Feasts of the Seven Sisters: Madonna of the Advocate in Maiori

Today is the feast day of the Madonna of the Advocate (Madonna dell'Avvocata) in Maiori, Costiera Amalfitana. She is one of the Seven Sisters, the famous Black Madonnas of Campania. 

Madonna dell'Avvocata
"Madonna of the Advocate"
Monday after Pentecost
Website

Her sanctuary in Maiori was first conceived of in 1485, when a shepherd boy named Gabriele Cinnamo fell asleep while tending his flock on Monte Falerzio. He dreamed of the Madonna, who told him to build an altar in that location. Inspired by the dream, Cinnamo became a hermit and began raising funds to build the chapel. 

In 1590, a small statue of the Madonna was brought into the church as a protector of the sailors from the surrounding coastal towns. Since then, many extraordinary events have been attributed to the statue, including it shedding tears, exorcising those possessed by demons, and curing those suffering from terminal illnesses. You can get a sense for the intense devotion directed at this Madonna in the video below. (As an aside: the hymn they are singing is very simple and perfect to learn, particularly if you plan to attend a festa in either Italy or an Italian-American parish in the US. I am posting the full lyrics below, but the only part you usually need to know is: "Evviva Maria, Maria evviva... Evviva Maria e chi la creò!") 

O Maria, quanto sei bella,
sei la gioia e sei l’amore,
m’hai rapito questo cuore,
notte e giorno io penso a Te.
M’hai rapito questo cuore,
notte e giorno,
notte e giorno io penso a Te.
Evviva Maria, Maria evviva.
Evviva Maria e chi la creò.
Quando il sole già lucente,
le colline e il mondo indora,
quando a sera si scolora,
ti saluta il mio pensier,
quando a sera si scolora
ti saluta,
ti saluta il mio pensier.
Che pien di giubilo oggi t’onora.
Evviva Maria, Maria evviva.
Evviva Maria e chi la creò.
E un bel giorno in Paradiso,
Grideremo: Viva Maria!
Grideremo: Viva Maria!
Grideremo: Viva Maria,
Viva Lei che ci salvò.
Tutti t’invocano soccorritrice,
Evviva Maria, Maria evviva.
Evviva Maria e chi la creò!

But more specifically than this hymn, the Madonna of the Advocate is associated with a particular style of tammurriata drumming. For the reason, I feel especially close to her. She was perhaps the first of the Seven Sisters that I learned about from my music teacher, Alessandra Belloni, who told me stories about her: about how people would travel from around the countryside to come and make the pilgrimage up Monte Falerzio. How often, these people were in their 70s or 80s, but they still found the strength to make the pilgrimage up the mountain in bare feet!

In Alessandra's classes, she taught us the distinctive drumming pattern you see in the video below. In the two years I have trained with her, I have seen dozens of new students learn to drum tammurriata for the first time, and this is always the pattern they resonate with the most. It has a unique strength which recalls the wild retinue of the goddess Cybele. As a woman learning to drum, it breaks through whatever socialization has taught you to be quiet and unobtrusive. It is simply too wild and loud to allow such restrictions on the body to remain in place. In that way and many more, it is an important medicine for us. 

Feasts of the Seven Sisters: Madonna of the Baths in Scafati

Background

Today is the feast day of the Madonna of the Baths (Madonna dei Bagni) in Scafati, Salerno. She is one of the Seven Sisters, the famous Black Madonnas of Campania. 

Madonna dei Bagni
"Madonna of the Baths"
Sunday after Ascension
Website

This Madonna is particularly associated with the healing waters found near her sanctuary, which harken back to pre-Christian rites. Here is a beautiful traditional invocation sung in her honor by Marcello Colasurdo: 

Magic

'O Bacile cu 'e rrose 

If you can't make the trip out to Scafati this year, consider cleansing yourself using this traditional folk recipe, courtesy of the Santuario Madonna dei Bagni Facebook page. This practice is still done in the comune of Angri in Salento, Campania. 

