Tarot artist Patrick Valenza

Patrick Valenza, creator of the fabulous Deviant Moon tarot (I have both versions of this deck; the first one and the borderless version) has a new deck due out in October. Trionfi della Luna. I like this image of The High Priestess from his new deck; it has a distinct Marian vibe.

The Trionfi della Luna is not a tarot deck per se, but just the major arcana cards . . .

:

Mother Mary Oracle Cards

I love this card; it's from Doreen Virtue's Ascended Masters Oracle Cards. I don't have this deck, but have been considering purchasing it. I do have Virtue's Mary, Queen of Angels oracle:

Unknown Mary Card (tarot?)

I really like this card; has an old school holy card feel to it. I think it must be a tarot card  -- III, The Empress --  but don't know what deck it's from, just found it while searching on-line.

Mother Mary Oracle Card

A beautiful oracle card of Mary from Doreen Virtue's Ascended Masters Oracle Cards,  Mother Mary. 

Mary Queen of Angels oracle deck

My brand new deck from Doreen Virtue; the Mary Queen of Angels oracle. Very lovely! Two powerful three card readings so far. It definitely has a heavy Chrisitian religious vibe, but I don't have to buy into that, I go with the beauty of the cards and a Goddess/UFO Mary kind of vibe.

Images from Doreen Virtue Mary Queen of Angles oracle

This is Ishtar: pronounced "Easter"

Santa Muerte: Underworld saint becoming more popular in US

Underworld saint becoming more popular in US - Yahoo! News: Popular in Mexico, and sometimes linked to the illicit drug trade, the skeleton saint known as La Santa Muerte in recent years has found a robust and diverse following north of the border: immigrant small business owners, artists, gay activists and the poor, among others — many of them non-Latinos and not all involved with organized religion.

Clad in a black nun's robe and holding a scythe in one hand, Santa Muerte appeals to people seeking all manner of otherworldly help: from fending off wrongdoing and carrying out vengeance to stopping lovers from cheating and landing better jobs. And others seek her protection for their drug shipments and to ward off law enforcement.

See also: Who the Hell is Santa Muerte? from Hell on Earth

Women Of Esoterica: BBC News - Pussy Riot members jailed for two years for hooliganism

BBC News - Pussy Riot members jailed for two years for hooliganism: Disturbing and disappointing news. Three members of Pussy Riot --- Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich, --- have been sentenced to two years in prison for their performance.BBC News - Pussy Riot members jailed for two years for hooliganism

The headline reads "...jailed for ... hooliganism" but the judge added that their "hooliganism" "crudely undermined social order."

Scary that anyone can be jailed for political protest that conflicts with the rule of the land. Equally frightening is the fact that one can be jailed for "offending" religions. In Pussy Riot's case, their protest was seen as "hooliganism" but not just; as the judge said, "...the act had been one of blasphemy, not politics."

The women have international supporters, including musicians like Madonna and Paul McCartney. But there are plenty of religious fanatics who think justice has been served:

One, Igor Kim, told the BBC News website from Moscow: "Shouting and screaming and spreading hate in Church is unacceptable and is contrary with Christian ethics."


Hardly need to point out the obvious that sending people to prison for three years for expressing their opinions is not "Christian ethics."

The Madonna and the Whore, and, Evading Pussy

I found this AP item interesting for what it couldn't bring itself to say: pussy. Associated Press | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon Not at first anyway,

Madonna, as in pop culture icon, and whore, as in, that's what Madonna is. Those words can be uttered. But pussy, that might be offensive!

The item is about a tweet from a "Russian deputy premier" that condemned Madonna (the performer, not the Madonna) for supporting, as the AP release put it "...the jailed members of a Russian punk band..."
That "Russian punk band" is called PUSSY RIOT. Say it. PUSSY. As in: vagina. Twat. And so on.

