Chapter Three for Portal of Creation: The Lady of Light at Fatima; Paradox, Penance, Prayer and Prophecy
“Fear not! I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me!”* The apparitions at Fatima Portugal began in 1916 with the apparition of an angel. In total, there were three visits from a young man in a cloud enveloped by light. Coming from Catholic families, Lucia 9, Francisco 8 and Jacinta 6, were already accustomed to saying their Rosaries as they tended their sheep. In his visits, the angel taught them to say additional prayers and do penance for sinners, to offer sacrifices and mortifications. He gave them these instructions: “Make everything you do a sacrifice, and offer it as an act of reparation for the sins by which God is offended, and as a petition for the conversion of sinners. By this you will bring peace to your country. I’m its Guardian Angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all accept and bear with submission all the suffering the Lord will send you.”* The angel had stirred the compassion of the three impressionable children and left them with a feeling of heaviness and sadness. The children told no one of this apparition. They took their instructions to heart, finding ways to make the sacrifices and do penance and mortification as the angel had asked.
The third apparition of the angel took place that fall nearby at an outcropping of rock called Loca do Cabeço. The children had begun their prayers when the angel appeared for the last time. In his hand he held a chalice over which was suspended a Host. Drops of blood were falling from the Host into the chalice. The angel knelt and repeated three times with the children: “Most Holy Trinity-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles in the world, in reparation for all the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences whereby He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.” The angel then stood, took the Host, and gave it to Lucia, the contents of the chalice he gave to Francisco and Jacinta, and said: “Take the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ horribly outraged by thankless men. Recover (compensate for) their sins and comfort your God.”* The seriousness of this ritual set the tone for the manner in which the children would live out the rest of their lives.
Children too young to have taken Communion in the Church were being given the sacrament of the Eucharist; participating in ritual blood sacrifice of a beloved Jesus. Who was this man who claimed to be the “Angel of Portugal”? Presumably, these visits and the Communion ritual came in preparation for the visits of the Lady of Light. I find this disturbing on any number of levels and will pursue the meaning of this in subsequent chapters.
I’ve never had any problems believing in apparitions and miracles, or at least in their potential to occur. In part, this is because I also grew up Catholic, loving the stories of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. What became a paradox for me was never in the “miraculous”, but in the subservient and pleading behavior of the Mother of Jesus and the ever present threats from a powerful male God when everything in my consciousness was teaching me that this paternalistic view of the divine and its use as a role model for family behavior was desperately and deeply wrong.
Much of what our ancestors assumed to be supernatural or beyond their understanding has become the science and high tech that we live with every day. What we don’t comprehend today will be in common usage tomorrow. Even some of what we consider to be miraculous may represent personal potentials that we have yet to develop. Unexplained synchronicity and miracles happen all the time and are obvious or at least apparent to those who are receptive to knowing their nature. They are part of our ongoing conversation with the manifestations of consciousness.
It’s also perfectly logical to consider advanced technologies from more advanced civilizations being used on our planet in an attempt to communicate with us in a way that employs legends, myths and religious iconography with which we are already familiar.
Beings of light and angels are described as multidimensional, interacting with people in our dimension or our dimensional frequency while emanating from another location or dimensional frequency. We have the technology to reproduce this effect for theatrical displays ourselves, but for us it’s only a light show so far.
That said, we have to ask ourselves what kind of being it was that would compel such young children to commit acts of self-mortification and sacrifice. What kind of energetic interaction was taking place that would leave the children in such a heavy and saddened state? What kind of ritual blood sacrifice were the children taking part in?
World War I was raging in Europe. The Bolsheviks were gaining power in Russia. It is at this turning point in history that these three young shepherds at the Cova de Ira in Fatima Portugal walk into their own fates…and possibly ours.
