The Future has an Ancient Heart

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

This paper was presented to the17th annual Cheikh Anta Diop International Conference "African Explorations: Theories and Models of Creativity and Discovery for a Resurgent African World". September 30-October 1, 2005, Philadelphia, sponsored by the Ankh Institute, Elkins Park, Pa.

the future has an ancient heart
legacy of transformation. African origins and african migration paths in Europe. Sardinia, Sicily, and Tuscany in Italy; Basque region and Andalusia in Spain; Brittany and the south of France
The human cost of racism, a lethal ignorance based on not knowing who we are, has been broadcast to the world in the Bush administration's delayed response to the devastation of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, leading to the deaths and suffering of many vulnerable people, predominantly black african americans. This paper is grounded on the african value of self-knowledge: who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.

In September 2005 I am assailed by a sense of urgency to tell the story of everyone's african black mother because the largely untold history of the United States has been that of enslavement of africans, extermination of native americans, and persecution of people perceived as "dark others." This mentality still characterizes the leaders of the United States , armed with a monopoly of weapons of mass destruction and ignorant of everyone's african origin,leaders who seem hell-bent on global domination of the world's other people, whom they perceive as dark.

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A sicilian/american feminist cultural historian, I have been deeply influenced by africanastudies -- notably the novels of Alice Walker, Cheikh Anta Diop's rescue of african history from the oblivion and/or distortions of western racism, scholarship of Molefi Asante on afrocentrism, and Maulana Karenga's recent research on the african culture of Maat, divinity of justice and order. My concern is to stress the mutual relevance of africana studies, feminist cultural studies, and genetics research of L. Cavalli-Sforza and world colleagues who confirm in the DNA - - the african origin of everyone, the findings of archeologists that african migrants after 50,000 BCE brought signs of the african black mother (pubic V and color ochre red) to every continent. . . As well as Cavalli-Sforza"s theme that [1] african migrants brought their beliefs with them.

What were these beliefs? The legacy african migrants brought to all continents is suggested in Maulana Karenga's study of Maat wherein she is the moral grounding and human flourishing of a universe in becoming. . . In which she keeps the whole in harmony. Maat is the grounding of human communities in justice, propriety, harmony, balance, reciprocity and order. She is truth, justice, and righteousness in communities that care for the vulnerable: the weak, poor, elderly, the hungry, thirsty, and the naked.

In the ethic of Maat, found in african documents 2500 years before the common epoch, the response to evil is to do good. The heart is the divine presence in humans and the seat of consciousness and moral sensitivity. Maat is the ground of communities where humans are equal, where there is no radical separation between humans and animals, and where wisdom or knowledge is an ethical requirement for everyone. In this african ethos, humans, rooted in their communities are a refuge for the wretched, a raft for the drowning, and a ladder for one who is in the abyss. In the ontological unity of god and humans, Maat is goodness of being in a dynamic and creative universe with an open-ended future.[2].

This african legacy, suppressed for 2,000 years by dominant cultures of the world, has been coming to the surface since world war II. The gnostic gospels, found in Africa in a jar near Cairo in 1945, offered a rich and nuanced alternative to the patristic christianity established by the holy roman empire in the fourth century CE and banished the gnostic gospels as heresies. Obliteration, or denigration, of african beliefs continued throughout the common epoch to the present. Contemporary analyses of the gnostic gospels (e.g., those of James M. Robinson and Elaine Pagels) do not relate them to african religion. Whatever other meanings conveyed by these gospels found in Africa (for example the voice of a divine woman in Thunder, Perfect Mind) they remind us that self knowledge was/is a major african ethical belief.

I am a sicilian/american feminist cultural historian who has written books on italian feminism, black madonnas, african origins of the dark mother, and collected an anthology of womanist/feminist writings in spirituality entitled She is Everywhere!.[3] Drawn to studies revisiting the origins of Europe, notably those of the french Annales school of historians who stress the importance of looking beyond present-day national boundaries to the interdisciplinary study of large geographical areas (e.g., that of the mediterranean), I have also learned from the Annales school the significance of the long duration of beliefs, in this case that of the black mother of Africa who has many names throughout the world, who transmitted african beliefs in justice, harmony, and transformation.

