The Real Halloween, Part Two

 

My previous post said "Halloween is neither based on nor co-opted from an old Celtic festival of the dead (more on that to come in a future post)." Well, now's the time.

If you live here in the Unites States or up in Canada, you've likely been told that Halloween comes from an ancient autumnal event that is spelled Samhain and pronounced "Sow-en." You've probably heard it was so beloved by the pagans native to the British Isles that Christians were compelled to mold to it if they were to have any hope of converting them to Christianity.

And you've probably heard that after molding to Samhain, "the Church" undertook a sustained effort to suppress knowledge of it because "church leaders" feared letting people "know the truth."

The problem with that narrative is that it's bullshit. The fact it gets proclaimed as true in textbooks and documentaries, and by the likes of National Geographic and Wikipedia, does not make it true, and it's long past time for all of us who value truth and love history to push back hard, whether we are Christian or not.

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To be sure, it does appear there was an annual event called Samhain a couple thousand years back in what would later become Ireland and Northumbria. It also appears that Samhain was celebrated on or about the turning of October into November.

But the Celts who presumably celebrated it never wrote a thing about it. In fact, their priests and leaders, the Druids, famously refused to write their beliefs because they didn't want them to become "common property," and also because they feared that writing would weaken the mind's ability to remember.

The Druids disappeared shortly after the Roman Empire arrived in Britain in 43 A.D., and the earliest accounts of them were not penned until circa 700 A.D. by Christian monks on Lindisfarne. That was long after the British Isles became Christian, and the earliest writings we have that mention Samhain were not composed until more than a century after that.

Keep in mind too that the earliest writings about Samhain do not depict it as a festival of the dead. That claim was not made until 1890, when a 36-year-old folklorist named James George Frazer placed the idea in his book The Golden Bough, which in turn struck a nerve with the modern pagan movement.

It was not until the 20th century that anyone imagined a connection between Samhain and Halloween - a falsehood misconception that cropped up in the USA and found dry kindling amongst a certain strain of fundamentalists. The fire it sparked had a fairly easy time spreading, thanks to several cultural factors there's no reason to get into now.

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My previous post explained that Halloween is a final contraction of All Hallows' Eve, the day before All Hallows' Day. It also touched on the importance of the overnight hours bridging All Hallows' Eve and All Hallows' Day. Before I continue, I think it's important to reiterate that using those two days to memorialize Christian martyrs goes way, way back to the first centuries of the faith.

Given that the early church extended across Europe, the Middle East, large swaths of Africa, and even into Central Asia (remember, Thomas himself made it to India) and there were no phones, steamships, planes, trains, or automobiles, it goes without saying that communication was a challenge.

When it came to doctrines and essential matters, the church was remarkably adept at keeping a pulse across the domain and rooting out heresies by way of ecumenical councils. However, when it came to inessential things like the precise date on which to recognize a particular person or thing, there was significant latitude from region to region. Therefore, from early on, All Hallows' Day was marked at different dates depending on where you were.

The church in Edessa observed it on May 13th. Most Christians in the East did so on the first Sunday after Pentecost, and this remains the case throughout the Eastern Orthodox Church. Coptic Orthodoxy, however, observed it as part of the Feast of Nayrouz on September 11th and continues to do so to this day.

The church in Ireland originally observed All Hallows' Day on - don't laugh, potheads - April 20th. That's important for today's post because the decision for Western churches to observe All Hallows' Day on November 1st was made in 835 A.D. and the Irish church - the only one that could have have had any inkling of Samhain at the time - had nothing to do with that decision. The Irish church merely went along with it when word arrived from the Vatican 1,500 miles away.

The decision was made by Pope Gregory IV and given legal teeth throughout the Holy Roman Empire not by him but by King Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, who at Gregory's insistence mandated that November 1st become the holy day of obligation. The thought of an Italian pope working with a Frankish king to force all of central and western Europe into appeasing a small, non-influential, relatively impoverished band of folks offshore makes very little sense to begin with - and makes even less sense when you consider that there is no record of that small, non-influential, relatively impoverished band of folks being drawn to November 1st anyway.

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Do some people, the Anton LaVeys and George Hodels of the world, go around doing occult things and getting too chummy with demons every time October 31st gets dark and bleeds into November 1st?