Before it gets dark on the Vigil of the Ascension (that is, the day before Ascension), gather fresh roses and mint. Remove the rose petals and mint leaves; combine with water in a basin. Pray that the water will be blessed; you can pray from the heart in your preferred language, or use this traditional prayer to the Madonna of the Baths in Neapolitan: 

Maronna re’ Bagn
Maronna gioiosa
Beneric chistu’ 
facile e acqua che scuri e che rose, 
Puort l’ammor e
Santific e Purific
chistu core

(Giovanni Borriello) 

Leave the basin with the water and flowers out overnight on a balcony. (Or, if you live in New York and balconies are hard to come by, a fire escape or rooftop works.) It is believed that in the night, an angel, or Jesus, or the Madonna will come down from heaven and bless the water. In the morning, wash your face with the water. 

La Pennellazione

Another traditional blessing which occurs in honor of the Madonna dei Bagni is the pennellazione. 

The person giving the blessing—typically, an old woman—dips a hen feather in blessed olive oil, then traces the sign of the cross on the forehead and throat of the person to be blessed. As la Contrada Madonna dei Bagni - Scafati remarks, the hen in Italian folk magic represents death and resurrection (cf. the Madonna of the Hens, another one of the famed Seven Sisters) because she scratches at the earth, penetrating into the chthonic kingdom of the dead. But, for the contadini italiani, death is intimately related to life: From the death and burial of the seed, comes the life of the plant. From the death of the flower, comes the life of the fruit. 

Madonna of the Mountain in Polsi, Calabria

There is a sanctuary in the mountains of Calabria where the mafia plots and ancient rites are carried out in honor of the Goddess--once Persephone, now A Madonna dâ Muntagna, or the Madonna of the Mountain. Until recently, her feast on September 2 was celebrated with the strewing of grain and flowers (cf. the Greek rite of aparchai), as well as the sacrifice and cooking of goats. 

In an ancient Greek settlement at nearby Locri, two great sanctuaries once stood. One was dedicated to Persephone. The other was dedicated to Aphrodite. It may astonish some to learn that these two goddesses were syncretized here: 

According to Diodorus Siculus (27.4.2), Persephone’s sanctuary was considered “the most renowned temple in Italy, preserved as holy for all time by the inhabitants.” Livy (29.18.3) reports that in 204 B.C.E. envoys from Locri addressing the Roman Senate could assume that their audience was fully aware of its religious importance. One of the most striking aspects of the worship of Persephone at Locri, at least to modern observers, is its conflation with the cult of Aphrodite, as evidenced by the type-scenes found on the pinakes. In this series of images, which are manifestly associated with the ritual activities of women and are frequently regarded as “wedding ex-votos”, the symbolism of the two deities is amalgamated, often provoking considerable controversy as to which goddess is meant. ... Is the relation of the two antithetical, with Persephone presiding over the domain of legitimate marriage and child rearing, and Aphrodite standing for socially “illicit and ‘aberrant’” modes of sexuality, as Sourvinou-Inwood proposes? Or are their operations wholly integrated, so that the goddesses, in MacLachlan’s formulation, “meet at the intersection of death and sexuality”? Redfield postulates that the Locrian fusion of nuptial and funerary imagery reflects an Orphic concept of marriage and death as parallel rites of passage, each involving transformation to a blessed state. Certainly the unique character of women’s religious activity there, involving joint worship of deities normally treated as quite distinct, confirms the importance of Sourvinou-Inwood’s stipulation that study of Greek divine personalities must take account of local difference and base its findings upon a non-Panhellenic, community-oriented approach to cult. 

From Marilyn B. Skinner, "Nossis and Women’s Cult at Locri"

The archaeological record at Polsi shows pinakes, or votive clay tablets manufactured by Hellenic settlers from Locri, so we know these locations were connected somehow. A Locrian pinax showing Persephone and her husband Hades, Queen and King of the Underworld, appears below. 