My indebtedness to other scholars includes Antonio Gramsci, marxist theorist from Sardinia, island museum of Europe in the Mediterranean who seems to have tapped african beliefs in considering values of justice and equality of subaltern cultures indispensable to the cultural revolution that precedes and accompanies nonviolent political revolution.

My work is grounded on my sicilian genetic and cultural inheritance- - the mediterranean culture that originated in Africa. My premises and methodologies are suggested in the case of Sicily. Contiguous with Africa in prehistory, Sicily was early reached by african migrants who after 50,000 BCE left evidence of their beliefs in signs (pubic V and ochre red) in rock art, later in icons of a woman divinity, then in black madonnas, conveying her values in rituals, stories, and themes of contemporary feminist politics. In antiquity the islands close connection with Africa is seen in the heavy traffic in the Canal of Sicily connecting that island with the mother continent Africa.

Later there were return migrations of ultimately african west asians:, notably of anatolians and semites who venerated women divinities; e.g.,

farmer migrations of anatolians after 10,000 BCE,
danites (semites) from Ur after 2300 BCE,
canaanites (semites) from Lebanon, Syria, andPalestine,whomthegreekscalled phoenicians and who are today associated with semiticpalestinians1500 BCE.
israelites (semites) in diaspora came to Sicily.after 70 CE
muslims (semites) from Africa and the middle east after 600 CE left a model notably in Spain but also in Sicily of different cultures (in this case jews, christians, and muslims) living together harmoniously - - bonded, in my view, by a suppressed belief in the african black mother.
In prehistory, Sicily was contiguous with Africa. In antiquity, Sicily was part of the mediterranean civilization that originated in Africa and flourished in west Asia, Europe, and mediterranean islands, notably Sardinia, Malta (founded by sicilians), and the Balearic islands. In the context of conventional history, wherein history is inaccurately taught as beginning with civilizations of Greece and Rome, Sicily was a colony of both. In the common epoch, the african black mother was represented as madonna figures painted in red (one of her signs) in caves. . After christian church fathers tried to destroy evidence of the african black mother, her memory was transmitted after 500 CE in subaltern cultures in V-shaped (another of her signs) black madonnas.

In Sicily, and elsewhere, not only direct migrations from Africa but return migrations of ultimately african peoples from west Asia deepened the memory of the african black mother. Isis and Tanit figures brought by africans navigating the African Sea that adjoins western Sicily may be found in my ancestral maternal area of Palermo. Cybele, brought by anatolians, is pervasive in my ancestral paternal region in the southeastern part of the island. Melding of african and asian images is suggested in that I have found images of Isis, Cybele, Astarte, and Tanit, as well as their images as black madonnas, in all my ancestral places in Sicily- -Palermo, Erice, Ragusa, and Siracusa. Nanna, in Sicilian dialect, remembers west asian Inanna, in the name for grandmother. The black madonna of Tindari, holiest icon of Sicily, is inscribed, Nigra sum sed furmosa (I am black and beautiful). Her values- - justice and equality - - are incised on statues of women at the entrance to her sanctuary.

Black african origin of the dark mother of a thousand names in the cultures of the world, as well as erasure of her african origin, are marked in the changing names of my ancestral paternal sicilian town, Ragusa. The ancient name was Ragusa Ibla (diminutive affectionate for anatolian Cybele) who was called Ibla Nera or Black Ibla. . . Until the seventh century BCE when greeks invaded Sicily and changed her name from Ibla Nera to Ibla Herae. . . Thereby erasing her black african origin and marking the decline of her status under the greeks who associated her with the subordinated wife of Zeus.

Christianization.whitened her more and tried to destroy her gift of vision. This is evident in Santa Lucia of Siracusa who lived in the 4th century CE, major saint of Sicily and south Italy, for whom I am named. In church iconography, Lucia, saint of light and martyred christian virgin, offers her eyes on a plate to a rapist. In my interpretation, this is the african black mother turned white sacrificing her gift of vision to the church. This interpretation is verified in popular stories wherein light comes out of darkness , an african belief. Both Isis and Lucia are associated with nurturance (both carry sheafs of wheat), healing, and vision. . In the vernacular christianity of Italy, Lucia is a saint who nurtures everyone and heals those who have lost their vision.