Of course they do. But they do that every day. There is nothing special about October 31st which makes it "theirs," so we should not let them get away with saying it is theirs. It's not. Why allow liars to co-opt our day for themselves?

Like I said in the prior post, there is nothing wrong with thinking about death, or thinking about what happens on the other side, or thinking about those who have already crossed over. If anything, there's something wrong with not thinking about it.

Frankly, I find it more than a little embarrassing when fellow Christians cower from such things, and more than a little insulting when they say we should not do anything we find scary. Sorry Allie Beth Stuckey, but I don't think the Jesus who "drove out all who sold" and declared "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" is calling for his army to be disproportionately staffed by shrinking violets.

So when this Saturday night rolls around, hand out candy to the kids who knock at your door. Allow yourself to be happy if any of them are teens, for it's good to see them in search of candy rather than drugs. Remember that Halloween is a holiday designed to honor the good guys, not a dark day designed to honor the demonic.

And finally, do not be shy about correcting anyone who trots out the tired canard that Halloween springs from druidic beliefs of Celtic people from pre-Roman Britain. A little truth never hurt anyone.

Happy Halloween. And while we're at it, Happy Hallowtide!

Note #1: Many thanks to Ana Munley, Joel Heschmeyer, Father Chris Alar, and all others who speak passionately about the real roots of Halloween.

Note #2: If you are interested, here's a good piece concerning how little we know about Samhain, and here is a chapter concerning the ancient church in Edessa that I mentioned earlier.

Note #3: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken in Graham County, North Carolina. 

 

The Real Halloween

Earth's Northern Hemisphere is tilting a bit farther from the sun with each passing day, causing daylight hours to shorten and leaves to turn. Fall has made itself known even down here in Florida, where acorns have dropped and overnight temps have danced playfully around the edges of cool.

Jack O'Lanterns are carved; consumables of all types are available in pumpkin-spiced flavors and scents; Märzen beers are pouring from barroom taps; and front porches are decorated in orange, yellow, scarlet, and amber.

All of which is to say: We are at Halloween's threshold.

Kids will soon be traipsing from door to door asking for treats from adults, many of whom have already celebrated with costume parties of their own. Fun is in the air regardless of whether you prefer cartoon specials or scary movies. And although you can always find a few killjoys out there, most folks agree the fun is harmless.

Between excited children, happy parents, mischievous teens, adults acting like teens, and that handful of well-intentioned scolds convinced that to enjoy Halloween is to praise the demonic, the odds of hearing anything about the holiday's actual roots and purpose are far too low, and this is what brings me to my keyboard today.

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Contra what millions believe, Halloween is neither based on nor co-opted from an old Celtic festival of the dead (more on that to come in a future post) but instead comes straight from Christian thinking and tradition. And while many are passingly aware the word "Halloween" comes from "All Hallows' Eve," few know what that means.

Going back to Christianity's Judaic roots, the observance of holidays has traditionally begun not on the holiday itself but on the evening before. Due at least partly to the custom of Sabbath commencing at sundown Friday rather than sunup Saturday, this is what gave rise to Christmas Eve being such a big deal.

All Hallows' Day, aka All Saints' Day, is a Christian holiday initiated to honor the martrys who died for the faith, and thus the evening before All Hallows' Day became important as All Hallows' Eve.

Back in the day, "eve" and "even" were interchangeable, so All Hallows' Eve was often called All Hallows' Even, which later got contracted to Hallowe'en with the apostrophe denoting the missing v. Eventually, the apostrophe disappeared and we landed on Halloween. 

Put yourself in the shoes of early Christians. Far from being some distant thing that could be thought of later, death was a constant, lingering presence hovering over their heads. Starting with Stephen in the Book of Acts and continuing for centuries, being killed for refusing to renounce your allegiance to Christ was a genuine threat, and the expectation was that you would choose death if put to the test.

Most of the apostles died martyr's deaths - Peter crucified upside down, Bartholomew flayed, Simon the Zealot sawed in half - and that danger continued apace after the apostles were gone.

Later on, Polycarp was burned at the stake and Sebastian bludgeoned and Warinus stoned and multitudes beheaded. 40 confessors at Sebaste (present day Sivas, Turkey) were forced naked onto a frozen pond to perish from exposure.

And don't go around thinking women were spared the executioner's sword, for among the martyrs were Perpetura, Felicity, Agnes, Euphemia, Lucy, and Petronilla. Also, don't go around thinking youth were spared, for Agnes herself was only 12.

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But back to what I said a moment ago: For early Christians, death was a constant presence they could not avoid thinking of. Even if the reality of persecution and possible martyrdom could have been removed, the realities of disease and famine in the centuries before modern medicine and agribusiness were still there. So meditating upon death was important and practical - and was absolutely Christian when you think of all the biblical admonitions concerning it.

Such meditations in Christendom go way back, as evidenced by skulls being carved onto tombstones and displayed in churches to emphasize memento mori (Latin for "remember you must die") as well as paintings of skeletons doing the Danse Macabre (French for "Dance of Death"). Such motifs were meant as solemnity, not sacrilege, for it was important to think of death with reverence lest it fill you dread.

When it came to All Hallows' Day, Christians gathered at tombs and memorials to commemorate those who died honorably, often gathering at night to avoid being seen by their persecutors - hence the centrality of those sunless hours bridging All Hallows' Eve and All Hallows' Day.

In the earliest years, they gathered on the anniversaries of individual martyrs' deaths. However, there came to be so many martyrs that it was impractical to celebrate each one individually; and therefore, All Hallows' Day became an occasion to celebrate all of them at once.

On a similar note, there is also the fact that a deceased person need not be martyred in order to life a life worthy of honor after he or she is gone. As a result, the day after All Hallows' Day eventually became All Souls' Day, a broader commemoration of the faithful departed.

Collectively, the three days from All Hallows' Eve through All Souls' Day became known as Allhallowtide.

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The season of Allhallowtide presents an imperfect symmetry with the three-day Easter weekend that spans from Good Friday through Resurrection Sunday. At first glance, some may say there is a significant difference because Easter looks at life while Allhallowtide looks at death. Ironically, however, that dichotomy is only true if one accepts the secular concept of life ceasing when the body dies, for Christianity, like almost all the world's faiths, holds that life continues beyond Earth and never truly ends.

Scripture is clear there is an afterlife that has different possible destinations, but it's noticeably silent about the specifics of what happens between the moment we die and the moment we arrive at whatever our destination is. Of all the speculations offered over the years by traditions and theologians, the one that is by far the rarest happens to be that fluffily comfy modern notion that we instantly find ourselves face to face with our maker in a state of unsurpassable bliss.

To the contrary, even the most avowedly Once-Saved-Always-Saved Protestants, the ones who seem to have an allergic reaction whenever they hear the word "purgatory" spoken out loud, fully expect to undergo a period of posthumous pain discomfort during which they must sit for a life review and answer for their sins.

To experience that purifying pain discomfort is actually a good thing, because it means you're en route to Heaven, but nevertheless it is something we want to avoid or at least keep to a minimum. Yet we tend to keep sinning, don't we? And thus the uncertainty of that interval between bodily death and heavenly entrance remains out there, no matter how many times we try to ignore it, and I think it goes without saying that ignoring it does no good.

In the British Isles of 1400 A.D., a Halloween practice known as "souling" was already being described in writing, by John Mirk, as having come from "olden time." Souling occurred when poor people, including children, would go door to door in richer neighborhoods offering prayers in exchange for soul cakes.

Those biscuit-like cakes were made from oats and often sweetened with things like nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, and currants. The prayers spoken when the cakes were given were for the souls of the homeowners' relatives and friends, typically ones who were already perished.

This interaction at the opening of Allhallowtide deepened faith and strengthened community bonds. Plus, it served a further heavenly purpose by placing the reality of death and the interval front and center, thereby emphasizing something that would, much later, be expressed in words by a certain American pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal."

Souling still takes place in Portugal and the Philippines, and, as you might have guessed, it is what gave rise to the 20th century idea of trick-or-treating.