The parallels to the Madonna and the whore iconography are obvious. A woman -- Madonna -- takes on the persona of the Madonna/whore mythic cliche. And she dares to support other whores, who themselves dared perform -- in your face, bourgeois! -- anti-Madonna sentiments. Actually, Pussy Riot prayed to Mary: ""Virgin Mary, drive Putin away!" they evoked. Further insult to the Madonna, these "whores" take back names and labels and own it. Pussy Riot.

Parked in the seventh paragraph, the name of the group: Pussy Riot, is written. Pussy Riot appears again in the ninth paragraph. 7 and 9, two powerful numbers in esoteric tradition, not to mention three, the number of members on trial. The three members of Pussy Riot have been in jail for five months and are accused of acts that amount to religious hate crimes. The women face up to three years in prison.

Madonna -- the musician, not the BVM -- is once again about symbols. (Remember her recent swastika provocation in France.) From the AP item:

Madonna, who performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg as part of her world tour, expressed her support for Pussy Riot at Tuesday's concert in Moscow, saying she'd "pray for them." She then turned her bare back, with "Pussy Riot" written on it and donned a ski mask similar to those worn by the band.

Pussy Riot has international support, including of course from fellow musicians. Here's just one link I found while surfing.

Deviant Moon Tarot: Ace of Wands as Madonna Figure

I've long admired artist Patrick Valenza's Deviant Moon tarot and finally bought myself a deck, which arrived yesterday. After exploring the deck, I find that I love it even more than I thought I would.(I even found myself having a dream last night in which I was wondering through various DVM type landscapes.)  I feel connected. No other deck has given me that intuitive connection, other than animal oracles. I've always found that I go back to versions of the "Waite" deck, much to my own dismay in many ways. Other decks I like a lot, like the Marseilles decks, have been fine as well, but just not...my soul mate of decks.

Ace of Wands, Deviant Moon Tarot, by Patrick Valenza

One card in the Deviant Moon deck that is particularly beautiful is the Ace of Wands. Which is a definite Madonna image. Here is the card on the official DVM site. More discussion on the Aeclectic Tarot forum. And here's an interesting site where two cards are pulled to answer a daily question: one card is from one deck, the other, the Deviant Moon. Creative idea; using cards from different decks in the same reading.

Santa Muerte (Saint Death)

One of my favorite blogs, Mystic Politics, has a brief item about "Santa Muerte" the Saint of Death.

"While tens of thousands of Mexicans have lost their lives in the ongoing drug war, millions more have become devoted to death. Saint Death (Santa Muerte) is a skeletal folk saint whose cult has proliferated on both sides of the border over the past decade. The Grim Reapress (she's a female figure) has rapidly become one of the most popular and powerful saints on both the Mexican and American religious landscapes. Although condemned as satanic by both Catholic and Protestant churches, she appeals to millions of Mexicans and Latin American immigrants in the U.S. on the basis of her reputedly awesome supernatural powers. ~ sources: Huffington Post

Santa Muerte, or The Grim Reapress, is a folk image/entity/icon. As such,like many folk images, she is outlawed by authorities and institutions. Since Saint Death is a protectress of the criminal and the murderous, her images, as well as conspicuous homages to her, are quashed:

The current administration of Felipe Calderon has even declared her religious enemy number one of the Mexican state. In March 2009, the Mexican Army bulldozed dozens of her roadside shrines in the border cities of Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. But providing protection to narcos is just one of Saint Death's multiple roles. She is also a supernatural healer, love doctor, money-maker, lawyer and angel of death. ~ source: R. Andrew Chestnut,Huffington Post.

'La Catrina' by Rodolfo Cartas

The duality is interesting too: adopted by the criminals, the outsiders, but also by another type of outsider: those needing help in every day matters concerning money, illness, love, the law...and, death, which gets us all. It's interesting the saint is a female. R. Andrew Chestnut, author of the Huffington Post article that Mystic Politics links to, addresses this:

No introduction to Saint Death would be complete without consideration of one of her most unique characteristics -- her gender identity. While folk saints abound in the Americas, and other supernatural skeletons work miracles in Guatemala and Argentina, Santa Muerte stands alone as the sole female saint of death from Chile to Canada. Her asexual skeletal form contains no hint of femaleness. Rather it is her attire and, to a lesser extent, her hair that define the saint as female. Devotees and manufacturers of mass produced images of the Bony Lady usually dress her as a nun, the Virgin, a bride or queen.

