THE POWER OF THE BLACK MADONNA
By Carminha Levy

This paper starts with a dream, a GREAT DREAM which the tribe's Shaman must tell his people.

Ten years ago, in 1981, after my Shamanic initiation with Michael Harner in Esalen, California, I went through a serious health problem returning to Brazil. I had a brain vascular accident (aneurism) and faced death and dismembering in a real concretization of Shamanic initiation. My life hung by a thread, and going into surgery I had only 1% possibility of coming out unharmed and 10% of surviving. I had my Dream under these terrible circumstances.

In Rome, in the Vatican Square, my husband and I were in a black carriage, pulled by black horses - the carriage of death. Suddenly, in the middle of the square I see four lions, all free, and one of them was black. I was surprised to see the lions, and people walking by freely in the square. My husband said there was no danger, it being only necessary that everybody respected each other. We were going to a Mass that a cousin of mine had celebrated as thanksgiving. The Mass was officiated by the Pope in an amphitheater and there were many people around praying. The Pope then becomes José de Anchieta, a Brazil in saint who was a priest and a poet at the time of the Colonization. The Mass is a poem written on the sand which was in the amphitheater. Each word he wrote became a purple rosebud. When he finished, the Mass-poem is shaped like a fan, and Anchieta, like a magic trick with a wand, opens all the roses. The audience praying at the Mass is simply marveled and one can hear an "oh" of surprise and awe and incredibility. And I tell my husband: "This is my cousin, always spectacular!" Obviously, I survived this surgery without sequels, with absolute control of my body and mind. But my life started again as the life of a newborn, and I needed some months to rehabilitate myself. During all this time, an image never left my mind: the Black Lion, never seen before.

Since my Great Prophetic Dream which predicted my healing, until today the Black Lion reveals the secrets of the Black Madonna, our Great Mother, to whom he belongs. He comes to me teaching me through dreams, experiences with my patients, Shamanic study groups and my own experience of miraculous cure. He teaches me the powerful healing strength of the Black Madonna and guides me to Her, for he is one of Her sacred animals.