Tamales and Baby Jesus

I am a new godmother!!!

Okay friends, here is a contradiction for you.

I consider myself a witch, a devotee of the earth, in service to the Divine Mother in all her manifestations, a wild animist, and an energetic shamanic practicioner. (But I don’t call myself a shaman. I’ll tell you why in another post.)

Yesterday was Imbolc, the cross-quarter day Celtic shamanic traditions celebrate that is the mid-way point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.

Yesterday I became a godmother to Baby Jesus.

Weird, right?

But here we are.

I’m currently in Teotihuacan, Mexico doing a private retreat with a friend. Yesterday my friend Emily said: I’m going to the market tomorrow to buy new clothes for Baby Jesus for Candelaria, do you want to come? It is quite a scene. You’ll love it.

So of course I had to go see what it was all about.

Here is a bit of the backstory: Emily came with me to Teotihuacan on a journey almost 20 years ago. She fell in love with the culture, the energy, and my friend Alberto’s son, Victor, and basically never left. If you’ve followed me you know that Emily is an incredible artist, and a deeply devoted to the Divine Mother in all her forms, especially Guadalupe. I could share so much about my relationship with Emily over the years, and our love and support for each other.

But we are going to kinda jump in the middle of things: I’m now family, as a madrina to her newest Baby Jesus.

Why Baby Jesus? That is a very, very good question.

I’m sharing an article that Emily sent me about this time of year in Mexico: Candlemas, and how it connects to tamales, Baby Jesus, La Virgin de Candelaria, and a Black Madonna found on the shores of the Canary Islands in 1392.

It is a beautiful, wild weaving of how older traditions are syncretized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

When we went to the market, I told Emily: I want to gift you a brown-skinned, brown-eyed Baby Jesus. So now we have three Niño Dioses in the family: two light-skinned, blue eyed plaster, and one brown-skinned, brown-eyed new addition. Which I’m the godmama to.

Later today I’ll be going with Emily and Victor to mass carrying my new ahijado. It may look like we are dressing up dolls and going to church, but that is only the surface. What I know is this: what we are actually doing is weaving our relationship more tightly together, committing to each other to help birth new dreams and nurture each other’s growth. We are participating in a much older ceremony, which invites in the rain to bless the coming crop. And we are witchy wild ones in Mexico joining the local community to honor the turning of the seasons as we move closer towards spring.

How can we all tenderly nurture each others dreams, and birth a new way of being; one that doesn’t negate other people’s traditions (and also doesn’t ignore the historical harm brought on my those traditions) but syncretizes the old into something more compassionate, loving, and connected to the mama earth.

Blessed Imbolc, everyone.

Seeking Mary in the Rhythms of the Earth at Candlemas 

by Emily K. Grieves

Originally written 2017 for the Red Madonna Sisters, a community of Shiloh Sophia
Follow Emily at https://www.instagram.com/emilykgrieves

The seeking begins in earnest now as we set out upon the Sacred Path. When I decided to take on the massive subject of Seeking Mary, learning about Mary, Marian apparitions and devotional practices around the world, I started to think that maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew. Where would I start? The subject is huge. It is my Holy Grail, in a sense – Mary is a sacred vessel for which I am eternally searching. I could spend years just studying the Bible and related literature about the original historical Mary. Forget about all the hundreds of variations of Mary as adored in churches around the globe! My instinct always tells me to begin where I am, at home, with what is closest to me. Since I already delved deeply and extensively into the Virgin of Guadalupe last year, I wondered where to go first this year. I looked at the calendar, and of course the natural rhythm of the Earth gave me my answer. 

February 2 marks a Cross Quarter Day in the season’s cycles, falling exactly between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere.

These days were observed in the ancient world, in a world of Earth-based spirituality, as important days energetically, marking subtle shifts in the light and the land. Solstices, equinoxes, and Cross Quarter days were all significant in the Earth’s natural circle of birth to growth to flowering to fruit to harvest to death to dormancy and back to rebirth. Cross Quarter Days were when the veils were thin, and communication with spirits living in other worlds was possible, and when acts of magic had particular potency. As Christianity spread across Europe, the church incorporated many of these days into its own calendar, largely as an effort to convert people to the new religion by laying a new holiday over a holiday already being celebrated. February 2 (actually beginning at sundown on the 1st) marked what was called Imbolc (meaning “in the Belly”) or Eumelc (meaning “Ewe’s Milk”) in Celtic Earth-based spirituality, both references to the fact that farm animals were pregnant with their milk coming in, ready to give birth in the Spring. 

