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THE IMAGE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

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The Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is an Indian Pictograph.  This is what the image meant to the Native American peoples of central Mexico:

1. Mary appears as an Aztec noblewoman, not as a Spanish woman.
2. The rabbit fur cuffs of her garment were only worn by Aztec nobility.
3. Mary stands in front of the sun.  Her position of superiority to the sun indicates that she is greater than the fearful Huitzilopochtli, the fierce sun-god of war.
4. Mary ’s feet rest on the crescent moon.  The moon god was the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl.  She clearly has crushed the serpent, a prophecy made to our first parents after the fall of man in Genesis 3:15.
5. The color of her mantle is jade green, the color of the garments worn by the gods and by Aztec Kings and their Queens.  This color identifies her status as the mother of the Son of God.  She is the Davidic Gebirah, the title given to the mothers of all the Davidic kings.  Mary, whose Son is the King of Kings who is seated on the right hand of His Father, is the Gebirah or Queen of Heaven
6. The stars which are scattered across her mantle indicate that clothed with the stars, she is greater the stars of heaven, which the Aztecs and other native peoples, worshipped.  The pattern of the stars is believed to form the constellations of the stars as they appear over central Mexico during the first two weeks of December.  Mary appeared to Juan Diego on December the 9^th - 12^th, 1531.
7. The black cross on the brooch around her neck is the sign of the God of the Spanish missionaries and indicated that she is carrying the message of the God worshipped by the Spanish.
8. The black belt is a sign worn by Aztec women to indicate pregnancy.  It is an Aztec maternity belt.  There is a cross-shaped image symbolizing the cosmos and called in the Aztec language “nahui-ollin,” beneath the image’s sash.
9. The four petal flower that rests over her womb indicates that she is the Mother of God because the four petal flower was a special symbol of life, movement and deity in the center of the universe.
10. The position of her hands indicates that she is praying as the Christians prayed.  She is not divine because she prays to God, and her fingers are in the direction of the cross on her brooch.
11. Some believe the design on her rose colored garment indicates a contour map of central Mexico
12. The image of Mary on Juan Diego’s tilma is similar to the image described by St. John in Revelation 12:1, indicating to the native peoples that the Christian Bible is now their sacred book.

Scientific information concerning the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe:

1. Scientists cannot explain the method by which the image was applied to the native cloth.  The image shows no sign of deterioration after 500 odd years.  Normally such cheap native cloth deteriorates in 20-60 years.  Replicas made with the same type of materials last only about 15 years before disintegrating.
2. There is no under sketch, no sizing and no protective over-varnish on the image.
3. Microscopic examinations reveal that there are no brush strokes on the main part of the image, and are only found on the outer edges where an embellishment was added to the ends of the rays of the sun by an unknown artist.
4. The image appears to increase in size and to change colors due to an unknown property of the surface and content of the cloth.
5. According to the Kodak Company of Mexico, the image itself is very smooth and feels like modern photographic pager even though the tilma and its image were produced centuries before the invention of photography.
6. The image consistently defies exact reproduction either by paints or by modern photography.
7. Several images are reflected in the eyes of the Virgin Mary in the image.  After researching historical documents to discover who was present in the room which Juan Diego opened his tilma to the Bishop, it is believed that the images are of those men who were present: Bishop Juan de Zumarraga, Juan Gonzales (the Bishop’s secretary) the interpreter, Juan Diego, who evidently moved in front of the tilma when he realized there was a image miraculously imposed on it, and perhaps others.
8. The distortion and location of the images on the eyes of the image are identical to what would be produced in the normal eye which has a rounded cornea as opposed to a flat surface.
9. A thorough scientific examination in 1999 revealed that there are no multiple images underlying the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as some have claimed.  Infrared pictures of the image do not show additional images underneath the present image but do show one image whose face, hands, robe, and mantle had been painted in one step with no sketches or paintbrush strokes.  Nobel Prize winner Richard Kuhn, who received the Nobel Prize for his work in chemistry in 1938, analyzed a sample of the fabric and reported that the tint on the fabric was not from a known mineral, vegetable, or animal source.
10. Scientists who have examined the image over the centuries testify that the properties of the image are absolutely unique and impossible to explain.  The image falls into the same category as the image on the Shroud of Turin: “not made with human hands.”

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS RELATED TO THE MIRACLE OF THE IMAGE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE