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Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy new year

I'm looking forward to 2013: 2011 was a living nightmare, my year card was the Hermit, and it don't feel good. This year loads of stuff has changed since my year card was the Wheel of Fortune. This coming year my card is Strength: one handed pull ups here we come!
I can't resist ending the year on a weird note: the pic is of the Miraculous Lactation of St Bernard of Clairvaux. The legend goes thusly:
Based on one of the later legends of the great Cistercian Abbot Saint Bernard, he was reportedly praying one day in 1146 before a statue of the Virgin Mary in Speyer Cathedral. In his prayer he asked the Virgin to "Show that you are a mother..." (Monstra te esse matrem). The statue suddenly came alive and squirted milk on Bernard's lips. In this mystical encounter Bernard becomes a spiritual son of Mary sharing a kinship with Christ who was also nourished by Mary's milk.
From the Middle Ages through the Baroque period, much theological and pictorial attention was made on the subjects of Christ's blood and Mary's milk. By the Blood of Christ one gained redemption. Mary's milk became, on the other hand, a symbol of nourishment and hope on that road to salvation. Source
Even before the advent of Freudian theory I don't see how anyone could see it just wasn't right to have the Mother of your God squirting breast milk into your mouth. And people think it's weird when in vodou they get married to the Lwa!

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