Halloween has been commercialized in the modern West, much like Christmas. But the big scandal is that modern Western Christians have permitted it to be retroactively misrepresented as a celebration of witchcraft, demonology, and the occult - and the biggest scandal is that some modern Christians have been enthusiastic participants in that misrepresentation.

'Tis time for that to end, in my humble opinion.

Update 10/29/26: After publishing this post, I came upon an interesting, 23-minute podcast episode dealing with what I referred to as "death and the interval." If you was to listen to it, here's the link. 

Note: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken in Graham County, North Carolina. 

 

Marian Musings, Part XI

 

Only once before have I written about any of Mary's purported visitations. That was last New Year's Eve, when I posted about Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Although I do find Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the most compelling of her visits, there are of course several candidates for that title, and today marks the 109th anniversary of the climactic moment associated with one that tops many people's list: Our Lady of Fatima.

The appearances known as Our Lady of Guadalupe took place over a span of days around Tepeyac Hill in what is now Mexico City. The ones known as Our Lady of Fatima took place over a span of months in central Portugal, near the village of Fatima, which is named after a Moorish woman who converted from Islam to Christianity in the nearby Serra de Aire during the Middle Ages. Interestingly, Fatima was also the name of Muhammad's youngest daughter.

Before I dive in, I want to say that although I used the word "purported" in the opening sentence, I do not think that qualifier applies to either Fatima or Guadalupe. These cases are backed by abundant evidence and I believe they are real.

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In 1917 Europe was deep in the throes of World War I, a conflict the likes of which mankind had never experienced. Portugal's troops were fighting and dying for the allied cause while their nation, consisting of 15 percent of the Iberian Peninsula and already one of Europe's poorest, was cut off from assistance partly by the fact its only neighbor, Spain, had turned inward and insisted on strict neutrality.

1917 was also the year Russia's Bolshevik Revolution forced Tsar Nicholas II from the throne, thus setting the stage for communism to take over Eastern Europe and eventually wield influence in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Strange though it may seem, that revolution on the opposite side of Europe, far from Fatima and not of any obvious international significance at the time, was very much on the radar God allowed Mary to speak of when he sent her to the Portuguese countryside.

On May 13th of that year, three children - 10-year-old Lucia dos Santos, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 8 and 7 - reported encountering a woman while watching sheep in a field known as the Cova da Iria. Appearing after a flash of lightning on a cloudless day, the woman was dressed "in white, more brilliant than the sun" and said she was sent "from Heaven." Assuring the children "I'm not going to harm you," she asked them to devote themselves to God, to pray, and to "say the Rosary every day" to bring about "an end to the war."

This was not the kids' first experience with something unusual, however, for during the previous year they had seen at least one angel and declined to tell anyone. Lucia initially said they should keep this experience to themselves as well, but Jacinta told her immediate family. Jacinta's mom, assuming the story was a prank, casually mentioned it to neighbors and it quickly became the talk of the town.

From here on, I am going to start referring to Mary by name instead of as a "woman," since she did end up revealing her identity.

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Amidst the ensuing hubbub, Lucia told her mom the apparition was real and that Mary had asked the children to return on June 13th. Less skeptical than the other mom, Lucia's spoke with the local priest, Father Manuel Ferreira, who advised her not to stop the children from returning.

Going forward, Mary came to the field to meet them on the 13th of each month through October. There was one hiccup on the morning of August 13th, when the region's municipal administrator, who harbored a known hostility to religion and distaste for local chatter, had the kids arrested and jailed before they could reach the field. Unable to maintain such abuse in the face of public outcry, he released them and they proceeded to meet up with Mary on the 19th rather than 13th before getting back on track.

Today's post is obviously about the October visit, but the others were major events in and of themselves, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Mary:

• Revealed Francisco and Jacinta would "soon" be taken to Heaven, but that Lucia "must remain on Earth" to spread devotion. Francisco and Jacinta wound up perishing during the Spanish flu pandemic at the ages of 10 and 9, whereas Lucia grew to become a Carmelite nun and lived to be 97 years old, residing at this convent from 1948 until her death in 2005.

• Prophesied that "if people do not cease offending God" after the war, "not much time will elapse" before the commencement of "another and more terrible war" (in hindsight, this sure sounds like World War II comin' round the bend a mere 21 years after the Armistice).

