Black Madonna of the New Dawn

An extract from an exclusive post on Patreon during the Novena to Our Lady of Living Fire

Nine days of images, art, contemplation and prayer

 Our Lady of the New Dawn sacred altar available

on www.hergracesacredart.com

It is a soft dawn sprinkled with the drops of birdsong.

In the sky the new moon is hanging just above the rising sun. I ponder my statue of Mary, placed in the most eastern corner of my garden, directly in the light of dawn during the astrological new year. 

Cloaked in the haze of the morning light, intense bliss rises in me, both tightening and releasing my heart and chest simultaneously and I hear the voice of Mary.

'You are not who you think you are.  It is not necessary, and at times quite pointless, to hang on to your weaknesses, foibles and strengths with such intent and focus.

Your nature may not always please you, or suit your idea of who you are.

The more you resist what is happening in your life and the more you resist your nature, the greater the wall which is blocking the light.

Only the warmth of the Light and its spiritual qualities of acceptance, compassion, understanding and peace, can bring life back to the barren wasteland that lies behind that wall.

Those who seek do not realise that it appears to them that they are making free and liberated choices, but this is very seldom true. You are a compilation of impressions, feelings, reactions, memories, half-felt emotions, fleeting desires and wishes and unexplored and half-lived dreams.

You carry within you the memories of all time.

At times you may appear to be a book, its pages the Keeper of all stories ever told and at other times you may feel like the blank pages, ready to be written onto. 

Both of these ideas may drive you to frustration, and into trying to become either or both or even 

to transcend the human experience by side-stepping the creative dance of creating and destroying.

But you are so much more than all of the above.  Within you lies the Holy Seed, dormant, waiting on the Kiss of Light.  Only the mind, with its ideas like clouds in the sky, is obscuring the Light from awakening the Tree of Life within you.

A mind locked down with ideas and concepts and beliefs of how you should be, is like concrete poured down onto a pavement.  It is only with the wearing away of time and weather that cracks can form, through which the tendril of a soft new plant can grow.  This tiny plant has the potential to become the beanstalk that will take Jack into the heavens of the giant.

A mind concretized with set ideas and theories, is the greatest obstacle to peace and ongoing blossoming and fruiting.

 That moment of absolute alignment with the Spirit within, is the kiss of the Light.

And all you need for that to happen, is to drop everything.

By that I mean that you can let your mind and its many doors and passages and rooms, drop away.

Over and over.

Repeatedly

Every day

Every time

You are standing in the Light and each moment that you open your heart and you accept yourself and your nature and the many selves that you have created, you will receive the kiss of Light.

And I ask you to share your love with everyone, as we are all the One.'

- Our Lady of the Living Fire

Full article is availabe on Patreon

blessings

Hettienne

Novena to Our Lady of Living Fire Day 9

 

A blessed feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes to you.

Apologies for the late post but I decided to do my own puja first and then to share the images with you.  These images and objects are imbued with the living fire of Our Lady of Lourdes and you will be able to feel and receive the shakty that is flowing from them

.An initiate is one who chooses to turn his or her focus inward, into a metaphysical reality and upward into a wider context and upward into a higher consciousness.

An initiation is a ritual which takes the initiate through a doorway and threshold from the mundane ordinary reality into the sacred life.

A puja is a ritual dedicated to the worship of one's personal deity or devi.

(also called the Ishta Devata)

As in all ritual there is a certain set of actions; each one designed with a particular focus and effect in mind.  Today's puja is one of devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, Lady of the Living Fire, the Immaculate Conception and out intention is to evoke our spiritual selves  through the senses and the open heart.

These rituals and tools are all part of ancient traditions known as tantra yoga which really means a coming together with the entire body, heart and soul.

Through repeated entry into the spiritual realms we shed the perceptions and projections of the mind and access a wider vision, a deeper connectedness to all of life and  transpersonal wisdom.

For today's rite or puja we use fresh flowers, fresh flower petals, incense, music and if you can, and you feel drawn to do so, movement and spontaneous dancing. 