“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Luke 1:28
The apparitions of “Our Lady” began on the 13th of May. She appeared to the children as a beautiful Lady of Light. The Lady asked that the children return to the Cova on the 13th day of six consecutive months and pray the Rosary. The thirteenth will come to have significance as we will explore later. The children wanted to know the Lady’s name. She would not announce Her title until the end of the six months, and when She did, She called Herself, the “Lady of the Rosary”.
During the second visit of “Our Lady”, the children asked if they would go to Heaven. The Lady told them that She would take Jacinta and Francisco soon and that they would have much to suffer, but that Lucia would have to stay for a while longer.
Every month, the crowds that followed the children to the Cova grew larger. Most presumed that they were being visited by the Virgin Mary and came to pray for healing, or for a beloved son to come home from the war and many other things.
A sound like bees in a hive was heard as Our Lady spoke to the children in Fatima. Onlookers were not able to witness the vision that the seers beheld as the Lady approached and then spoke to them, although some reported seeing an orb of light that seemed to carry the apparition.
Apparitions have no perceivable material density. Those who see apparitions are generally children, innocents, although spiritual adults have also seen apparitions. A prayerful state seems also to be prerequisite in most cases. Apparitions are viewed by “seers” as if they are able to perceive a wider spectrum of light and form. The vibrational qualities of prayer and of light both seem to be at play in the ability to witness these supernatural events.
The visible spectrum for humans covers only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. What we can hear is likewise a small portion of the entire sound spectrum. What we recognize as conversational voice fills an even more restricted portion of that field. What this implies for the seers who carry on verbal interactions with the apparitions is that they are at least temporarily capable of extending their range of sight and sound….or that it is capable of being extended for them exteriorly.
On July 13th, 1917, the Lady gave the children three “secrets”, two of which have been shared:
The first secret was of a vision of hell with souls writhing in agony. The Lady asked the children to fast, pray and do sacrifices for the souls of sinners.
The second secret was that the “errors of Russia” would be spread and that another terrible world war would begin unless mankind offered prayer and the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart.
The third secret given to the children by the Lady of Light was withheld by the Catholic Church.
On October 13, 1917 an estimated seventy thousand people stood in the rain at the Cova and waited for a promised sign that would prove to the people that the children were telling the truth; that the Lady was coming to the Cova. What happened at noon on that day has since been referred to as “The Miracle of the Sun”. As the rain soaked crowd stood in the mud, the clouds gave way to the sun. The sun appeared as a silvery disc that “danced” in the sky, giving off radiant colors in the spectacle. Shouts of “miracle” arose from the crowd. Then the sun seemed to fall from its position in the sky, hurtling toward the Earth. The frightened people at the Cova believed they were witnessing the end of the world. The great disk halted its free-fall and returned to its place in the sky. As the Sun resumed its normal appearance, everyone realized that the muddy earth was dry as were the clothes of the people at the Cova.
The dancing sun had been witnessed by people for miles around but no eclipse and no such solar movement was registered from anywhere else on the planet. It had been a local event but not limited to the view of those directly at the Cova de Ira in Fatima.
The sun did not fall toward Fatima that day, though the “miracle” was real. It was a warning of the power of God to move the sun in the sky, but beyond that, what was the message of the miracle? Was it a warning of the chastisement that was due to befall mankind if it was not stopped short by prayers offered to “Our Lady”? Was the falling sun a metaphor for the fallen Lucifer being cast unto Earth, fomenting the “sins” of man? Was the falling sun a holographic re-creation of a cataclysm of the past? Were people at the Cova actually witnessing a disc shaped craft between them and their view of the actual Sun? Is there a resonance of purpose or meaning in the event across scales of metaphor and consciousness?
Francisco and Jacinta both died in the years following the apparitions, just as the Lady had foretold. Lucia became a Carmelite Nun and lived in near seclusion from the outside world. The second World War began as the Lady had foretold with Lucia witness to a sign in the sky that heralded its beginning. She wrote about her experiences upon the insistence of the Church, including instructions from the Lady of the Rosary regarding the Consecration of Russia and public disclosure of the third secret.
