It is always a really exciting experience, to have the opportunity to access an old place of worship, regardless of the province where it is located, regardless, after all, that the effects of time and above all, those perhaps more important caused by the hand of man, retain a good part of the sacred excellence that he had in his time.
One of the most interesting, and at the same time, which we can still draw relevant conclusions, is none other than this Sanctuary of the Virgin Peña. Located in the historic city of Alcarria de Brihuega, it reveals not only what must have been, in times, a true spiritual center of worship of the primordial figure of that Great Mother Goddess who, whatever you want -Isis, Ashera, Astarte, Tanith, etc. - under his mantle-whether or not this is the original with an unequivocal form of a triangle, pointing out that tripartite character that many of the most primitive sanctuaries had- was welcomed and nourished by practically all the cultures of the most remote Antiquity, but also , in its own history, or rather, in that popular current that generally always carries with it some immaculate historical water -as some authors say, among them the esteemed Master Alkaest-, perhaps coming to indicate us, likewise, forgotten and ancestral pilgrimage routes of which each time there are less traces left in this, our magical Hesperia.
This advocation does not seem to be casual -de la Peña-, to which one must also add the detail of the specific color of the images - blacks - that seems to point out some very specific places, whose common denominator - apart from the consigned data of their remote cult - , it seems to be the presence of an order that, if we have to take into account their supposed secret statutes, had the figure of Our Lady as the beginning and end of their religion, because it already existed before the mountains - those to which San Bernardo himself referred, as part of the best places of learning - and the land: the Order of the Knights Templar.
And the places that are worth reviewing and that would form an authentic route of Vírgenes Negras through different provinces of La Vieja and Nueva Castilla, are no other than Calatayud, Ágreda, Brihuega and Sepúlveda. Here, in addition, the circumstance occurs that in the own tradition that surrounds this astonishing figure, it is mentioned to personages, like the Moorish princess Zulema, sister of another Moran Christianized maiden, in whose honor it was also raised in a place of old cults pre-Christians in the Bureba, a magnificent sanctuary: SantaCasilda.
The Christianization of this place, as well as the subsequent eremitical tradition that was installed in it, call attention to the steps carved into the rock, as well as the presence of two Romanesque arches, which in turn recall another place, not too far away , where a pre-Christian site was also Christianized, with a hermitage in honor of Santa Elena next to the sacred cave, in whose entrance you can see another unique Romanesque arch: the hermitage and cave of Santa Cruz, in Conquezuela, in the neighboring province of Soria
Although the reproduction that we can see in this sanctuary is a copy, without a doubt, it responds faithfully to the original, that is conserved in the head of the church that takes its name, raised on the same farallón, next to the old Moorish castle, today day, municipal cemetery.
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NOTICE: originally published in my blog LUGARES DEL ESPÍRITU, although the photographs are unpublished in Steemit. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry can be found at the following address: https://lugaresdelespiritu.blogspot.com.es/2015/06/brihuega-santuario-de-la-virgen-de-la.html
