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From Mexico comes a quaint story involving a goddess and the Roman Catholic Church’s holiest woman, Mary, mother of Jesus.

On December 9, 1531, a 57-year-old Mexican Indian farmer by the name of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, an Aztec who had converted to Christianity, was minding his own business as he walked to early morning Mass, passing by the hill known as Tepeyac, between his village and Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). 

Juan Diego was born in 1474 in the calpulli or ward of Tlayacac in Cuauhtitlan, which was established in 1168 by Nahua tribesmen and conquered by the Aztec lord Axayacatl in 1467, and was located 20 kilometres (14 miles) north of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Tlatelolco, Juan Diego's village, was once an Aztec centre and the place where the final battle of the Spanish conquest had taken place just a decade earlier.

Tepeyac had for centuries been of significance to the people of what is now called Mexico – the Aztecs and their descendants – because it was the site of a shrine to the goddess Tonantzin.

Tonantzin (pictured above left), associated with the snake goddess Coatlique (perhaps cognate with the Judaeo-Christian Eve), was worshipped in the Winter Solstice celebrations at around this time of year. Tonantzin wore a white robe covered in feathers and seashells, which adorned her as the goddess promenaded among the worshippers and was ceremonially killed in a scene reminiscent of the apparent death of the sun of winter. The goddess was also known by the name of Ilamatecuhtli (‘a noble old woman’) and Cozcamiauh (‘a necklace of maize flowers’).

It has been suggested that the name 'Guadalupe' is actually a corruption of a Nahuatl name, 'Coatlaxopeuh', which has been translated as 'Who Crushes the Serpent'. In this interpretation, the serpent is Quetzalcoatl, one of the chief Aztec gods, whom 'the Virgin Mary' crushed by inspiring the conversion of the natives to Catholicism.

As Juan Diego walked to Mass (some sources say he was walking to the shrine of the goddess), he heard celestial music and the sound of beating wings. Presently, a maiden appeared to him, dressed in the attire of an Aztec princess, a lovely apparition who, speaking to him in his native Nahuatl language, introduced herself to the startled peasant as Maria, the Mother of God.

Maria instructed the dazzled Juan to tell the Bishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga, to build her a chapel on the site. Juan did as he was bade, and quite naturally his message impressed the Bishop not at all. His Grace just as naturally demanded evidence of Juan’s fantastic story, and sent the Aztec on his way.

Shortly after, the farmer returned to the sight of the visitation of the Virgin, who reappeared and told Juan to climb the hill and gather an armful of Castilian roses (although December is not the season of their blooming) and to take them in his tilma, or cape, to the doubting de Zumarraga.

When Juan opened his cloak before the Bishop and out tumbled the ‘miraculous’ roses, His Grace fell astonished to his knees. Not only did the out-of-season flowers amaze the Bishop, but there on Juan’s cloak was an image of the Blessed Virgin just as the farmer had said she had appeared to him, with cinnamon-coloured skin, dressed in traditional Mexican clothes, and surrounded by an oval frame of stars.

A church was built in 1533, on the location of the shrine of Tonantzin, and dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been used by advocates of indigenous rights throughout Mexico's history, most recently by the Zapatista movement.

Expropriation of heathen shrines

In many places worldwide, from time immemorial, it has not been uncommon for one religion to supplant, by force or moral authority, a former religion in a certain place. Very often, as in post-pagan Europe, sacred sites and the shrines built on them in prehistoric times have been converted from ‘heathen’ places of worship to Christian churches. A well-known example is the Catholic church by a ‘healing’ grotto at Lourdes, France, the former site of a shrine to the pagan goddess Persephone, where, in 1858, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary.  

Just what it is about these places – a visual beauty, an attractive fragrance or ambience, healing waters, perhaps even a sacred energy – that leads a succession of differently believing people over aeons to consider a place holy, is one of the most captivating mysteries of our planet.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is affectionately known as La Morenita, ‘the little dark one’, and she is revered by millions of Catholics in Mexico to this day. Particularly in that country, there are celebrations this week to commemorate the Blessed Virgin and Juan Diego’s vision. These days, Juan’s tilma with the image on it hangs in the basilica built on the spot, as ordered by the convinced Bishop de Zumárraga. The image of the Virgen de Guadalupe remains clearly imprinted on the miraculous cloak without visible signs of deterioration. Or, so it is said.

