Original sin, The Serpent, and Sacred
Sex as seen in art from pre-history to the present
(The iconology of fallen humanity)
....What
is this command God has given you, not to eat the fruit of any tree in the
garden? To which the woman answered, We can eat the fruit of any tree in the
garden except the tree in the middle of it; it is this God has forbidden us to
eat or even to touch, on pain of death. And the serpent said to her, What is
this talk of death? God knows well that as soon as you eat this fruit your eyes
will be opened, and you yourselves will be like gods, knowing good and evil.
And with that the woman, who saw that the fruit was good to eat, saw, too, how
it was pleasant to look at and charmed the eye,
took some fruit from the tree and ate it; and she gave some to her
husband, and he ate with her. 7 Then the eyes of both
were opened, and they became aware of their nakedness... . And the Lord God
said to the serpent, For this work of thine, thou alone among all the cattle
and and beasts, shalt bear a curse; thou shalt crawl on thy belly and eat dust
all thy life long . And I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between
thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou doest lie in
ambush at her heels. Genesis
3: 1-7 *
While ignored or denied by many, or most, today, the doctrine of Original Sin is a core belief of traditional Christianity, i.e., through the malice of the Devil, our first parents were deceived with the promise from the "Serpent," that if they disobeyed the patriarchal authority of the Creator, they themselves would become as "gods." They did deliberately disobey the Divine command and the results were disastrous for ensuing humanity . (see: appendix, i)
For the Roman Catholic Church, the reality of Original Sin, is not only a matter of strict dogma, as defined by the Council of Trent, (see: appendix, ii) but an observable fact. In the words of Blaise Pascal, "As to myself, I confess, that as soon as ever the Christian religion has revealed to me this one principle, that human nature is depraved, and fallen from God, this opens my eyes to see everywhere the proofs of that fact. For nature is now in that state, that every thing, both in us and out of us, bespeaks our loss of God." [i]
Whether one takes the account of man's creation and
fall in the Book of Genesis as literal presentation of an historical
occurrence or mythopoetic presentation
of a truth via an imaginative narrative, [ii]
the facts are the same. The account speaks of four persons; Almighty God, Adam
& Eve, (the first two creatures endowed with a rational conscience and
immortal soul - neshamah, Hebrew) [iii]
and the Evil One, Satan, disguised as a serpent. (The "Evil Spirit" takes on the
appearance of the cunning serpent at the beginning of Biblical history just as
the "Holy Spirit" takes on the appearance of the gentle dove at the
Baptism of Jesus in the river
Just as in the Biblical account, the contemporary Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh acknowledges that it was the serpent who cheated man out of eternal life.
"Then Gilgamesh sat down and wept, tears streaming down his cheeks (having lost the possibility of eternal life)...For whose sake, Urshinabi, have I strained my muscles? For whose sake has my heart's blood been spent? I brought no blessing on myself.. I did the serpent underground good service."[iv] [emphasis added]
Revered or feared , the serpent is an ubiquitous figure in ancient Sumerian, as well as Egyptian art.
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Sumerian
serpent goddess, Ubaid , c.5000 BC |
Sumerian
serpent mask, c.4500 BC |
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Egyptian serpent god, Apep,
, Lord of the underworld, Middle
Kingdom c. 2600 BC |
Serpent
Crown of Tutankhamen 1358 BC |
Serpent
bracelet, Kam-at-f, |
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In
fact, depictions of deified serpents are by no means confined to the ancient
Middle East The University of Oslo, Norway, published a paper In 2006 claiming
that the site of oldest religious ritual of humanity thus far discovered is to
be found is a cave in the Tsodila hills of Botswana and involved the worship of
a stone python by the San people perhaps dating back to the early stone age
(70,000 BC).[v] *
Serpent deities, it would appear, exist and have a central place in the mythologies of virtually all cultures. [vi] While scholars may dispute the origins and meanings of ancient fables, images of serpent deities, as well as other universal symbols and pictographs, presented below in this essay, are found in historic as well as prehistoric locations world wide as seen in the following images.