The third secret of Fatima was to be released, as instructed by the Lady of the Rosary, no later than 1960 but every Pope who read the secret summarily refused to release it.
“In 1957, Sr. Lucy gave her famous interview to Fr. Augustin Fuentes, postulator of the cause of Beatification for Jacinta and Francisco. In this interview, Sr. Lucy said that she had determined that we are in the last times, and that there are punishments in store for the world. Sr. Lucy also said not to wait for the hierarchy for the call to penance.”* By making an appeal directly to the people, Sister Lucy was blatantly disregarding the hierarchical authority of the Church in favor of carrying out the instructions of the Lady of the Rosary.
In July of 1959, the Diocese of Coimbra issued a statement which they claimed Sister Lucy had written to declare that the earlier quotes were fabricated by Father Fuentes. After that, Lucia was silent.
In the year 2000, the Vatican released what it claimed to be the third secret of Fatima…a vision of a Bishop in white in a scenario that vaguely resembled the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul ll. The “secret” as released by the Church contradicts what that had been known about the authentic third secret’s shorter length and content. Nonetheless, the Vatican declared the Fatima issue closed.
Later in life, Sister Lucy reportedly changed her views on the contents of the third secret and on the Consecration of Russia, and made public appearances with Pope John Paul ll in support of the Vatican’s version of the secret. If it seems odd that Lucia would abandon her devotion to fulfilling “Our Lady’s” instruction, consider this: photographs of Sister Lucy from 1945 and earlier clearly portray the maturing Lucia dos Santos from Fatima, Portugal. The jovial aging nun who was photographed with John Paul ll appears to be a different woman.
In 1973, “Our Lady” appeared to Sister Agnes Sasagawa in Akita, Japan. The message given to Sister Sasagawa is thought to closely parallel the third secret of Fatima:
“As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as no one has ever seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only consolation which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests.”
“The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.
The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If mankind’s sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them.” *
*http://www.newjerusalem.com/akita1.htm
Certainly, the Catholic Church has been riven with hypocrisy and scandal. To tolerate priests who irrevocably scar children by sexual abuse and the imposed silence it entails and to additionally protect and shelter sexually predatory priests is the most heinous breach of trust against the children and their families. If the third secret contained the accusation of brewing sexual scandal, then we can begin to understand the Church’s defiance of Our Lady’s warning.
This pattern of “religious”, first the angel and then the priests, using the trust of children to solicit behaviors that are deleterious to the emotional, psychological and physical health of the child is linked to silent compliance as part of spiritual obedience. Clearly, the priests were in dire violation of everything spiritual when they violated the sacred boundaries that inherently belonged to those child victims.
In the case of the angel, there was no sexual abuse. By today’s standards we would view the mortifications at the very least as psychologically and physically damaging. We would question, or we should question the lack of parental awareness or consent for such zealotry. The parents of the seers were not consulted or allowed to shelter their children from what might not have been what it presented itself to be. This speaks directly to the responsibility of the parent that was ignored just as collectivist dogma ignores any hierarchy but its own, and it does so in stark contrast, in absolute contradiction to the very Commandment to honor one’s father and mother which the Church supposedly demands.
In a historical time when rural children rightly busied themselves tending sheep or doing chores but children in cities were being forced to labor for survival, we can see stark difference between teaching responsibility to children within the family and abuse of the children as cogs in a machine demonstrating how childhood is thereby stolen.
Experiencing a true childhood would have been a luxury for any child during the war. What Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco experienced was a call to compassion so profound that they were ready to sacrifice their lives for its cause. The three children experienced inner impulses to silence and seriousness after the apparitions of the Angel. Love and joy were the overwhelming feelings left by the apparitions of the Lady of Light. What the young seers experienced was so profound as to mold their innocence into the most intense devotion, intention and action.
