THE SPANISH NUN AND HER ASTRAL JOURNEY TO THE NEW WORLD
The marvelous beauty of Spain could be seen not only in the breathtaking nature that it possess but also in the golden culture and religious heritage. Not many countries have that amazing mixture of the glorious past and modern way of life. The Spanish people somehow managed to hold on both and to offer the best of it to the passionate travelers, lost globetrotters and dreamy artists.
However we reach this country, we will be amazed by small miracles, undiscovered secrets and the echo of some ancient times that have survived the pressure of civilization. The unique merging of different colors, religions and identities has turned each part of Spain into the book of wonders.
From dynamic Barcelona, via golden Salamanca to the mystical town of Agreda, it seems that the rhythm of surprises never stop to make a beautiful sound. Spain is like a completely new world, still not enough portrayed and still desired as the flamenco dance in our souls.
The religious tourism has always been a strong attribute of Spanish society. The pilgrims from all over the globe crossed their roads, trying to find the blessings on the grave of the Apostle James the Great, at Santiago de Compostela, located at the North-Western part of Spain, where has been also found his tomb in the ninth century. Nevertheless, St. James is not the only one spiritual hero that brings attention of thousands. The Santa Dama, mystical Lady in blue that provokes the imagination of the believers is one that has been described as Spanish nun that experienced the astral journey and influenced on Jumano Native Americans in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona, to accept the Christianity.
How is that possible when she has never visited America? People have spoken about her but majority has never found out that Maria de Agreda hasn’t ever traveled out of her own town but she has been seen in American Southwest as she preaches. The Tradicion Revista states that phenomena has been studies by historians and religion experts and there is something supernatural about this tale:”The answer lies in her legendary appearances between 1620 – 1631 as the “Lady in Blue,” through which she mystically “bilocated” to New Mexico, Texas and Arizona, to preach Christianity to Jumano Native Americans. At the same time, nuns in her convent testified that she never physically left the premises, while Jumano Indians described her in detail and petitioned for baptism at the Isleta mission outside Albuquerque, following her instructions”
The Blue Lady was born in 1602 as Maria Coronel y Arana, but she escaped in the safety of the Catholic order of the Conceptionists when she was 16. Her dream was to travel to other countries and to spread the importance of Christianity. As a girl, she was limited by the strict rules so she found the universe in her own heart. Back in those times, she claimed she had experienced travels in her ecstatic prayers while her fellow nuns confirmed that she was able to practice levitating.
She could not have explained herself what has happened each time she had had contemplative prayers. Young nun was gifted to reach the special level of spirituality and to be very devoted to God in all her thoughts. How she has done it? It was a miracle to be physically in Spain and to be spiritually in the New World, spreading the Jesus love to the indigenous people. She has recognized the Jumano community and she had no problem to communicate with them and to evangelize.
In spite of her specific prayers that let her being emanated in another part of the world, through the Gods divine, she has been known as a brilliant mind and one of the nine most influential women in Spanish history. The pure and logic mind but still the humane and brave heart that had given a holy balance to her personality. We shouldn’t forget that Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda has been one of the advisers of King Felipe IV of Spain, through their 22-years long correspondence that has covered many important topics and burning issues in that time.
The humble nun from Agreda had an ability to express her knowledge and religious deepness in her writing that was considered as touched by Gods wisdom. She used to play with words as some painter plays with colors or some composer with accords. When Maria had kissed the paper with her thoughts, the world got the most beautiful book of all times, The Mystical City of God – Mistica Ciudad de Dios, on 1660, inspired by her private revelations from God the Father and Most Holy Mary.
This amazing woman moved the mountains with her soul and spirit but also tickled the minds of researchers, believers and sceptics. Javier Sierra has made a great success on his book about Lady in Blue, offering the thrilling hook:“…Thirty-eight years later (1631), the Holy Inquisition would detain the nun María de Ágreda, who claimed to have made more than 500 voyages to the New World to evangelize the pagans. As far as is known, the nun never left her convent during the previous eleven years. Nevertheless, when missionaries reached the Jumano Indians of New Mexico to Christianize them, the tribe was already familiar with the Catholic faith. To Alonzo de Benavides, their Superior, they confessed that it had been a nun matching the physical description of Sister Ágreda who had instructed them in the Gospels… “
Unfortunately, she will remain the pure mystery for the modern world in spite of all attempts to be exposed as one ordinary woman with extraordinary characteristics. What I find very interesting is her Jewish family background that leads us to Don Abraham Senior, a Jew who accepted Christianity in 1492 and name Ferdinand Perez Coronel. He was one of the very prominent people and a favorite of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile but the family name Coronel has been always linked with the Jews that have converted into Christian faith. It does not surprise either the deep religious devotion of Sor Maria\s parents, Don Francisco Coronel and Catalina de Arana. Young woman had the strong base to meditate and to contemplate the highest levels of Christianity so the question is how she experienced the bilocation. The bilocation is physically impossible but Catholics philosophers have written that bilocations of saints could be explained by phantasmal replications:”No matter how it is explained, or whether or not it is believed, the subject of bilocation has been mentioned in the lives of numerous Saints—their instances of bilocation have been witnessed by trustworthy persons at both the places where they appeared, even at times being acknowledged by the Saint who performed such a wonder through the grace of God. Additionally, numerous instances of bilocation have been so well-documented, witnessed and investigated that they are accepted facts in the history of the Church and in hagiography. It is understood that the mystical gift is not given for the convenience of the recipient, but to aid him in helping his fellow man or in performing a function some distance away that had been forgotten.”
