La Candelaria

August 15. Day of La Candelaria, a Black Virgin, like those of the Templars

Until recently it was quite frequent to meet one of them in any place of ancestral worship, but today, whether they have modified or lost their dark color, there must be about 70 in all of Spain.

If you look at them well they are not the same as the carvings of other virgins, they have something different, something mysterious and unknown that does not fit with the image we have of the Virgin Mary... but what is it? If we only looked at the color they would not go beyond one more curiosity, but to understand the reason for these icons of Byzantine origin we have to go further and go back in history and more specifically to the Middle Ages.

Until the 11th century the worship of the Mother of God was quite secondary focusing more on the figure of her son Jesus Christ and the saving devotion of the saints. But overnight, between the 11th and 13th centuries there is a disproportionate increase in Marian devotion coinciding with the time of the Crusades and the height of the order of the Temple.

The central figure of the Templar order, Bernard of Clairvan decides to Christianize the ancient places of worship and for this he replaces any pagan icon with images brought from the east. To justify the continuous appearance of black virgins, he decides to surround them with a halo of continuous miracles and since at that time there were no newspapers and the news ran very slow between regions makes each miracle seem unique.

• Incredible events quickly occur and Marian figures begin to emerge in any unsuspected place: bells, caves, walls, tree holes, or incredible unembarrances where a virgin appears who was buried to avoid being destroyed by Muslims.
• It seems like an innocent mission of re-Christianization, but Bernardo and the Templars went further. It is not by chance the place where these black virgins appear continuously. Always in ancient shrines where the earth’s telluric forces are strong.

The Templars to contact with sects and secret societies in the East had access to a lot of information that was believed to be lost in the West, such as the Earth’s earthquakes or crosses. Since ancient times the human being has felt that some places were different from the others and were more accessible with the transcendent.

The prehistoric who found these places and pointed them with stones, menhirs or megaliths, or placed them in wet caves, knew of the power of the place but not why. The earth we inhabit is not a dead and inert being but is surrounded by pulsations and electromagnetic movements, like a complex network of nerves that intersect continuously. There circulate the telluric forces of the earth and at the crosses of these avenues the concentration is stronger.

Therefore those points are tricken with shrines and holy caves. They stand out above all the places that have water or fountains. The Templars had access to this ancestral knowledge and to mark these shrines placed the black virgins.

These icons, in the image and likeness of the Agia Theotokos, or Holy Mother of God of Constantinople, proliferated between the 11th and 16th centuries. They are even said to have been carved by St. Luke by thus coating him with a halo of brilliant holiness.

The predominant feature is that it is not a graceful figure but a majora, stone, but that it is not equal to each other, because there are different classes. First there is the Kiriotissa or Throne of Wisdom where the Virgin, a reflection of the Sofia, serves as a mere support to the child God. Then there is the Odegtyria, which points the way to Salvation, where we see the child with an egg in his hand that represents the Primal Egg of Creation.

Some people or scholars have wanted to see in the egg the image of the earth but it is quite wrong because when these icons were carved it was believed that the earth was flat. Another way is the Theotokos, or Virgin Mother who sustains the child who blesses humanity. And finally the most curious of all the Galactrofusa or Virgin who gives of sucking Jesus. The milk that spills on the baby’s mouth is not normal milk but means wisdom so that all humans can come to true Knowledge.

We have already seen when they were found, how they were carved, but we still need to know why they are black. Essentially for two reasons: a) because in Eastern wisdom, the color black is one of the symbols of wisdom, and in Eastern languages, black and wise share the same linguistic root (for example, in India, the goddess Kali is black since the beginning Kala means black; and let's not forget the Romani people, who we know originated in the East and venerate another non-canonized virgin in France called Sara La Negra); and b) black is the allegorical color of the wife of God in the cryptic Book of Solomon, The Song of Songs: "I am black, but beautiful, Daughters of Jerusalem..." An interesting story of the Black Virgins that takes us back to a lost world where humankind was closer to nature, and which the Templars, in their quest for Synarchy, attempted to return to by merging ancestral Mother Goddess cults with Christian solar cults.