Black Madonna Archetype

aspects of life. When there is little or no room for these experiences in daily life, they will still live in the unconscious. The dreaming mind will continue to tell you stories about what is sacred in your life, even if you never consciously think in those terms. The dreaming mind will use soul figures to try to prompt you to think about your place in the Universe, to feel your relationship to the intangible forces that move through human life.

For some women this archetypal figure resembles a Goddess, often a Goddess with a motherly cast. In the late 70 's a Jungian Analyst named Edward Whitmont noticed that many of his female patients were dreaming of goddesses.(Whitmont 1982). He believed that this meant that these ancient archetypes

The most famous examples of the Black Madonna are probably the Virgin of Guadeloupe in Mexico and the Cracow Virgin, in Poland. They are objects of veneration and pilgrimage for devout Catholics. Woodman, and others, relate these dark-skinned icons of the Christian Divine Mother to other dark Mother Goddesses, such as Kali in India. This amplification of the Black Madonna, as well as observation of the way Black Madonna figures act in women 's dreams, helps us understand this archetype. The Black Madonna seems to appear in dreams that connect a woman to the cycles of nature, to the destructive as well as the generative forces in life and to the erotic aspect of the sacred

Emotions are a good guide to choosing a scene or image in a dream to pay attention to. Associating to dream images by asking yourself what the image reminds you is a good way to begin relating to your dreams. The Jungian practice of amplifying images and symbols by looking at cultural and archetypal associations builds up a web of connotations and possible meanings. Finding out some new facts about the figure the dreaming mind chose to use or looking at the ways in which the image comes up in stories, movies or history can spark a useful notion about the image. Once again, use your feelings as your guide. If an amplification causes you to feel excited, sad, even uneasy there is probably something in it