This universality gives credence to the unity of the human race, its origin and fall as described in Genesis
The Images
below represent, the "Rainbow Serpent" revered by Australian Aborigines
(left), and the Aztec Serpent god Quetzalcoatl, (center) and an Anasazi painting from San Rafael
Swell,
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Some further example are; Shiva dancing with the "Naga"
serpent, Greek "Ophite" serpent worship, The Norwegian serpent god
"Gorunjand" who encircles the world, and finally a pre- Christian
Irish serpent herm cross. (It was not the physical serpents that St. Patrick
drove from
Frequently,
as in the Sumerian Gueda vase and the Irish stele shown above, two intertwined
serpents are depicted as the male and female or active and passive (good &
evil) energies of the cosmos in need of balance.
According to the earliest Chinese creation legend, the land was swept by a great flood and only Fu Xi and his sister, Nüwa survived to become the progenitors of the human race. They are invariably shown as male and female anthropomorphic entwined serpents.
The twin serpents, Ida (f.) and Pingala,(m.) are fundamental to Indian Kundalini Yoga where the twin male and female forces rise through the "Chakras" to enter the brain and open the "Third eye" of divine wisdom. In the Tantric version of Kundalini Yoga called maithuna, the Yogin (m) and Yogini (f) unite in sacred intercourse producing rapture, but without passing the "seed," the Yogi thus retaining the "divine spark" which brings enlightenment and ultimate divinization.[vii]
The entwined serpents were often portrayed in Ancient Egypt as symbol of the mythical god Toth associated with wisdom and healing.
The ubiquitous twin serpents, or the believed to be, male and female cosmic forces were worshiped
in pre Classical Greece as seen in the image
of the Minoan snake goddess (1600 BC),
as well as the Gorgon from the
In regard to the initial "Fall" or primal disaster, aside from the biblical and other ancient accounts, There are two which come down to us via the Greeks written down by Hesiod in his Works and Days and Theogany ( c. 651 -59 BC). Both point to man's desire for forbidden knowledge. First is the story of the Titan (demi-god) Prometheus "stealing the fire" from the gods for mankind. In punishment "The Father of the Gods and men" charges Hephaestus (Vulcan) to form the first woman, Pandora, of great beauty and skill, but "of shameless mind and deceitful nature", to cheat man of his happiness. Thus Pandora is sent carrying a "Gift" from the gods consisting of a great "jar" (pithos) [viii] containing all the miseries that are to henceforth plague mankind. In the opening of the jar, Pandora " loosed and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Hope remained under the unbreakable rim of that great jar."[ix]
Early Christian writers, such as Tertullian, Origen, St. Irenaeus and St. Gregory of Nazanzius all saw parallels in the Greek legend and the Biblical account of the Fall with Prometheus, like Satan, offering false promises of divine knowledge, which, in fact, bring suffering and death, Pandora as Eve beguiling Adam, but, as in Genesis, a promise of hope.[x]
In a second account of the Fall, Hesiod, in his Thegony, speaks of Gaia (Mother Earth) inciting her offspring Kronos (Time) to emasculate Ouranos (the supreme sky god) with a flint sickle, because he would not share in his secrets or allow evil children to come forth from within her. Once Kronos has accomplished the deed, Ouranos' member falls into the sea causing a great foam from which Aphrodite (the fair goddess of sexual desire) is born.[xi] Kronos then devours his own children, which is to say, once time is born, death enters the world.
This myth, however, has far older roots as seen in the following image of a Rhodesian rock painting from 8,000 BC:
In the original image to the left, one sees the rebellious "horned god" holding aloft the severed member of the "sky god" while he, himself, brings forth life from his own ejaculation, emphasized in the modern copy to the right.