Belief in the veracity of the apparitions at Fatima, or apparitions like it, is not part of Catholic dogma. For the most part, the Catholic Church is stringent in its skepticism of such events. Lourdes, Guadalupe, Akita and Fatima are among those apparitions which the Church has approved as “worthy of belief”.
The Lady of the Rosary who has appeared across the planet as a Woman of Light since at least the third century does not directly refer to herself as the Virgin Mary, although it is inferred. She identified herself at Lourdes in France, not as the product of the Immaculate Conception as the Catholic Church claims, but as being the Immaculate Conception. The difference is staggering. This implies that the consciousness that appears as a Lady of Light is a living metaphor for the process, the qualifying circumstances that are prerequisite to the conception of a Christed consciousness.
In the language of the Church, the Virgin Mary is the personification only of mortal obedience, purity and grace; conditions defined in relationship to the surrender and subservience of Her will to patriarchy’s ideal of God’s will. As the lowly handmaiden and empty vessel, She is the recipient only of that which comes from Her Son and from the Father.
While the difference in understanding is partially an issue of semantics, the distinction underscores the often schizophrenic relationship between all patriarchal religions and the concept of the Mother of God. The Lady of the Rosary, the Immaculate Conception as a conscious and communicative entity presents a conundrum for the Catholic Church and for Christians and Muslims who honor the memory of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
If you haven’t already noticed with the apparitions at Fatima and with the vast majority of other Marian apparitions, it is not the Church who receives visitation by “Our Lady”. The apparitions present themselves to the people directly and leave the Church to respond to Her call. The Church attempts to play catch up, following the people instead of leading them; all the while trying to regain control over the events. The Church is cautious and tedious in its investigations, siting adherence to dogma, demanding that each apparition be put to the test as a possible demon, or at least a hoax.
In the case of Fatima, the Church had little choice but to acknowledge the coherence between the messages and dogma, between the behavior of the Lady of the Rosary and the Church’s expectations of the Mother of the Christ.
It seems odd that the Church, anxious for the patronage of converts brought to the Church by the apparitions, so honors the Mother of Jesus that Cathedrals and Churches are named for Her, saints are devoted to Her and yet when the Mother of God appears in person with orders to reveal information to the people by a certain date, the Church has the audacity to refuse. Clearly, the Church prefers a silent Mary standing carved on a pedestal to “Our Lady” who appears to the people directly and makes requests of the Church.
It is reasonable to be cautious about apparitions in general given the opportunity for hoaxers to take advantage of the undiscerning. There is also a history of copycat apparitions that follow in the wake of apparitions, such as happened at Lourdes, where energies anathema to the initial apparitions appeared, also claiming to be [the Lady of the Rosary].* The apparitions often display and solicit behaviors that are contradictory to the purpose of the initial apparition. The effect of such copycats is to discredit the occurrence of apparitions in total as the machinations of mental illness and delusion.
What I did not realize until recently was that the Mother of Jesus was not a focus of attention in the early Catholic Church. There were certain interactions with her spirit, possibly in what we would now consider as “bilocation” before her reported death.* Other accounts, be they myth, legend or simply beyond our understanding stand as testimony to her appearance to apostles.* For the most part, however, it seems that honoring Mary as the Mother of the Christ was incorporated over time in response to the repeated apparitions of the Lady of Light.
The Church has often cautioned against visions as being the work of “the Devil” who, the Church contends, will impersonate “Our Lady” to confuse and bring chaos. In today’s world, belief in the devil is ridiculed as unsophisticated ignorance but real evil does exist in this world. We see the evil manifest throughout the world, on all levels of scale. The Church and religion in general, is quick to cultivate the devil as the tempter of human weakness and hell fire as “God’s” punishment against those who don’t accept in full the dogmas of organized theology.