Footnote: Was Juan Diego a real person?

Sceptics, however, including some Catholics, have doubted the very existence of Juan Diego. The earliest written reference to him dates from 1648, in a publication by a Mexico City priest about Our Lady of Guadalupe. A 1649 publication in Nahuatl followed, referring to earlier Nahuatl sources that have not been found. Regardless of this, he is now Saint Juan Diego as he was canonised in the Catholic Church on July 31, 2002.

When the Vatican came to canonize Juan Diego, their investigation reportedly revealed that the lowly farmer had been an Aztec prince, the son of a king of Texcoco, who helped Cortés defeat the Aztecs.

It’s been suggested Juan Diego was known as Tlacateccatl (he who commands the warriors), an honorific given to generals commanding a division of 8,000 soldiers. If he were a royal this fact might account for the fact that the Spanish Catholics in Mexico baptised large numbers of Indians after this 1531 apparition.

It is said that Juan Diego died on May 30, 1548 of natural causes.

Abbot renounces cloth

“As early as 1556, when a formal investigation of the cloth was held, one Franciscan testified that the image had been ‘painted yesteryear by an Indian.’ Another priest testified that the picture ‘was a painting that the Indian painter Marcos had done’ (a probable reference to the Aztec painter Marcos Cipac). (For a discussion see Skeptical Inquirer Spring 1985, pp. 243-255.) 

“In 1996 the abbot of the basilica of Guadalupe (where the image is enshrined) created a furor by conceding that the whole story was a myth. He said that Juan Diego was fictitious, ‘a symbol, not a reality.’ Subsequently, the Roman Catholic Church announced his departure as head of the basilica but gave no explanation. (See Skeptical Inquirer, January/February 1997, p. 9.)”   Source

The timeline

December 9, 1531 (Saturday). Early in the morning, Juan Diego hears beautiful music and a woman’s voice calling him to the top of Tepeyac Hill which he is just passing; he sees a radiantly beautiful woman, who reveals that she is the Virgin Mary and instructs him to go to the bishop and tell him that a temple should be built in her honour at the bottom of the hill.

Juan Diego goes immediately to Tlatelolco to the palace of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga who receives him kindly but, for the moment, is reluctant to believe Juan Diego’s story. Discouraged, Juan Diego goes back to the top of Tepeyac Hill and admits his failure to the Virgin. The Lady directs him to go back to the bishop and repeat the request.

December 10, 1531 (Sunday). Juan Diego returns to the bishop’s palace to try again. The bishop asks many questions and tells Juan Diego that he needs some sign to believe that it is really the heavenly Lady who has sent him. Juan Diego tells the Virgin of the bishop’s request, and she promises to fulfil it the next day when he returns to Tepeyac Hill.

December 11, 1531 (Monday). Juan Diego fails to keep his appointment with the Lady because his uncle has become gravely ill and Juan must spend the day looking for someone with medical skills. He fails to find anyone and tells his dying uncle that he will go to Tlatelolco the next morning and bring a priest who would hear his confession and prepare him for death.

December 12, 1531 (Tuesday). At a very early hour, Juan Diego is rushing toward Tlatelolco to find a priest for his dying uncle. Being busy, he tries to avoid her but comes down the hill to meet him and listens to his excuse for not keeping his appointment. She tells him: “Your uncle will not die of this sickness; be assured that he is healthy.” (That morning, the Lady also appears to his uncle and cures him.) Juan Diego is greatly relieved. Then the Lady tells him to go to the top of the hill and gather the flowers he finds there. He does as she says and discovers a miraculous garden of roses. He gathers them and takes them to the Lady who arranges them in his mantle and instructs him to take them to the bishop as the sign he had requested.

When Juan Diego finally arrives before the bishop, he opens his mantle and lets the roses fall to the floor. But then comes the greatest sign of all: A beautiful portrait of the Lady appears on the coarse fabric of the Indian’s mantle. The bishop and his whole household are filled with amazement. And before long a temple is built in Mary’s honour.

