THE BLACK VIRGIN IN BROOKLYN
by
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS
THE CONTROVERSIAL 'SENSATION' Exhibit at the Brooklyn museum of Art on October 2, 1999, received sensational responses from the public: law suits were filed; dung was hurled; the public vomited; iconoclasm was attempted.
The Holy Virgin Mary painted by Chris Ofili, a young British artist of Nigerian descent, was the epicenter of the cultural upheaval. The image portrays a black woman decorated with some shellacked elephant dung the artist claims is symbolic of his African heritage. An odd assortment of female buttocks clipped from pornographic magazines flits about her head like butterflies.
"Sensation" attracted a curious crowd to the museum. However, based on what was seen and heard in the media, most people would not have given a farthing to see the show. Nonetheless, the symbolic elements of the controversy are invaluable and could, if taken advantage of, work a transformation of dung into gold or of foolishness into the wisdom it presently occludes.
For instance, if the subject of The Holy Virgin Mary is the esoteric Black Virgin who presides over the Underground Stream flowing in its spiral course throughout the Hidden Church, then her apparition, perhaps unwittingly made manifest by Mr. Ofili, presages events of biblical proportion.
According to occult tradition, the Black Virgin's appearance precedes a carnival of feminine equality and liberation. A poor compassionate woman shall commune there with mankind, and from the virginal black earth shall emerge a son who shall reveal the Secret Doctrine in the chasm of his poetic ambiguities: those who seek the Grail in the gap shall behold the face of Mother Night on the threshold of bliss.
The Black Virgin prophecy appertains to the long-awaited liberation of man's feminine side from the violent patriarchal oppression of his forefathers, and to the ensuing procession of the Matriarchal Age of Love. Some thinkers now believe that women are almost liberated. However, they expect a male backlash rather than a love fest to follow. They opine postmodern man has been so badly whipped by modern feminism that he has lost his sublime sense of ultimate male utility; that is, his identification with some higher purpose than becoming, for example, an Internet or Wall Street whiz, movie star, or sports idol. Hence he is expected to strike out violently in a last-ditch effort to erect his self-dignity.
Nonetheless, we find nothing new in postmodern man's misogyny, psychological weakness, and reliance on brute force to redeem himself:it would be a classic mistake to blame his typical behavior on the current Women's Movement.
Fortunately, however, for all those concerned, women are experts in the struggle for personal identity, wherefore they have much to contribute to the male struggle, just as the long struggle of slaves for their freedom helps to emancipate all men. Yes, indeed, perhaps feminist expertise may be the key to the mysterious evolution of sexual peace. Wherefore, when the prophecy is fulfilled, man shall come to equal terms and merge with the real woman fully exposed: the War Between the Sexes shall end in bliss.
In the interim, at least until the peace treaty is signed, the Black Virgin, the gap between the father and the son, must somehow be whitewashed. A week before Christmas, Mr. Heiner, a 72-year old retired teacher, feigned sickness, slipped behind the Plexiglas barrier. and smeared white paint on The Holy Virgin Mary, because he and his wife believed the image was "blasphemous." A museum spokesperson called his act "incomprehensible," and the vandal was charged with felony criminal mischief.
The painting was promptly cleaned and redisplayed. But elsewhere the whitewash has had centuries to dry: the ideal mother resides unspotted in her candle-lit niche, a glowing ornament to emasculated virtue, yet a real source of confusion to men still in full possession of their senses. Her retinue of ideal ladies-in-waiting are legion: one, and sometimes more, for each man. She is the lost mother each man seeks in his wife; she is the first housekeeper or oekonomikus; she is the principle of propriety on a pedestal; she is the trustee of native identity; she is prime productive private property. And she is much more than all that: she bears a burden beyond man's comprehension, laboring where he is incompetent to the task.