So, if it couldn’t be rationally presented it must be religiously protected as the truth. The bilocation and even multilocation of saints have been known for years but still there is no person that has successfully demystified this Catholics myth. I do not deny the powerful attributes of mesmerizing Maria de Agreda and her strong intellectualism, colored with Spanish mysticism and renaissance encyclopedia knowledge. I believe that there are special people who were given the gift to conquer the world with their shining. It could be fantastic to think that ecstatic praying would let us experiencing the astral journeys into the far away universes. Sor Maria\s bilocation is something like a religious version of holograms. Theoretically, it is possible but factually, it is very difficult to understand the riddle. Through the eyes of science, the idea about holographic universe is not a joke. Actually, it might be that we all live in one matrix project and that reality is a projected illusion within that hologram. According to it, Spanish nun existence in American Southwest is just a proof that she was one-step forward in understanding the world we live in and using that knowledge for her own faith. Through the eyes of religion, everything is possible to be done within the Gods love and in sacrifice for him. Beautiful Maria in blue has obviously found the right code for the door of wonders and she left this world without final answer. What we know definitely is that she was an extraordinary woman that changed the dimension of 17th century and that she imprinted the power of faith in hearts of many people. She should be glorified just the way she was, as unique Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda.
SARAH MAX RESEARCH 
Sarah’s intriguing and elucidating article brought to mind specific contradictions of the Christian hierarchies in power in Europe and North America during the lifetime of Maria Coronel y Arana (1602-1665): bilocation (i.e. the alleged psychic ability wherein an individual person is conscious in two different geographical locations, simultaneously) reaches back to ancient Grecian philosophies and perceptions; influencing their counterparts of occultism and mysticism, etc.
The Bury St Edmunds witch trials were a series of criminal trials conducted intermittently between the years 1599 and 1694, in the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England. The 1645 trial witnessed 18 people executed in one day. The judgment by the future Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Sir Matthew Hale in the 1662 trial acted as a powerful influence on the continuing persecution of witches in England and similar persecutions in the British North American colonies.
Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620-1647) was an English witch-hunter whose career flourished during The English Civil War (1642-49). He claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General; although, that title was never bestowed by Parliament. It has been estimated that all of the English witch trials (i.e. between the early 15th and late-18th centuries) resulted in about 500 executions for ‘witchcraft’ (fundamentally, women who represented a threat to the patriarchy of English elite society).
About eighty people throughout New England (i.e. British North America) were accused of practising witchcraft during the period Maria Coronel y Arana was active as a bilocation individual.
Between 1620-23, Maria Coronel y Arana reported to her religious fellows that she was often ‘transported by the aid of the angels’ to primitive settlements of a people called ‘Jumanos’. The Jumanos people of New Spain (what became Texas and New Mexico) had been exposed to Catholic missionaries and accompanying military/commercial contingencies, already; being persuaded to accept ‘protection’ against the offensive Apache peoples (i.e. divide and conquer tactic of the Iberian military/government).
As reports of Maria Coronel y Arana’s (an abbess by then) mystical excursions to the so-called New World proliferated, The Spanish Inquisition’s hierarchy took notice; although, she was not proceeded against with severity (perhaps, due to her cordial relationship with King Philip IV of Spain, 1605-1665; a contemporary of the ordained nun and abbess).
Spanish Conquistadors first recorded encounters with the Jumano tribes in 1581 (pointing to the possibility that Maria Coronel y Arana knew of the Jumanos prior to her declaration of bilocation). The last historic reference was in a 19th-century oral history, but their population had declined by the early-18th century (mostly, due to European diseases that were introduced into the area).
Occidental historical scholars have argued that the Jumano tribes disappeared as a distinct people by 1750, due to infectious disease, the African slave trade and inter-tribal warfare; with remnants absorbed by the Apache or Comanche, ironically.
Certainly, Maria Coronel y Arana lived in dangerous religious times and there was extensive pressure from authorities to conform, and by declaring the apparent bilocation she risked her life. This may have been her fundamentalism as a devout Catholic subject. Ostensibly, a vested interest among the Spanish nobility discerned the declaration as a means to promote certain agendas in New Spain (e.g. converting tribes to become demographically superior to pagan aboriginals).
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Thank you, Sarah, for such an intriguing and well-explained article !
It is very interesting that María de Jesús de Ágreda was seen simultaneously in two locations, namely, Spain, and the Southwest of North America !
I watched a video by a professor Who explains how images may be created by the brain and projected very far away from the brain as opposed to the current theory which assumes that all the images created by the brain are contained within the brain !
If we were to apply this new theory or idea, then the possibility of María de Jesús de Ágreda’s being in two places at once, or bilocation, is not that far-fetched after all !
Then, she may have had an extreme level of concentration that allowed her to project her own image so far away from Spain so that she could spread Christianity, as she really had that burning desire to do so !
What an amazing article, Sarah ! You are always keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat !
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