This mythology is echoed in the oldest Egyptian Pyramid texts ( c. 1248 BC) wherein Atum, (the all and the nothing) brings forth himself and subsequent creation via an act of masturbation. [xii]
According to Peter Tomkins, author of The Magic of the Obelisks, Atum's act of
self abuse is the proto-myth of
Renowned Swiss occult psychologist, Carl Jung, in his autobiographic book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, relates his first dream at about four years of age, as visiting a dark underground chamber wherein there stood a huge 15 foot phallus that at first frightened him but later realized was "the underground god," and that etymologically, the Greek word Phallus was a derivative of the "shining light" [Lucifer] who is opposed to, but complementary to Jesus.[xiv]
Phallic worship
abounded in antiquity and continues in Africa,
Below is one of the classic carved stone images of Shiva's "lingam" or phallus worshipped by the faithful., in this case encircled by the serpent.
The "Horned God" as initiator of life seen in the 10,000 year
old rock art of
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"The
sorcerer" - Trois Frères cavern (sketch by
Abbé Breuil) |
"Horned god"
- Moheno-Daro, |
"Lord
of nature" - Sumerian seal, c. 3000 BC |
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"Pashtupati"
"Lord of Nature" Babylonian, c. 2500 BC |
"Cernunos" as "Lord of Nature |
"Cernunnos" |
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While, as shown, the
worship of the "Horned god" is
ancient and widespread, his
depiction fecundating nature, as
seen in the Rhodesian rock art above,
goes back to one of the earliest
paintings known to man. The picture below is from the recently discovered
(1994)
In fact, judging from art and artifacts going back to the Paleolithic , some form of "Sacred sex," involving a Phallic cult and the blind (The female figurines below have no faces) generative forces of nature would appear to be the default religion of Fallen man [xv]
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Canaanite phallic stone from grave site, |
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Paleolithic "Venus" figurines from
distinct sites, 32,000 - 10,000 BC |
... [M]en imparted to stocks and stones the
incommunicable name of God. ... Nor
were they content with these false notions of God’s nature; living in a world
besieged by doubt, they misnamed its innumerable disorders a state of peace.
Peace amidst their rites of child murder, their dark mysteries, and vigils consecrated
to frenzy.” Wisdom 13, 15
Cave
art at
Perhaps the most well known depictions of "Sacred
sex" are found in the ruins of the Roman resort of
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In the Villa of
Mysteries, which itself contains
several images of Priapus, one may
see the famous murals depicting an
initiation into the Mysteries of Bacchus
and Priapus
Discovered in 1930, these murals are extremely well preserved and can thus give us a full visual representation of the "Sacred Mysteries." While scholars give different explanations of the full meaning of these frescos, there is general agreement as to the following:
In the right hand fresco below, an initiate is being prepared amidst music and dancing for an initiation, hieros gamos, or ritual marriage to the god Priapus represented by the phallic herm being uncovered in the left hand panel. Given the stance of the winged and booted priestess, the initiation involved some form painful flagellation..
The contemporary Roman poet, Juvenal, made the following
observation regarding these sexual initiations:
"the secret rites of the Great Goddess are now made public when
these votaries of Priapus by the
music of the pipe and horn and raised by the vapors of wine...toss their heads
and make a strange howling. How their desires are inflamed, how agitated."
Satire VI
As well as the fixation on the serpent and phallic worship, sacred sex and the "horned one," fallen man worshipped the major forces of nature in general, especially the sun moon and stars.
“Instead [of recognizing their Creator] they
have pointed us to fire, or wind,… to
the wheeling stars, or sun and moon and Made gods of them. Wisdom: 12
Below are three well
know pictorial examples of pagan sun worship from
Lesser known examples appear world wide as in the two examples below, the first from North America (Utah) showing a sun symbol attached to a serpent along with some sort of horned creature, and the second from Europe (Sweden) showing a sun symbol above a group of belligerent men with erect phalluses.
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Once again, the universality of these pagan images, sun, moon, stars, serpent, " horned one, " phallus etc. tie all these peoples together in single bond and clearly point to the unity of the human race and a common ancestry as described in the Book of Genesis.
These images also would tend to confirm the
Biblical injunction that prior to God's
salvific intervention, "The gods of
the gentiles (peoples) were demons," as described in Psalm
96,5 as rendered in the Septuagint Greek
text.[xvi]
This is not to say that there were not some holy men and women who did walk in obedience according to God's ways. As H.H. Pope Leo XIII explained in his1884 encyclical Humanum Genus, " The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, 'through the envy of the devil,' separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth."