But let us return to Brooklyn and the case of dung in hand. Some time after Mr. Heiner smeared white paint on the detested image inside, another man outside doused the museum with red paint for unknown reasons. Yet another protester hurled dung at the museum. Moreover, 200 New Yorkers assembled in Manhattan's Washington Square Park, paid a dollar each to don a latex glove, and hurl dung at a portrait of Mayor Rudolph Giulani. who was depicted as the Madonna. Reporters later reported that the police raided the apartment of one Stephen Powers, a graffiti artist who disclosed on a radio talk show that he was responsible for staging the protest. A great deal of material was seized, including an antique set of brass knuckles hanging on his wall: Mr. Powers was arrested and charged with the criminal possession of a weapon. Joey Skaggs, the man who actually designed the mayor's portrait, was barely mentioned in the reports.
The dishonored mayor, characterized by his liberal foes as an anal-retentive conservative, wanted to halt the museum's funding, cut off its utilities, and evict it from the public facilities. He denounced the exhibit as "sick". He was eventually overruled by Judge Nina Gershon, who held that the mayor and the city were threatening the neutrality required of government in the sphere of religion.
So far none of this is very astonishing in a city where horses are forced by the city to wear diapers and where pooper-scoopers are a common appliance. Nor is it surprising that the 'Sensation' exhibit included, much to the horror of animal rights activists, dismembered animals in large containers of formaldehyde.
Now then, as we can see in the symbolic context, Mr. Ofili's intentions were irrelevant when he created the image The Holy Virgin Mary we have so conveniently appropriated for our various excursive interpretations. If the artist had malice in his heart, his heart will surely suffer. Nevertheless, a few pious folks in Brooklyn are probably burning candles, making mysterious signs in thin air, kneeling and saying special prayers before a facsimile of his work - perhaps a photo clipped from the catalogue or the newspaper. Shall we charge them with bad taste, or with idolatry?
Some sympathetic souls believe a little superstitious ignorance might be healthy for vulgar people despite our own noble aesthetic and religious convictions. In any event, no matter what our perspectives and prejudices might be, we should thank Mr. Ofili and his ilk for playing their roles, that we may play ours.
We should also thank Mayor Rudolph Giulani for his intolerance and his vigorous litigious opposition to "Sensation" The mayor plays the part of a character many generous liberals love to hate: that of an orderly, parsimonious and obstinate mayor sitting on the throne of Babylon under which he is occasionally self-moved to deposit in a box his various execrations in the form of regulatory commandments. Liberals rarely receive mercy under his tarnished seat of power, which doubles as a ceiling to all below. Liberals can only hope his angels will fly him and his portable throne elsewhere. Be that as it may, wherever his seat of power may move him, his inhospitality towards the Black Virgin during her visit to Brooklyn has only served to further illustrate the enormous power she holds, even over the most powerful men.
PRIMITIVE VESTIGES & ANAL THERAPY
The Psychological Implications of Elephant Dung
IF WE ARE TO TOLERATE the vestiges of "primitive" religions represented by The Holy Virgin Mary, then, in order to keep our conscience clean, we should give some brief regard to the post-modern psychoanalytic return to the Primitive, at least in reference to elephant dung and associated matters. We therefore note a reference to elephant dung by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
According to Sherry Turkle in her book Psychoanalytic Politics, Lacan raised the elephant dung issue before a MIT audience in 1975. He said he was reasonably certain in his capacity as an analyst that man does have an interior: the evidence he found for that interior was the presence of excrement. Lacan claimed that man is the only animal who does not instinctively know what to do with his dung, except the dog, who is also civilized and is therefore also dung-encumbered. Lacan said that elephant dung does not occupy much space even though it is reasonable to expect it to require, considering the size of the animal producing it, enormous accommodations. Then he equated civilization with excrement. He remarked that it would take a long time for people to understand what he was talking about. His audience thought he was delirious and senile - he was 72 at the time.
Elephant-Dung Natural Gas
Lacan must not have been familiar with the production capacity of elephants. Thai researchers have recently generated electricity from elephant-dung natural gas. An elephant produces 88-110 lbs. of dung per day, enough to produce cooking gas for a family of three, or it can be used as feedstock for an electric generator. But the cost is not cheap. The minimum price of construction of a fermentation pit, pipeline and storage tank is around $800 and a generator that could use the gas costs around $2,667. The Thai ministry responsible for the project plans to release a report promoting use of the method nationwide, especially in the North and the Northeast where most of the country's domesticated elephants are found and the problem of how to dispose of the elephants' waste is most acute. -(AP)- Bangkok, Thailand, February 23, 2000
Despite that contradiction to Lacan's hypothesis, to be fair we shall render a few extractions from the ancient literature in his support or his general position.