There is also this to consider, the essence of what the Church and the apparitions themselves present as the Mother of Jesus may indeed be the “Immaculate Conception”; the feminine aspect of the creative process of God consciousness. While the Church cultivates the image and symbolism of Mary’s strength in being the totally subservient and virginal empty vessel, it is the conscious matrix of creation that calls for the power of conscious intention to be shifted into readiness for the Christing of Consciousness within each of us.
Apparitions of “Our Lady” share common themes. She asks for fasting, prayer, sacrifice and devotions to be offered up to hold back the chastisement that will happen if mankind continues to “offend” God. We will examine these requests more closely in subsequent chapters. The chastisements will come in the form of wars, famine, and the annihilation of nations. Natural disaster is implied in the chastisements. The “offenses” she refers to run the gamut from dancing in public, to not keeping the Commandments, to abortion.
She asks for the conversion of sinners, not necessarily to Catholicism exclusively, but away from sin. Many in the Church would disagree with this assessment of conversion. She asks also for prayers for the Pope and the priests and seemingly respects the authority of the church. Whoever or whatever is represented by this conscious Lady of Light, there is at least an attempt at cooperation with the power structure of the Church or at least with what the Church claims to be.
The warnings from Our Lady are like those of a mediator and mother who comes to the children after they have broken the rules with instructions for how they can make amends. Still, placed within the language and dogma of patriarchy, I have to believe that there is more to this story than is described by superficial understanding. The conversation and relationship between the powerful feminine consciousness and the authoritarian male hierarchy is an alchemical interaction in which we are taking an active part. If there has been purpose in learning the consequences of our actions, then the product of the alchemy is us. It is the honing of our own free will.
Surrendering free will to a more powerful “other” is the essence of collectivist idealism. The assumption that free will is inherent to all of “God’s” creations is what fed the flame of freedom and separated us from the tyranny of the past. It was at the heart, at least for a while, of the Constitution of the United States.
Communism is assumed to be chief of the “errors of Russia” that were warned about by “Our Lady of Fatima”. It is the reason for Our Lady’s request for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. At issue is the elimination of religion and a belief in God. Otherwise the Church and patriarchal religion in general, seemingly has no problem with heavy handed government. Both communism and Catholicism are collectivist control mechanisms, the difference being who is claiming the authority.
All collectivist mechanisms speak to that feeling of being a part of something inclusive. They build upon, and take advantage of the longing for a forgotten intimacy of soul and spirit. It is our longing for Oneness that is paradoxical to our need for independence and sovereign self-authority. Religion and government use collectivism and self-authority as seemingly polar opposites against us. This is true for any domineering religion, culture or mechanism of group think.
Control mechanisms of Church and State become the parent who never allows the child to mature into independent sovereignty. Without maturity and sovereignty, no individual reaches potential. God’s creation of humans with the potential to exceed the excellence of angels was the mythical reason for the jealousy of Lucifer and the reason for the angelic revolution. Casting Lucifer as pontificate and ruler who tests the worthiness of mortal mankind is the heartiest of strategies for challenging our ability to reach our full potential and inherent sovereignty.
Without reaching our individual potential in spiritual and material realms, we cannot appreciate the value of the individual or weigh the scales of balance between the individual and the group. Without this maturity and independent sovereignty, we can’t form balanced marriages between people. We can’t even find balance between the hemispheres of our own brains. It is the vested interest of discord, of evil and corruption that this human potential should never be met.
Independence and self-authority of individuals in relationship with other independent and sovereign individuals is the only way to nurture the respect and balance necessary for the fulfillment of each and every human being. Without this balance, the dogma of the group dominates the individual. This is true whether the dogma is religious, political or scientific. It has been said of the philosophy of the United States, that the group guaranteed the rights of the individual. That’s why we had a Constitution. Unfortunately, that’s all but relegated to history just as foretold, by the unbalance of collective control.