I'm not going to lie: mostly, I'm writing about this Madonna because I just discovered this amazing album of vintage devotional songs sung in her honor. In particular, track #4, "Zampognara pi Maria SS." is LIT. (Catholit?) 

In addition to the devotional music played in honor of the Madonna, pilgrims to the sanctuary at Polsi will dance and play the tarantella. You can get a taste for this regional tarantella in this video: 

Feasts of the Seven Sisters: Castle Madonna in Somma Vesuviana

Today is the feast of the Castle Madonna, or Madonna di Castello in Somma Vesuviana. She is sometimes called the Mamma Pacchiana, "pacchiana" meaning gaudy, uncultured, or otherwise peasant-like. She is one of the Seven Sisters, the famous Black Madonnas of Campania. 

Madonna di Castello, aka Mamma Pacchiana
"Castle Madonna, aka Peasant Mother"
May 3
Website

History 

A structure has stood where her sanctuary is now since 1269, when Charles of Anjou, then King of Naples, built a castle there with a chapel to St. Lucy inside. It passed through several hands, a few times being abandoned and later rebuilt. In 1622, the Venerable Don Carlo Carafa, founder of the Congregation of the "Pii Operai", bought the grounds. On the ruins of the old castle, he built a house for his community and restored the ancient chapel of St. Lucy, where he placed a wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was called the Castle Madonna, in honor of the location's history. 

Carafa would later sell the property, entrusting the church to a hermit, with the instruction to light a lamp to the Madonna on a daily basis. On December 16, 1631, a terrible eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed everything, including the church and statue of the Madonna. After the eruption, only her head was found in the ashes. It was brought to a sculptor in Naples, who ignored it for some time, placing it away in a chest. But one day, the sculptor's daughter, who was bedridden due to illness, began to hear the voice of the Madonna calling her. The voice told her to get up and free her head from the chest. The girl found that she was able to get up and move again. When her father returned, he sculpted the Madonna a new body in thanks for the miraculous healing of his daughter. 

Traditions

The Castle Madonna is celebrated using many of the same elements common to other Southern Italian feast days, including pilgrimage, ritual song and dance, banquets, and ex votos dedicated to the miraculous statue. You can see these elements in the video below: 

Due to her personal encounter with the might of Vesuvius, this Madonna is particularly associated with fire and volcanic eruptions. Like San Gennaro, she is prayed to for protection from the destructive power of the volcano. Her feast begins and ends with fireworks. The following video shows footage from an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1943 mashed up with a traditional tammurriata, or ritual trance song in honor of one of the Black Madonnas, dedicated specifically to the Castle Madonna. It is an excellent accompaniment to your own trance work. 

Feasts of the Seven Sisters: Madonna of the Hens in Pagani

Today is the Sunday after Easter (domenica in albis). This is the day we celebrate the feast of the Madonna of the Hens, or Madonna delle Galline in Pagani. She is one of the Seven Sisters, the famous Black Madonnas of Campania. 

Madonna delle Galline
"Madonna of the Hens"
Sunday after Easter
Town website

Legend 

Popular legend has it that an image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was found buried beneath the earth. It was located by a flock of hens in the 16th century, who scratched persistently at the soil where the icon was located until it was dug out. Between 1609 and 1610, eight miracles were performed by the icon, including the healing of a cripple who was visited in a dream by the Madonna.  

Tradition 

The miraculous image is displayed year-round. However, the wooden statue, seen in the film below, is only revealed during this feast and another in September. The doors of the sanctuary are closed from Easter until the feast day while the statue is unveiled and a throne set up in her honor. The feast begins when the doors to the sanctuary open. 