Sacred Elephant Dung
Elephants themselves have long been associated with divinity and wisdom. The elephant is the Indian dragon with the snake of wisdom for its proboscis. It is the great god Indra's indispensable steed or vehicle, called Airavata, one of his necessary auspicious signs, equally important if not more so than his chakra, jewel, queen, treasure and horse. Airavata. meaning "produced from the ocean", came from the Ocean of Milk stirred up at the Creation. He is a cloud-white or milky-white elephant. Wherefore wars were once waged for the mere possession of a white elephant, and their images were placed as capitals on pillars and worshiped.
Celestial elephants have wings and can fly like clouds. It has long been known that they, as does the Chinese dragon, bring luck and abundance down to Earth. In fact, elephants fertilize the Earth Goddess: therefore she loves the sound of approaching elephants. Furthermore, so powerful is the fresh dung of white elephants that an ancient prescription for barrenness provides that infertile women stand in it for one hour prior to intercourse with their husbands.
Moreover, since the elephant is a royal vehicle, elephant dung may be a sign of the coming of a great lord. For instance, consider the myth about the birth of Buddha. His mother, Mayadevi, fell asleep and dreamed. Bodhisattva, in the form of a white elephant descended from a golden mountain, circled her bed clockwise three times, smote her right side, then entered her womb. A brahmin, upon hearing her account , prognosticated, "Thou shalt have a son. If he dwells in the house he will become a king, a universal monarch if he leaves the house and goes forth from the world, he will become a Buddha, a remover in the world of the veil of ignorance."
Elephant Dung on Noah's Ark
Incidentally, lest we become to grave about this matter, The Mesopotamians had a sense of humor concerning the droppings of the great elephant: their account of the Flood relates how the elephants stood on one side of the Ark, nearly causing it to roll over and capsize by weight of their excretions.
Lacan Made a Good Point
Those examples alone, and there are many more in the literature, should suffice to support Dr. Lacan's statement asserting the positive relation of dung to the advance of civilization. Nonetheless, a few more references will reinforce our case.
Excremental Capitalism
Take for instance, the first anthropological evidence of capitalism: it seems a primitive North American tribe gorged themselves to speed up their production of ordure, then baked it in the sun and stored it for future consumption in case of dire need.
Excremental Totemism
Also consider the fact that, among the Kujamaat Diola of Senegal, certain individuals used to defecate in secret places in the bushes, then adopted the leavings as their personal totems or animated doubles. And note that an Africa sacred object might be worthless in itself: it is merely the means of communication. For a descendent of Nigerian elephant hunters, that object might very well be a clump of shellacked elephant dung, a symbol of power intended to wish happy elephant hunting as well as the capture of many erotic butterflies by the illustrious sons of "The Holy Virgin Mary."
Post-modern Excremental Psycho-anal-ysis
That which is called "primitive" is not as primitive as it sometimes seems when we proceed to analyze it, hence we return to psychoanalysis in hopes we may obtain good therapy during our excremental discourse.
The evolution of dung-consciousness in the developing child must be mentioned in our context. According to the psycho-anal lore, a child becomes intensely interested in its productions during the anal stage. According to the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, the child exchanges the wet, stinky and sticky product for clean dry sand, although he might pour water in the sand or show a predilection for mud. That product is, in turn, traded for pebbles, rocks and marbles. Hard currency, jewels and precious metals might eventually follow. If a man has been raised properly, he will not want to touch dirty money: liquid currency is disgusting to him. Working capital must not be held in the form of cash in pocket or in bank accounts but must be fully vested in productive assets. A hygienically inclined man will prefer plastic cards, and have his digital statements handled by his accountants. However, he might often be involved in construction projects that leave petrified dejecta all over the land, such as buildings, roads, machines and other stools of power.
