As time wore away, and the facts of Semiramis' history became obscured, her son's birth was boldly declared to be miraculous: and therefore she was called 'Alma Mater', from its ancient meanings to have the meaning of 'the Virgin Mother'. The Two Babylons, pp. 75, 76.

The world is ready and ripe for this almost overpowering deception. In fact, the December, 1996, issue of LIFE magazine featured on its front cover, a picture of a statue of Mary and the caption: "Two thousand years after the Nativity, the mother of Jesus is more BELOVED, POWERFUL, and CONTROVERSIAL than ever. The Mystery of Mary."

So, where are you going with all of this?

So, what is the secret of Mary's mysterious power? The powerful NEWSWEEK article (August 25, 1997) reveals, "The secret of Mary's mysterious power may be just this: having no history of her own, she entices every new generation to draw her portrait. The Bible offers only scraps to build on . . . From this meager line of development, Mary gradually grew in stature. Astonishingly, this obscure Jewish mother absorbed and transformed the most powerful pagan goddesses. She was the Madonna who gives life, but also the pieta who receives the dead. Once asceticism became the privileged road to Christian holiness, she became the perpetual virgin, the model of chastity and self-denial. In 431, the Council of Ephesus issued the first dogmatic statement of Mary: she was to be honored as Theotokos, the Godbearer or Mother of God . . . In the 19th century, long after many Protestant reformers had rejected the cult of the Virgin as popish nonsense, Pius IX proclaimed the Immaculate Conception Catholic dogma."