Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12, 1531)

No doubt there are skeptics out there that wonder if it is even possible for Mary, the mother of Jesus, to appear to simple folk who live in countries where Roman Catholic beliefs are unshakable. I wonder, too.

Third apparition

Juan Diego returned immediately to Tepeyac and, encountering the Virgin Mary reported the bishop’s request for a sign; she condescended to provide one on the following day (December 11).

By Monday, December 11, however, Juan Diego’s uncle Juan Bernardino had fallen sick and Juan Diego was obliged to attend to him. In the very early hours of Tuesday, December 12, Juan Bernardino’s condition having deteriorated overnight, Juan Diego set out to Tlatelolco to get a priest to hear Juan Bernardino’s confession and minister to him on his death-bed.

Fourth apparition

In order to avoid being delayed by the Virgin and embarrassed at having failed to meet her on the Monday as agreed, Juan Diego chose another route around the hill, but the Virgin intercepted him and asked where he was going; Juan Diego explained what had happened and the Virgin gently chided him for not having had recourse to her. In the words which have become the most famous phrase of the Guadalupe event and are inscribed over the main entrance to the Basilica of Guadalupe, she asked: “¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?” (“Am I not here, I who am your mother?”). She assured him that Juan Bernardino had now recovered and she told him to climb the hill and collect flowers growing there. Obeying her, Juan Diego found an abundance of flowers unseasonably in bloom on the rocky outcrop where only cactus and scrub normally grew. Using his open mantle as a sack (with the ends still tied around his neck) he returned to the Virgin; she rearranged the flowers and told him to take them to the bishop. On gaining admission to the bishop in Mexico City later that day, Juan Diego opened his mantle, the flowers poured to the floor, and the bishop saw they had left on the mantle an imprint of the Virgin’s image which he immediately venerated.

Wikipedia

Just so we are on the same page, this apparition happened about 10 years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The priests and monks imported the ideas of the Virgin Mary from Spain.

The shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Guadalupe, Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain was the most important of the shrines to the Virgin Mary in the medieval Kingdom of Castile. It is one of the many dark- or black-skinned Madonnas in Spain and is revered in the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe, in the town of Guadalupe, from which numerous Spanish conquistadors stem.

The most popular etymology of the name “Guadalupe” is from the Arabic “Wadi” (river) and the Latin word “lupus” (wolf). Some find it unlikely that Arabic and Latin would be combined in this way, and suggest as an alternative the Arabic “Wadi-al-lub”, signifying a river with black stones in its bed.

Wikipedia

Ah, now we’re getting some place. Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary at a grotto containing water.

Up until 1858, Lourdes was a sleepy country town with a population of around 4,000 hosting an infantry garrison in the castle, a transit point to the waters at Barèges, Cauterets, Luz-Saint-Sauveur and Bagnères-de-Bigorre, and for mountaineers on their way to Gavarnie.

Then on 11 February 1858, the 14-year-old local girl Bernadette Soubirous claimed a beautiful lady appeared to her in the remote grotto of Massabielle. The lady later identified herself as the Immaculate Conception and the faithful believed her to be the Blessed Virgin Mary. She appeared 18 times, and by 1859 thousands of pilgrims were visiting Lourdes. A statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was erected at the site in 1864.

Wikipedia

But then, the sightings of the three children of the Blessed Virgin in Portugal in the early 20th century makes no special mention of water nearby, or does it?

Since the 18th century, Fátima has been associated with events related to Marian apparitions. The first supposed apparition dates back to the mid 18th century in Ortiga, now a quarter of Fátima, when, according to popular belief, the Virgin Mary appeared to a young, mute shepherdess and asked for one of her sheep, causing the girl to speak in response. This event supposedly incited the creation of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Ortiga in 1758, which, in 1801, prompted Pope Pius VII to grant an indulgence to all pilgrims visiting the Marian shrine.

Later in the early 20th century, a similar event took place in which three local children, Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, purportedly saw visions of a woman known as Our Lady of Fátima, since believed by the Catholic Church to be the Virgin Mary. On 13 May 1917, whilst guarding their families’ sheep in the Cova da Iria, the children first claimed to have seen an apparition of a “lady dressed in white” and shining with a bright light.

Wikipedia

I have previous written about Bernadette’s vision at Lourdes, and the children’s visions at Fatima.

Now let’s put these three sightings together.

What is interesting to me is how these three events dovetail with each other, without having a direct planetary link for all three. In fact, I would suggest that the Mexican and Portuguese events are more connected than the Lourdes sighting by Bernadette, The reason for this is perhaps that there was physical proof that others witnessed. The Mexico City North Node is (almost) exactly conjunct the Fatima Midheaven. That has to count for something, right?

This exercise was intended to see if Chris Bledsoe’s visitation by the Lady in White is also connected.

At first glance, I thought, “no.” But maybe I was being too hasty. There are links, but they seem to be more in line with the “Miracle of the Sun” event at Fatima. So, that raises the question:

Are these apparitions connected to Unidentified Flying Objects?

Hmm.