After celebrating the many expressions of motherhood this month, and hopefully taking time to honor those who have brought us this far, it feels appropriate to also bring reverence and attention to the sacred feminine force known to us intimately as The Holy Mother. Truly, to properly discuss something so complex and far reaching requires the length and research of a book, not a blog article. Whether we call her Blessed Mother, Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Compassion, Señora Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fátima, The Black Madonna, or any of the other nuanced reflections she has offered us, reaching beyond the boundaries of organized religions, she carries within her sacred image, history, and lore of manifested miracles more than can be simply articulated in a few words. Let us, instead, think of this offering as a meditation, simply us, as children, reflecting on the one who reflects us, continually renewing herself to meet us where we are. Let’s reflect on the bridge that she creates with her adaptability, and with her dual role as mother and intercessor, between the mysteries of divinity and the sacredness of the earthly.
“I have many names and faces.
Beyond those names and faces,
I am your loving mother always.”
-Alana Fairchild, Mother Mary Oracle Guidebook
To begin, we have to consider The Great Mother, and our role as her children, forever of her, and yet alight with free will and wildness, adrift with confusion and independence, and longing for the union of opposites that stir within us, the mind and the heart, the soul and the life force, the power and the vulnerability that together make us human. There is something about the Goddess that is so distinctly different than other sacred forces that inspire, guide, and set a holy, archetypal example for us here on earth. Having spent my younger and middle adult life as a devotee of this sacred presence, learning her myriad faces and aspects, I have come to believe that it is because, despite how vast and complex she might actually be, she is also here. She both resides within and encompasses the earth. Even when we forget her, she remains here with us, in the everyday intimacy of a mother, from whose body we are made, and in whose embrace we are held all of our days. We may read about, or hear the oral traditions that describe ancient cultures which held this reverence for The Great Mother as a central principle. From these legacies we have inherited many complex images and stories of the Goddess, as the force of both life and of death, not remote but as close as the green earth and as bright as the shining moon and stars. We can’t really know what it was to live before the last epoch of history, in which the ancient temples were destroyed or defaced, and many of the teachings and practices of the sacred feminine were lost, or at least forbidden, but we do know this. The Holy Mother arose from this history, and offered the people who were in need of connection to her a way in which to remain close, a form to which they could pray and receive grace.
Remember,
O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known
that anyone who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help,
or sought thy intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence,
I fly unto thee,
O Virgin of virgins, my Mother…
from The Memorare
It’s hard to deny that the sacred feminine force adapts and stays near, when we take even the briefest look at what might be called the cult of Mary. Around the world, the shrines and rituals of supplication to Mother Mary are a mystery tradition of their own, rising from the ruins of older forms and yet distinct. If we cannot embrace her as the Goddess, she will come to us as the Mother, and not only to those in the highest positions, but to those in the lowest, those who need, those who ask. The many faces she wears, in order that we see ourselves in her, and remember our connection, are the bridge of nurturing and mystery that she builds for us through the changing of times. As in so many of the painted images and sculpted statues of her, she extends her hands and heart, offering to us a kind of intimacy with the larger cosmic order, as well as a personal face that looks at us as if we belong to all of it.
“The Divine Mother is a genius of manifestation and she will have her creations come to life through the simplest and most ordinary of steps that somehow combine to manifest extraordinary beauty.”
Alana Fairchild, Mother Mary Oracle Guidebook
The alchemy of the everyday is blessed in the Holy Mother’s hands, but this work of manifestation is something more than the compassionate support she offers to many. It is the creation of her own sacred image, welcome and holy across the globe, holding the ancient, the esoteric, and the mundane, holding us. I hope someday to collect the far reaching examples of how the Holy Mother emerged in different parts of the world during the times when Catholicism was law, and what she may have preserved, offered, or transmitted, but for now I can share some of what I have learned about her in my own complex cultural legacy as a Mexican American.
There is a well known folk story about the first appearance of Señora Guadalupe in 1531 to the Indigenous man called Juan Diego, who was walking to bring remedies to his sick uncle. The story tells of the Holy Mother as an apparition with brown skin and dark hair, reflecting the Indigenous people of Mexico, speaking the Nahuatl language, and appearing at the sacred hill where once the temple of the Earth Mother Goddess called Tonantzin had stood. What remained of this sacred site in 1531 was a ruins, and a legacy of loss and danger for anyone who dared to practice the old forms of worship, or the sacred knowledge of precolonial mysticism. This is why, when she asked Juan Diego to be the one to speak to the ruling Bishop about her presence and desire to have a church built for her there, he tried to decline, despite his reverence and humility, and the rich scent of unseen flowers filling the air. He knew that he would not be believed, and perhaps even killed for suggesting something like this, being an Indian and a poor man, with no power under Spanish rule. Yet, she insisted that it be him, and so he tried. He was laughed away by the Bishop, but left with his life and would perhaps have given up if she had not appeared to him again. This time, after asking why he had not completed the task she had given him, she offered help. She filled a cloth wrapped around his shoulders, a traditional carrying sack, with fresh rose petals, flowers that were not found there and would be proof of a miracle. When he returned to the church, he showed them the flowers in his cloth sack. The guards, not wanting to let him in again, attempted to take the flowers, but when they reached in the blossoms disappeared, becoming like a painted image on the cloth. After several tries, the guards let him in and he saw the Bishop again. After the Bishop tried to reach into the cloth and found the same impossible result, Juan Diego poured out the roses before him and showed in the cloth an imprinted image of Señora Guadalupe. Convinced of having witnessed a miracle, the Bishop allowed for a church to be built in her name.