In the middle ages the culture of Sicily was christian, jewish, and mooorish. . After 1060 CE Sicily was connected with mainland Europe. . . When expanding normans (scandinavians based in France) invaded the island and in 1066 took Britain. Afterward, Sicily was ruled by angevins of France, swabians of Germany, and monarchs of Spain-who brought the inquisition to eradicate heresies, persecuting my sicilian grandmothers, and help us to understand the almost total success of dominant church and state in stamping out deep (ultimately african) beliefs of europeans in the modern epoch;.

My hypothesis is that primordial and continuing migrations from Africa, as well as return migrations of ultimately african semites from west Asia into the region greeks called Europe, left a cellular and/or cultural memory that has persisted in descendants of african migrants everywhere on earth - - despite the trauma of institutional suppression, inquisition torture and killing, slavery, and persecution of dark others. Today the emerging memory of the african black mother and her values offers the possibility of world transformation.

Signs preceded images of the black mother. Contemporary study of dark women divinities of the world should be preceded by understanding that although black madonnas and other dark women divinities may be our most palpable evidence of the continuing belief in the african black mother, the belief is also evident in signs and in many ways of knowing. Black studies, feminist cultural history, genetics, archeology, anthropology, folklore studies, and ethnic studies, are coming together with other disciplines, notably clinical psychology and other studies of how we can access unconscious or preverbal knowledge , with controlled breathing, drumming, et al.

A fired professor after 1969 (I went on strike at San Francisco State supporting students who struck for black studies and against the imperialist war in Vietnam) and independent scholar, I was intent onfinding my sicilian grandmothers and my own ancestral beliefs. . . A quest that has led me to Africa. My on-site explorations of italian feminists and black madonnas of Europe led me to realize the importance of suppressed beliefs.. By 2001, when dark mother. African origins and godmothers was first published, I had concluded that the memory of the african dark mother has persisted for millennia to the present, not only in indigenous subaltern cultures, but in unconscious or preconscious levels of memory of everyone, on all continents.

The black african mother has drawn me, particularly since 1988 when I was very moved by the black madonna in holy week processions at Trapani (in western Sicily on an african migration path), dreamed of my mother as a black madonna, and learned the next day that my mother was dying of cancer. I wrote the book on black madonnas while my mother was dying. Black madonnas, conflated with the memory of my mother, seem to have determined my research ever since. The major reason I wanted to visit France again this summer was that my study of african migrations led me to realize that the Auvergne of France, where there is a very high concentration of black madonnas, was a region early reached by navigating and migrating africans from the Atlantic Ocean as well as upriver from the Mediterranean.

In France (and elsewhere) the continuous presence of signs, and after 25,000 BCE of icons. Of black women divinities, underlined for me the long duration of ultimately african beliefs. Bringing a feminist cultural perspective to archeology, I have reflected that menhirs and dolmens (which we have found all over the mediterranean) may be markers of african migration paths throughout the world . Menhirs are upright stones; dolmens are two vertical menhirs holding up a horizontal menhir.

Menhirs and dolmens characterized our first religious sanctuary - - created by migrating africans in the Sinai 40,000 BCE. This first religious sanctuary, located in the place muslims call Har Karkom and jews and christians call Mt Sinai, is the founding place of judaism, christianity, and islam . This is a stunning datum discovered by italian archeologist Emmanuel Anati, a datum whose implications I am just now realizing. . . African religious beliefs are documented in the archeology of the origin place in the Sinai of judaism, christianity, and islam.[4]

The meaning of dolmens is suggested in african cave paintings of two figures carrying a horizontal dead person..On african migration paths, dolmens were sites of funerary and burial rituals. Jean Clottes, major archeologist of France, attributes religious significance to menhirs and dolmens. Marija Gimbutas associated menhirs with 25,000 BCE stone women divinities. . In the south of France two significant menhirs are statues of women divinities - - the Venus of Laussel - - holding a lunar calendar and pointing to her vulva, suggesting menstruation and pregnancy, and the Venus of Lespugue. A woman figure sculpted all in rounds.

Our on-site research in mediterranean places has uncovered some significant patterns. Visiting caves on african migration paths at Altamira in Spain and at Lascaux in France, I visually understood Emmanuel Anatis insight that there is a continuum between prehistoric african art and great modern art.[5] Prehistoric art was created in a cosmology of the african black mother, a cosmology remembered in France on african migration paths by Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Matisse, et al. And in Spain by Picasso, Miro, Dali, Gaudi, et al.