When evil
appeared to triumph, however, the Book of Genesis tells us that Almighty God
advised Noah to build
an "Ark" prefiguring the Church (Barque of Peter) as vessel of salvation. Then
God made a covenant with Abraham and afterward revealed his law to Moses. In
the fullness of time He sent his only begotten Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ to redeem us via his propritiatary death on the cross. Thus: "...
through one man guilt came into the world; and since death came owing to guilt,
death was handed on to all mankind by one man ...but, If this one man's fault brought death on a
whole multitude, all the more lavish was God's grace, shewn to a whole
multitude, that free gift he made us in
grace brought by one man, Jesus Christ" Romans 5:12,15
To participate,
however, in this "free gift he made us in grace,", we must believe and be baptized in his name .
"He
through whom the world was made, was in the world, and the world treated him as
a stranger.... But all those who did welcome him he empowered to become the
children of God, all those who believe in his name; their birth came, not from
human stock, not from nature's will or man's, but from God." John
1:10-13
Unfortunately even the elect, those redeemed in the blood of Christ through Baptism, are not free from the moral disorder and concupiscence inherited from the Fall.
In the words of
St. Paul, "But I observe another disposition in my lower self, which raises
war against the disposition of my conscience, and so I am handed over as a
captive to that disposition towards sin which my lower self contains." Romans 7:23
The doctrine of Original sin has been under steady attack as religious superstition by the rationalists and philosophes since the 17th century whence it was proposed that man might build a more just and equitable society in the future via human reason alone. The cult of reason itself became a religion culminating in the enthronement of the "Goddess of Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral in 1793, at the time of the French Revolution..
According to a contemporary account, having previously removed all altars and crucifixes, an artificial mountain was constructed where the high altar had been, and Mme. Monoro, the wife of a republican agitator, escorted by dancers from the Opera and common prostitutes, was enthroned as the new "goddess of reason" atop the mound wearing a transparent diaphanous white dress and red Phrygian cap[xvii]
As pointed out by James Billington in his seminal work, Fire in the Minds of Men, the origins of the Revolutionary Faith, while the orators in the Palais Royal at the center of Paris, preached republican ideals of political freedom, they also preached accompanying sexual license, and by night descended to the cellars to enjoy such distractions as a pornographic wax museum or the favors of a seven foot three inch Prussian prostitute, Mlle. Lapierre.[xviii]
While
republican ideals were not so strong in
Among the more illustrious members were Prime Minister, the Earl of Bute, First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich, the painter William Hogarth, and the fiery orator, John Wilkes,[xix]
(Above to the left is a modern diagram of the caves and to the right, a deteriorated bronze statue of Venus with a drinking bowl still to be seen in the caves today.)
Later, fanned by the 1792 trial of the Bounty
mutineers at
Among the German Romantics of the same period, the
idea of unfettered progress was enshrined, not in reason, but in nature itself. Philip Otto Runge expressed
his experience of the immanent divinity of Nature as "…the feeling of the
whole universe with us; this united chord which in its vibration touches every
string of our heart;…here is the highest that we divine - God"[xxi]
The painting below by Runge is titled "Morning" and shows the goddess Aurora bringing forth a new beginning. Along with three other paintings reflecting the times of the day, this work was to be enshrined in a chapel extolling the new religion of nature.
The concept of "radical evil," however, remained unresolved. Emanuel Kant, writing in 1794, recognized the "perversity of human heart," or simply the "evil heart" placing concupiscence and lust in violent conflict with reason resulting in disequilibrium[xxii]
This disequilibrium became quite obvious in the visual arts by the end of the 19th century, especially in works of German and Austrian schools. Below are examples by Eduard Munch, Gustav Klimt, and Franz Stuck.
