Truth of the Spirit hosted by Patti Brunner brings you a remarkable description of the miraculous cloak of Juan Diego in Our Lady of Guadalupe Part 2 – The Codex of the Tilma. Since the Aztecs had no written language, the miraculous image was like a book or codex to those who understood the Aztec culture. Juanita Salazar Lamb takes us on a journey of the images on the Tilma, explaining the message of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under her title of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was given not just the Aztecs on December 12, 1531, but to all generations who continue to gaze upon it.
TOS097 Our Lady of Guadalupe (Part 2) The Codex of the Tilma; For audio only PPN
We recommend you have an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe nearby as you listen. Or watch the Truth of the Spirit YouTube Channel version for images referenced in this episode.
The image is surrounded by clouds which told Juan Diego that she comes from among the mist and clouds from a place hidden to all. She is saying to him, or this image is saying to him, “I am the one sent by the one who is invisible and spiritual, but who is visible through me.”
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit, I am Patti Brunner your host and today we welcome back Juanita Salazar Lamb who is going to tell us more about Our Lady of Guadalupe and about just exactly what Juan Diego saw when he met her and what came forth from that visitation. Welcome Juanita.
Today I will, as Patti said, I will talk about what it is that Juan Diego saw when he saw this strange lady out in the middle of nowhere. Our Lady of Guadalupe or as I call her “la Virgen”, that’s “la” l a, “Virgen” v i r g e n. And that is Spanish for “the Virgen”. I grew up with the Lady of Guadalupe; my mother, I grew up hearing her refer to her as “La Virgen” and I have a very hard time thinking of her as anything else. So if you will indulge me, she is “La Virgen” to me. So, what did Juan Diego see? Why did he trust her? She told him something; “Sure, I’ll go do it!” She told him, “Your uncle is well.” He said he believed her. “Ok, I don’t have to do what I told him I would do.” But why was that? That’s because her entire appearance is codex. It’s a book.
Let’s start with the image. What we see here is a woman, she is not light skinned. Not dark skinned. She is, she has medium colored skin, the skin of a mestizo. In Juan Diego’s world a mestizo was a mix of the Europeans and the indigenous people. We have a young woman whose hair is parted down the middle as we can see, although most of her hair is covered by the mantle, that’s in green. She is wearing a pink colored dress or sheath, she is standing but it looks like she might have one of her knees bent. And at the bottom we see a little angel supporting her. Ok, that’s all very nice, pretty picture, pretty lady. But what does that really mean?
In her teal covered mantle—teal was the color that could be used only by royalty. Juan Diego’s on the other hand, Juan Diego as a common man and uneducated man could wear only white clothes. No embellishment, what-so-ever. The women of his class, if you will, could also not wear any sort of embellishment. So right there the fact that she is wearing a teal-colored mantle tells him that she is royalty. Her mantle is also covered, or has sprinkled on it forty-six stars, which we will examine later, and the mantle is trimmed in gold, again, a symbol of royalty.
The tunic she wears underneath is a rose colored tunic. And it ends at a roll at her feet and is imprinted with flower and leaf designs outlined in gold—again we have the gold. The rose color of that gown signifies the earth; the teal of her mantle we associate with the sky or the heavens. Her hair is dark, and its parted down the middle, and you can see, right at the edges, that she has long hair. It’s a very simple hairstyle indicates this woman is a virgin. And how do we know this?
In that era, women used to wear a very unique hairstyles; the hairstyles for a married woman, their hair is parted down the middle but then it is caught up in two little pony tails on the crown of their head and it looks, I don’t know, it would keep me from getting married!
So, Let’s look at the face and the eyes. Again, I’ve already said, she has European features; she does not have indigenous features. And she has the medium colored skin. Her head is inclined to her right, and her eyes are downcast. Now, so, is that because she thinks herself as higher than? Apparently she’s royal if not heavenly. Is she NOT looking at Juan Diego because, does she think that he is nothing? No, quite the contrary! In the Aztec culture, as it in the Hispanic culture today, a sign of respect os to not look someone in the eye—to not look at their face, at their eyes directly, that seems challenging. So if I meet, if I am Juan Diego, or if I’m in Juan Diego’s society, I would approach someone and not meet them right in the eye. She, La Virgen, is showing Juan Diego a tremendous sign of respect. And now keep in mind that this happened in 1531, ten years after the conquest by the Spaniards. At that point, the Aztecs were nothing. No one respected them. There were no more royals; there were no more priests, and yet here she is, a royal heavenly person, showing great respect to Juan Diego.
Next as we come down we see that Our Lady is wearing a pendant. It is a gold pendant overlaid with a dark cross. And the cross represents the mirror of wisdom and truth. In theidols, the Aztec idols, they had, before the destruction, every idol, major idol, had a mirror right beneath their collar bone, if you will, that was the mirror of wisdom and truth. It was a mirror, though, that had a hole in the middle. If you looked at the mirror, of course like any mirror, all you can see is yourself. If you looked through the small hole in the mirror, you could see a little bit of what’s around you. If you looked through the bigger hole in the mirror you can see God. So, look at this, she is wearing a mirror, and it’s pointing Juan Diego, it’s pointing all of us, to Christ in the cross. Now, does this mean then that Our Lady is just another idol? No, no! What she is doing, presenting herself this way, remember, Our Lady presents herself to each of us as we would recognize her so that she can let us know that she knows us, she knows our culture. She loves our culture wherever we might come from. .
