Our Lady of the Rock

By Lisa M. Bitel, Matt Gainer (photographer),

Book cover of Our Lady of the Rock: Vision and Pilgrimage in the Mojave Desert

Book description

For more than twenty years, Maria Paula Acuna has claimed to see the Virgin Mary, once a month, at a place called Our Lady of the Rock in the Mojave Desert of California. Hundreds of men, women, and children follow her into the desert to watch her see what they…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Our Lady of the Rock as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book combines thought-provoking text with stunning landscape photography.

In 2010 in the Californian Mojave Desert Maria Paula’s feet started bleeding with a similar pattern to the stigmata of Christ nailed to the cross. In this engaging book Bitel grapples with the modern resurgence of apparitions and cult. She makes the fascinating suggestion that modern technology has led to a new global audience for spiritual apparitions, contributing to the continuation of pre-modern Christian behaviour.

It is a theme that I take up and write about the modern transcultural emergence of shrines to female figures from Vietnam’s shrine of Ba Chua…

From Katie's list on heroines in history.

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