Sigmund Freud, living in fin de siècle
In brief,
the id, according to Freud, is the unorganized part of the personality
structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. The id is the only component of personality that
is present from birth. The id is the
source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our
sexual and aggressive drives. The id contains
the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification
of any impulse. The id contains the
libido, which is the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive
to the demands of reality. The id acts
solely according to the "pleasure principle."
Freud,
himself, describes it thus: "It is the dark, inaccessible part of our
personality,... we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations....
It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no
organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about
the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the
pleasure principle."[xxiii]
Simply
said, what Freud is referring to is what St. Paul called the "old
man" or "old self," that
the Christian must overcome: "...with
regard to your former way of life, to put off the old man (self) which is being
corrupted by its deceitful desires." Ephesians
4: 22
In contrast
to the "id," Freud posited the "super ego" (das uber
ich), to replace the Christian word "conscience" for religious
and ethical formation, "The super-ego retains the character of the father,
...and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of
[paternal] authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter
will be the domination of the super-ego over the "ego" (see below)
later on—in the form of ... an unconscious sense of guilt."[xxiv]
For Freud the "Father figure" [God] must be destroyed to release the "id" from its bondage. To do this he invented a whole new myth, the "Oedipus Complex" to replace the fall recounted in Genesis.
According to Freud, in his seminal 1913 work Totem and Taboo, perhaps as far back as the Ice Age, the primal horde of humans turned on the dominant male who jealously guarded all females including mothers and sisters as his own exclusive sexual partners, thus depriving the other males fulfillment of their libidinous desire. This tyrannical father (Totem) was murdered and then eaten by the resentful young males, his sons, who then possessed all females, including mothers and sisters (Taboo).[xxv]
Having removed God from the equation, it is the task of psychoanalysis to allay the inherited feelings of guilt of modern human beings attached to this primal act which is reflected in jealousy of the father figure and desire for incestuous sexual relations. (Freud, himself was involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister in law, Minna Bernays.)
Freud in his overall theory, included, along with the id and the super ego, a third element called the ego (das ich) or rational principle, that keeps a balance between the forces of desire and repression in order to maintain civil society. As stated in one of his final works Civilization and its Discontents written in 1929, the need for societal repression of the pleasure principle, especially of sexual desire produces overwhelming discontent.[xxvi]
This sentiment was shared by his then colleague Carl
Jung who had written to Freud in 1910
"...and must we not love evil if we are to break away from the
obsession with virtue which makes us sick and forbids the joys of life."[xxvii]
“ Jung went on later to state in his Zur
Psychologie der Trinitatslehre,: "In our diagram, Christ and the devil
appear as equal and opposite[xxviii]
While the other two major destructive forces of the modern era, Charles Darwin with his theory of mechanistic evolution, and Karl Marx with his theory of class struggle and socialist revolution, denied Original Sin, it was Freud who turned the doctrine on its head and unleashed the sexual revolution and moral decay that has overwhelmed Western Civilization today: premarital sex, rampant promiscuity, sodomy, pedophilia, pornography, contraception, abortion, sex trafficking, homosexual marriage - all promoted as a healthy liberation from patriarchal oppression i.e., God the Father, "...that Father from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name," Ephesians 3:15).
This sense of patriarchal repression even wormed its
way into the bosom of
The sexual revolution is not just the triumph of the "id" or releasing of the libido, but is, in many cases, a return to the "sacred sex" of our pagan ancestors prior to the Gospel and Christ's propitiatory sacrifice on the cross.
