The Black Madonna / Isis / Mary

DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit.
H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine 1:70

Give heed, my son, Horus, for you shall hear the secret doctrine of which our forefather Kamephis was the first teacher. It so befell that Hermes heard this teaching from Kamephis, the eldest of our race. I heard it from Hermes, the writer of records, at the time when he initiated me into the Rite of Black Perfection, and you shall hear it now from me… [Words of Isis from Kore Kosmu, the sacred book of Hermes Trismegistus. Meditations of the Tarot, Arcana 9, The Hermit.]

The Black Madonna, an image of Divinity shrouded in darkness, is enshrined in countless pilgrim churches, in remote monasteries, in tiny chapels and vast cathedrals, down in dark crypts and upon high altars, in Sicily, Spain, Switzerland, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Turkey, and as Black Tara in China, as Kali in India, and as “Our Lady of Guadalupe” in Mexico. She has been visited by millions of people for hundreds of years.

Historically, Isis of Egypt was the first recorded appearance of the Black Madonna, other than the Paleolithic Venus figurines. The cult of Isis was the dominant religion of the Mediterranean during late Roman times, and had spread into Roman-occupied lands, including Gaul. The city of Paris was devoted to Isis, as Lyons was to Cybele and Marseilles to Artemis. Like other Black Goddess figures, Isis is the life-giving and healing goddess of the Earth. In The Golden Ass of Apuleius, Isis speaks: “I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all the gods and goddesses there are.” The text goes on to state that she is identical with Cybele, Artemis, Aphrodite, Persephone, Demeter, Juno, and Hecate.

More than five hundred of the world’s Madonna images are black or dark. Who is The Black Madonna? What does she represent to the world? What is her message? It is possible to consider The Black Madonna as the archetypal counterpart of the Virgin Mary, in which they interrelate as the Yin/Yang of the Taoist symbol create a whole and each half contains the other. The Black Madonna is known as the Queen of the Earth and as Mary as the Queen of Heaven; The Black Madonna is fertile and generative as Mary is the icon of the Immaculate Conception and Incorruptibility. The Black Madonna is the Virgin who is consort to no man or deity, as all life emanated from her as Mother Nature.

THE BLACK MADONNA AS THE COSMIC MOTHER:

The Black Madonna is the darkness of the void from which even the light is born, the final mystery that is drawing all things into deeper and deeper union with it. She is the formless void at the beginning of the Rig Veda in Hinduism and the Book of Genesis in the Bible. The Black Madonna is the great cosmic Mother on whose lap all creation exists, the seed and source of creation, the manifested counterpart to the transcendental being of the Heavenly Father beyond all creation. The universe itself is embraced and mothered by Her. She is the mediatrix of unity, uniting all aspects of creation, without separation into nations, ethnic groups, or religious sects. She is the primal void from which everything has emerged.
https://sophiafoundation.org/the-black-madonna-a-divine-mystery-veiled-in-blackness/

The Sacred Science Of Alchemy And The Black Madonna

While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course,
Thy almighty Word, O Lord, came down from heaven from Thy royal throne.
—Wisdom 18:14–15

"Out of the blackness of cosmic midnight the Primal Mother birthed the seeds of creation, the Primal Mother on whose lap all creation exists, also known as the Black Madonna. Her blackness represents the womb of the unmanifest quantum field from which all of creation arises and into which all of creation will eventually dissolve. Black is the color that contains all colors. Out of the black depths of space, stars, suns and planets form. Alchemists called this nascent matter that preceded all other substance the ‘prima materia’. This was the original essence from which all alchemical transmutation manifested. The prima materia is known in Alchemy as the cause of all effects that occur.

The Black Madonna’s primordial material provides the substance for the Great Work of Alchemy, which is a process of revelation, incarnation, illumination and transfiguration. On the material plane it is the science of transmuting lead into gold and on the subtle plane it is the science of transmuting the ‘prima materia’ of the pre-conscious soul into the gold of the awakened soul that is reunited with its cosmic ground. The emphasis is on building awareness of and communion with spirit and creating an incorruptible body of light or subtle body that will hold this relationship beyond the death of the physical body. The Great Work of Alchemy transmutes the relationship between the human being and the cosmos through the integration of body, soul and spirit and the conscious reunion with the unus mundus or the divine ground of being. Alchemy is a sacred rite of unification, an opus divinum (divine work), which ultimately reveals or brings to birth the innate divinity of the human being.

The question at hand is: What is the deeper relationship of the Black Madonna and the science of Alchemy?

At least 4000 years old, the science of Alchemy has deep roots in Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek, as well as Chinese, Indian and Persian civilizations. The connection between the Black Virgin and Alchemy was prefigured in Greco-Egyptian Hermeticism from its beginnings. The color black attributed to Isis was expressly presented as the symbol of the ‘Secret Doctrine.’ In the treatise entitled Core Cosmu — translated as ‘The Cosmic Virgin’ (no. 23 of the Corpus Hermeticum), Isis herself declares:

“Listen carefully, Horus my son, for here I tell you the secret doctrine [Crypte theoria] that my grandfather Kamephis learnt from Hermes . . . and I from Kamephis, when he honored me with the gift of perfect Blackness [teleio melani].”
https://sophiafoundation.org/the-sacred-science-of-alchemy-and-the-black-madonna/

Son 1:5 I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

Kedar - H6938
קֵדָר
qêdâr
kay-dawr'
From H6937; dusky (of the skin or the tent); Kedar, a son of Ishmael; also (collectively) bedawin (as his descendants or representatives): - Kedar.

H6937
קָדַר
qâdar
kaw-dar'
A primitive root; to be ashy, that is, dark colored; by implication to mourn (in sackcloth or sordid garments): - be black (-ish), be (make) dark (-en), X heavily, (cause to) mourn.
PS - I do not put the X in the meanings. It appears from Strong's Concordance

"It is in attempting to explain the mysterious 'Black Rite' of Isis at the highest degree of the Egyptian mysteries that Mead cited the magic papyrus which I have already quoted. He explains the 'Black Rite' as being connected with Osiris being a 'dark god' who is 'Lord of the perfect black' which is 'the unseen world, the mysterious black'.

Luk_11:31 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and condemn them: for she came from the utmost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

The Black Rite

Osiris Lord of the Perfect Black

"An Egyptian papyrus says the companion of Isis is 'Lord in the perfect black'. This sounds like the invisible Sirius B. Isis's companion Osiris 'is a dark god'.

The Trismegistic treatise 'The Virgin of the World' from Egypt refers to 'the Black Rite', connected with the 'black' Osiris, as the highest degree of secret initiation possible in the ancient Egyptian religion - it is the ultimate secret of the mysteries of Isis.
https://ontheroadtofindout.locals.com/post/1834599/the-eridanus-black-hole-sirius-b-white-dwarf-pt-5

"The many-breasted figure which forms the frontispiece of this volume, represents Isis under this aspect. The black face and hands are, of course, equivalent to the celebrated Veil, and indicate the inscrutable nature of the occult influence which directs Destiny; and which, to the uninitiate, even appears to be blind and fortuitous. The well-known "black virgin" has the same significance."
Virgin of the World, Kingsford & Maitland