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Mary, Queen of Heaven – or goddess? – appears to kids

During the dark days of the First World War, an event happened in a Portuguese village that has profoundly affected the Roman Catholic Church ever since.

According to Catholic tradition over nearly the last century, the Blessed Virgin Mary (‘the Mother of God’), appeared six times to three shepherd children ('the Three Seers') above a holmoak tree in a chickpea field near the town of Fatima, Portugal. These apparitions commenced on this day and continued until October 13, 1917.

Mary told the children that she had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman and child. She promised that prayers to her would result in the advent of peace in the world. She also gave them secrets that are still carefully guarded by the Vatican. Consequently, something akin to a cult of Fatima has existed within the Catholic Church.

Strangely, the Virgin/goddess instructed the children that they should suffer for sin. An issue of the Catholic newspaper, The Wanderer, stated that after the vision, there "began a gradual transformation of the little shepherds into spiritual victims of reparation for sin."

It is said that the children viewed their suffering as contributing to the conversion of sinners. While in great pain, on of the girls, Jacinta, would pray, "O my Jesus you can convert many sinners now, because this sacrifice is very big".

Mary told two of the children that they would soon "go to heaven" but that the third would live long. This indeed happened as the two youngest died in the great global influenza epidemic that swept the world after World War One, and the other lived as a cloistered nun in a Portuguese convent.

The shrine of Our Lady of The Rosary at Fatima is one of the most significant places of pilgrimages of any religion, anywhere in the world. On May 13, 2000, Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to the shrine. His purpose in going was to thank the Virgin Mary again for sparing his life when a would-be assassin wounded him May 13, 1981.

Fatima is also the name of an ancient Arabian goddess and she is identified also as the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed. She is known as Zahra, the radiant one, as well as Batul, meaning virgin. She is queen of humanity, is compared to Mary and is called Maryam. A major all-female feast, sofreh hazrat i zahra, is still very popular with Muslim women; these sofreh (dining cloth) feasts, mainly celebrated in Iran, have their origins in the ancient Zoroastrian religion that began in Iran c.55 BCE.

Fatima is thus a popular girl’s name amongst Muslims and Catholics especially. Variants of Mary, such as Maryam and Miriam are also very popular Muslim names.

Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad that he created the universe for him and because of him. He later told him that Muhammad himself was created because of Ali and at the end proclaimed that both and all was created because of Fatima (Hadith Ghodsi).

"On August 13th, the pre-Christian feast of the Mother Goddess Diana, or Vesta, was once celebrated with cider. Another name of this Goddess was Nemesis, from the Greek nemos or ‘grove,’ which in Classical Greek connotes divine vengeance. Nemesis carries a wheel in her other hand, to show that she is the goddess of the turning year, like Egyptian Isis and Latin Fortuna, but this has been generally understood as meaning that the wheel will one day come full circle to exact vengeance.

"This feast was converted in the middle Ages into that of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin [ie, her raising up to heaven, August 15]. Since the Virgin was closely associated by the early Church with Wisdom – with the Saint Sophia or Holy Wisdom, of the Cathedral Church at Constantinople – the choice of this feast for the passing of Wisdom into Immortality was a happy one."
Excerpted, with minor edits, from Robert Graves, The White Goddess, 1948 Ch. 4 Source