Not only art but healing rituals and heresies in christian places have continued to transmit the memory of the african black mother to this day. Islands and mountain enclaves (where people fled invaders and inquisitors) have preserved the memory more clearly than have mainland cultures, although these, too, have startling instances of the african content of submerged beliefs of Europe, not only images of the black african mother, but african solar motifs in rock art, and african healing water rituals.

On our study tour to Sardinia in 2004 we visually understood the connection between african migration paths, the african dark mother, and african water rituals when we saw Santa Cristinas well- - shaped in the form of carthaginian Tanit. The well is constructed so that one descends into the body fluids of the woman divinity. . Mary Saracino, who participated in our sardinian tour, advises that before african water rituals became christian rituals, there was a semitic version of african water rituals with the water god Maimone. As I read Marys message, I thought of the similarity of the water god Maimone to the name of the great jewish philosopher of Spain, Maimonides, in the golden age of harmony between jews, christians, and muslims before 1492. I also thought of the evidence of african water rituals in communities surrounding nuraghi, the thousands of cone-shaped structures of Sardinia that resemble those of Zimbabwe in Africa.

Perhaps the most significant, ultimately african, water ritual we found this summer in the south of France, on an african migration path in an area of many menhirs and dolmens., is located at the second place (after Rome) of christianity, at Lourdes, which annually draws three and a half million people - - the sick and desperate of the world who come for healing,. Pilgrimages at Lourdes feature Mary, jewish mother of Jesus, whom we study in womens spirituality programs as the major christian manifestation of the african dark mother.

Springs, grottoes, peasants, particularly young people, are associated with apparitions of the dark mother as the virgin Mary. In the case of Lourdes, the story is that Mary appeared in a grotto to a young girl, Bernadette Soubirous. Mary told the girl to bathe in the water of a spring in the grotto. Grottos, and springs, in italian, french, and other folklore, are regarded as wombs of the dark mother. At Lourdes thousands of the afflicted of the world pour into the town to participate in nightly torchlight processions.. People singing, most in wheelchairs who are taken to the grotto to be washed in the healing waters of the spring.

A vernacular, or people's ritual, everyone in processions at Lourdes in the french pyrenees sings "Ave Maria."Mary is also invoked in the writing around the cupola of the church built over the grotto. Popular beliefs in Mary are periodically denounced as "mariolatry" by the papacy- -whose canon denigrates women and leaves the mother of Jesus out of the trinity. Like other cases of european popular christianity that I have studied, the veneration of Mary at Lourdes edges heresy. Underneath one of her statues in the church built above the grotto is the inscription, "All that is better in us may be attributed to Mary" - - an involution of biblical attribution of original sin to Eve and to all humans, and a popular revision of the canonical doctrine that Mary, because of immaculate conception, is uniquely different from other women..

Although subsequently whitened by church fathers, the mother of Jesus was first depicted in ochre red (one of the signs of the african black mother). See painting in Priscilla catacombs of Rome. At Le Puy , where we saw the statue of Notre Dame de France presiding atop a hill of the city, she is sculpted in red stone. Simone Weil (who may be the most significant woman philosopher of the twentieth century) , during world war II fasted herself to death in witness against the rising violence of the world. At Le Puy she worked on the left politically while she meditated on the african origins of judeo/christian beliefs. Townspeople called her the red virgin.[6] Inside the church at Le Puy, a major pilgrimage place in France, we noted that the very popular icon of the madonna is black. Church fathers by the 5th century CE had destroyed or lightened most icons of the african black mother, but people in subaltern cultures of Europe persisted in painting her black. In paintings of V shaped black madonnas, almost always, there is, somewhere in the image, the color red.

Heresy pulled me to France this summer, notably the major 13th century cathar heresy. Cathars, lived on an african migration path in the Pyrenees and called themselves "good Christians."Cathars did not care for the church of Rome. Like jews and muslims, they did not consider Jesus divine, although they lived by his values. Bypassing popes and priests , cathars regarded their own clergy, "parfaites and parfaits" (women and men) as intermediaries with the divine. Cathars did not eat meat, and did not believe in the church sacrament of marriage. They lived nonviolently with the values of Jesus' sermon on the mount, values that Simone Weil, Maulana Karenga, and others, have pointed out, may be found in very early african documents. The ultimate object of cathar belief , in my view, may be glimpsed in their pilgrimages to black madonnas of Le Puy in France and of Montserrat in Spain.