• Said that if Russia did not turn to God, "she will spread her errors throughout the entire world, fomenting wars and persecution of the church" (in hindsight, this sure sounds like Soviet communism comin' round the bend with its enforced atheism, military invasions, and puppet regimes).

Those are but a few of the highlights, if there's any way for that to be the right word.

For each apparition after the initial one, increasing numbers of people came to the field every 13th, hoping to see the Lord's mother for themselves. By September they numbered in quadruple digits despite the rural and out of the way location, and though it was only Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta who proved able to see and interact with Mary, people kept coming; obviously, they were convinced the kids were not acting.

Finally, on September 13th Mary told the children that when she returned in October there would be a "miracle so that all may believe." Those words set the stage for what is widely considered the most captivating thing humans have witnessed in the modern era.

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Please remember that although 1917 was in humanity's modern era, it was not at all like today's world. What we think of as modern media did not exist, as there was no such thing as television, computers, or the Internet. Cameras were cumbersome luxury items that few people owned, nobody carried around, and could not be relied upon even when present; they depended on finicky film that could easily be damaged even before making it to the darkroom, where there was still no guarantee of good images in any event.

Telephones existed but were rare. So too with radios. Long distance communication happened by snail mail or telegraph, and although the latter allowed it to arrive at its destination fairly quick, it often died there. Sure, if a telegraph's destination was a newspaper, the info it carried might make it to print, but the vast majority of newspapers were circulated only locally and got thrown away after being read, so stories tended not to spread very far.

In other words, news traveled slow, if at all, and needed word of mouth. Be that as it may, news of the happenings at Fatima was already drawing visitors before September, as mentioned above, and once word got out that a miracle to convince "all" had been promised, it spread farther than any of the previous buzz.

The throng that arrived at the Cova da Iria on October 13, 1917 was enormous: Some estimates placed it as high as 100,000 and some as "low" as 30,000, with most pegging it at 70,000. That size is even more remarkable when you consider that not only was the location remote, and not only was travel difficult given limited infrastructure, scant resources, rampant poverty, and a world war sucking up everyone's attention and energy - but on top of all that, heavy rains swamped the countryside for three days leading up to the 13th.

It was still raining on the morning of the 13th, yet those scores of thousands still made it to the field. And Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta were of course right there, faithful and expectant as always, when the rain stopped and the clouds parted to reveal the sun looking "like a disk of white fire" against a sky of "clear blue." What happened next has become known to history as the Miracle of the Sun.

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Among the crowd were not only farmers, peasants, and devout Christians, but also journalists, skeptics, and devout atheists, many of whom expected to see nothing and wanted to use it as an excuse to mock believers confirmation of their superior supposed intellect. Instead, if I may borrow one of the words most commonly used by those who were present, they saw the sun dance.

Witnesses described the sun spinning "rapidly with dizzy and sickening speed, flinging out all sorts of brilliant colors that reflected on the faces of the crowds." It dropped downward in a zigzag course, then zigzagged back up. This continued for several minutes. Notably, people several miles away reported the same thing. At the Cova da Iria itself, clothes wet from rain became dry.

To be sure, there were some who did not report seeing the sun dance, but the vast majority did, including many who, as stated above, had come as skeptics - and even among those who did not claim to see it dance, most said it was different in that it threw off "brilliant colors" and they could keep their eyes fixed on it without being forced to blink or look away.

The multitude on hand was almost entirely from Portugal, as you would expect given the state of things. World War I meant newspapers from foreign countries, even if they heard a miracle was predicted, certainly weren't going to entertain sending their reporters all the way to isolated Fatima based on the say-so of three peasant kids. Nevertheless, reporters from secular Portuguese newspapers were on hand and recorded the events as factual; these included O Dia and O Seculo, the latter of which was avowedly anti-church in addition to being the nation's largest paper.

The former reported that "the silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn" and "the light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral." Writing in the latter's pages,  Avelino de Almeida - who came as an on-the-record skeptic expecting to watch the crowd be disappointed - reported the sun "appeared free from clouds and at its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort...the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people."

