Maria Lionza. She is the queen and highest echelon of the Venezuelan spiritual courts, therefore considered the highest spiritual authority, after the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary Mother of Jesus .
She is revered as the goddess of nature , love , peace, fortune and harmony. His image represents a horizontal, changing religious organization that reaches all strata of society. María Lionza also known as María de la Onza, Yara, Guaichía, is a mythical female deity indigenous to Venezuelan folklore.
Summary
[ hide ]
- 1 Origins
- 2 The myth of María Lionza
- 1 Story 1
- 2 Story 2
- 3 A woman made myth
- 4 A myth made woman
- 5 Prayer to María Lionza
- 6 Sources
origins
According to the Venezuelan anthropologist Daisy Barreto, the oldest references to the cult are found in oral testimonies dating back to the beginning of the century, in which peasants from the Yaracuy region and some adjacent areas discuss the existence of a peasant-style devotion and Afro-Venezuelan to Queen María Lionza in the Sierras de Sorte . At that time, the cult was limited to that small region and was based on devotion to the ancestors, mostly indigenous chiefs and heroes of Venezuelan independence. The importance of María Lionza’s religion in VenezuelaIt is such that, according to the American anthropologist from Tulane University, Wade Glenn, more than half the population has participated in some “marialioncero” ritual. Although she is believed to be of indigenous origin, she is commonly depicted as a white woman with a gold crown on her head and a rose and a pennant in her right hand. The pennant has written her mission as a goddess: Protector of the waters, Goddess of crops. There is no historical documentation on the represented woman, but there are numerous contemporary theories about the origin of the myth based on the Venezuelan oral tradition. These stories, although different, coincide in pointing to María Lionza as a superhuman being, who inhabits the mountains of Sorte in the Yaracuy state, from where the cult spread to the rest of the country around the year1900 . For this reason, the Sorte region is a constant pilgrimage site for believers of the marialioncero cult.
The myth of María Lionza
The myth of María Lionza has its origin in the legend of a white indigenous maiden who manages to survive by being sacrificed to the God of the waters, becoming a Protective Goddess of nature. A tapir rides the fields and describes herself as a beautiful woman who is combing her long hair with a golden comb in her Palace in SORTE. This myth, the poetized blood of many generations of Venezuelans, is the reason for Pedro Centeno’s new painting “María Lionza “. This inexorable destroyer of men of all races appears in the rye painting as an auroral symbol; because it occurs to us that María Lionza more than a woman who represents America, is America. There are more than 25 legend stories about the goddess. Ethnologists have discovered that the myth is constantly written in spiritist circles of the Maria Lionza cult. However, it is difficult to find a written version of the myth. Below are two accounts of this myth.
Story 1
The Indian chief had a pretty daughter with green eyes. Since green eyes were a bad sign, the father decided to take it to the lake and give it to the anaconda that lived at the bottom of the lake. Later, the anaconda threw her out of the lake. She became a wonderful Goddess surrounded by many animals, water, and plants.
Story 2
According to Antolinez, an ethnographer, long ago the people of Yaracuy, received a warning or premonition that a girl with green eyes was going to be born. That was considered an alert, because her eyes could be a sign of bad times to come, and if she saw her reflection in the nearby lake, a monstrous snake could come out of her and bring death and destruction. Under this prophecy, and just before the Spanish conquest, a green-eyed girl was born. She was destined to be sacrificed to the great Anaconda, for the advice received. The father saved her and sent her to a secret place where she grew up. Twenty-two guards took care of her in that new house and were energetically responsible for preventing the girl from approaching the lake. One day the guards fell asleep and she ran away from them. He went to the field and found on his way a beautiful lake, and with fascination, he saw its reflection in the water. From that moment on, she took the form of an anaconda and grew so large that her body exploded and overflowed the waters and brought floods to the town. His head was onAcarigua and its tail in Valencia .
A woman made myth
The myth of María Lionza is part of the spiritual wealth and aboriginal heritage of Venezuela, as such, it is part of a living heritage that is renewed and expressed in the mystery of women and the feminine. This myth began to be studied in 1939 , Gilberto Antolínez recorded the myth of María Lionza, when he was making an ethnographic compilation of the aborigines . This was the first research that was done and that continues to be done around the symbol of women, the feminine, mother and nature , fundamental elements of this myth and of Venezuelan culture.
A myth made woman
In 1951 , the artist Alejandro Colina, produced the sculpture of María Lionza in Caracas . With the passing of time this image transcended the aesthetic tastes of its time and occupied a significant space in the inhabitants of the city of Caracas and in all the believers of the myth. Proof of this is all the interest that its state of conservation arouses while it was standing on the Francisco Fajardo Highway; and when he left, the 6 of June of 2004 , and during its restoration process, culminating in in 2011 .
Prayer to María Lionza
Oh! sweet and miraculous Maria Lionza, paragon of beauty and goodness, who with Guaicaipuro, vigorous, cacique, winner of a hundred battles and the cerebral and powerful Negro Felipe, you form a trilogy of supernatural powers, with the greatest devotion and longing, I beg you to calm my existence so that life is bearable for me, keeping from my path enemies and envious, criminals and thieves, cheats and tricksters and instead see myself surrounded by my selfless, kind and altruistic friends and successful advisers.