Cathars lived on an african migration path where the earth is red and the Aude river turns red after a heavy rain. Considering the red earth moistened by rain water as healing, people make medical poultices after it rains. I think of cathar country as a land of the dark mother, whose values (found in the folklore) are justice (see the left political traditions of justice and equality in the cathar region) and compassion or healing.

The catholic papacy aligned with the french monarchy considered the cathars very threatening. In this period when both were intent on killing dark others - notably muslims, jews, and dissenting christians .Cathars were singled out for killing while pope and state were forming the inquisition to eradicate heresy . For Europe, black madonnas (and dark women divinities elsewhere) may be considered our most palpable evidence not only of the black african mother but of heresies that transmitted her values on submerged levels.Cultural resistance, at the height of the inquisition, is suggested in the great number of black madonnas all over France,evident in a map of 1530.[7]

The 13th century domestic crusade against the cathars was accompanied by earlier and continuing european crusades to wrest the holy land from the muslims.Christian church and state killed muslims in the holy lands while at home they killed nonviolent cathar heretics. Killing people who lived as "good Christians" by the christian church strikes me as a lethal hypocrisy similar to the lethal hypocrisy of the contemporary avatar of freedom killing thousands of innocent dark people (most of them under the age of fifteen) in Iraq and sending young U. S. Soldiers,in the name of freedom, to death in a war based on lies.

Cathars, for me, recall young heretics of the 1960s all over the world who protested the U. S. Imperialist war in Vietnam, in the U.S. Insisted on civil rights of african americans, then on equal rights of all the vulnerable, reached for democratic forms of communalism, and lived in the primitive christian manner of the cathars. In an article I wrote at the time, I called them "the unkempt prophets of Berkeley." They began in nonviolence, considered love, rather than the church sacrament of marriage the significant bond, and tapped deep levels of consciousness. . . . A Berkeley bumper sticker advised, "God is black and is she pissed!"

My hypothesis regarding cathars is that they were christian heretics on an african migration path in the french (also the spanish) Pyrenees who tapped ancient african matristic beliefs which they shared with basques in the same region. Basque blood type confirms they are an african enclave in Europe who have kept matricentric beliefs and have defied those who would wrest them away - - from romans to fascists of the twentieth century. Similarly, in the balkans on another african migration path in eastern Europe, where Marija Gimbutas found many icons of the prechristian woman divinity (and where I have noted that byzantine madonnas are dark) an earlier bogomil heresy is said to have influenced cathar heretics in southwest France . With the lens of african origins of everyone and the hypothesis of the persistence of african beliefs in places reached by african migrants, the bogomil heresy, like the cathar heresy, both on african migration paths, in my view, tapped african beliefs.

What happened to cathars who fled the burnings? Several went to Lombardy, in northern Italy where I have found a pattern of beliefs connecting black madonnas, heretics, and feminists.Heresy, regarded as resistance to the dominant culture, can be tracked in France from early christian evangelization when peoples stories differed from accounts in the canonical gospel. Cultural resistance became political with the french revolution of 1789, subsequent 19th century uprisings. In the 20th century catalonians on an african migration path in Spain (near the immensely popular black madonna of Montserrat) courageously fought the fascists in the civil war that preceded world war II. The maqui, in southern France in the resistance during world war II, saved jews from extermination camps,and fought the nazis.

In early and continuing heretical interpretations of christianity, the french, particularly in the south,looked to "other"Marys. They considered Mary Magdalene, who had seen the risen Jesus, an apostle. Male apostles did not believe her, the church denigrated her, but french legends recount that Magdalene came to the south of France where she spread the gospel and lived in a cave (near the inn, La Labadous, where we stayed this summer) until she died. Some of the "other Marys"in this region suggest that people identified the mother of Jesus with the black madonna ofSaintes Maries de la Mer . This black madonna on the mediterranean coast of France who recalls the black mother of Africa points to an inclusive woman divinity with beliefs subversive to the christian canon. Stories and rituals connect this black madonna with Sara of hebrew scriptures, with Kali, fierce hindu woman divinity of India, and the beloved black Maria of gypsies of the world.