Separately, when a friend and fellow skeptic privately wrote to de Almeida and essentially asked what really happened, his letter back said: "The rain, at the pre-announced hour, ceases to fall; the dense mass of clouds breaks up and the king star - a frosted silver disc - at the height of its zenith appears and begins dancing in a violent and convulsive ballet, which a large number of people imagined to be a serpentine dance, so beautiful and brilliant colors successively covered the solar surface. Miracle, as the people shouted? Natural phenomenon, the wise would say? I don't want to know now, but just want to tell you what I saw."

A lawyer named Jose Almeida Garrett wrote that the sun "spun round on itself in a mad whirl" and "seemed to loosen itself from the firmament." He continued that while this "solar phenomenon" was occurring, "there were changes of color in the atmosphere...I saw everything an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color...I turned away and shut my eyes...I opened my eyes and saw that the landscape was the same purple color as before...All the phenomena which I have described were observed by me in a calm and serene state of mind and without any emotional disturbance."

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Many aspects of the Fatima story bear a striking parallel to patterns we see in Scripture. For any anti-Catholics out there, I have to begin by stressing that Mary, at Fatima, warned people they must turn to God (i.e., not to her) before I go on to note that:

• God sent her not to rulers, generals, or clergy, but to children (cue Matthew 18:3-4 and Mark 10:14-15).
  
  
• Those children were watching sheep in a field when she appeared (cue Luke 2:8).
  
  
• There were three of them (a la three patriarchs, three people in the furnace, three named angels, three days in the belly of the great fish, three times denied, et al).
  
  
• Before they were visited by her, they received angelic visits (cue Genesis 19:1-3 and 15-17, Matthew 1:20, Matthew 28:5-7, Mark 16:6-7, Luke 1:11 and 26-27, Luke 2:9, Luke 24:4-7, Acts 10:6, and Acts 12:7-8).
  
  
• Her first words to them were an assurance she would do no harm (i.e., "don't be afraid," cue pretty much every time in Scripture that a figure from the other realm appears to humans).
  
  
• She did not shield them from troubling ideas, but instead told Francisco and Jacinta their deaths were imminent; seemed almost apologetic when telling Lucia she "must" remain alive on Earth; and warned that mass misery and calamity would soon come if mankind failed to mend its ways (again, cue seemingly countless spiritual injunctions all the way from Genesis to Revelation).
  
  
• And sure enough, misery and calamity did come when people failed to take heed (again, cue examples aplenty from Genesis to Revelation).
  

As with Our Lady of Guadalupe - and as with some other compelling apparitions I've not written of - reasons to affirm the truth of Our Lady of Fatima continued beyond the dates of her 1917 appearances.

For starters, there is the fact that World War II and expansionist Soviet Communism did come to pass.

There is also the matter of inexplicable healings occurring at the Cova da Iria in subsequent years.

Also, there is the matter of inexplicable healings occurring at other locations where soil and water from the Cova da Iria have been taken and applied for that very reason. While this notion of physical ground/elements becoming holy and getting moved from one place to another with tangible effects might at first sound strange to some of us non-Catholics, it does have a biblical basis that is explained well in this eight-minute clip by Michael Heiser.

If your knee jerks uncomfortably over Mary being at the center of what happened at Fatima, please pardon me for sounding like a broken record by again asking you to remember that: 1] both the Catholic and Orthodox churches teach that she only does what God wills; 2] you certainly agree with them about that; 3] both the Catholic and Orthodox churches teach that she directs people to God, not herself; and 4] her own words at Fatima say the same.

And finally, let me add something else. In Mary's third visit to Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, the one on July 13, 1917, she asked that the following words be spoken when praying the Rosary: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.

Those words were later made an official (though not mandatory) part of the Rosary and are now recited, 109 years later, by hundreds of millions of Christians around the world.

Like Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta would have said in their native tongue: Que a paz de Cristo esteja convosco.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer
    Part VI-b: Worship
    Part VII: Involvement and Femininity
    Part VIII: Our Lady of Guadalupe
    Part IX: On Good Friday
    Part X: Queenship

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken in the Our Lady of Fatima Garden at Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa, Florida. 

Note #3: There is much I did not include in this post, so I recommend googling away if you have the time. If you are interested in visiting any of the sources I consulted when researching, some of them are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.