Cosmologically, these events reference a bigger event on the horizon. Within the dead of winter, beneath the frozen ground, the seeds lie dormant and incubating. Halfway through this cold season, the sun’s pale rays begin to shift and lengthen across the barren snow-covered fields, heralding the return of the light. What appears dead holds a promise of new life within it. The Earth teaches us about our own psyche and spirit through its eternal cycling through the seasons of shadow and light. This cross quarter day was considered a time for spring cleaning, purification, and initiation. Imbolc was also dedicated to Brigid, the goddess of springtime and of fire. Because of the day’s relationship with the return of the light, the blessing and lighting of candles and fires were an important part of traditional Imbolc rituals, calling in the warmth of the sun and purifying oneself for the beginning of a new cycle. 

The Church logically adopted the February 2 date for the consecration of its own candles used in mass during the year and the holy day became known as Candle Mass, shortened to Candlemas. The Church also deemed February 2nd to be the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, as the date coincides (whether historically or because the Church found it convenient to make the date coincide with the already-celebrated Imbolc Cross Quarter Holy Day) with the end of the Virgin Mary’s post-partum quarantine, 40 days of ritual restrictions imposed upon or observed by women after giving birth.

So that’s what apparently happened on February 2 about 2017 years ago. On a day that coincided so perfectly with the return of the light on Earth, as this flying sphere in space turned a little closer to the Sun and gave us the promise of light not only in our crops and our fields, but in our minds and our hearts, Mary received Her purification and presented Her son to the temple. Mary’s son, God’s Son, was destined to be the promise of the Light in our consciousness and the return of Light to the hearts of humankind. 

As I looked around my immediate environment for guidance in this search for Mary and who She is in light of Candlemas, or the Feast of Purification, once again I didn’t have to look far. Right down the road is a little village named “Barrio de la Purificacion,” where my own son was actually born, and the tiny old white-washed church in its main square is dedicated to La Virgen de la Candelaria, whose feast day is of course celebrated on February 2. The Virgin honored on this day represents the Purification, the Presentation of Jesus, and the Blessing of the Candles, the candles being symbolic for the light that is Jesus. On this day here in Mexico, everybody who has a Niño Dios (Baby Jesus) figure (and everybody does, as these figures are common gifts for everything from baptisms to Christmas) dresses the baby in new finery for the year and brings him to mass to be blessed. It is a mass reenactment of the presentation of Jesus at the temple. 

It is customary when being gifted a new Niño Dios to choose someone to be his “Madrina,” his godmother. The madrina makes a 3 year commitment to dressing the baby Jesus each Candlemas and to taking him to mass for the presentation and blessing (and to undressing him every Christmas, returning him to his nascent state and singing him lullabies and rocking him in her arms at mass, welcoming the Christ child to the world anew each year). The role of the godmother in this great divine reenactment is to be in service to those who are role-playing 

Every mother needs someone to witness her, to orient her and guide her on the sacred path of motherhood. A godmother’s job, based on her own personal experience, is to help align both the mother and the child with the Light, to remind them of their heart’s truth when they stray from it, and to keep them on track in their search for God. So of course there are god mothers at Candlemas. 

The dress of the Niño Dios usually is chosen based on affinity for a particular aspect or apparition of Christ, as a way of calling in a particular “medicine” or making a special prayer. For example, one might dress the Niño Dios as the Sacred Heart or the Divine Redeemer or the Holy Spirit. Or one might dress the Niño Dios in relationship to an apparition of Mother Mary, such as in the traditional dress of the Virgin of Carmen or the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos. The options are endless and extend into the dress of various saints and archangels. I have always considered this fun peculiarly Mexican tradition to be like dressing up dolls for adults. Imagine all the ladies in the village gathering at the market stands set up just for this occasion, clucking about what colorful outfit to choose this year, rapidly scanning their mental prayer list to pick out the most pressing issues that they believe can be solved by choosing the prettiest embroidery on a gown, stitching little underclothes and golden sandals onto the baby, and attaching tiny accessories like crowns and crosses onto him with museum wax. Some families have entire collections of Niño Dios that they have been gifted over the years, and they arrive at the church with a whole basket of identically dressed baby Jesus dolls to hold up as the priest walks up and down the aisle blessing them and sprinkling holy water. 