The prophetic warnings of Fatima spoke of wars sent by God as a punishment upon man. Wars, famines, political chaos and strife are the natural, logical consequences that we bring upon ourselves by purposeful acts of corruption against ourselves and others. We have been the “creator” of the “punishment”. If the consequences are truly initiated by our own actions and inaction, then the authority and responsibility for the corruption is our own.
If the behavior and corruption were not truly initiated by our own actions and inaction, but orchestrated intentionally for the detriment of humankind and the planet, then the blame upon humankind would be in falling for the temptation, participating in the corruption and allowing it to ruin lives. While religion would chastise independence and self-authority as the very evil that emboldened the jealous Lucifer, it is only that independent sovereignty that allows one to hear the wee small voice of intuition, conscience and inner knowing of God consciousness that lies deep within the human heart.
The side-stepping of responsibility by blaming the “other” or “evil” facilitates the creation of an incarnate scapegoat, real or spiritual. We recognize this on many levels of scale in ethnic, cultural, political and religious conflict. We blame everyone from our ancestors to the devil for the evils of the world. We blame the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Original sin is not in Eve’s choosing to make an independent decision that resulted in the separation of humankind from the presence of “God”. Original sin was the assumption that the children of God would not inherit free will sovereignty which has always been our birthright and that we would not temper it with compassion and love as our purpose for being.
Collectivists rule through fear whether by force or more subtle manipulation. Being expelled from the group meant starvation for primitive man and that deep-seated fear is renewed when we fear rejection from non-compliance with the group. Where our fears have convinced us that we have not had choice or free will and where we have been thereby manipulated into error, our portion of responsibility lies in changing course and correcting our errors.
We have made many errors in part by allowing our intuitions to lie silent while our wills were surrendered to the will of powerful others be they religious, political or social in their dogma. In this way, we have fallen short of our responsibility to be discerning when our sovereignty has been corrupted. We have allowed ourselves to “sin”.
Sin has been described both as an offense to the will of God and as a falling short of the expectations of God. By surrendering our individual wills to the temptations that lead to corruption, are we not creating the circumstances of suffering? By surrendering our individual wills to the will of a group, are we shirking our responsibility to be discerning about the decisions to be made or about their consequences? Is this not a falling short of our responsibilities?
Assuming for the moment that God does “send” punishment for our corruption then is God or the Son of God, a personification for the energy of creating consequence? Is the “offense committed against God”, or against the “Son of God” another way of describing the level by which our energetic participation in creating our circumstances has fallen short of the level of our own potential in the co-creation of our lives?
In a fractal and holographic reality, God consciousness would permeate everything and yet find representation in levels of scale that we might perceive as demi-Gods, or aspects of consciousness, or even as conscience. Paradoxical aspects of God consciousness could be experienced in waking states as apparitions, such as the Angel and the Lady of the Rosary.
If we look at the punitive God as an angry exterior deity, then the view of God looks more like a jealous conqueror who created, altered or has ownership over the energy producing life forms enslaved to service the God. That’s not the God we hope to find here, but if we are energetically participating in the creation of our consequences, maybe that kind of God is a being that we have allowed to claim title over us.
To paraphrase Shakespeare a bit, “if all the material world is a holographic stage”, then the role of “God” could be claimed by an usurper from a more advanced species with lots of sophisticated tech. Our energy, in the form of prayers, penance, emotions and work could be consumed as food for an essentially vampiric energy consuming malevolence and because we have not been discerning, we would not be the wiser. Various religions might translate the apparition of such an entity as demonic and they’d essentially be right. Having religion, Catholic, Protestant, Islamic or otherwise endorse energy siphoning demands from multidimensional beings would be even worse.
As for the events of Fatima, the children were given instructions on devotion, prayer, sacrifice; all offerings of life energy to the Mother of God for the sake of others who were in sin; falling short of their God conscious potential. The intention and emotion of prayer and sacrifice were also directed to lessen the intensity of the catastrophic event set as the punishment of humanity thus inferring the ability of conscious intention and emotion to be converted by the Mother of God, by the “Immaculate Conception” into a protection condition or barrier or change of circumstance in defense of humanity upon this planet.