Author Dan Brown in his 2003 mega best seller (over 80,000,000
copies sold) the Da Vinci Code, tells us via his protagonist, Robert
Langdon: "The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete
until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the
female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually
complete and ultimately achieve gnosis—knowledge of the divine. Since the days
of
While many will dismiss Brown's book as simply a work of fiction, silly, non historical and irrelevant, the effects are demonstrable. For example, in two towns near this writer's former home in once Catholic Spain, the crucifixes in the in the public squares have been recently replaced with erotic monuments
"Los Enamorados" Antequera (Málaga) "Pareja" Coin (Málaga)
On
October 12th, 1992, at the Metropolitan
Opera House of New York, an opera, written by renowned composer Phillip Glass
and directed by maestro James Levine, titled The Voyage, had its opening premier. Staged as a commemorative of
the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovery of America, it was in fact, a blasphemous
portrayal of a female extraterrestrial
(goddess) illuminating primitive humans via a sexual ritual and later
appearing to Columbus in the guise of Queen Isabella dressed as the Virgin Mary
claiming to be divine while engaging in a simulated sexual act on stage. [xxxii]
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"I take many forms |
In 2011, To great critical acclaim, (New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) Sarah Small, presented a show, quasi opera, titled Tableau vivant in which she posed Christ like, including stigmata, surrounded by a virtual mob of naked men and women in various stages of sexual arousal..
Sarah Small, Tableau Vivant Performance, New York City 2011
In February of
2012, a "Punk Rock" group named Pussy
Riot dedicated to radical feminism and "gay rights" desecrated
the sacred space of the Russian Orthodox church of Christ the Savior in
Also in
In the
Yet more disturbing , at this same Grammy awards ceremony of 2012, a third super star, Niki Minaj, after what can only be understood as a rock musical variation of a "Black Mass," presided over a final scene described in official press coverage as the destruction of the Catholic Church as black clad girls seduced altar boys and the stained glass and stone structures came tumbling down.
To celebrate the supposed demise of
the Catholic Church, in 2013, a topless
member of the radical feminist group
"Femen" leaped on the altar with the words "I am
God" painted on her naked torso during
the Christmas mass being celebrated at the Cologne Cathedral in
The "Serpent's promise" ostensibly fulfilled - "You shall be as gods." Below is card No. VI, "The Lovers" from the 1911 Rider-Waite Tarot deck. Although denied by occultists, the angel emerging from the sun is clearly Lucifer, the "Angel of Light" presenting the forbidden knowledge to our progenitors via the "Serpent" coiled about the tree.
Along with "Sacred sex", as Christianity wanes, the old "Luciferian" Sun worship returns. Below is a painting titled "danza al sol" (dance to the sun) by acclaimed (adored by her followers) Mexican artist Frieda Kahlo in the 1930s. Note that in the upper left corner that it is the horned black creature with enlarged sexual organ that leads the dance.
Sun worship, in fact, is a growing phenomenon as demonstrated in
the 2012 gathering at
And the "Horned God" is alive and well both among the neo-pagan Wiccans, and the Freemasons.
Wiccan Cernunnos
by Ephy Drow Masonic Baphomet by Elephias Levi \ 33 ͦ
Icnographically, Cernunnos carries a single serpent in his left hand, while the Baphomet displays twin serpents entwined about his phallus.
As we enter deeper and deeper into a post-Christian age, modern "iconography" becomes more and more indicative of our devolution into the diabolical religion of our ancestors. The image shown below by Dan Lomahaftewa titled Rainbow Myth was featured on the Spring 1998 cover of Teaching Tolerance, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This painting, is reminiscent of the ancient petroglyphs shown at the beginning of this essay. It portrays a classic pre Christian cosmos, between the celestial rainbow above and the infernal horned serpent below (emerging from the flames). Within this hermetically enclosed environment one sees a horned male and a feather decked female The male figure carries a shield with the male sun symbol and is flanked by spermatoid serpents. The female caries the feminine spiral involuted uterine symbol and is flanked by the same symbol. The allusion is to the all sacred generative principle of post lapasrian man cut off from his Creator and Heavenly Father. Between the two, above, is the sacred sun disk, and below are their offspring, a harmonious union of man and beast.
A
statue of Quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs was
placed in the main
Thus today the serpent of Genesis still raises its ugly head, however, the prophesy is clear. "...And I will establish a feud between you and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou doest lie in ambush at her heels. Genesis 3: 7
Our Lady of
(Coatlaxopeuh "Quatlasupe" in the Aztec Nahuatl language meaning "she who crushes the serpent")
Pray the
Rosary
Offer acts
of reparation
Assist
worthily at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
Please see following article: http://www.agdei.com/Massinart.html