The Virgin of Guadalupe, the Feathered Serpent and the "hidden river" of history

On the day of the winter solstice of 1531, at thehe hill of Tepeyac, sacred to the goddess Coatlicue, the apparition of a "Lady" who will present herself simultaneously as the Virgin Mary and the Inninantzin huelneli (Mother of the Ancient God Quetzalcoatl) diverted the "hidden river" of History in a way that was unthinkable until a few years ago.


di Gianluca Marletta
originally published on the Author's blog
cover: Miguel Cabrera, "Altarpiece of the Virgin of Guadalupe with Saint John the Baptist, Fray Juan de Zumárraga and Juan Diego"

December 12th is the anniversary ofapparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe to the Aztec Indio Juan Diego: a story that, beyond the devotional aspect, seems to offer not only surprising scientific confirmation, but above all highlights an enigmatic story interwoven with symbols, omens, prophecies and signs which would seem to come out of a mythical tale. In the background, the fruitful but ruthless encounter-clash between the European world of the conquistadors and the archaic symbolic universe of the Aztecs.

The story we are about to tell could seem the plot of one of those "mysterious" novels that are so fashionable today: in fact, it tells of the mythical ruler of a legendary kingdom placed in the uncertain "Time of myth", of an enigmatic "god", of an apparently fulfilled prophecy, of an apparition and of a segno very concrete miraculous that still today would seem to grant itself to our eyes - in spite of all secularism and skepticism - and the names of places, people and "divinities" which, in themselves, would seem to hide mysterious omens.

The only difference between this story and those fictionalized in certain books is that here we are not in the middle of an invented plot, but in a true story: a mysterious story made up of signs and symbols that challenge our intelligence and also, for Christians, the faith we claim to confess; a story that, at the same time, is inextricably linked with the so-called "official" story, the one narrated in school books and of which scholars often believe they know the causes and dynamics so well.

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Between "black legends" and messianic expectations

The scenario of the story is that of the Conquest and Evangelization of the Americas, and in particular of that cultural and spiritual center of the New World which was, for centuries, Mexico. The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards is one of those events that still arouse violently conflicting opinions: on the one hand, in fact, starting with that anti-Catholic "Black Legend" born in Protestant England [1] and taken from the Enlightenment, it is claimed that the undertaking would have been, essentially, an infamous massacre; on the other hand, a certain traditionalist Catholic apologetics presents this event as a glorious adventure, a liberation of the natives themselves from the yoke of idolatry and the terrifying practice of human sacrifices, practiced on a very large scale especially by Aztecs. These unilateral positions, however, in addition to failing to do justice to historical truth, do not seem to be able to grasp, in their polemical and somewhat banal perspective, that truly "mysterious" aspect, in the proper and original sense of the term, that the story seems to possess.

The Conquest of what Mexico is today begins inyear of production 1519 - around the same time that, on the other side of the ocean, an obscure German monk named Martin Luther it was laying the foundations for the most dramatic division the Christian world has ever known. THE conquistadores, a few hundred adventurers who left Spain and neighboring Cuba, were led by a noble named Hernan Cortes: man animated by a deep chivalrous spirit and contagious courage, but also, if necessary, cynical and ruthless enough to embark on an apparently crazy adventure.

Various factors naturally contributed to the incredible success of Cortés and his people - who in three years conquered an Aztec empire that had more than 8 million inhabitants - in addition to the technological superiority given by steel weapons and cannons, it is demonstrated that numerous Indian peoples preferred to side with the Spaniards rather than remain under the power of the Aztecs, who used the subjected peoples as a "hunting ground" for the countless human sacrifices required by their bloody deities [2]. But there is more. The chroniclers of the time, in fact, testify how the Mexican world on the eve of the Conquest was traversed by an expectation that we could define as "messianic": an expectation largely connected to the prophecy of the return of the god-king Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl.