This story is an important one in the Mexican culture, though it is not without some controversy. Many people think of it as proof that the Holy Mother is here primarily for the poorest and most in need, and has brought herself forward in this form to care for the Indigenous and their mixed race, displaced descendants. Many feel that it shows not only her compassion but her resilience as the Goddess Tonantzin, returned to the people in a form they could openly worship. Others say the story was used to indoctrinate Indigenous people into the Catholic Church, perhaps in a similar manner to the way in which elements of Pagan traditions were incorporated into new religious holidays and archetypes. It’s possible that both of these perspectives hold a piece of the truth. In many ways, this story and her image allowed for the blending of two cultures and two spiritual systems. Still, Señora Guadalupe is at the heart of Mexican culture and Mexican Catholicism. On December 12th, each year, thousands of people gather at the shrine dedicated to her in Tepeyac to supplicate, to honor, to dance their prayers, and to show their devotion. Indigenous people from all over Mexico join others who come from afar to make this pilgrimage, walking or even crawling up to the sierra de Tepeyac. The sacred site of Tonantzin, honored by the indigenous peoples of Mexico long before the conquest, is actually a small hill behind the church, and the pilgrimage is a continuation of a practice from pre-Columbian times that still holds its power, while remaining safe enough to practice in the light of day. Yet, as potent as this story and practice of worship is, there is another aspect of the image of Señora Guadalupe that deepens the mystery and practicality that combine within her emergence, and sheds light on the imaginative manifestation work of the Holy Mother.
The image of Señora Guadalupe is deeply encoded. It is an act of preservation magic and a form of codex where deep principles of the ancient tradition were intentionally preserved and passed down from the times of sacred knowledge, through the times of persecution, to us where we stand now, In Tlacticpac. I will not pretend to be an expert in every aspect of how this came to be and all of what the image entails, but I will share some of what I know. In the Mexica (Aztec) culture, knowledge was revered and school was central to communal life. The scholars who held the sacred teachings were artists who drew the teachings in a language of images, most of which were later stolen and taken to European museums. The figure of Señora Guadalupe, hidden in plain sight and handed directly to the people, holds the 260 Goddesses (or sacred feminine forces) in Tepeyac, represented by the gold lines that can be seen in the cloth surrounding her, shining like rays of the sun. She wears the blue and gold that represents the Divine within the material world, in the Deified elements of Water, Corn and Earth. If you are looking at the original image from a geographical view, you can see that it is split into four planes, which represent the axis of the Earth, and its meridians. Her head tilts down to the right, at the angle of 23.15 degrees, which is the exact inclination of Earth’s axis. To her right is the East, where you can see a clear light like dawn To her left is the West, with the darker light of sunset. Her head points North, and her feet are at the South. The stars in her reboso are actual constellations of sacred importance to the ancient Mexicans and their spiritual traditions, recorded in the positions they were in at her first appearance on December 12, 1531. Her joined hands represent the union of the two cultures that allowed the people to survive, one darker and one lighter. She is dressed in a Huipil, traditional dress of ancient Mexico, and adorned with flowers of tobacco and the hallucinogenic Ajujuké (Bell flower). Beneath her is the moon, perhaps the primary feminine force, for which Mexico is named, and a symbol of Tezcatlipoca, who rules the most central tenets of dreaming, the unconscious, and bringing consciousness to the hidden layers of life. This is represented in the image of the child, who has the face and receding hair of a wise elder. This angel-like figure has the wings of a Macaw, representing new ways of seeing and of consciousness.
Here I am only naming a few of the principles encoded. Further analysis can reveal information about the positions and practices that are ideal for dreaming, and many details of the cosmic alignments and observations made by the ancients, in reference to the particular mysticism of Mexico and its relationship with the cosmos through time. It, as a whole, represents the divine mysticism of the earth, in one place, from the perspective of the Indigenous cultures of knowledge. Without knowledge, we are trapped in the concept we are fed about what we are and what the mysteries of life entail. With knowledge, we are placed and in sacred relationship to something much larger than the tides of time that rule privilege and oppression. We are free to know who we are, even when others don’t see us, and even when our actions on the outside are limited. And, part of who we are is a child of the mystery of Earth, one small part of the divine incarnate that The Holy Mother embodies for us. Perhaps this is the what she communicates to us when we ask for her help and she warmly extends her hand.
I return again to the Mother Mary Oracle, because the spirit of channeling guidance and remembrance, through written blessings and sacred art, feels in keeping with her nature. In one of the oracle card descriptions, written in the first person of her voice, it says: “There shall be no prison for your soul, beloved of mine. Your soul shall be in love with the earth and fly free.” May we always find our way home to this understanding and the freedom of heart it affords us. In whatever aspect she appears to us, in whatever face she shows us, may we see our most divine reflection and know it is not something far outside of ourselves. It is both outside and inside, part of what we are, and part of the enlivened earth that is our home and our body, aligned with the cosmos that surround.
If each of us created our own sacred image, using symbols and words to listen and record the message that the Holy Mother most wants us to receive, and keep close, what would this image reveal? Would you take this on as a holy task, a meditation, and an act of the inner freedom that can never wholly be violated? May this small practice of devotion become a bridge between who you are expected to be and who you are really, in the deepest sense.
In Reverence,
the eleventh house
-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez. You can learn more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com