“The Black Madonna of Einsiedeln does not simply compensate for a lack of femininity in our culture, but the lack of a specific kind of femininity – a femininity that is dark and acts as the matrix of all creativity and renewal.” – Fred Gustafson

Who doesn’t love it simple and straightforward. We go through life with a ready-made answer for any problem that might arise, with little room for what doesn’t fit with our agenda. This is a thinking function, a masculine quality, and most of the time it’s very helpful in bringing order and making sense out of the chaos life throws at us. But the truth is it’s not enough. We need more than skating over the surface or our life and organizing every last detail. We need depth and mystery. The Black Madonna acts as a touchstone, a physical reminder of how to deal with the void, the times when we are at a loss, when life unravels and mysteries perplex us. These qualities of the dark feminine serve an important function that spurs us on to find what’s been missing from our lives, to fill in the blanks left by rational thinking. It isn’t possible for everything to make sense all of the time, life falls apart with no discernable answers, and this grittier aspect forces us to face our fears and the complicated solutions life demands. What’s required of us is a connection to what’s unknown and navigation of these internal dark waters.

The dark feminines’ pulse rests on the aspects of life that challenge us the most, all that continues to haunts us, and the cyclic nature of life. We recognize this energy most clearly when we’ve run out of answers, when life overwhelms us, or when we are deserted by all we know with no action left to take. This is when we are asked to surrender. When we find ourselves immobilized by fear, caught in the grip of what terrifies us with no seeming way out, we are staring straight into the eyes of the dark feminine, and it can be horrifying. Our first impulse may be to run, but what’s really being asked of us is to walk through the fire. Consciously confronting what we fear most is the hard work the dark feminine requires, and in our culture it’s a very unfamiliar work.

It can be easy to see why a masculine-oriented, youth-obsessed culture doesn’t much care for the complicated and often messy lessons the dark feminine has to offer. It’s much easier to work around what distresses us, completely ignore it, or misplace our anxieties onto others. This is the reason why we need the Black Madonna, she reminds us of our own dark roots and that what troubles us the most is often a catalyst for meaningful growth. This symbol connects us to the deepest, most ancient parts of ourselves, the parts we’ve long ignored and underserved, the parts we bury under contempt, rejection, and hatred. This dark feminine energy asks us to acknowledge our personal demons and learn the deeper lessons they have to offer. Don’t be fooled, everything we are running from resides within. Reconciling these darker parts of our self is never easy, but more often than not they are the very things that stop us from fully living. They stunt and twist us up into a facsimile of ourselves. The Black Madonna reminds us that facing what frightens us brings soulful substance by allowing for the expansion of awareness, healing of old wounds, and connecting to our lives in meaningful ways. The difficult truth she makes clear is the necessity of embracing our darkness so we can live in the light.

By accepting what’s been rejected and reclaiming it as our own we heal the wounds of the soul. This is the hero’s journey, and we’ve been robbed of it in this culture. There’s no question that it’s unnerving to move closer towards the dark corners of what we’re capable of, but what we find there is just as necessary, there are important lessons to learn if we’ll listen. The dark feminine, sometimes disguised within us as hopelessness, clutching fear, and annihilation, pushes us to live something larger. It calls for cutting away what no longer serves, and putting to death the parts of our self that no longer make sense. Embracing this dark feminine energy has many meanings that grow as we grow, but at it’s core it’s the hard work of recovering what we’ve rejected from the depths. When we wrestle with what we fear we escape its control over us, and we emerge renewed and transformed. What the dark feminine ultimately asks of us is to live alongside what we don’t understand, rather than dominate it. It may not be easy work, but it is necessary work if we are to live a life filled with meaning and mystery.

Here’s to reclaiming what we’ve lost along the way, and learning to honor the gifts that come disguised as our greatest fears.

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