Several sorts of characters might emerge because of the different quirks of toilet training. A child might become an artist. Every true artist is a sort of rebel. The rebellious child might start his first savings account during the training process just to give himself the pleasure of squandering it as he pleases despite the best efforts of his parents. However, he might scorn savings altogether because his parents cherish the same.
On the other hand, because of some other accident of upbringing during the critical anal stage, a child might become an uptight tightwad, a constipated person who might know he belongs in analysis but does not want to pay for it; by the way, the Greek word for analysis means "to loosen up."
Post-modern Exremental Therapy
We have by no means exhausted the prospects of civilization and its discontents relative to the anal erogenous zone. Yet we can have comfort in knowing that the latest group therapy practice may provide a great deal of relief to the malcontents and the discontented. Two hour sessions are conducted while the group sits on toilets; the pioneering analyst got this idea from the customary practice of men in ancient Rome who sat for hours on public toilets chatting with each other while taking care of business. Naturally, this new anal therapy is being subsidized by the United States Government.
National Implications of Anal Therapy
Indeed! The Surgeon General of the United States has defined mental illness as a mental state interfering with production and relationships. A man must achieve optimum productivity in our society in order to have fully productive relationships, yet his duty to consume and to maximize production may interfere with those relations. In any event, a healthy individual must make at least an adequate or "normal" contribution to the Gross National Product. Consumerism is the official state religion: continuous production is worshiped because of the manna that products supposedly contain, and because of the cathartic release of tension. Therefore the new anal therapy is conducive to the religion of consumption and productive, and therefore merits the allocation of public funds.
Our Excremental Civilization
Mr. Lacan might not be so crazy and coprophilic as he seemed when he said civilization is excrement. Of course, he employs a figure of speech which apparently accounts for a massive sublimation of a primitive movement. I opine we are going overboard: a great deal of crap is now being frantically produced in developed countries just so people can get a bite to eat.
A black granite torso of Isis lifted from the seabed.
Photo From Al-Ahram Weekly
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/485/eg4.htm
THE BLACK VIRGIN IN EGYPT
THE DUNG AFFIXED by Chris Ofili to his The Holy Virgin Mary had sensational effects all over the world, where people familiar with dung discussed its vices and virtues. Although mothers are familiar with dung no matter whether they live in town or country, city fathers who do not change diapers are reluctant to have much to do with it personally, assigning such matters to their wives and other sanitation officials. Of course, farmers with livestock and those who use natural methods of cultivation are intimate with dung.
The mention of dung is certainly appropriate within the historical context of The Holy Virgin Mary scandal. Hebrew prophets were well aware of the fertilizing property of dung whether real or ideal: they called idols "dung" - all idols were dung except their own ark and its deposits.
The Egyptians, whose sacred images were referred to as dung by the Hebrews, had good reason to appreciate the virtues of dung. They used dung as fertilizer to supplement the silt carried down to them by the Nile. Therefore, if we are to trace the Black Virgin's movements about the world, it would behoove us to examine the dung issue in Egypt.
First of all, the Black Virgin was know as Isis in Egypt. Isis was the Queen of all domains. She was understandably most popular as Goddess of the Nile; her great river, sometimes known as her husband, Osiris, flowed through her black virgin soil, much to the benefit of mankind: in Isis' heyday, her black virgin soil provided a living paradise on Earth. Osiris himself came and went; he was associated with the Underground Stream as god of the Other World, returning through his son Horus; but Isis was the First Mother and the Eternal Throne of Osiris.
The ancient Egyptians were expert irrigation-canal builders, and of course they were familiar with the fertilizing virtues of dung. Although a great deal has changed since the good old days, especially in respect to religion, dung is to this very day known in Egypt for its ancient virtue as a fertilizer; that clue to the travels of the Black Virgin beckons us to take advantage of an optional tour of the Nile - not quite the pretty cruise offered by the travel agencies.
