Sightings and Apparitions of
The Virgin Mary
Guadalupe Mexico 1531
Revelations 1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.
The Mysterious Eyes of The Lady
At Tepeyac hill, near Mexico city, which was formerly the site of a Aztec temple .In pre-Hispanic times, the hill had once been the site of a temple dedicated to an Earth and fertility goddess called Tonantzin ["Our Lady" in the native dialect]. She was called the Mother of the Gods. Mother Goddess of earth and corn celebrated at the time of winter solstice. Her most sacred shrine was located on This hill.
Following the conquest by Cortez in 1521, the shrine was demolished, and the native people were forbidden to make pilgrimages to the site. Such practices were considered by the Christians to be pagan devil worship.
Juan Diego, was a recently baptized convert, aged 57, when The apparition allegedly appeared to him in 1531 . On his way to Mass on 9 December, {the feast of the Immaculate Conception at the time}, he saw an apparition of a beautiful young girl surrounded by light. She told him of her love for the people of Mexico, and asked that the local Bishop, build a temple or church on that spot. She spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl a native language of the Mayans
Juan Diego presented himself before the Bishop and relayed the apparitions request.
He was initially rebuffed by the bishop, who said he would need a sign in order to comply.
On her next meeting with Juan
Diego, the apparition promised a sign that would convince the bishop, but when
he returned to his village he found that his uncle, who he lived with, was
dying, and in need of the last sacraments. He met the apparition again on his
way back to Mexico city to fetch a priest, and she told him that he was free to
visit the Bishop, because his uncle was uncle was no longer ill.
The apparition asked Juan Diego to gather some out of season, flowers, which he
would find on the hilltop and carry them in his tilma {rough cactus fiber outer
garment}, to the Bishop. She strictly ordered him not to show the contents of
the tilma to anyone on the way. While unfolding the tilma, as the Bishop, saw
the Image of "Our Lady of Guadalupe" on it. This, rather than the flowers, was
the real sign for Bishop Zumárraga.
News spread and the result was that the Aztecs, who were reluctant to become
involved in Christianity, as the religion of their conquerors, the Spanish,
flocked into the Church.
When the apparition appeared, she described herself as the Mother of the True
God, of the one who created heaven and earth - a description that also applied
to the Indians' Lord god Omecihuatl.
The place where the church was built was sacred to the Aztec Goddess, Tonantzin,
who may be the true form of Guadalupe. The Church often built on sacred
Indigenous ground { Some say for the sake of having Indigenous peoples worship
the the Christian gods}Over time, this helped to allow for conversation. She
referred to herself as the Mother. Tonantzin was also the Mother, and was
associated with the moon
Science Sees What Mary Saw From Juan Diego's Tilma
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..Image in the Eye of The Lady...... In 1929, the official photographer of the old Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, found what appeared to be a clear image of a bearded man reflected in the right eye of the Virgin. . After many inspections of many of his black and white photographs he had no doubts and decided to inform the authorities of the Basilica. He was told that time to keep complete silence about the discovery, which he did. More than 20 years later, on May 29, 1951, Jose Carlos Salinas Chavez, examining a good photograph of the face, rediscovered the image of what appears to be a bearded man reflected in the eyes of the Virgin. In 1979, A Ph D, graduate from Cornell University was working in IBM and scanned at very high resolutions a very good photograph, taken from the original, of the face on the tilma. After filtering and processing the digitized images of the eyes to eliminate "noise" and enhance them, he made some astonishing discoveries: not only the "human bust" was clearly present in both eyes, but another human figures were seen as reflected in the eyes too.
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The Image on the tilma {rough cactus fiber outer
garment} has been preserved in Mexico now for over four and half
centuries, although such fiber garments usually disintegrate within
twenty years.
The tilma is 450 years old, and has been on public display daily
continuously.
Two fibers of the tilma were lent to a Professor Chiment for testing.
These fibers were removed from the outer edge of the tilma when it was
stored during the Mexican Revolution. Testing showed that the fibers did
not come from native cactus plants, cotton, wool, or linen, The tilma
seems to be woven from hemp, a plant native to Mexico. Hemp is one of
the strongest fibers known, and hempen cloth can last hundreds of years.
This could explain the tilma's remarkable state of preservation.
The Professor expressed hope that additional testing would be permitted.
He recommends an examination using neutron-activation analysis and x-ray
fluorescence.
It has defied all attempts to give it a natural explanation and thus we
can have full confidence in the historicity of accounts of Our Lady of
Guadalupe.
In the image of Guadalupe, why is she standing on the moon?
Book of the Apocalypse, Chapter 12, verses 1, 3 and 4. These verses
refer to a woman clothed in the sun with the moon under her feet doing
battle with the dragon, the devil, who sweeps one third of the stars
from heaven with its tail.
http://www.unitypublishing.com/Apparitions/BrianE.html
Notes
Aztecs received a prophecy in the 1400s. The daughter of the king has
had a dream that men in ships will come from beyond the sea to teach the
people the Truth about God. The sign that the men and their ships are
from the God according to her Dream is that they will use a Cross as
their symbol.
On one of his journeys, Christopher Columbus is shipwrecked and nearly
drowns. Praying for Mary’s intercession, he is washed ashore on an
island. He names it Guadalupe (“Guadeloupe” on our maps today because it
became a French territory) in honor of the shrine dedicated to Mary in
Spain.
Mary began appearing to Juan Diego on December 9th, the original date
that the Byzantine Church first began celebrating Her Immaculate Conception in the 8th century.
Guadalupe in the native Language of the time translates to the One who
crushes the serpent!