We open our sacred space with the daily prayer. Put your music on and you may want to put it on 'repeat' so that it plays continually. Light the candles. Light the incense and offer the sacred smoke to the items on the altar and to the image of Holy Mary.  Pick up your instrument and offer your devotion through voice and song or music.  You may feel drawn to move your body in movement and offer the devotion (bhakty) of your sacred dance to Her.

Or however you feel the bhakty move in and through you.

We offer the fresh rose petals to Mary by showering her image with the petals.
You can also sprinkle some of the rose oil and water from the altar as a blessing.

This is a very evocative and heart opening practise which
you can do every day or once a week and not only on holy days.

Contemplation

The woman at Lourdes refuses to give any other name but to say "I am the Immaculate Conception." She does not say, as the Church would have Jesus' mother say, "I am the virgin Mary who has been immaculate from the moment of my conception." (conceived and born without sin of any kind) She says that she IS the Immaculate Conception. The Lady of the Grotto is the embodiment of the cosmos speaking to us as an aspect of God’s own Being. She shows us the breathlessly beautiful immaculate plan – God’s conception of materiality. She is telling us that she is an image of our created, material nature, which is nothing less than a cloak that covers divinity. She uses every means available to communicate to us about who we are and what will help us

Spirit "wears" materiality like a garment. 
This garment is Earth's physical nature –  her Body. 
She/we are the Immaculate Conception!

Our emotions, feelings and our energetic heart has the power to alter and transform the electromagnetic field of our world and to move mountains.

The appearances and manifestations of Mary prove that the idea of separation between our world and the Otherworld is but an illusion.  Matter is made up of atoms and those atoms can be altered by the power of belief.

At sacred sites where the veils of belief have thinned, thousands of people feel the sacred presence  of the divine. And this sacred presence transcends all dogma, beliefs and laws.  It demonstrates to us that we have the power to alter our collective reality.

The bigger the crowd of believers in the power of love and beauty, the bigger the collective effect on the perceived and created reality.

To me, the Blessed Mother is not limited to any religion, any dogma or any culture. The Soul has her own religion and that is where you will find Her and Her many faces.

She is present for all

Her Grace enfolds everyone

You only have to become aware of Her.

Prayer

Hail Mary

Ave Maria

Glory is the one who is our home

Glory for the presence in our hearts

Glory since the mystery transcends all words.

all songs, all signs

Glory is the hope that makes us live

Hail Mary

Ave Maria

Glory is the wonder that we were and are

and will become

Glory is the Spirit who invades our bones

and makes them shine

Glory in the wind and in the  fire

Glory in the one breath

giving life to all the world

Hail Mary

Ave Maria

Glory in the rising earth

Glory embracing what we lost

Glory in assuming who we are

Glory in the One who is whole

Hail Mary

Ave Maria

blessings

Hettienne

Novena to Our Lady of the Living Fire Day 7

 Contemplation

'I am the Immaculate Conception' were the words by which Lady of Lourdes made herself known to Bernadette.  She appeared as a Radiant White Lady, known as the Sacred Woman of the Land before Christianity eradicated the knowledge of the spiritual world from the understanding and belief of human beings.

Pink Madonna by @maryhenlin on Instagram

Roses from my garden

She appeared at the grotto once sacred to Persephone-Kore, holy daughter of Demeter.  On Candlemass we celebrated Mary Magdalene as Black Madonna of the Confession in the crypt of an Abbey that once used to be sacred to Persephone.  

Demeter and her burning torches and the sacred pomegranate

Statue is a work in progress from a sacred altar in the

Mysteries of the Red Madonna tarot deck

During the feast of Persephone the search of Demeter was re-enacted by the devotees. They walked in procession in the city with lit candles and torches, as Demeter once did.

