Welcome to THE LIBRARY OF VISUAL HEALING BOOKS.

These Vision Books are a contemporary version of illuminated manuscripts - immersive and written in the language of images. They are created in the alchemical lineage of artists as healers and storytellers of the Soul.

I hope The Library can become a sanctuary that allows you to dive deeper into the Original visual energy patterns that underpin the body of Earth which can hold us steady in these times of immense upheaval and dismantling.

The books are Origin Stories, written in the language of organic universal connective pattern that can help us to access less tamed, organic parts of ourselves where we can visually remember and attune to the wilder origins of our soul and species healing.

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I deeply appreciate your support. The world comes alive with our attention.

Sighting of The Black Madonna

My painting studio sits in the top corner of an imaginary isosceles triangle bordered with two-kilometre long sides that contain the only two shrines solely dedicated to The Black Madonna in the UK. A hidden energetic vortex where multiple ley lines entangle in the underworld, invisible to those above ground in this bedraggled part of London.

Perhaps only a sprinkling of priests, nuns, and devotees know that She has lived here in this place of holy watering for more than a millennia and beyond.

I found out about the location of both these shrines to The Black Madonna through the voice of a particular set of paintings. In June 2022, I was working on an ongoing series of work for an Open Studio called Maps to the Invisible.

The Maps are a series of twelve paintings created on constructed paper in luminous lapis lazuli metallic paint and gold dust.

As I sat with the paintings, looking into a field of shimmering blue and gold, I wondered about the deep scarification lines imprinted in the soft folds of the watercolour paper. These folds reminded me of something and someone - I couldn't quite remember...

I felt these words ring in my body...

And then she flowed in - The Black Madonna of Częstochowa - with Her deeply affecting scars, Her strangely compassionate stare that made me feel my sadness but also made me feel seen.

As I experienced this connection a deep ache to sit close to the physical presence of a statue or a shrine to the Black Madonna arose in me. As I researched on my phone where I might find a church, a relic - I saw that there were only two places in the London that named Her in their title and they were quite literally down the road.

From before the year of AD939 the records of the Royal Charter make mention of the Shrine of the Black Madonna in the pastures of Willesden & Harlesden. They document that pilgrims from all over Europe and beyond took healing waters from the hallowed well at Willesden.

These two churches were within a 2 kilometre radius to each other and in walking distance from my studio.

Today, Her Willesden shrine houses a Food Bank and a refugee drop-in centre offering shelter and warmth to those who have scant belongings or an even lesser sense of belonging in the world as some countries, cities and communities harden borders, shrink benefits systems and hands of care.

In perfect cosmic timing The Dark Mother, She Who is The Creation Ancestor Of All That Is, cloaked in Her Luminous-Fluid-Holiness reappears from an ancient sacred watering site invisibilized over the last 1000 years of patriarchy induced forgetting to let us know Her true vocation is this:

Even when we can't see the threads of Her weavings we can restore Her powers of rebirth and healing by calling Her name.

MAPS TO THE INVISIBLE -

Sightings of the Black Madonna

Series of 12 works on constructed watercolour paper, acrylics, ink, gold dust - 110cm x 80cm (pictured in situ in my studio - Harlesden, London)

Statue of The Black Madonna - created by the sculptor Catharni Stern in 1973. The altar of Saint Mary's Church, Neasden Lane, Harlesden, London.

Above: The Black Madonna of Częstochowa - Poland

www.suzetteclough.com

www.visualmedicine.org

suzette@visualmedicine.org