The Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland, created prior to 14th century CE
$3 Vinyl reusable sticker, 7.62 cm (3") round.
$4 Wooden Coster / Ornament 9.4 cm (3.7") round.
The traditional composition is well known in the icons of Orthodox Christianity. The Virgin Mary is shown as the "Hodegetria", meaning "One Who Shows the Way".
Icon usage in the Haitian Vodou religion
Reproductions of the Black Madonna were brought by Polish soldiers who sided with the rebels during the Haitian Revolution. The icon has been syncretized by some Vodou practitioners to the deity Ezilí Dantor, the main loa of the Petro family in Haitian Vodou.
The Black Madonna as Mother of God
Dr. Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba studies syncretic religions and representations of the divine feminine. It goes all the way back to primordial times, she says. In Russia and Poland, the Virgin Mary is referred to as the Mother of God. This is very close to her original name of Mother Goddess.
She is the mother of universes, identified with the primordial darkness and chaos of the universe, and with the moist and fertile black earth.
The Black Madonna also speaks to an ancient cultural memory of the African origins of humanity, representing the original mother of Earth’s children.
It is a memory that people all over the world carry. Because of this, blackness has a very strong symbolic meaning connected to love, nurturing, protection, transformation, power, wisdom, fertility, and justice.
Read the article I quoted from here.
Also depicted here:
Top, from left: Our Lady of Czestochowa, in the shrine of Eureka, Missouri; Our Lady of Guadalupe; Egyptian goddess Isis with Horus, (©Brooklyn Museum/Corbis).
Bottom, from left: Venus of Laussel (©Charles & Josette Lenars/CORBIS); Baba or Zywa—goddess as the center of a flowering Tree of Life; Guadalupe Defending Xicano Rights, by Ester Hernandez (©1976 Ester Hernandez. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of the artist).