(I wonder about Catrina, the famous Day of the Dead skeletal figure -- is she as common/popular? It's not quite the same meaning, from my limited understanding; Day of the Dead, while maybe morbid to some of us gringos, isn't a negative celebration, and it doesn't share the same context as Saint Death. While both are female images, both are of the people, and both are vilified by authorities, they aren't the same.)

Another post I found: Pagan Spirits: Santa Muerte -Saint Death with comparisons to other female dieties of death, including, to my surprise, the Virgin of Guadalupe, who one doesn't usually think of in this context:

The Virgin of Guadalupe’s indigenous antecedent is Tonatzin, the Moon Goddess, a milder aspect of Coaticue. Coaticue was the Lady of the Serpent Skirt, the creator-goddess who gave birth to all the deities and to earthly life as well. At death, she swallowed living things back into her body. She was also goddess of the moon and stars. She wore a necklace of skulls (like India’s Kali) and, as her name implies, a skirt of serpents. She is sometimes depicted as wearing a skirt made from the penises of her sacrificial victims.

Sister Joan Chittister, OSB: In Search of the Divine Feminine

Via the blog Mystic Politics, this article on the Divine Feminine at Huffington Post:

Sister Joan Chittister, OSB: In Search of the Divine Feminine: Where does this notion of the Divine Feminine come from? Is the question of the Divine Feminine simply a current fad? A silly notion of even sillier feminists? Or could it possibly have deep and ineradicable roots in the tradition itself?

However much we mock the idea, the truth is, ironically, that every major spiritual tradition on earth carries within it, at its very center, in its ancient core, an awareness of the Divine Feminine. In Hinduism, Shakti -- the great mother, the feminine principle -- is seen as the sum total of all the life-giving energy of the universe. She is the source of all. In Buddhism, Tara is seen as the perfection of wisdom, and in Buddhism, wisdom is life's highest metaphysical principle! Tara is considered the light and the prime source of Buddhahood and so of all Buddhas to follow.

Lucky Mojo Curio Site

I love this site: Lucky Mojo Curio Site. It's been around for years, and still going. Have fun exploring religious, folk art and folk religious items from around the world. Truly wonderful ... Images shown: Saint Wallet Package Amulet

---

Asherah -- God’s Wife Edited Out of the Bible

God’s Wife Edited Out of the Bible - Almost (Videos)

God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.

Information presented in Stavrakopoulou’s books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection.

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe."

"After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

Arizona church is house of prostitution, police say - CNN.com

The Goddess Temple in Phoenix, Arizona, busted for prostitution:

The alleged brothel generated tens of thousands of dollars a month, Martos told CNN.

A history of neighbor complaints, a recent Phoenix newspaper article, and the temple's website were among the factors prompting authorities to conduct the undercover investigation, Martos said.

"What's unusual is that they were trying to hide behind religion or church, and under the guise of religious freedom, they were committing acts of prostitution," Martos said.

"We certainly respect First Amendment rights. However, religious freedom does not allow for criminal acts," Martos said.

Regarding the Goddess Temple's website, he said: "What they would talk about would seem to be religion. At the same time, they were implying or intimating that they were giving sex therapy."

The website says at one point: "Sex is a holy, sacred and divine healing force at the core (of) our beings. Once we embrace this force instead of deny it, we become successful, happy and powerful manifestors."

Can't argue with their philosophy, (the Raelians would probably agree) but seemingly, they were just bull shitting the masses. Kind of like most churches. . .

---

Folk Art: St. Maria Magdalene, Patroness of Fallen Women

About fifteen years ago, there was a local woman who sold religious folk art/outsider art items at her booth at the Saturday Market. Saturday Market is a long running street fair in Eugene (since 1970),  full of booths of hand made items, as well as food booths and lots of music.

I bought several things from her at the time and did a paper on her when I was studying folklore at the University of Oregon.