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In Aztec and Mesoamerican mythology, Quetzalcoatl is a divine figure of fundamental importance: his name, which can be translated as Feathered Snake [3], indicates the concept of union between heaven and earth, between spirit and matter, between human and divine. The only deity of the pre-Hispanic pantheon to not require human sacrifices, he was remembered by the natives for having given to men the calendar and the cultivation of corn. One of the legends about his birth tells of how the goddess coatlicue [4], personification of mother nature and the feminine aspect of Divinity, has conceived virginally the God thanks to a fragment of jade that would have impregnated her.

The myth of Quetzalcoatl, however, is confused - often to the point of overlapping - with that of a semi-historical character who bears the same name: the 10th king of the Toltecs [5], Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl, who would have lived towards the tenth century of our era (Ce Acatl, ie "1 canna" was the year of the king's birth, according to the pre-Hispanic calendar). The ancient ruler was remembered by the Aztecs as the protagonist of a real golden age: patron of the arts, benefactor of his people, religious reformer (would abolish human sacrifices, replacing them with offerings of tortillas corn), curiously described in some traditions as "fair skin" [6], Ce Acatl would have fallen out of favor in the eyes of the conservative priestly caste (represented in the myth by the underworld god tezcatlipoca ("Smoking Mirror"), which would have forced him to abandon the throne. Accused of having seduced a priestess, Quetzalcoatl would have fled and, according to some versions of the legend, would have embarked on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico near present-day Veracruz. but promising to return precisely in the year Ce Acatl corresponding to that of his birth. Now, being the Aztec calendar made up of 52-year cycles, the year Ce Acatl ended up falling back at the beginning of each cycle: thus, for example, the fateful date could fall in the year 1414, in 1467, but… also in 1519!

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Precisely on this last date, on that same Gulf coast from which the mythical king would have departed, came the Spaniards of Cortés: strange beings with "light skin" like the god-king, bearers of a new faith, that the Aztecs could not fail to mistake, at least initially, for their ruler who had returned from the eastern ocean ... On the other hand, it was the Mexicans themselves, uncertain about the identity of the newcomers they called teules [7], to fill with precious gifts and lead the future rulers to their capital, the fabulous one Tenochtitlan [8]. The coincidence between this prophecy and the date of Cortés's arrival, on the other hand, deeply affected not only the Aztecs, but the Spanish conquerors themselves, who immediately interpreted it as a "providential sign". However, this is only one of the enigmatic coincidences of this "hidden story" yet it is real that we are telling [and which we have also dealt with previously on our pages; cf. MACULOTTI: Secret history of the conquest of Peru: the prophetic dream of the Inca Viracocha and the coming of the Spaniards].

It didn't take long for the Aztecs to understand that newcomers they were not gods who came to bring back the golden age: the Conquest, in fact, was marked by brutal episodes, which was followed by an even more dramatic period, in which the indigenous universe entered a terrible crisis, not only due to the method of government of the new masters or imported diseases from Europe, but above all as a consequence of collapse of an entire worldview. An entire people, in fact, had lost, with defeat, too the sense of its existence in this world, without having had the time and the means to acquire the cultural models of the colonizers; and the consequences, as evidenced by the documents of the time, were dramatic beyond imaginable [9]. The same conversions to Christianity, in the early years, were very few, despite the presence in Mexico of men of great charity and noble mental openness such as the Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente: one of the first Europeans to address with unprecedented respect to it that was valid in the culture of the Indian peoples; proposing, among other things, a (perhaps) naive but significant identification between Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl, the "light-skinned king" enemy of human sacrifices, and the figure of the missionary apostle St. Thomas.