Radical cultural beliefs are evident in heretical legends that french peasants, for two millennia, have transmitted about Mary Magdalene, who is today the national saint of France. Perhaps recalling Africa whose female divinities married male divinities, a heretical legend in France is that Mary Magdalene married Jesus. The gospel of Mary Magdalene (not recognized in the official catholic canon) also emphasizes a belief implicit in african rituals - - self-knowledge is necessary for transformation . A major belief of contemporary feminist and nonviolence movements is that self-knowledge is necessary for transformation of self I would add that self knowledge includes an understanding of the genetic origin of everyone in Africa and an accurate knowledge of the history of the world. . . Knowledge that may be necessary for transformation of ones society, and world transformation. Or, nonviolent revolution.

The black woman divinity of Africa and her manifestations along african migration paths throughout the world may be central to the contemporary cultural revolution. In this context, Magdalene stories may be considered a heretical challenge to the canon that has denigrated the red-haired woman who anointed Jesus. Her task, a woman taking the mother's values to the people, was implicitly remembered by Dacia Maraini, major cultural and political feminist of Italy in the 1970s, who founded an experimental theater that enacted feminist issues in the streets. Recalling the woman apostle, Dacia called this theatre, La Maddalena.

In Magdalene churches, as well as churches with black madonnas, that we visited this summer in the south of France, other doctrinally discounted figures like St. Joseph are also given their due. St Joseph , in the folklore of Italy, France, and elsewhere, is considered a worker and a nurturing father who brought up Jesus even though the church said Jesus was not his son. Male communists of Italy identify with saint Joseph. . In beliefs of submerged cultures, people iregard the holy family as human. In my childhood in Kansas City, Missouri sicilian/americans bypassed the church trinity of father, son, and holy ghost, looking to Mary and her son and celebrating St. Joseph (the earthly father) at the spring equinox with a table of food for the poor. My brother Louis remembered that men, in moments of deep emotion, would invoke the madonna, exclaiming, "Madonn!" Women, when overtaken by awe, fear, or gratitude, would call on the older african beautiful mother, "Bedda Matri!"

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It is my hypothesis that the memory of the beautiful black african mother implies nonviolent revolution. In 1789 in France, revolutionaries wore the phrygian cap of followers of the anatolian dark mother and raised the banner, Liberte',Egalite', Fraternite' The woman symbol who personified this first great revolution of our time was named Marianne - - for Mary, jewish mother of Jesus, and Anne, his pagan grandmother, goddess of the harvests, whose veneration in Brittany recalls the Anu of Africa. The french revolutionary triad is compatible with values of the african mother, except that justice by guillotine negates the mother's value of compassion/healing and fraternite'leaves out women. This summer in France in the town square of Salon de Provence we saw a a very old black madonna in a niche, and then a statue of Marianne, symbol of the french revolution, honoring the twentieth century third world revolution in Vietnam. In a park of this city that used to build bombers, we saw a sculpture of a tail of a bomber in which a mother duck sitting on her nest has been sculpted . . . A contemporary response (nonviolent and ecological) to war.

The unfulfilled aims of the french revolution are remembered today in the south of France in a strong ecology movement that seeks to fulfill revolutionary aims of Liberte', Egalite', and Fraternite' with a life style that respects the earth and all its creatures. The unfulfilled aims of the french revolution are also remembered in the contemporary feminist movement in France, and elsewhere, honoring prehistoric women divinities who preceded the male divinities of the worlds dominant religions. Scores of black madonnas in France remind us of our african origins and the values of our african dark mother. Antecedents of today's french feminists are the strong peasant women of the early modern era studied by Natalie Zemon Davis[8] and the iconoclastic french women of the 19th century (George Sand, Flora Tristan) who spun the first spiral of modern western feminism. Luce Irigaray (who has a basque name) is today the major feminist theorist of France, Spain, and Italy. Luce Irigaray's feminism is grounded in women's bodies and on remembering ancient values in our work for the future.

A similar ancient/future pattern of feminism may be found not only in France but in Spain, and Italy. In Italy, notably in Tuscany, there is a pattern of african migration paths, primordial woman divinities (e.g., 26,000 BCE "venus" of Savignano), and 20th century heretical movements pointing to a better world - - democratic communism, feminism, and ecology. In Bologna, a city where buildings and politics are both red, feminists and communists climb through many porticos to pray in the hillside sanctuary of the protectress of the city- - a black madonna.