What were the events that Our Lady was attempting to protect us from and has any of it been mitigated by our response to her call? Moreover, what is yet to come?
As to the timing of the disclosure of the third secret prior to 1960, consider what might have been predicted of the sixties and beyond: The sixties was a decade that brought the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and the growth of the shadow government. The United States became totally involved in Viet Nam and southeast Asia. Drugs became an escape from a cognitive dissonant reality, offering personal revelations but for most delivering suffering and addiction. Vatican ll redefined the heart of Catholicism; it was supposed to be more accessible, easier to understand. Aborting the unborn became legal in 1973. The sexual revolution that promised legal gender equality delivered irresponsible sexual behaviors, AIDS, and for all its progress, has still fallen short of ending violence against women. Gender equality has also been met with a theocratic backlash that defines radical religious behavior. Corporatism has become globalism. Environmentalism has embraced global collectivism. Wars have been unceasing, devastating generations to come with chemical and biological weapons. Nuclear accidents continue to release radiation into our oceans and airways. Economies have been decimated to the profit of elites and centralized usury banking. Nations have been swallowed by regional Unions, annihilating autonomy. In a post 9/11 world, nations that vowed to stand for freedom now surveille their citizens and run tanks in the streets. Orwell’s nightmare is but a whisper from reality …and we are afraid of “the end of the world”?
Where is the “reset” button?
Y2K and 2012 have come and gone. The Mayans told us we’d gotten it wrong. Still, catastrophism nags at our fears and likely at ancient memories of cycles of disaster. Our myths recall the flood that drowned most of the life on this planet. The rainbow bears the mythical promise that such an end will not befall us again. Instead Our Lady foretells of “fire that will fall from the sky” and Hollywood makes films like “Knowing” that depict the burning trees and animals when a flailing arc of plasma is ejected from our Sun, annihilating nations and destroying most of the life on the Earth.
It is in this “fire from the sky” that we recall the ancient mythological parallel between the Son of Mary and the Sun in the sky. The Lady of Light has repeatedly requested the offering of prayers that She might “hold back the arm of (Her) Son”. What if She is speaking in prophetic metaphor, in esoteric symbolism, giving us clues to the nature and resonance of God consciousness and to the role we are to play in manifestation of consequences? What if our thoughts, our words, our prayers and our actions were the determining factor in consequences that lie beyond the energetic responses of this planet alone? What if our energetic awareness upon this planet is in fact, part of an energetic interaction with the Sun from which our planet derives its sustenance?
What if Our Lady is in some way reflecting the energy of this planet as a mother of humanity who is enlisting our energetic participation in shielding ourselves and our planet from a harsh and cleansing blast of arching plasma from the Sun by our intention and our behavior?
If such is the case, then we can begin to feel the connection to the “Mother of God” and begin to understand the seriousness of the children of Fatima in their devotion to Her. We can begin to re-examine the layers of metaphor and dogma, unveiling the mysticism that was our gift and our responsibility in the first place.
It will begin a quest to understand the Eucharist as the Thanksgiving that it was meant to be instead of a holdover of catastrophic sacrifice.
As I studied Our Lady of Fatima, I often heard the sky referred to as “Our Lady’s blue mantle”. On those bright blue days that were commonplace before the sky was blanketed with chemicals, it seemed a fitting metaphor that our planet was also our Mother, Our Lady and that the sky itself was her veil.
Our planet can survive a cataclysmic arch of plasma even if the life upon it is decimated by fire. It is fire that cleanses the forest and opens the seeds. It is we, her children who will not survive. We who have fought among ourselves, who have been enslaved by our own submission to those who have held power over us, we who have forgotten that the real sin was our separation from our constant conversation with God…we have the opportunity to change our prophesied future and create a world in participation with the consciousness of God.
The Portal of Creation 