1531: the apparition of the Virgin and the mantle of the Tepeyac

The human efforts of the missionaries, however, failed initially great success, and for years the faith of Christ remained essentially the "religion of the victors", which had little attraction on the desperate masses of the children of the defeated. All this until the year 1531, when once again our history marries the mystery. Protagonist of the event that will lead to the enthusiastic adherence of the defeated to the Christian faith was a man of indigenous origin - one of the few converts - named Cuauhatlatoa (Talking Eagle), baptized with the name of Juan (Giovanni) Diego by analogy between his Aztec name and the symbol of the evangelist John, which is precisely an eagleIt was to this man that (another "sign"? [10]) had received in the name of the Beloved Disciple - the same one to which Jesus, from the cross, had entrusted Mother - that the extraordinary grace of being an instrument of a unique event, of a real one, was given theophany that would forever change the history of an entire continent.

The day of the winter solstice of 1531, in fact, it was Juan Diego's turn to pass through the hill of Tepeyac - near Mexico City - and attend theapparition of a very sweet "Lady" who will present herself at the same time as the Virgin Mary and the Inninantzin huelneli (Mother of the Ancient God) or also, as the most ancient traditions report, "Merciful Mother of yours and of all those who inhabit this land" [11]. At the behest of the divine Lady, Juan Diego communicated his apparition to Bishop Juan de Zumàrraga but, at the moment of opening his rough mantle of agave fiber, a figure of extraordinary beauty appeared representing the Lady of the apparition.

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This figure, known as the Our Lady of Guadalupe, it is still today one of the most fascinating and inexplicable relics of Christianity, second only to the Shroud in importance and in the number of scientific studies to which it has been subjected. And it is particularly significant, moreover, to note how the first "skeptics" to question the supernatural origin of the image of Tepeyac were precisely the members of that Hispanic clergy who arrived in Mexico with the aim of "evangelizing" the indigenous. As early as 1556, in fact, it was the provincial father of the Franciscans of Mexico, Francisco Bustamante, who was the first to deny the miraculous origin of the image, even stating that the alleged "painting" was the work of an indigenous painter named Marcos Cipac. This is, if we like, the initial act of a confrontation that will creepily oppose on the one hand, popular enthusiasm, convinced that the image of the little brunette [12] is a concrete proof of the theophany that has taken place; on the other, the rationalist culture of European origin, who will legitimately want to verify by every possible means the presumed "prodigious" origin of the sacred icon.

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The first "reconnaissance" on the Tilma took place in 1666; the same investigation will then be repeated in 1752 and 1785, when groups of scholars and painters tried to reproduce an image as faithful as possible to the original, noting the absolute impossibility of performing, on such a coarse fabric as that of agave , the very refined details present in the original. The thing that will most strike these early scholars, however, will be above all the degree of conservation of the secular Fill up, which already seemed to be since then ignore inexplicably the effects of the harsh hot-humid climate of Tepeyac. Suffice it to say that a copy of the Image, made by the painter Rafael Gutiérrez in 1782 always on agave canvas, and exhibited in the sanctuary of Tepeyac, will have to be removed only 11 years later because it is almost completely ruined by the combined action of humidity and of biological disintegrating agents. This incredible ability to "remain unharmed" to any offense - whether brought by nature or by man - will also remain a constant throughout the history of Fill up, which will have to endure, among other things, a bomb attack [13] and an accident caused by an involuntary drop of nitric acid on the fabric [14] by two careless workers.


Science does not solve the mystery - it amplifies it!

It is in the twentieth century, however, that thescientific investigation of Tilma seems to give the most surprising results. The first contemporary scientist to deal with the Image was, in 1936, Prof. Richard Kuhn - Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1938 - who, analyzing two colored threads taken from the Fill up - one yellow and one red - will have to ascertain the absolute absence of detectable artificial pigments. The most accurate investigation of the Guadalupe Image, however, remains that of the photographer and painting technician Philip Serna Callahan and Masters of Art of the University of Miami, prof. Jody Brant Smith, who in 1979 took dozens of infrared photos of the Tepeyac image, in an attempt to discover any artificial pigments. The results of this research will be surprising: because, with the exception of some peripheral parts of the Image (such as the wings and hair of the angel who is at the foot of the Lady, the golden rays surrounding her head, the image of the moon at the feet and other small details, due to questionable "aesthetic" interventions motivated perhaps by excesses of devotion), the origin of the figure would seem completely "inexplicable" and would not show traces of dyes known at the time. Furthermore, in the infrared photos, the details of the folds of the dress and the softness of the face emerge surprisingly, which are hardly visible to a naked eye reconnaissance or on normal photos: yet another revelation of what seems to be an inexhaustible mystery.