The procession occurs on Easter Sunday. The statue of the Madonna is placed on a chariot which is driven by motorbike. Devotees, either people of Pagani or pilgrims, make offerings to the statue. The traditional offerings are live birds, such as hens, doves, turkeys, or peacocks; or rich peasant food, including savory torts made of salami and eggs. Mothers bring their children to the Madonna to be blessed and protected by her. The procession, including the statue now covered in live birds, moves throughout the city streets and alleyways. It passes by shrines called toselli, such as the ones seen here and here, which are set up in honor of the Madonna. These are often draped with satin and lace, and sometimes contain paintings or small statues of the Madonna to whom prayers and food offerings are made. 

Of course, throughout the feast, the tammurriata is played and danced in honor of the Black Madonna. 

In this documentary, Madonna delle Galline tra sacro e profano ("Madonna of the Hens Between Sacred and Profane") by Michele Pelioso, you see all of these elements of the celebration: the altars, the offered birds (hens, doves, even a peacock!), food, and the tammurriata. 

Magical elements

So, what's up with all those birds? 

As Peter Grey explores in Lucifer: Princeps, birds have been associated with the souls of the dead residing in the underworld since ancient Sumeria. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes them thus:

They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away for ever; rulers and princes, all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old.

The emphasis on hens is particularly interesting, given the association that some traditions draw between the the older woman and her hen in the presepe with the agricultural goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, maiden goddess of the underworld. This association between Demeter and the Madonna of the Hens has at the very least been commented on by Protestant writers such as Theodor Trede, who wrote about the ritual similarities between Southern Italian Catholicism and Greco-Roman paganism. 

In African-American folk magic, hens' feet are used to protect against harmful tricks because of the scratching they do in the ground. If someone has laid a harmful powder or charm against you in your yard where you are likely to walk over it every day, thus poisoning yourself through your feet, the scratching of the hens (literally or magically) helps to tear that power up out of the earth. It would be a stretch to say this practice and the Madonna of the Hens share a common point of origin. But the image of the hens' feet digging magic out of the ground resonates nicely with the popular legend of the hens clawing at the buried icon of the Madonna. 

Feasts of the Seven Sisters: Madonna of the Arch

Today is the Monday after Easter (lunedì in Albis, or informally, Pasquetta). This is the day we celebrate the feast of the Madonna dell'Arco in Sant'Anastasia.

Madonna dell'Arco (Our Lady of the Arch)
Monday after Easter
Website
Sanctuary Website

In this video, you see several elements of the feast of the Madonna dell'Arco. You will notice the presence of the fujénti, a Neapolitan word which literally means "the ones who come". These are people who have received miracles from the Madonna, who now make a pilgrimage to her sanctuary in honor of her feast day. They dress in all white and wear two bands: one blue and one red, in honor of the colors of the Madonna's mantel. The fujénti are occasionally so overcome by the presence of their patron, that they will drop to the ground and convulse in front of her. A special police force, seen in green, maintains order during the festival.

In this video, you see two women dancing the tammurriata, a ritual dance performed in celebration of the various Black Madonnas of Campania. The tammurriata is led first by the voice, which improvises lyrics according to a vast traditional repertoire. The voice is followed by the drum, which matches lyrical patterns to a set of rhythms. The drumming then inspires the dancers, who add to the percussion both visually with their bodies as well as audibly with their castanets.

Prayer
English

Oh Pious Queen Dell'Arco, provider of so many favors. Your beautiful pupils bow on your children who ask you mercy. You are the only hope of the hearts that, groaning, sigh to you.

Prayer
Original Italian

O Dell'Arco Pietosa Regina, dispensiera di tanti favori. Le pupille bellissime inchina, sui tuoi figli che chiedon mercè. Tu sei l'unica speme dei cuori che gementi sospirano a te.