Since the Nile has been damned at Aswan to tame the flood in order to curb the broad feast-or-famine swings resulting from the natural cycle, chemical fertilizers must be employed, for there is insufficient dung to make up for the lost silt. Critics of the Aswan High Dam complain of the lack of nutrients in the soil. They also claim that the silt-free water erodes barrages and bridge foundations, that it has caused coastal erosion of the delta, and that the reduction of flows has caused saline inundation from the Mediterranean resulting not only in the salty soil but also the loss of fish.
Furthermore, the artificial lake behind the Aswan dam has submerged and threatens to further submerge the ancient artifacts of one of the first organized states in human history, Nubia, and has run the Nubians, a black people who once ruled Egypt for over a century, off their land. Nubian women were famed for their beauty, an ideal beauty employed by artists as the model for certain black granite statues of Isis. Ironically and fortunately, the great temple of Isis at Philae in Nubia was removed to the island of Agilkia. The cult of Isis survived in Nubia to about the 6th century, long after she had been remodeled into a white virgin in Europe. Other monuments in Nubia have not been nor will they be so lucky. In fact, it seems Nubia has lost her attraction. Some Nubians now long for those ancient days, such as the day when the legendary Moses married a Nubian much to the dismay of his sister Miriam, the prophetess; perhaps not because Miriam was a racist, but because the Kushite woman was a prophetess of Isis in direct competition with Miriam's own practice.
Yes, excremental side excursions can serve as food for thought and fertilizer for future growth. But let us remain in Egypt for a bit longer and travel back in time to the carnival, to the procession of shrines, accompanied by flutes, tambourines, hand-clapping, dancing, singing, and, amongst many other things, to generous offerings of wine, beer, oil and milk--yet a vase of water takes precedence, whether it anoints the fore or aft of the precious ark. And here comes yet another ark, of Isis, bearing her king, who prays the prayer of all kings, for a single blessing: Eternal Life.
The sacred casket of Isis' consort Osiris is borne, on long staves passing through metal rings, by twelve black-cassocked disciples led by their pope. The pontiff wears the garment and carries the magic club of the first world hero, then prehistoric Hercules, the heroic Cave Man of the Stone Age who cleared the Way for civilization.
Every significant personage in our parade has his float staffed by a crew of priests and their pontiff. And what wonderful conveyances the floats are, over land, sea, and sky. We enjoy the fragrant beauty of the talented women everywhere to be seen, some of whose charms exceed the excellencies of Elizabeth Taylor in her Egyptian garb, eyes protected by blue eye-shadow.
But hold on: what is that "thing" in the boat over there? That beetle with hawk-wings pushing a ball of fresh dung before it? That beetle protected by the enveloping wings of two angels, Inspiration and Expiration, fanning the breath of Truth? That thing is Khepri, the dung-beetle form of the Sun-god creator, represented by a scarab emblem wherever life is expected to go on despite its travails and its seemingly final tragic conclusion.
Khepri is reputedly even older than the great Ra-form of the Sun-god. Khepri is the sunrise, the morning, the birth of a new day, the resurrection of the body. He is, therefore, very good news. The scarab beetle lays its egg in dung and then pushes it around until it becomes a ball from which the larva eventually emerges. The wet and warm ark of dung pushed around by the beetle was, to the Egyptians, analogous to the Sun pushed around the sky by a huge beetle.
But we must bring our option tour to a screeching halt. Even in its brevity, our brief excursus into the excremental culture of Egypt reveals that dung is not something to be scorned and set aside as obscene, disgusting and useless, but it is rather something to be examined for its highest and best uses, a material to be pushed ahead as our own globe hurtles at an astonishing relative speed through black virgin space. Even though he might have been unconscious of his motive, perhaps that is why Chris Ofili shellacked a clump of dung on his painting 'The Holy Virgin Mary.' We should keep that in mind during our future excursions into excremental culture.
Smashing the Barriers to Love
by
David Arthur Walters
As for the commandments to love and fear a transcendental lord as sufficient incentive to desist from our crimes against humanity, faith in words alone shall not suffice to accomplish the works. In Josiah’s case, we see that words in a box, even when supported by the force of arms, do not suffice for enduring, radical reform, for such reform must be of the willing heart.
bravenet.com