The rituals of Candlemas in Mexico have pre-Hispanic roots as well.

The indigenous tradition that makes a “reenactment” of Jesus’ presentation at the temple by Mary seem completely natural dates back thousands of years. Massive and complex reenactments of creation myths and cosmological events were staged in the temple plazas of Mexico’s ancient cities. The date of Candlemas happens to coincide with the 11th day of the new year in the Aztec calendar, a day when traditionally corncobs and tamales would have been taken to the temple to be blessed by the priests in honor of a new cycle of planting the crops for the year. The corn-based gifts were in honor of the supreme life-giving water deities, God Tlaloc and Goddess Chalchiuhtlicue and their children, the Tlaloques, in petition for favorable growing conditions and rain. In the current syncretic festivities on February 2nd, tamales remain the center piece of the celebratory meal. Previously, on January 6, “Dia de los Reyes” when the three Wise Kings are said to have arrived in Bethlehem with gifts for Baby Jesus, children in Mexico receive gifts from “los Reyes,” and families gather to break bread together. The wreath-like bread, “Rosca de Reyes” has a baby Jesus (made out of plastic in this day and age) hidden in it, and whoever finds it in their slice must make tamales for Candlemas, per the tradition. So on February 2nd, the families gather again to eat the long-promised tamales, most unwittingly keeping the pre-Hispanic tradition that calls for tamales on this day. It is said that making tamales is like swaddling a child, the way the corn husk is wrapped around the masa and filling, so the tamales become representative of the Niño Dios. When one makes tamales, one must make the sign of the cross in the bottom of the pot before cooking, and if anyone becomes angry around the pot, the tamales will never cook. In short, just as one must be mindful and aware to raise a child well, one must be especially tender and calm with the Niño Dios. We must be conscious in developing our relationship with Christ and with our model, the Divine Mother. 

I have participated in these Candlemas rituals for as many years as I have lived here in Mexico, but I never really wondered about the actual Virgin who accompanies this holiday until now – La Virgen de Candelaria, the patroness of the village down the road where my son was born. She is always decked out in a gloriously lacy satiny dress, covered in gold embroidery, holding 

Her own little Niño Dios tight with one hand while She holds a candle in the other. A friend traveled to Peru and came back with a beautiful gift for me – an original oil painting encrusted with gold and rhinestones of La Virgen de Candelaria, who is highly honored there in Peru, especially in the area around Lake Titicaca. She has hung in my house for several years now, but it just recently dawned on me, based on learning about famous Marian apparitions like the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico or the Virgin of Fatima in Portugal, that the Virgin of Candelaria must have also been based on Mother Mary appearing somewhere. Where is that somewhere? As I set out investigating, assuming that She had likely appeared in Spain, what I discovered both surprised and fascinated me. 

The story of the Virgin of Candelaria took place on the Canary Islands, off the western coast of North Africa.

The indigenous people of the islands are called Guanche, and seem to be descendants both linguistically and genetically of the Berber people, who are believed to have migrated to the islands between 6000 - 1000 B.C. after the desertification of the Sahara. The legend about Our Lady of Candelaria was recorded in 1594 by Alonso de Espinosa, a Spanish priest and first official historian of the Canary Islands. In his account, he writes that in 1392, prior to the Spanish Conquest of the islands which began in 1402 and completed in 1496, two native Guanche goatherds found a statue of the Virgin Mary on a beach in Tenerife. She was dark-skinned and life size, holding a child in one hand and a green candle in the other. 