(Sing along here)

Selected quotes from dark mother

"Healing black madonnas are associated with wooded areas, water (the sea, a lake, a river, a fountain), grottoes and caves, and with the subterranean, often volcanic, chthonic earth." (140) "Deborah Rose went to France in search of black madonnas; afterward, she wrote, 'the last thing I expected was to re-enter Catholicism, the religion of my childhood.' She found that 'devotions of the catholic faithful were keeping alive a reverence for the mother that I suspected was much older than that to the Christian Mary.' Her twenty five years of work in holistic health care have made her 'a firm believer in body memories and cellular consciousness. On an individual, and I believe on a collective level, the body remembers the past. And the oldest memory is of darkness as the source and the beginning. The dark mother is the original mother.'" (149)

"Lucia's popular meaning is caught at Canicattini Bagni, paleolithic site in Sicily, where Lucia is sought for eye maladies connected with loss of wisdom. In italian popular culture, loss of wisdom means loss of hindsight, or memory of the past, and loss of vision, or faith in the future." (171-172)

"In popular themes underlying political traditions of the left in Italy, the black of anarchism is understood as fidelity of subordinated peoples to the truth of the earth." (172)

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother: african origins and godmothers

law, logic, and the dark mother

"In Italy, Isis was a mother divinity associated with healing; the 6th century BCE temple to Isis at Pompeii is located next to a temple of Aesculapius, or Serapis. A significant characteristic of Isis, one later associated with the christian madonna, was that she was a compassionate mother. In the rhcistian epoch her son Horus was represented as a child figure. Isis is often depicted with a laurel wreath and two prominant ears, symbolizing that she listened with both ears to the prayers of all those who came to her, an image that can be found to this day in italian folklore. "Water, always associated with Isis, held a sacred quality: holy water, holy rivers, and holy sea. The serpent, identified with Isis, was always sacred. ...Isis and wheat, in the roman epoch, became Ceres and wheat. In the christian epoch Isis became santa Lucia, whose images always carry a sheaf of wheat. The olive tree, associated with Isis, has today become symbol of nonviolent transformation. Italy's contemporary nonviolent left political coalition is named L'Ulivo, or the olive tree. ...In her 600 BCE image in the Museum of Cairo, Isis is figured as a black nursing mother, who bears a startling resemblance to christian images of the nursing madonna.

"Veneration of Isis, her spouse Osiris, and son Horus persisted in all the pharaonic dynasties, a 3,000 year old history when belief in Isis spread from Meroe and Alexandria to 'the whole Mediterranean basin.' In Italy and other latin countries where the holy family is a focus of devotion, the trinity of Isis and her husband and child became the popular christian trinity of Maria, Joseph, and Jesus, popular trinity that differs from the motherless trinity--father, son, and holy ghost--of canonical christianity.

"At african Memphis, hymns praising Isis as a civilizing, universal divinity who had ended cannibalism, instituted good laws, and given birth to agriculture, arts and letters, moral principle, good customs, and justice. Mistress of medicine, healer of human maladies, sovereign of earth and seas, protectress from navigational perils and war, Isis was 'Dea della salvezza per eccellenza... veglia anche sulla morte,' divinity of salvation par excellence, who also watches over the dead. ...

"Acknowledging the dark african mother who preceded patriarchal world religions does not, to this sicilian/american woman, seem all that iconoclastic. It may be a matter of how we think. Erik Hronung, egyptologist of the University at Basel, refers to the complementarity of egyptian logic, which resembles complementarity in physics. 'For the Egyptians two times two is always four, never anything else. But the sky is a number of things--cow, baldachin, water, woman--it is the goddess Nut and the goddes Hathor, and in syncretism a deity a is at the same time another, not-a.' For Hornung, 'the nature of a god becomes accessible through a "multiplicity of approaches," [and] only when these are taken together can the whole be comprehended.' Sicilians, as Justin Vitiello reminds us, know this intuitively. So do artists, craftsmen, poets, and peasants of the world. In the 1970's, when I began to research my italian godmothers/grandmothers, I came across a tile with a blue-black star with thrity-two points in a blue green sea. The tile was named Iside, italian for Isis."

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother: african origins and godmothers, pp. 20-21, 27.