Source (adapted)

The celebrations

Feast day of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin is December 9   
Beatified Apri1 9, 1990 by Pope John Paul II at Vatican City; confirmed and ceremony held on May 6, 1990 at Mexico City, Mexico.    More

Feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is December 12  
Ten million visitors a year come to see Juan Diego's mantle with the Virgin's image.
Other apparitions of Mary   More

The Virgen de los Remedios

Feast day September 6

Virgin of the Remedies (Fiesta of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios), Mexico
Our Lady of Health, or La Purisima

Long before the Puritans settled in the New World and brought with them the form of Protestantism that still profoundly influences American culture, the Roman Catholic Church believed that the Americas were meant to be, and would become, Catholic.

Most Rev. Richard J Cushing, DD, LL D, Archbishop of Boston, writes of the patronage of the Virgin Mary over America:

“The first official proclamation of it was made in 1643 by the King of Spain … but her patronage was implicit in the bull of Alexander VI in which, in 1493, he ordered the Spanish Crown in virtue of holy obedience to send to the newly discovered lands learned, God-fearing, experienced and skilled missionaries to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith and imbue them with good morals. The Holy See endorsed Spain's claim to the whole western hemisphere with the exception of Brazil under these conditions …”   Source

Conquistadors such as Hernán Fernando Cortés and the Catholic missionaries who followed, appear to have innately believed that the indigenous people of America were to be subdued, converted and plundered. Archbishop Cushing describes the indigenous people of the region of Michoacan  west of what we now call Mexico City, thus:

“The Indians of Michoacan, the Tarascans, were nomadic and impatient of all restraint.”

After the small but devastating army of Cortés had seized and killed the local nobles of Cholula, Mexico, set fire to the city, and killed an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 of the inhabitants, and before destroying almost the entire city of Tenochtitlan and killing some 120,000 to 240,000 Aztecs there, they experienced ‘the sad night’.

Cortés and his men pillaged the great 40-acre Aztec temple to the great feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, and placed a doll-sized wooden statuette of the Virgin Mary on the altar. Naturally enraged, on the night of July 1, 1520 the Aztecs, drove Cortés and his men from the town, and this night was henceforth called by the conquistadores ‘La Noche Triste’, The Sad Night. The conquistadors attributed their good fortune in escaping to this little Vergin de los remedios.   Read more about La Noche Triste

Madonna and the cactus

The statuette (which some reported seeing actually taking up arms against the conquered race), disappeared for twenty years, until, Anneli Rufus tells us in The World Holiday Book, the Virgin Mary herself appeared to an old Indian and told him where the Madonna image could be found. Another source tells us that it was found by an Otom' Indian chief called Juan Ce Cuautli ( One Eagle) under a maguey (cactus) plant*:

“The story goes that when Juan Ce Cuautli (was going to the town of Tacuba he saw a lady who came towards him and recognized her as the one who fought along the Spanish on the Sad Night. She asked him insistently to look for her the following day in the same place, but he did not pay attention and just told the Franciscans. Friars about his encounter but soon after that, he fell from a pillar and was near dead and again he saw the lady coming towards him and gave him a belt of St Augustin an then he decided to pay attention to his protectress and went to the place she asked. Under the maguey plant he found the lost image, in which he at the moment recognized the lady of the apparitions. Immediately he covered her with his cloak ‘so that they wouldn’t see her or envy him’ and took her to his altar in his house. Never the less the Lady went back again and again under the maguey in spite of Juan’s offerings, praying and supplications. He came to the extreme of locking her up in a box with a key and putting her under his bed. But everything was useless, the image went back to her refuge in the wilderness. Our chief finished giving up and one day when he was very ill, he went to Tepeyac to beg to the Guadalupe and asked her for health. She started laughing and said ‘Why do you come to my house when having me in yours you threw me out of it?’ After that, the dark virgin gave him precise order of how to build the hermit dedicated to Mary of the Remedies, who seeing her wishes properly fulfilled, came to set herself by her own will on the altar.”
Alberro 1997 ‘Remedios y Guadalupe. De la unión a la discordia’ in Manifestaciones religiosas en el mundo colonial americano. INAH Condumex. UIA. México pp315-330

He did find the Vergin, and a sanctuary was built on the spot. Loved by the Spaniard invaders, she was named la Conquistadora. Her shrine is in the diocese of Michoacan, to the west of Mexico City and was erected by the first bishop, the famous Vasco de Quiroga, described by Archbishop Cushing as “one of the geniuses of all time in the humane introduction of civilization among primitive peoples”.

