Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Juan Diego was an Aztec Indian who converted to Christianity shortly after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He lived in a town called Quahutitlan, near Mexico City. Each day, he would walk to a church in a place called Tlatiloco. On the way, he would pass a hill called Tepeyacac. On the morning of December 8, 1531, as Juan Diego was passing by Tepeyacac, he heard music coming from the top of the hill. The music stopped, and then he heard a female voice calling his name. He climbed the hill and saw the glowing form of a beautiful young woman with a dark complexion, like an Indian. She spoke to him in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. She identified herself as the Blessed Virgin Mary and asked him to tell the local bishop to build a church for her on the Tepeyacac hill. Interestingly enough, the Tepeyacac hill was the site of a temple to the Aztec earth goddess Coatlique (Mini 2000, p. 92).

Juan Diego went to the residence of Bishop Zumárraga and waited until he was allowed to see him. The bishop listened for a short time, and then suggested that they could talk more later. It was apparent to Juan Diego that the bishop did not believe his story. He went again to Tepeyacac and saw the apparition, who told him to go once more to the bishop. The next day, he again went to Mexico City, and with great difficulty, again managed to see the bishop. This time Zumárraga was more receptive. He told Juan Diego to ask the apparition for a sign that would authenticate her divine nature. Juan Diego said he would do this and left. When he saw the apparition for a third time, she told him she would give him the sign he requested on the next day.

On the next day, Juan Diego found that his uncle had become sick. His uncle wanted a priest. So instead of going to the hill to see the Virgin, Juan Diego went searching for a priest. On his way to get a priest, he passed the hill and heard the voice of the apparition calling him to see her, as he had promised. He replied that he would come, but he must first get a priest for his uncle. The voice replied, accusing Juan Diego of not having faith. The voice said his uncle would recover from his illness. Hearing this, Juan Diego agreed to come up to the top of the hill, but only if the apparition would give him the miraculous sign she had promised. She agreed. When Juan Diego reached the top of the hill, he saw it had been transformed. Where previously there had been only weeds and cactus plants, there was now, on December 12, 1531, in the iciest part of winter, a beautiful garden of blossoming, fragrant flowers, including Castilian roses and other Spanish flowers, all out of season. The apparition gathered some of these flowers, and placed them in the cloak that Juan Diego was wearing. She told him to present the flowers to the Bishop as the sign he had asked for. She also told Juan Diego not to open the cloak and show the flowers until he saw the Bishop.

Juan Diego came to the Bishop’s residence, and after making his way through hostile servants and guards who tried to see what he was carrying, came before the Bishop himself. When he opened his cloak, not only did the flowers fall out, but there was visible on the cloak itself a colorful image of the Virgin Mary. The radiant image was that of a beautiful young dark-skinned woman in prayer. She was standing on a crescent moon, and the crescent moon was being held by an angel. It could be seen that it was not a painted image, but was part of the fabric of the cloak. Bishop Zumárraga was overwhelmed by this miraculous sign, and agreed to build a church on the hill. The cloak, with its image unfaded, is on display even today in the Church of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Villa Madero (Rogo 1982, pp. 117–120).

Rogo (1982, p. 120) says, “Between 1531 and 1648, no fewer than thirty-three documents describing the events of December 1531 were placed on record. As Father José Bravo Ugarte, an expert on Mexican history, states in his Cuestiones historicas guadalupanas (1946), ‘There can be little doubt that the story of the Guadalupe miracle rests on firm historical fact.’ Even Zumárraga apparently wrote out an account of the miracle, though his description was destroyed in 1778 by a fire that struck the archive room of the monastery where it had been deposited. In 1666 the Church officially investigated the miracle, retraced its history, and documented the evidence supporting its authenticity.” As part of the 1666 investigations, a group of painters examined the image and concluded it could not have been made by even the finest human artists. They stated: “It is impossible for any human craftsman to paint or create a work so fine, clean and well formed on a fabric so coarse” (Mini 2000, p. 167).

Over the years, there have been many investigations of the cloak and its image. The miraculous preservation of the maguey fabric was noted long ago. In 1660, Father Florencia wrote in his historical book la estrella del norte de mexico, “The permanence of the coarse maguey canvas. . . has lasted more than a hundred years. This is miraculous, since it is as entire and strong as it was the first day; especially when we consider the place in which it is subject to wind and saline dust and the heat of the candles and the incense which the devout continuously offer—without fading, or darkening or cracking” (Rogo 1982, p. 120).

In the twentieth century, enlarged photographs of the eyes of the Virgin showed a human face, apparently that of Juan Diego, reflected in each eye. In 1956, a group of eye and vision specialists looked at these images. Mini (2000, p. 169) stated: “They found that the images were reflected not only from the corneas of both of her eyes, but also from the lenses. . . . The image of Juan Diego’s face appears three times in each of the Virgin’s eyes. It appears once at the surface of the cornea, again at the anterior surface of the lens, and a third time at the posterior surface of the lens. . . . The images of Juan Diego in the Virgin’s eyes maintain perfect optical proportions under the closest scientific scrutiny. The scientists discerned that the images in each eye are in the exact locations required by optical physics.”

In 1979, Philip Callahan, a biophysicist from the University of Florida, tested the image on the cloak and found no brushstrokes or any “underdrawn blueprint” (Rogo 1982, p. 121). He also confirmed that the image has suffered no fading or cracking, which is unusual for an image produced by painting four hundred years ago. Callahan did find that there had been some additions to the original image. A sunburst had been painted around the Virgin’s figure and some stars and a golden border had been added to the Virgin’s cape. But Callahan pointed out that these additions had faded, while the original image retained its full colors. The cloak bearing the image is made of maguey cactus fiber, which should have rotted away hundreds of years ago. Callahan inspected the fibers to see if the cloak had been treated to prevent rotting, and found that this was not the case (Rogo 1982, p. 120).

The village of Pontmain is near the city of Le Mans in northwestern France. On the evening of January 17, 1871, Eugene Barbadette, who was twelve years old, and his brother Joseph, who was ten years old, were working in the barn on their father’s farm. Eugene decided to take a break from their work and went outside into the winter night. The sky was clear and filled with stars. Then Eugene noticed the figure of a beautiful woman floating in the sky. She was dressed in a blue robe, studded with golden stars, and wore a blue veil. At first, Eugene took the vision as a sign that his brother, who was in the French army, had died in battle with the Prussians, who had invaded France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. But he then noticed that the woman was smiling, and decided the vision must mean something favorable. Jeanette Detais, a neighborhood woman who had come for a visit, was standing nearby. But she could not see the apparition. Eugene’s father Mr. Barbadette and Eugene’s younger brother Joseph also came out. The father could not see anything, but Joseph could. Joseph and Eugene then began speaking to each other about what they were seeing. During the course of the evening, the boys continued to see the apparition, while others arriving on the scene, including Mrs. Barbadette, her maid, and a local nun, Sister Vitaline, could not.