mariagrot 2

Various archaeological excavations have proved... 

that the Cave of Achbinico in Tenerife...

was a place of worship long before the Guanches placed the statue of the Virgin in it. 

According to recent excavations, the layers of ashes found there indicate an age of more than 3000 years. In this cave a permanent fire had been maintained, such as in the vestal temples of Antique Rome. 

According to a legend... 

a statue of the Virgin Mary, bearing a child in one hand and a green candle in the other...

was discovered on the beach of Chimisay...

by two Guanche goatherds in 1392. 

This was before the Castilian conquest of the island of Tenerife (until 1496).

One of the shepherds tried to throw a stone at the statue... 

but his arm became paralysed. 

The other tried to stab the statue with a knife...

but ended up stabbing himself. 

The statue was taken by the local mencey [1/9 kings]... 

to the Cueva de Chinguaro [palace and place of Chaxiraxi/Sun Mother-worship].

Later, Antón... 

a Guanche who had been enslaved and converted to Christianity by the Castilians, returned to Tenerife and recognized the statue as that of the Virgin Mary. 

He told the mencey-king of his conversion... 

and the statue was thus [as Mary] venerated by the Guanches... 

who moved it to the cave of Achbinico. 

At first, the autochthons identified the statue with their goddess Chaxiraxi, but later the Christian conquerors imposed the idea that the statue was that of the Virgin Mary, now called Virgen de la Candelaria.

After the appearance of the Virgin...

and its iconographic identification with this biblical event... 

the festival began to be celebrated with a Marian character in the year 1497, when the conqueror Alonso Fernández de Lugo, celebrated the first Candlemas festival dedicated especially to the Virgin Mary, coinciding with the Feast of Purification, on February 2.

Before the conquest of Tenerife, the Guanche aborigines celebrated a festivity around the image of the Virgin during the Beñesmen festival in the month of August. 

This was the harvest party, which marked the beginning of the year. thanking the most important gods Magec, Achamán and Chaxiraxi, and asking the ritual of breaking the gánigo with milk and honey, and the ritual of green candles.

Currently, the feast of the Virgin of Candelaria in Canary Islands is celebrated in addition to February 2 also on August 15, the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic calendar. 

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