In the future has an ancient heart, I shall explore L. Luca Cavalli Sforzas hypothesis that he can predict how a geographical region votes based on his knowledge of african migration paths His premise is that places whose culture is centered on the mother (on african migration paths) tend to be politically on the left . I find this dramatically true, for example, in Bologna in Italy, center of the partisan resistance in Italy which saved scores of jews, fought the nazis, and has been red since 1945.

In my thinking, places whose culture is centered on the father reflect the successful suppression of the ancient belief in the african dark mother, and will tend to have right wing cultural and political beliefs, notably male dominance, violence, and ultimately, fascism. In the twentieth century the conflict between the two world views was bitterly fought out in the spanish civil war, a rehearsal for world war II. Picassos painting Gernica in the basque region of Spain remains today the most powerful anti-war painting of our time. . . Of nazis bombing a peaceful basque market town.

Cavalli-Sforzas theory that beliefs brought by ancient african migrations have left their imprint in left politics, is borne out in the south of France, a region of resistance to fascism and work for socialist ideals. This pattern also prevails in the basque region of Spain which, at Mondragon, has the most successful cooperatives in the world, and in Italy in the Salento region of Puglia - -both on african migration paths. The Salento has many menhirs and dolmens, and many black madonnas to whom peasant communists pray. Recently, women in Bari (in Puglia) founded the contemporary Permanent Convention of Women against War in whose 2003 conference Stephanie Hiller, and I participated.

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The recent trip to France helped me clarify what I am researching. As well as helped me find the title of my book in progress. Earlier I thought to call it, Tanit! African semitic goddess of Carthage. Yet everywhere I traveled in the south of France this summer, two symbols - - dark wheat and red poppies (that have lain in my consciousness since 1970) kept showing up. "Dark wheat and red poppies"refers to an essay on epistemology that I wrote a few years ago describing an epiphany I experienced outside Palermo, my maternal ancestral place on an african migration path, later a canaanite entrepot, at Mt. Erice- - a mountain that looks like a sleeping woman covered with a mantle of dark wheat and red poppies.

Dark wheat and red poppies, I later realized, were symbols of african Isis and semitic Astarte. In 800 BCE semitic canaanites (african in origin) founded trading bases at Carthage in Africa and at Palermo in my ancestral Sicily. Canaanites brought their woman divinity Astarte to Carthage where she melded with african Tanit. Roman church and state maligned the carthaginians and their dark goddess Tanit with untrue stories about child sacrifice . Romans defeated the carthaginians (and sicilians with whom carthaginians were allied) but they could not destroy the dark mother Tanit's values - - love and nurturance of infants and children.

In the 1970s the symbol of african Tanit, an ankh - -cross with an oval head----in one of those periodic upsurges of deep beliefs, became the symbol of international feminism.Molefi Asante, scholar who is today rescuing the african matrix of a future of harmonious world cultures, has named his research center the Ankh Institute. Tanit, in her image as african black mother and feminist ankh, has been proposed as world symbol of contemporary world movements of healing and transformation.

As I write this, I am remembering another sign we saw everywhere this summer in the south of France- - sunflowers, whose faces turn with the sun's movements (italians call them girasole). The sun is a major symbol of african belief; Ra is the sun god. In ancient african manifestation of gender complementarity, Isis carries the sun (and the sun god) on her head. In my sicilian/american childhood in Kansas City, Missouri, suggesting sicilian/american cosmology, the favorite song was "Oy Marie!" The second was "O Sole Mio!" Recalling this, I am thinking of african Isis who carries the sun on her head- - african mother who legitimated egyptian male rulers. Sunflowers have today become the symbol of the world anti-nuclear movement, looking to the sun for e nergy in a nonviolent world.

On my return home to the U. S in July 2005, still casting about for a title for my book, I was jolted by headlines that the Bush administration,- - in what may be a last gasp of patriarchy grounded on violent white male supremacy- - is still murdering innocent dark children in Iraq and sending our youth to die in an imperialist war benefiting a small monied elite in the U.S.

