Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Black Madonna
https://www.google.com/#q=black+madonna+shrine+missouri
http://ramblings-and-rumblings.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-black-madonna.html
The Rat
I wake standing in the middle of a small living room. Two plastic covered white couches line the far wall while a small love seat and divan flank the sides. I stand in front facing guests. Four people walk into the room. Two men are followed by one woman and a tall human sized rat man with a long tail. The human sized rat walks in and sits on the love seat. I am repulsed at the matted hair and fact that he seems a real being and not a man in a suit. On first responses, I think him Satan and as he tries to take over a conversation that has been the ebb and flo of the night for hours. In hindsight I am sure he is the only thing in the white room that has a profound odor of rot. The others smell of skin, dirt, and sweat. Despite my fright they continue to talk. Maybe, just maybe I am not here for them. Maybe they cannot see me. Blackness. I walk into the kitchen. The walls and cabinetry are all white to the core. A man stands to the left of the sink. His wings relax behind him and four faces float in white light to the right of his head. An older woman in her 50’s stands in front of him to my right posturing a guilt trip for him to fall into. I try to interrupt but she refuses to stop harping on him. The floating heads begin to talk. I recognize my face in one of the floating balls of light. He is panicking and fighting not to lose his mind. I cannot seem to divert her arguments to provide him a way to leave. I wake knowing the rat took over and will not be leaving the scene any time soon.
The Journey
I pledged to myself that year to take another route up north instead of taking the familiar route through Arkansas. One idea I planned all summer was to take several roadside stops en route to Ohio. Driving alone with an extra week for insulation makes for excitement and personal accomplishment. On my first day I made it to the other side of Oklahoma. Before leaving the state, I saw the signs for the Shrine of the Black Madonna over twenty miles before crossing into Missouri . After exiting into Eureka, I pulled in at a corner store. One tip from the man outside the gas station and I found the Shrine in ten minutes. After parking I wandered the site looking for somewhere to register and someone with which to speak. I found neither. What I did find was a tent with glass encased icons and a large series of grottos.
I started at the end and worked backwards. If memory serves me correctly I started with Saint Francis. Walking up to the shrine, I paced my steps by walking slow. One thing that was obvious as I slowed my temperament was that felt my emotions change. Raving awareness was not what I needed to connect with the imagery. What I needed was to approach with humility and patience. This was not art to gawk at or criticize with a contemporary’s panacea to correct for social suitability. It was art to meditate on quietly. The name of the cement image did not matter. It was the design of each grotto that was meant to be a passage of consciousness as well as physical transformation. The sights, textures, and smells worked me to the bone. With every step this inner quiet caught flame and consumed me. This was a journey years before I took the step into baptism. It was not a surprise that the lingering guilts, passions, and appetites conjured up an appearance of something long gone. It was the rat. By the time I had grasped what my senses where telling me around the second grotto, there he was leering at each statue and lounging beneath Saint Josephs hands. I said nothing, but continued to walk the grotto. After that with every step through the grounds I became tired and extremely sleepy. Whether I had eaten lunch I do not know, but what I remember is quickly moving through the rest of the grounds to get back to the car.
The Exorcism
Driving the car back up to the exit ramp to continuing my journey is clouded in my mind. What I do remember is seeing the human faced rat sitting next to me in the passenger’s seat. Why he manifested this far away from home I did not know. I truly had no clue. I do recall how difficult it was driving for the next five miles. Those five minutes still terrify me. Despite driving, my attentions went to the vision in the car far more than the 18 wheelers quickly passing me down the highway. When the rat finally jumped into the back seat, I exited the highway and pulled off on a hill covered in gravel. After turning off the car, I jumped in the backseat and dug for my medicine bundle that was filled of little pieces of this and that. I packed that medicine bundle specifically for this trip. It was to be the foundation for an altar in my bedroom once I got back to Ohio. I only took the best of semi-precious stones from my bags and pieces of nature collected from my travels between school and home. One piece in the bundle was a small statue attributed to the Egyptian Goddess Bast. I bought the painted piece of plaster from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It served its purpose like a dreamlike portion of history. Outside the car, bag in hand, I threw piece after piece of stone, seed, and bone on to the graveled hill. I took to Bast with a heavy right foot. She broke into three pieces. I tossed the piece one after each other over the ravene.
The “big” dream of cats occupies a base in my memory. The place I lay was immediately covered in cats from kitchen to bedroom as soon as the front door swung open. The white couch was inundated. How could I not determine it a sign of fidelity and totem back then. For now I rest in knowing childhood dreams are potent unto death. I blamed Bast that afternoon once leaving the shrine. I did it without thinking. I forgot that rats lay prey to cats. I could have asked but would have been indebted beyond my understanding. Her destruction was the sacrifice that caused the rat never to show his face again.
Resolve and Expanse
I see a large piece of rose quartz in my hand. It is the piece I ground into the hill with my right heel. Right now the quartz’ presence is only in my imagination, but I remember scrying. I also remember leaving comfort for the dead. I remember the rat knowing that I did not battle my demon/monster the ways I have before. I presumed for decades that the field of battle in dreams ends at the boundaries of sleep and wake. He, the rat, is elsewhere, waiting. I do not flaunt my Chinese Zodiac birth symbol in anyone’s face. If the human rat is an aspect of myself, I have not seen a connection in over twenty years. There is still time to learn though. Still time indeed.
As ever, stay hungry and curious.
BTW: Look at a picture of Madonna and Child then compare it to a picture/sculpture of Isis ad Horus. It is not so much the immediate recognition that pulls me to understand the comparison, but a deeper look into the concept of "mother" as a archetype. I wonder whether there is a girl child enthroned somewhere in history - with or without mother or need be I stand by the maiden as depicted in romanticism and symbolist painters. There must be some depth to that argument. That just might be a self-imposed challenge.