12/12/12: Queen of the Americas

Lupe, Lupita, Guadalupe, La Virgencita, Nuestra Madre, Reina de las Americas (Queen of the Americas), all are different names for the Holy Mother, Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Mary, the Mother of God. December 12th is her feast day, an especially auspicious day this year since it falls on 12/12/12. This week, as part of her continuing cultural immersion therapy for new New Mexicans, the Spiritual Adventuress attended a lecture on “The Virgin of Guadalupe” by the curator of Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center, Tey Marianna Nunn, offered by Oasis, the continuing education program for those over fifty. Guadalupe has been increasingly fascinating to the Spiritual Adventuress for more than two years during which time she has been purchasing glass columnar candles featuring Guadalupe’s image at convenience and grocery stores. Lupita is “big” in New Mexico, and the Adventuress wanted to know why.

Nunn began by recounting the familiar story of how the Virgin Mary radiantly appeared to the Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, just outside Mexico City on December 9, 1531. She told him she would like a church built there in her honor. Juan Diego dutifully recounted the story of her appearance and her request to the doubting Spanish archbishop of Mexico City who requested a miraculous sign of verification from the apparition. When Juan Diego returned to La Virgen with the bishop’s response, she instructed him to pick flowers at the usually-barren top of Tepeyac Hill where they met. Remarkably, since it was December, Juan Diego found pink/red Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, in full bloom. The Virgin arranged them in his poncho-like, peasant cape, or tilma, made of rough cactus fiber. When he opened his cloak on December 12^th in front of the archbishop, the roses fell to the floor revealing the image of The Virgin, imprinted on the fabric of his cloak.

A chapel dedicated to the Virgin was built on the same site, and with the rubble from, a destroyed, ancient, pagan temple to the Aztec mother-goddess, Tonantzin, following a pattern established in Europe where churches were built on top of earlier goddess sites. Newly-converted Indians continued to come from afar to worship there and continued to address the Virgin Mary as Tonantzin. The Conquistador who overthrew the Aztec empire ten years earlier in 1521, Hernán Cortés, was a native of Extremadura, Spain, home to Our Lady of Guadalupe, dating back to the 14^th century. Her dark-skinned depiction fused with that of Tonantzin, making her the perfect icon for the missionaries who followed Cortés to convert the natives to Christianity. Guadalupe continues to be a mixture of the cultures which blended to form Mexico, both racially and religiously. She became further integrated with Pueblo Indian culture when brought to New Mexico by Mexicans.

The original cloak is now on display in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City encased in bullet-proof glass in a low-oxygen atmosphere. I saw it there more than twenty years ago and was entranced by the information that photographers discovered Juan Diego’s image reflected in the virgin’s eye – accurately allowing for the curvature of her eyeball. The new basilica can accommodate ten thousand visitors at one time and is the most visited pilgrimage site in the Western hemisphere according to the website www.catholic.org. In 1999, Guadalupe was declared Patroness of the Americas, and in 2002, Juan Diego was canonized as the first indigenous American saint.

The first Spanish language apparition account, by author Miguel Sanchez, identified Guadalupe as “Revelation’s Woman of the Apocalypse” (“clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” – Revelation 12:1). The image had a hidden layer of coded messages for the indigenous people of Mexico who had an elaborate symbolic system for making sense of their lives. They reserved the blue-green color of her cloak for their divine couple, her black belt was a sign of pregnancy, and, to them, her radiating light represented the spines of the maguey plant, source of a sacred beverage.

The image of Guadalupe can also be seen as having a hidden layer of coded messages for contemporary people, making her the perfect “Woman of the Apocalypse,” not in the sense of the cultural dictionary (a final catastrophe that comes at the end of the world, or the end of time, as some believe the Mayan calendar predicts), but in the sense of a revelation or disclosure, the uncovering of an agreement between the human and divine, the end of one consciousness and beginning of another. Guadalupe stands upon (“understanding”) a crescent moon which represents immaculate conception (“a pure thought”), held aloft by an angel (“messenger”). Her robe is blue-green. Blue is the color of the throat chakra, or energy center, in the body (“communication”), and green the color of the heart chakra (“love”). The windows and doors of many brown New Mexican adobes are trimmed in Marian blue for protection. Her dress is pink/red. Pink also represents “love,” and red is the color of the root, or base, chakra (“grounding, or connecting, the energy with the earth”).

Radiant light emanating from Guadalupe extends outward (“expanding awareness of truth”), and she wears a cloak of stars (from the “heavens,” or “realm of the divine”). It is claimed that an overlay of the star pattern on her robe coincides with the position of the constellations in the night sky at the time of her appearance. Guadalupe’s feast day this year on 12/12/12, is a triple trinity (three aspects of the one divine), of wholeness or unity. 1+2 = 3, 3/3/3, or 9. The number nine in tarot connotes attainment, completion, closure, renewal – no ending without a beginning. The Latin word for nine is novum which shares its root with novus, meaning “new.” So Guadalupe is communicating her message, based on a pure, divine thought of truth, of the expanding new consciousness of love being grounded on earth. The apocalypse is the end of an old way, and beginning of a new way, of being - a new consciousness. Guadalupe, the mother, gives life, brings the compassion and peace love brings. This ascension can be seen as a new, higher consciousness of unity and love.  

December 12^th is also National Poinsettia Day. Poinsettias, native to Mexico, are named for Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first U.S. minister to Mexico. They are also known as “Noche Buena” (Good Night), referring to Christmas Eve, for their star-shaped leaves said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem. There is also a legend of a poor, young girl who had no gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birth other than roadside weeds an angel told her to gather – poinsettias. Both Guadalupe and poinsettias are associated with the Christmas experience. Early this morning I when I looked at the lunette (crescent-moon-shaped) glass table in my living room which also serves as an altar, I saw I had appropriately placed there, unaware of their connection, the Guadalupe candle, a poinsettia plant, and a statue of Quan Yin, the goddess of compassion. Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes said, “You cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe.” When a friend in my aquacise class heard I had bought a Guadalupe candle for my home, she said, “Ah, now you are truly a New Mexican.”