Come with us on a modern spiritual pilgrimage to discover the inner meaning of these fascinating medieval mysteries!

All pilgrimages are journeys into the body of
the Great Mother.
Ajit Mookerjee

Our tour is designed to take you to the awesome Madonna's of the Auvergne, many of them mysteriously black. In little known shrines and caves we will savor the medieval legends of Mary Magdalene still celebrated in Provence and Burgundian Vezelay. Haunting echoes of lost cults of the sacred feminine also survive in the lovely troubadour songs to La Donna (or Lady) and in tales of the initiatory quest for the Holy Grail. Were these all part of a kind of underground stream or church of love? Evidence exists of a secret order of devotees called the Fideli d’amore or Faithful of love - Dante was one of them.

What can I say of her beauty?
In truth she was made to be gazed upon:
for in her one could have seen oneself as in a mirror
Chretien de Troyes

Dr. ROGER J. WOOLGER, Ph.D., is a lifelong student of these medieval mysteries, a scholar of comparative religion and an expert in esoteric psychology. He will be our guide through this rich and ancient territory. With lively on-site talks, folklore, medieval music on our bus and evening slide shows to enrich our daily travels Roger will sketch the many layered history of ancient, Roman and Romanesque Provence. You cannot fail to be moved by the rich and beautiful charismatic statues of the 11th and 12th century Madonna's and inspired by the stories of Mary Magdalene. Through the ages their spirit recalls the ancient cults of the Great Mother that nourished people for thousands of years up till the advent of Jesus and His Mother.

Her shrines were found everywhere, for everywhere
is her abode
Adele Getty, Goddess

Black Madonna's start to proliferate all over France from the 10-11th centuries onward. Many, like the Madonna of Le Puy have mysterious links to the East, possibly through the Crusades - she was thought to be an effigy of Isis. Others like the magnificent throned Black Madonna's of Orcival and Clermont suggest a derivation from the Great Mother in majesty, her seated divine son recalling the mysteries of Osiris, Attis and Adonis, her authority emanating the wisdom of Holy Sophia of Byzantium. All these deities were originally known to have been celebrated in Provence first by the Greeks and later by the Romans. But the earliest celebrants may have been the Egyptians, since they and the Phoenicians first used Marseille as a port.

By the 12th century the ancient catacombs of old Marseille had became the much revered shrine of a Christian Black Madonna. But there is little doubt that she harkens way back to the ancient patroness of the Greek city, the goddess Artemis. These catacombs were also once also the site of the mysteries of Persephone, whose torchlight return from the underworld is still celebrated every February under the form of the Christian Candle mass. Little cakes or navettes are baked each year at this time to commemorate the arrival from the Holy Land of the three Mary's, one of them supposed the Magdalene. Could their number be a reminder of the Mother as Triple Goddess?

Mary Magdalene herself has rich legendary associations with Provence, especially Marseille, where we begin our tour. Medieval lore has it that Mary Magdalene along with Mary Jacobe and Mary Salome (mothers of the two James’s of the Gospels) landed in a frail barque near Roman Marseille with Martha, Lazarus and their black servant Sara. Hostile Jews had cast them out to sea out from the Holy Land in a rudderless boat which miraculously found its way to Provence.

Magdalene is said to have converted many to Christianity in Marseille with her passionate preaching. Did she preach in the ancient catacombs near the old Greek harbor? Was she herself the object of lost mystery tradition like that of Persephone? According to later legend, she retired to a holy cave high in the massif of Sainte-Baume not far from the city. Here she ended her life in prayer. The cave is a sacred site to this day, but we may only guess as to how far back in pagan times it was also a place of power. The bear goddess Artemis inhabited caves in neolithic times.

Mary’s relics came to rest in the basilica of St. Maximin-Ste. Baume (Holy Balm) and were much venerated throughout the Middle Ages—until in Vezelay in Burgundy the rival Abbey of Sainte Madeleine also claimed her remains! The cult of relics lent itself to all kinds of fraud in the Middle Ages, since a credulous populace is always hungry for “signs and wonders” associated with their beloved saints.

Negra sum, sed hermosa: I am black, but comely…
Song of Solomon

Sara was adopted as the Black Madonna of the gypsies in the 15th century in Les Saintes Maries de la Mer, a small village near the Rhone estuary, which had known Egyptian and Phoenician settlements. It seems highly likely that the Sara legend of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer pre-dates Christianity since remains of temples to Artemis, Cybele, Isis and the Celtic Triple Goddess Matres have also been found in the town.

Black statues of these ancient goddesses were widespread (see Goddess Gallery) and remains of their cults are to be found all over France. In Roman times the patroness of Marsala (Marseille) as we noted, was Artemis. Her earlier form as Cybele gave Lyon both its patroness and its protective animals, which were of course lions. Both goddesses are often depicted as black, as is Isis, whose image is thought to be the origin of the famous Black Madonna of Meymac, known as “the Egyptian”.

One writer speculates that Sara was originally the goddess Saraswati brought by the gypsies from India, but it is much more likely that she is the goddess Kali Sara whom the Roma or “gypsies” still worship today as a reminder that they originate from India. (Sara Kali, recent researchers have determined, is also worshipped by the Roma not just in France but in other parts of Europe; see Ronald Lee:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kopachi/articles/romanigoddess.html

Much of the Sara story smacks of later Christian propaganda however, since Provence did not become Christian till many centuries after the alleged arrival of the Marys. But when four decapitated skeletons were excavated from under the church in the 15th century the story got a special boost since Good King Rene instituted a cult to Sarah the Egyptian, whom he saw as descended from Isis. He also included the three Marys in this cult although later the Church reduced the Marys to two, typically removing the sin-stained Magdalene from the picture.

In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life,
the Mistress of heaven.
Merlin Stone, "When God was a Woman"

There are no legends associating the Magdalene with the Auvergne, which is high in the Central Massif in volcanic territory. But this region boasts the largest concentration of Black Madonnas and Madonnas in Majesty in not only France but in the whole of Europe. No one can explain this concentration. Was there a concentration of Celtic Mother Goddesses here? Certainly the Druids were very powerful in this region and were persecuted by the Romans at one point. No doubt the cults of Cybele, Artemis, Dionysus and Isis spread north up the Rhone Valley to Lyon and thence into the mountains. Mountains have always held sacred power and the high up sources of rivers emanated woivre or sacred “serpent” energy for the Celts; the Loire actually rises not far from Le Puy. It is possible that this stunningly beautiful region had been held sacred from extremely ancient times leaving cults of the Mother Goddess, the source of all life, that only dimly survive in folk memory.

Many Celtic and other myths talk of beguiling ladies arising from lakes or dwelling by springs and the sources of rivers. Springs have always been associated with the healing of the Earth Mother as Tella Mater; they also are the place of entry to the Netherworld or the world of the Shades (“La belle dame sans merci hath thee in thrall…” Keats wrote). At Vaucluse we visit the stupendous cavernous gushing aquifer, which is the largest water source in Europe. Seeing it’s awesome aspect on a visit at around 1200 inspired in Dante his vision of the entrance to Hell described in his Inferno.

On our tour we will descend into caves and climb dizzying peaks, following the great movements of seeding, incubation and rebirth, those instinctive patterns of death and renewal which have forever been the holy cycles of the Mother, who is Nature Herself and all Creation.

Spirit is a land of high, white peaks…Soul is at home
in the deep shaded valleys
Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Letters

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
It doesn’t matter
Ours is a caravan of endless joy.
Jalaluddin Rumi