On September 6, thousands make an annual pilgrimage to San Bartolo Naucalpan, enjoying fireworks, dances, food stalls and many elaborate church rituals.  

“She is especially venerated at the shrine of Our Lady of Remedies at the church of San Bartolo Naucalpan. Her special feast is from Sept. 1 - Sept. 8 (the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary). Thousands of pilgrims come by plane, car, animal cart and foot to spend the eight days. Indian families jam the city, living outdoors near the church. Everyone makes time to visit the authentic image of Our Lady of Remedies, kept in a glass-covered niche on the high altar.

“The presence of so many Indians, the importance of maguey cactus symbolism (which links this Virgin to the Aztec mother goddess), the concheros, and other factors, led Victor Turner to remark that while the Virgin of Guadalupe, the indigenous Mexican Virgin, has become internationalized, the Virgin of Remedies, once the symbol of Spain, has become "more indigenous, more creolized, more indianized.”   Source

The Catholic Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, has a similar tradition regarding the important role of a Conquistadora/Madonna statuette in the conversion and subjugation of local peoples.

Diane Stein (The Goddess Book of Days, Llewellyn Publications, St Paul Minnesota, USA, 1989), who must be taken with a grain of salt, says she is a cognate of Yemaya, Isis, Kwan Yin, Chalchiuhtlique: “A day of Tonantzin … The sixth day of the September moon belongs to Artemis, Erzulie and the Mothers.”

* Note: There does appear to be overlapping of the Guadalupe and Remedios legends. Also, note that Tenochtitlán was the place where the nochtli cactus, the nopal cactus, grew, where the Mexica found the sign promised them by Huitzilopochtli: an eagle on the cactus in the middle of the lake. Huitzilopochtli was the Chief god of Tenochtitlán; God of War and of the Sun; more at The Fall of Moctezuma (at Wilson’s Almanac Scriptorium). – PW

“Mary Lee Nolan, a leading scholar of European pilgrimage has noted that more than 10% of the European shrines where Black Virgins are venerated are known to have been centers of worship in pre-Christian times. Echoing this fact, other scholars see in Black Virgin veneration a continuation of pre-Christian worship of such pagan goddesses as Isis, Diana of Ephesus, Artemis, Cybele, and the Celtic deity Hecate (it is interesting to note in this regard that the great Egyptian goddess, Isis, is often shown as a nursing mother with the infant Horus god at her breast; in this image lies the origins of the Madonna and Child image). Lending still more support to the pre-Christian origin of the Black Madonnas, Begg writes that ‘Again and again in the stories of the Black Virgin, a statue is found in a forest or a bush, or discovered when ploughing animals refuse to pass a certain spot. The statue is taken to the parish church, only to return miraculously by night to her own place, where a chapel is then built in her honor. Almost invariably her cult is associated with natural phenomena, especially healing waters or striking geographical features. The Romans had taken over and adapted many of the sacred sites of the Celtic world, which the Christians were later, in their turn, to sanctify, but the spirit of the place remains Celtic, and still whispers something of its origins through the cult associated with it.’

“It is evident from a serious study of these matters that the patriarchal Roman church in its effort to exterminate the ancient and immensely popular goddess cults had only succeeded in driving them underground. In contemporary Europe the veneration of the feminine principle and her sacred sites is once again gaining power. As Begg interprets it, ‘The return of the Black Virgin to the forefront of collective consciousness has coincided with the profound psychological need to reconcile sexuality and religion.’”  Source

             

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Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

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Sacred wells, springs and grottoes

Madonna, Jesus, Virgin Birth, Crucifixion in other old religions

Greed, gold and God Part 1: The Aztecs and Cortés

Aztec religion and the festival system

Books on Cortés and Aztecs

The Sad Night, the Story of an Aztec Victory and a Spanish Loss, by Sally Schofer Mathews

Goddess theme, one of many in our Planet Directory

Monagahan, Patricia, The Book of Goddesses and Heroines, Llewellyn 1990

Waverly Fitzgerald’s article at School of the Seasons

Goddess Myth Projects

The Virgin of Guadalupe: Tonantzin or Mary?

Get your Virgin of Guadelupe lamp

Or, sir and madam might prefer a pillow

‘Mysterious images’ inside the eye of the Virgin of Guadalupe

Lourdes apparitions of Mary

St Brendan's amazing voyage

About Lammas/Lughnasadh