This is a beaded necklace, with a wood pendant. On the front is an image of St. Maria Magdalene. On the back is a little label: "St. Maria Magdalene Patroness of Fallen Women." This is what Books of the Times site has to say about St. Maria Magdalene:

There is a breathtaking moment in the Gospel of Philip, one of the Gnostic gospels, which were denounced by the church as heresy. The apostles witness Jesus kissing Mary Magdalene on the mouth. The apostles are horrified, jealous. ''Why do you love her more than us?'' they ask. Jesus' response is mysterious and enigmatic. ''Why do I not love you like her?'' he says.

What is the meaning of those kisses? Sexual passion? A profound friendship? Jesus anointing Mary Magdalene as his successor and as leader of the church?

Traditionally, Mary Magdalene has been seen as a reformed harlot, portrayed in paintings as red haired and bare breasted. But as Karen L. King, the Winn professor of ecclesiastical history at Harvard University, in the Divinity School, points out in her new book, ''The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle,'' nowhere does the Bible say that she was a prostitute.

I know I have that paper, with photos, around here somewhere. I also have other items that I hope to take snaps of and post. I think the woman -- a very colorful person! -- called herself "Sister Spirit" and I want to say "bear" was in there somewhere, but it's been many years and I don't remember.

She sold jewelry with decorated images of the saints and the BVM as well as Jesus. She was known for her Jesus nightlights: religious plastic nightlights of Jesus and Mary, (the kind you can buy at dime stores; I've even seen them at Dollar Store type places) painted, often with neon colors, and decorated with beads, glitter, feathers .

I haven't been to the Saturday Market for a couple of years; but when I have gone there, I didn't notice her around. I think she left the area some time ago, or at least, stopped making her wonderful folk art.

Pilgrims Flock To Medjugorje For Anniversary

It's been thirty years since the first apparitions at Medjugorie took place, and the site is still active. As this article notes, the Vatican has not recognized Medjugorie as legit, though just last year they began an official exploration into the apparitions. More here, with pics:Pilgrims Flock To Medjugorje For Anniversary
UFO-Mary related posts:
Trickster-Mary-Devil in the Mysterious Valley?
Vatican to Officially Investigate Medjugorje
Researcher Mike Dash: "The Marian Apparitions at Marpingen, Germany #1"
Medjugjore Mary: How Tall is She?

Speculative Realms: The Enduring Love of the Woman-Girl: Who Are We to Disregard Her?

Painting by Jusepe de Ribera 1636

Gary Haden at Speculative Realms on Mary Magdalene. Very comprehensive. And addresses the popular myth that Mary was a prostitute, and why that idea, believed still by so many, is a problem...

There is much more to Haden's article than that point, but read it for yourself.

Brown Pelican Synchronicity

I wrote about our watching a brown pelican while on the coast over Thanksgiving on my blog The Orange Orb. I took some pictures but they didn't turn out well; couldn't distinguish too well the pelican, which was swooping, diving and hovering above the sea, from the many gulls. When I uploaded the photos I noticed a strange thing; a sharp object appeared in the sky, somethine we didn't notice while on the beach. It's pixalated, and hard to tell what it could be; camera glitch, or UFO/military-gov. object?

Writing away here at UFO Mary on various things (see posts below) including the suppressions of the church and "maverick" groups, I find the following item on a Mary contactee; St. Catherine Laboure, on the Brown Pelican Sociey of Lousianna blog.   

November 25th is her feast day.

St. Catherine's body is "incorrupt" and is enclosed in a glass coffin in Paris, at one of the places Mary appeared to her. 

On JREF: "Endorsing Our Lady of Fatima is endorsing the Moon Goddess"

New thread on the uber-skeptic forum JREF (James Randi message boards) titled"Endorsing Our Lady of Fatima is endorsing the Moon Goddess" I'm not sure what the OP's intent or point is; and it's interesting he/she posted it on a skeptic forum -- a pathological skeptic forum, as the JREF is. The usual replies of snarky retorts, but an interesting idea from the OP. . .