Let’s continue on down. Let’s look at her hands. She holds her hands together in a prayerful posture. Now, if you look closely at her hands, yes they are held together in a prayerful posture, but in her hands, if you look very closely, her hands seem to hold one of the gold leaf flowers—one of the nine petal gold flowers. In the Aztec symbolism, not only symbolism, in their pictographs; the Aztecs did not have a written alphabet like many languages do, they had pictographs. So, one picture could symbolize many things or several things. In this case, that nine petal flower can symbolize a heart, it could symbolize a rattle used for dancing And it also symbolizes a mountain. So she is holding in her hands either a rattle, or a heart, or a mountain. Another thing, if I can deviate a little from her hands. Each of the 9 petal flowers on her rose colored gown are rooted in the virgin’s gown. You have the nine petal flower and then you have the stem that goes off from the flower. And each of them is rooted into her mantle; none of them are just out there floating around. And what she is saying is she is holding our hearts in her hand as she intercedes for us. And also keep in mind she is holding it close to the mirror, the mirror of wisdom and truth which is leading us to Christ.
Continuing on down then she is wearing a black sash around her waist, and this , indicates she is pregnant. Now I’ve already pointed out that she is an unmarried young woman. Remember, Juan Diego is a Christian. Not only is he a Christian he’s a very devout Catholic man. And he knows about Mary and the Virgin birth and the fact that she wasn’t married when she was carrying the Christ Child
Let’s continue on down. If you follow the sash to where it ends, where the tie ends, it ends right above a four petal flower that is on her abdomen. The four petal flower in the N’ahuatl, the Aztec language, is called the Nahui Ollin, and that symbolizes the place where the 4 directions come together, where the center of the universe is. It symbolizes constant movement. The Nahui Ollin is still a very present in the Mexican culture. Of course we now have the Nahui Ollin at the center of the Aztec calendar. The Nahui Ollin can still be seen in the ancient Glyphs which have been preserved. And we can even find it on the 10 peso coin in Mexico.
Now, let’s follow on down and let’s see, let’s look at how she is standing, with her left leg, her left knee is bent a little bit, like maybe she is walking toward us? But let’s look at the whole picture. Yes, she is holding our hearts in her hand, but maybe she is holding a rattle. Because maybe she is dancing! And for the Aztecs, one form of prayer was to dance. And this even goes back to the bible.
In 2 Samuel, Chapter 6:5 “while David and all the house of Israel danced before the LORD with all their might, with singing, and with lyres, harps, tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals.” and Luke Chapter 1:43-44 Elizabeth says to Mary: “And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.”
So if you look again where her hands are, she is holding the 9 petal flower which can then be interpreted as a rattle. She is just dancing for joy as she knows as she brings her son to just whoever calls on her.
Continue on down, she is standing on a dark upturned moon, a crescent moon. She is stepping on it or trampling on it, the dark moon, the black moon symbolizes the lunar eclipse. To the Aztecs, an eclipse was a horrible omen; it was an omen of destruction and the end. It was proof that the moon was devouring the sun. And here she is, trampling it down. She is going to defeat it.
Let’s continue on down. Below the moon is a cherub, a dark-haired little cherub. He is dressed in a crimson gown, its outspread wings supports La Virgen. To the Aztecs a new era, which was ushered in every 52 years, was carried in by a winged servant. This cherub has dark hair, but if you notice when I say cherub; at least what comes to my mind are the cute little fat angels with the curly blonde hair, that you see at Christmas time you know a lot of times are playing a trumpet or something. If you look at this little angel he has the face of an old man, and he even has thinning hair like an old man. Well, again, in the Aztec culture, it was the elders who had the wisdom in their culture. The feathers on the angel are white, blue, and red; when you combine that with the black of the moon, those are the four colors of the universe. His right hand is holding the heavens the tunic with the stars; his left is supporting the earth, the roseate gown, which he is then joining the earth and the heavens by holding them together
The image is surrounded by clouds which told Juan Diego that she comes from among the mist and clouds from a place hidden to all. She is saying to him, or this image is saying to him, “I am the one sent by the one who is invisible and spiritual, but who is visible through me.” Then, again, she is surrounded by sun’s rays. The aura that surrounds Our Lady is comprised of more than one hundred rays, and she is saying, “I bring you the one who is truly omnipotent, more powerful than your sun god. I bring you the true Light of the World, my Son Jesus.”
Let’s go back to the stars on her mantle. As I stated before there are 46 stars. So if you think about when Juan Diego saw her, the sun is behind her, which means she has her back to the east which means that north is on her right side and south is on her left side. This has been proven, the stars on the right side of her mantle are in the exact shape, location, relative location to one another, as the constellations in the northern hemisphere at the time she appeared to Juan Diego on December 12th, at the time she printed her image on his tilma. The stars on the left side of her tilma are those constellations that appeared in the sky in the southern hemisphere at that time. Now, if you look at it very closely, if you want to follow-up, and do your own investigation, you are going to notice though that the stars, or the constellation shapes are upside down. Well imagine then, if you are looking up at the sky, and you can see the constellations, now bring that down, bring the sky down over your head, so that it covers you like her mantle, so that you are looking at them in reverse. That’s why they are upside down, and backwards.
Thank you, Juanita, for sharing with us the explanation of that beautiful image that is on the tilma of Juan Diego and we invite you to come back for next time, because we have some really fascinating information about some music that’s available through the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. So, I invite you to subscribe, and come back for more. Because, with the Holy Spirit, there’s always more! Amen
About the speaker: Juanita Salazar Lamb graduated with a master’s degree with a thesis topic of “La Virgen de Guadalupe in Chicano Popular Culture: Images in Art and Literature” in 2003. She has a diploma from the Instituto Superior de Estudios Guadalupanos Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe for the advancement of Guadeloupian studies in Mexico City headed by Msgr. Eduardo Chavez, the lead investigator for the canonization of Juan Diego. This became Lamb’s biggest resource with more than 30,000 documents concerning the 2002 canonization of St. Juan Diego. She continues her research as more revelations are discovered within the tilma.