“Why do we carry candles in this feast? Because the Gentiles [meaning non-Christians here] dedicated the month of February to the infernal gods; and as at the beginning of it Pluto [Hades] stole Proserpine [Persephone], and her mother Ceres [Demeter] searched for her in the night with lighted candles, so they, at the beginning of this month, walked about the city with lighted candles. Because the holy fathers could not wipe out this custom, they ordered that Christians should carry around candles in honor of the Blessed Virgin; and thus what was done before to the honor of Ceres  [Demeter] is now done to the honor of the Virgin.” - Pope Innocent XII

Mother Eucharista, Black Madonna of Montevergine sacred altar

The Mysteries of the Black Madonna tarot deck

The feast day of Mamma Schaviona, Mother Eucharista, in the Mysteries of the Black Madonna, takes place on the same date.  Her feast day has been celebrated with the breaking of the bread and wine in the past.  Bread and wheat were sacred to Demeter, mother of Persephone and wine to Dionysius.  Demeter, Persephone and Dionysius were the key figures in many of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The holy daughter, like her mother, is a many faceted goddess.  She is Kore, the Maiden who brings the spring.  In the Underworld she is Persephone (Proserpina) who receives the disembodied souls.  After her descent into the Underworld, she dies to her maidenhood as becomes the bride and sacred lover of Plouton, the God of Death.  She is a radiant source of light in the Underworld and initiates the newly dead into Elysium and introduces them to the knowledge of their own divinity.  She destroys the initiate's fear of death.  She is the one who has overcome the fear of death and death itself as she had descended into the Underworld and yet returned to life again. One of the important messages of the Mysteries are that death is not the end.

Exquisitely fragrant roses all from my Mary garden

There is also a powerful connection shown between Persephone and Aphrodite in ancient works of art.  Love, an aspect of Aphrodite and later Mary, is what draws Persephone and Plouton together.  Persephone is often shown with doves, (sacred to Mary), always with the five petalled rose and lily and an ointment jar (sacred to Mary Magdalene)  She is also accompanied by the hen, similar to many Black Madonnas and especially Madonna of the Hens. As the maiden she is often accompanied by the swan

The Red Madonna and Her Beloved sacred altar wip

from the Mysteries of the Red Madonna tarot deck

As Queen of the Underworld, Persephone's sacred union with the god of Death is essential to the continuation of the seasons and to life.   The rape of Persephone is not part of the original tradition nor story.  Many modern authors view the story of the maiden and her descent very differently to the well-known hymn by Homer, called 'Hymn to Demeter'.  Research has shown that this part of the story were changed when the change from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal society began.  

Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in Women who run with Wolves, that in older matristic tales of the East, the Maiden had a desire to descend below in order to find her bridegroom.  In older myths such as Inanna, the Maiden knows her destiny and chooses to meet if of her own free will.

                                   Demeter and her torches, searching for her daughter

The story of the maiden Bernadette and Lady of Lourdes has all the elements of the mythic and the mysteries and we see the echoes of Persephone-Kore in the story of Bernadette as well.

'First Bernadette feels a brief quivering pang of terror, next a steady fear.  But this is no familiar, no fear that propels one to jump up and run away.  Later this fear melts into still another feeling of which this child Bernadette has no idea and can find no name.  One might call it comforting or consolation.  But until this instant Bernadette never knew that she was in need of being comforted.

For she is really not at all aware of the hardness of her life .... This is naked reality accepted as a matter of course. But moment by moment now she is more deeply

swathed in this consolation which has no name, which is a hot flood of compassion..... extract from The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel

In her own way Bernadette descended into the Underworld and had to face her fear of death, as she was taken into deep trance states when the Radiant Lady appeared to her.  Bernadette saw the shimmering young lady appear in the grotto near Cachot 18 times.  

The young Bernadette descends into the Underworld in order to receive the messages and gifts from Lady of Lourdes.  And she returned with the greatest gift to the world : the gift of compassion for self, for all living creatures and for life itself.  She enters the womb of the Great Mother of All and brings back the compassionate heart.  She entered into a divine union with the Beloved and her soul received the Immaculate Conception.