The most extraordinary of scientific discoveries linked to the investigation on the Guadalupan Image, however, would be the one made public in 1979 byPeruvian-born electronic engineer José Aste Tonsmann, of the American Cornell University, using the method of electronic processing by computer, based on the decomposition of a figure into luminous "points" and on the "translation" of the brightness of each point into the "binary code" of the computer - a method used, among other things, for the "deciphering" of the images sent to earth by space probes - managed to enlarge the irises of the Virgin's eyes up to 2500 times their original size, highlighting the extraordinary presence of "Human figures" that would appear inside the pupil of the Virgin, perfectly respecting the Purkinje laws on the optical refraction of images inside the cornea [15]. The scene discovered by Tonsmann, in reality, would almost seem to present itself as a "snapshot", like a photo" before its time reproducing, in all probability, the moment in which Juàn Diego showed the cloak to Bishop Juàn de Zumàrraga: in fact, in the order, the figure of a man with a beard and European features (the Bishop?), a man with European features markedly indigenous (Juàn Diego?) and other figures.

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The rebirth of the Indian spirit and the "hidden river" of history

If great is the astonishment that the mantle of Guadalupe he still knows how to transmit to scholars as well as to the simple faithful, much greater, however, he was the real "revolution" that this miraculous sign aroused in the dying soul of the Indian people. Other messages, in fact, other "signs" were contained in that poor agave fabric: signs that no computer can help decipher - and that even the Spaniards of the time ignored - but that burned themselves into the souls of the children of the defeated, transforming their destiny. These are signs that belong to theother story, the hidden and underground history that we are following, but which speak a language that is all too clear for those who, like the Indios, were used to living in a universe of symbols. First of all the place of the event. The hill of TepeyacIn fact, it was sacred from time immemorial to the goddess Coatlicue, the generous but terrible mother earth who for the peoples of Mesoamerica represented the sacred feminine in all its forms; the same goddess he was born from virginally the god Quetzalcoatl. The very name "Our Lady of Guadalupe", which indicated an image highly revered in medieval Spain, was perhaps chosen precisely because of its assonance with the name of the ancient Aztec Divine Mother. 

It is on the mantle itself, however, that the symbolic language it takes on an unparalleled meaning, precluded as we have said to the Spanish occupants, but well understood by a hieroglyphic civilization like that of the Aztecs: a "language of signs" like the one we are gradually discovering behind this whole affair. On the mantle of the LadyIn fact, a complex map of stars appears which, according to the most recent studies, represents precisely the appearance of the sky visible from Tepeyac during the Winter Solstice of 1531: appears there la constellation of Virgo in the foreground just at the height of the Virgin's hands. But the highest and at the same time clearer concept is expressed by a small hieroglyph, the Nahui Ollin, placed at the height of the belly: it is a small flower with four petals, which in the ancient pictographic writing designated the Center of the World or the most ancient Divinity: the meaning that an Indian could therefore perceive was, unequivocally, that of a Mother who ... is about to give birth the Divinity.

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The Cloak of Guadalupe is therefore a perfect example of "spiritual encounter" between two cultures so distant in the only way in which such an encounter is possible: the eternal plane of symbols. From this point of view, the Guadalupe event appears like the "mouth" of a long underground path which, reading the symbols, would seem to cross the heart of a culture, even though it is so different from ours, like a karst river. A non-human encounter but, if we believe in the event of Tepeyac, directly divine, in a historical era in which certain contemporary "ecumenism" was far to come and patristic reflections on the "Seeds of the Word" were too distant in the past. . A hidden yet real story that perhaps, as a last "sign", even the name "Guadalupe" seems to want to seal: a name of ancient Arabic origin, like many in the topography of the Iberian Peninsula, but with a very evocative meaning: "Hidden River".