The tale recounts that the goatherds believed her to be real and alive, and since men were prohibited from speaking to women outside the settlement, in an effort to motion her away, one of the goatherds tried to throw a stone at the woman, upon which his arm became paralyzed. The other goatherd became angry and tried to stab her with a knife but ended up cutting himself instead. While this seems fantastical, in typical legend style, I love this part of the story: The Feminine defends Herself, as if saying “Oh, you think it’s okay to throw stones at me because I’m a woman? Notice that when you are angry at women, you are actually hurting yourself. What you do to women, you are doing to your Mother, and will have an impact on you!” The Divine Mother is protecting not only Herself, but also women in general, and she is protecting Her Divine child and the Light (represented in the candle). What a powerful first teaching from Our Lady of Candelaria. I doubt anyone understood the teaching from that perspective, but the great thing is that we get to look at it from the Feminine aspect today from our place in the story. 

After the Lady defended Herself, the chastised goatherds fled in fear to tell the local Guanche “mencey” (king) Acaymo, who came to see the statue for himself. He asked the scared goatherds to help him carry the statue, and when they approached now with humility and good intentions, their previously caused wounds were miraculously healed. The Divine Mother forgives as freely as She scolds. They took the figure to a cave called Chinguaro where the indigenous people identified Her as Chaxiraxi, the Mother of the gods, the Mother of the Sun. Chaxiraxi is accompanied in Her divinity in the Guanche cosmovision by Achamán, the Supreme Father God and Creator, and by the Divine Child, Chijoraji, Her Son. The part of the story where the Mother defends Herself and women takes on an even more interesting aspect to me given the indigenous roots of worshipping Her – that it doesn’t matter whether She is Mary or Chaxiraxi; it doesn’t matter by what name She was called. She is the Divine Mother teaching a lesson to Her people. 

At a later date, a Guanche man named Anton who had been enslaved by the Spanish during the Castilian conquest and converted to Christianity, returned to Tenerife and identified the “Chaxiraxi” figure as the Virgin Mary. The statue was moved around the island to a number of different caves (including the Cave of Achbinico which is now a sanctuary) and sites, even being stolen at one point, then evacuated from Lanzarote during an outbreak of the plague, all the while still worshipped as Chaxiraxi by the Guanche until the Spanish completed the conquest and imposed the veneration of the Virgin Mary upon the native population. The original statue was a medieval Gothic sculpture, a Black Madonna, with peculiar inscriptions of scrambled letters in numerous locations on her carved drapery and hands – a mystery whose meaning has never been solved. Unfortunately the original Lady was washed into the ocean by an unusually high tide in 1826, and She was lost at sea, apparently returning to the place from where She came. The image currently viewable for veneration in the shrine at Tenerife is a copy of a copy of the original. Our Lady of Candelaria is known to this day as the “Mother of the Sustainer of Heaven and Earth.” 

Candelaria Cove in the Canary Islands

Worship of Our Lady of Candelaria swept across the globe with the Spanish and migrants from the Canaries, taking firm root in the Americas, in San Antonio, Texas, in the United States’ oldest Catholic Church, from Puerto Rico to Cuba, from Mexico to Brazil, Bolivia and Peru, and all the way to the Phillipines. Celebrations of Her feast day on February 2nd are huge, colorful, and as varied as the cultures that adopted Her as their patroness. She merged into a number of cultures in the same syncretic way in which She first appeared, merging seamlessly with local Divine entities who are also considered Mother of the Gods, Mother of the Sustainer of Heaven and Earth, or Divine Mother. In Cuban Santeria, for example, She is identified with Oya, in Brazil as Oshun, and in the Andes of Bolivia and Peru, She is Pachamama. 

After flying around the globe and just down the street with the Virgin of Candelaria and the Niño Dios, I have to admit I feel both overwhelmed and fulfilled on my quest of seeking Mary. I feel overwhelmed because I’ve just barely cracked open the lid of the treasure chest and I can see that there is so very very much to learn and integrate in there, and I wonder how I will ever be able to do it. At the same time, I feel a deep fulfillment, knowing that She is always there. She is everywhere. She is always the same. No matter by what name She calls Herself, or what vestment She dons, She is our Divine Mother and I will find Her wherever I happen to look on the Sacred Path.