“Hieratic, majestic, austere, the Black Virgin gazes out from the windows of Chartres Cathedral, or sits enthroned in the crypt, holding her son in the manner of the goddess holding life, her child. So much interest surrounds her today that she is once again becoming the focus of pilgrimage. Her image is stolen from churches where she has sat for centuries undisturbed, and must now be hidden as a precaution against thieves. . . .

The symbolism of the Black Virgin returns us once again to the Song of Songs, to the bride who is “black but beautiful”. It returns us to Cybele, whose symbol was a black stone, a meteorite, and to the black images of Demeter, Artemis and Isis, and to the black-robed, exiled Shekhinah, the “Precious Stone”. It evokes the blackness of the night sky in which the moon and the evening star are the brightest luminaries, and the mystery of space as a mother who gives birth each night to the moon and stars and each morning to the sun. Above all, the Black Virgin holding her son, Christ, on ther lap, gives us the image of the light shining in darkness, and the esoteric, hidden teaching of Gnosticism and Alchemy.”

—Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, from The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, 2005.