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Note:

[1] It is paradoxical that this "black legend" was born in that Anglo-Saxon world which, at the same time, exterminated the Irish and cleaned up with puritan determination North America from the native "pagan" populations.
[2] Human sacrifice was justified among all Mesoamerican peoples as a "reparation" or "penance" (nextlahualli), in memory of the "Primordial Sacrifice" through which the gods had given life to the universe. Among the Aztecs, however, this practice reached truly unprecedented dimensions: it has been calculated that from 5.000 to 20.000 human victims were sacrificed every year and each deity required a different torture (eradication of the heart, flaying, drowning, burning, etc.).
[3] Literally the Serpent (coatl) Quetzal. The Quetzal is a wonderful bird of the forest whose green feathers were often used to make beautiful clothes intended mainly for the Sovereigns.
[4] The Dea coatlicue, literally Skirt of Snakes (snakes here symbolize the primordial forces of nature), did not lack, like all Aztec deities, a terrifying aspect: the images of the goddess depicted her with a belt of severed human hands (something analogous to the goddess Time of the Hindus).

[5] The Toltecs were a population that had preceded the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico: the apogee of their reign should fall towards the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. A.D
[6] This particular of the "light skin" attributed to King Quetzalcoatl in the legends has given rise to a jumble of interpretations - from the most interesting and plausible, to the most fantastic. There are those who from time to time have seen, in this character, an Irish monk who arrived in Mexico before the year 1000, a Scandinavian priest, a Templar knight or even, as the first Franciscan missionaries imagined, an apostle of Jesus (in particular St. Thomas). The mystery remains, also because the legend of the "white gods who came from afar" is also present in other pre-Colombian cultures, such as the Maya, the Incas, etc. Regarding this conundrum in the Andean tradition, see MACULOTTI: Viracocha and the myths of the origins: creation of the world, anthropogenesis, foundation myths, on AXIS mundi.
[7] According to Bernal Diaz del Castìllo, soldier of Cortés and author of the most complete chronicle of the Conquest, this was the name that the Mexica (i.e. the Aztecs) attributed to the Spaniards (evident correction of the Nahuatl term theotl, which means divinity).
[8] On whose ruins Mexico City was built.
[9] "Many Indians hanged themselves, others let themselves die of hunger, others poisoned themselves with herbs, some mothers killed their children" (quoted in V. Elizondo, Guadalupe, mother of the new creation, Assisi 2000, p. 55).
[10] As a curiosity, we recall that the most ancient sources tell that the city of origin of Juàn Diego was Cuauhtitlàn, known in the Aztec world as the seat of the warriors of the Order of the Eagle (cf. AF Castanares, Vida del Blessed Juan Diegoin  Historica, n ° 2, June 1991).
[11] Cit. in AA.VV., Our Lady of Guadalupe. Gift of God or a painting of a man?, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2000, p. 2.
[12] It is the affectionate name with which the image of Guadalupe is known throughout Latin America: the nickname is due to the "mestizo" color of the Virgin, who has mixed European-indigenous racial traits.
[13] In 1921, during the ferocious persecution against Catholics in Mexico, the image was made the subject of a bomb attack from which it remained unharmed because a large metal crucifix "absorbed" the shock wave of the explosion.
[14] In 1836, during a cleaning of the case, some workers inadvertently poured nitric acid on the fabric: also in this case, the centuries-old and very fragile mantle, instead of fraying, remained unharmed.
[15] The text richest in information on this extraordinary discovery, among those translated into Italian, is certainly: C. Perfetti, Guadalupe. The tilma of the Morenita (Mexico 1931), and. it. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan) 1988.


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