karlyn, you’re going to be burned at the stake as a heretic!"  That seems appropriate, for Provence and the Languedoc were the sites of the only crusade by Christians against Christians.  Whole towns were slaughtered because of beliefs in which Mary Magdalene played, and still plays a leading role, up to and including the idea that she herself was the Grail.

Doors did open for us.  Here is just one example. My husband and I went to the nearby town of Manosque to search for a long hidden Black Madonna. Our 1985 resource book, The Cult of the Black Virgin, by Jungian analyst Ean Begg, said "doyenne of the French BV’s [Black Virgins]; now kept in a safe hiding place; copy in church; church closed for repairs for many years; no postcards, booklets or information."  This lack of access and information presented a daunting prospect.  It was a Sunday afternoon.  We parked and strolled toward the old center of town, trying to find the church.  One young couple ignored our questions in primitive French.  Another couple came toward us, more our age.  "Ou est l’église?" (Where is the church?)  Patching together our attempts at French and theirs at English, we understood there were two churches, but one was closed on Sundays (!).  I decided to come to the point, "Et la vierge noire?" (the black virgin/madonna).  "Oh, oui!"  The man smiled broadly and removed his hat out of respect at the mention of her.   Proudly, he told us,  "Ahh, oui, the church is right over there, and I am the one who opens the doors every morning and closes them every night.  You can go now and see her."  And he pointed the way to the church.  Indeed, there was the lovely old statue, and nearby a stained glass window over the altar, showing a dark madonna, as if to emphasize this building as the home of one of the traditional black madonnas.

The seminar materials and experiences also have clinical relevance. Using Gareth Hill’s highly differentiated model of the masculine and the feminine (Masculine and Feminine:  The Natural Flow of Opposites in the Psyche, Hill, 1992), we see that we are in a period dominated by the negative aspect of the dynamic masculine principle. Hill defines this as characterized by inflation, willfulness and determination, rape, directed violence, life-taking technologies, disregard for nature and ecologies, the Despot. (p.22). What is needed is more balance.  In this case the Mary Magdalene/Black Virgin tradition seems to hold the needed aspects of both the static and dynamic feminine (p. 36):  the holding, the sense of being all right (the static pole), the transformation of awareness, discovery that all possibilities are not encompassed by the known order, and the Gnosis of the dynamic pole.

One of the seminar groups spent time considering the geographical origins of black madonnas, but I like best the answer given us by a French man whose passion is photographing nuances of the nearby basilica which houses the alleged bones and skull of the Magdalene, and who knew nothing about psychology or Jung.  "Ah," he said, "we all know it doesn’t matter where she came from, she’s ‘in here!’" gesturing to his heart.

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Karlyn M. Ward, M.S.W., Ph.D., is a graduate of CICSW. She is in private practice in Marin County.

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