An essay by Sardinia'ss premier archeologist, Giovanni Lilliu, arrested my attention. It was entitled, "Il futuro ha radici antiche." The future has ancient roots. Lilliu has documented that in Sardinia , italian island and veryearly african migration path. And island museum of Europe, contrary to the established belief that monotheistic violent male divinities of the world'ss dominant religions have always prevailed- - more than 90% of paleolithic and neolithic figures - -are women.[9]

I meditated on the palpable presence in the middle ages of the dark mother in Andalusia in Spain- - manifested in the high art, philosophy, and harmonious communities of jews, muslims , and christians. The bond that enabled them to live together peacefully and productively, in my view, was the unarticulated suppressed belief in the african black mother. After 1492, in Spain, France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, church and state scapegoated muslims, jews, dissenting christians, gypsies, and other "heretics."Ethnic cleansing killed and killed but could not kill the memory of the dark mother in Spain. Today the belief is alive in archeological artifact, art, and in the easy way people live together. See Tanit in Ibiza, Cybele in the center of Madrid, and the black madonna of Montserrat, who attracts international pilgrimages.

The easiness of diverse people with each other when they share a belief in the black african mother is palpable today in the south of France where ancient african beliefs are very near consciousness. In the Raymond Museum in Toulouse we saw a frieze of african amazons on the banks of the Garonne river. In the new archeological museum at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne, african origin of everyone and the early african migrations that formed world civilization are highlighted. I thought about Josephine Baker, african american woman who became an international chanteuse in Paris in the 1920s, who built her villa chose to the ancient Lascaux caves with their ochre red paintings. . . And of James Baldwin, great african/american writer who wrote searing indictments of U. S. Racism in the 1960s from his expatriated home in Provence.

I recalled a phrase of the 1970s of italian feminists whose not yet conscious memory of the ancient black mother may have been implicit in the phrase I found in graffiti on walls of feminist gathering places - - "The future has an ancient heart." I have borrowed the phrase for the title of my book. The front cover. . . A mountain meadow of dark wheat and red poppies, on the back . . . An ankh in a field of sunflowers.

In a phenomenon I note that characterizes my writing, the realization did not arrive until I was writing the book, that my book in progress is a study of nonviolent revolution for a harmonious world. This harmony may, perhaps, be best understood listening to african american jazz. . .different riffs but a constant bass tone that remembers her.

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Women's Spirituality Program, CIIS
Revised, July 22, 2005 day of Mary Magdalen
Revised September 22 fall equinox.
Berkeley, California
Email: lucia@darkmother.net

[1]L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and Paola Mernozzi, Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton University Press, 1994).

[2] Maulana Karenga, The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt. A Study in Classical African Ethics (New York and London. Routledge. 2004.

[3] Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother. African origins and godmothers (New York, Chicago, Lincoln, Shanghai, iUniverse, 2001; Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Woman Centered Literature, 2002; italian edition, la madre o-scura (Cosenza, Italia, Media Mediterranea, 2004). Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Black Madonnas. Feminism, Politics, and Religion in Italy (Boston, Ma., Northeastern University Press, 1993; italian edition, , Black Madonnas. Femminismo, religione e politica in Italia (Bari, Italia, Palomar Editrice, 1997, Premio Internazionale di Saggistica, Salerno, Italia 1998; iUniverse reprint, 2000. She is Everywhere! An anthology in womanist/feminist writings in spirituality (New York, Chicago, Lincoln, Shanghai, iUniverse, 2005).

[4] Emmanuel Anati, Har Karkom. 20 Anni di Ricerche Archeologiche (Capo di Ponte, Italia, Edizioni del Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici. 1999)

[5] Emmanuel Anati, Il Museo Immaginario della Preistoria. L'arte Rupestre nel Mundo (Milano, editoriale Jaca Book ApA, 1995).

[6] Simone Weil Reader, ed., G. A. Panichas (Mt. Kisco, New York, Moyer Bell Ltd, 1977).

[7] Cassagnes-Brouquet, Sophie Vierges Noires. Regard et Fascination (Passage des Macons, Editions du Rossergue, 1990)..

[8] Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Eight Essays (Stanford, Ca, Stanford University Press, 1965).

[9] Giovanni Lilliu, Arte e religione della Sardegna prenuragica. Idoletti, ceramiche, oggetti dornamento (Sassari, Carlo Delfino editore, 1999.