In one of the versions of the Eleusynian myth, Persephone is torn between her love for her mother and her love for the god of the death.   This crisis took place at the same time as the Earth was laid barren by Demeter's grief and the maiden's absence.  A resolution was reached : Demeter and her opponent for her daughter's love, Plouton, met and broke bread together in an act of great compassion for all of life and the Earth.  This surrender of the self to the Immaculate Conception, is the miraculous power that continues life into eternity.

Prayer

I enter the Underworld as you pull me into your embrace, in every waking moment of living.

Contemplating on your Presence in the world, opens me up to the poignant beauty and suffering of all life in order and my  heart breaks open over and over, over flowing with compassion.

As my rigid mind dissolves in your presence, all boundaries between myself and all living creatures and the earth disappears and we are all one.

blessings

Hettienne

Novena to Our Lady of Living Fire Day 4

 

Our Lady of the New Dawn

Contemplation

We contemplate the darkness as we wait for the

Gate to the New Dawn

"Who is she that rises forth like the dawn,

fair as the moon,

pure and bright as the sun,

and as terrible as a many-bannered army?"

- Song of Songs 6:10

Black is the colour of night and the shade of soil.

It cloaks midnight and blankets the depths of caves

and grottos.  In previous cultures, the most

popular totem for a chief male divinity was the sun and,

by extension, light;  goddesses have been

associated with the moon and, by extension, night.

                                -Leonard Shlain (The Alphabet vs the Goddess)

Many medieval churches, extending in a wide arc from

Russia across Europe to Spain, had as their most sacred

object a statue of Black Mary.

Like the black, abiding earth, her simple being is so vastly 

present that we have not noticed it.

           - Caitlin Mathews

In a quest for a mother who will accept us when we can't quite

make peace with our errors, or with ourselves, it is easier

to turn to a simple mother acquainted with the darkness of life

than to the image of the Virgin distorted by religion into a perfectly obedient and always pure being.

In the heart of our dark mother, love for us endures without

judgement or pretense.  She helps us deal with the undeniable

fact that we live in a world we can neither control nor

comprehend, a world with which we often cannot cope -

in which we can at times only endure.

She is the silent companion who stands at our elbows

as we toil ..... daily grappling with humanity's

problems ...... striving to reflect the light of the

spirit in our world.

                    - Caitlin Mathews

In the Gnostic book of the Apocryphon of John it is written that we are never alone as the  power of the mother, the shakty in Hindu terms, the Epinoia in Gnostic terms, kundalini in tantric terms and Mary in my own personal experience,  is here with us and within us.

the blessed One, the Mother-Father, the beneficient and merciful One,                had mercy on the power of the mother .........

And he sent, through his beneficient Spirit and his

great mercy, a helper to Adam, luminous Epinoia which

comes out of him, who is called Life.

And she assists the whole creature,

by toiling with him and by restoring him to

his fullness ........ and be teaching him about

the way of ascent.

And thus we ponder the dark Madonna within ourselves -

the unknown who springs into action during an emergency, or who rises to the occasion as need be without thought or hesitation.

We also have the queen within who wants everything perfect and who, when not treated just so, can take offence unnecessarily.

Disciple, 'know thyself'

We are she.

These polarised appearances - as Hag or Queen of Heaven -are the two sides of the coin, one archetypal power.

Just as coal and diamond are both carbon - that basic substance of life - so does the Goddess of Wisdom manifest her power through seemingly opposing appearances. The Goddess of Wisdom is seeded in us all.

  -  Caitlin Mathews

However, the Great Mother of Wisdom, in all her

many aspects, are the One, only perceived

in polarity and duality.  By the darkness of night

we perceive her as the moon and in the

brightness of the day, as the sun.

But there is only One Light

and we come to know this through detachment. - Mary Gate of the New Dawn, Mysteries of the Black Madonna

Prayer

LAUDS - DAWN

Oh Mary Gate of the New Dawn

come to me

Oh Mother of both night and day

come to me

The blackness burns until only white bones remain

glimmering in the Light of new possibilities

I follow your black cloak down the well of the night

You receive me once more

as we await the New Dawn

Ave Maria

blessings

Hettienne