Our Lady of Carmen: The Garden of God, the Womb of the Sea

Our Lady of Carmen

The Garden of God, the Womb of the Sea

Today we receive the presence of Our Lady of Carmen, venerated throughout Spain as Nuestra Señora del Carmen, and especially cherished along the southern coasts, where land and sea meet in ancient remembrance.

Every time I share about one of the Our Ladies, I feel it is important to remember that she carries a lineage far older than any single tradition. Our Lady of Carmen, like many Marian forms, bears the resonance of the Black Madonna. She who comes from the depths. She who arrives to carry us into mystery, into what is fertile, hidden, and transformative.

The name Carmen is rooted in Carmel, from the Hebrew Karmel (כַּרְמֶל), meaning garden, vineyard, or cultivated land. In biblical poetry and mystical language, Carmel is not only a geographical place but a symbol of abundance, beauty, and divine cultivation. It is the Garden of God, a place where life is tended with care and brought into fullness.

Across mystical traditions, the image of the garden is also a metaphor for the womb—the inner ground where creation is conceived, gestated, and reborn. The Song of Songs speaks of the beloved as a sealed garden. Jewish and Christian mystics alike understood the garden as the inner sanctuary of divine union. Through this lens, Our Lady of Carmen may also be contemplated as Our Lady of the Womb, the sacred space where divine life is continually renewed.

One of the most powerful and moving rituals associated with Our Lady of Carmen is her procession into the sea. She is placed upon a small boat or raft and carried out over the waters, often at sunset, as the community follows in prayer.

This ritual is ancient, far older than Christianity itself.

The boat represents the vessel, the body.
The sea is the Great Mother, the primordial waters from which all life emerges.

To carry Our Lady into the ocean is to return the Divine Feminine to her original element, allowing her to cleanse humanity through immersion. This is not merely symbolic; it is an ancestral rite of death and rebirth, a baptismal remembrance. The Goddess enters the waters so that creation itself may be washed, renewed, and re-seeded. As she touches the sea, we are invited to release what no longer serves and to remember our origin.

These rites echo far older traditions. Along the southern coasts of Spain  layers of devotion long predate Christianity. This land once held reverence for Asherah, the ancient Hebrew Tree and Sea Goddess, honored across the Levant and Mediterranean world. Asherah was associated with sacred trees, fertility, water rites, and lunar cycles. Her presence was not marginal—she was venerated in temples, including, according to many scholars, within the Temple tradition itself before later reforms erased her from official memory.

Water rituals, moonlit immersions, and processions returning the Goddess to the sea were understood as acts of cosmic rebalancing—cleansing collective grief, restoring harmony, and renewing life-force. When I witness or feel the ritual of Our Lady of Carmen entering the sea, I sense these older currents still alive beneath the surface.

Our Lady of Carmen is also intimately connected to Mount Carmel in present-day Israel, a sacred mountain long associated with divine encounter. In the Hebrew Bible, Mount Carmel is linked to the prophet Elijah, to fire descending from heaven, and to the restoration of right relationship between humanity and the Divine. Carmel stands between sea and land, a liminal threshold where transformation occurs.

Mystically, Mount Carmel represents the meeting place of heaven and earth within the human soul.

For those of us walking the Magdalene path, this resonance is unmistakable. While Mary Magdalene is most directly associated with Galilee, Jerusalem, and later the lands of the West through oral tradition, the Carmelite lineage—devoted to Our Lady of Mount Carmel—carries deeply Magdalene qualities: contemplation rooted in the body, devotion as lived intimacy, inner fire rather than outer authority, and a spirituality of descent that births light.

Magdalene Consciousness and Carmelite mysticism meet here, in the garden-womb of the soul, where God is no longer a distant ruler, but an indwelling presence.

Our Lady of Carmen comes to us now with a simple yet profound message:

Return to the waters:
—not only the oceans and seas, but the inner waters of your own being: your emotions, your creativity, your ancestral memory.

Remember the garden within you:
—the holy ground where divine life is continually planted, where sorrow and prayer alike become fertile soil. This garden is not outside of you. It is your heart. It is your womb-space. It is the living sanctuary where Alaha, Divine Mother–Father, walks.

Trust the womb of life:
—the dark, unseen, patient intelligence of creation—to cleanse, gestate, and renew you from the inside out. Rebirth does not come through force, but through surrender and communion.

In her presence, we remember that we are meant to be baptized again and again into our true life.

She invites us to soften, to release fear, to reconnect with the rhythms of nature and the wisdom of the body. In a world fractured by separation, Our Lady of Carmen calls us back to the sea of unity, to the tree of life, to the garden where creation begins again.

May we allow ourselves to be carried, like her, into the waters of the Mother.
May we emerge renewed, remembering who we truly are.

I am wishing all of you a blessed Shabbat Day.

Upcoming Events:

Magdalene Shabbat January. Online Gathering donation based, funds go towards the children we are sponsoring in India with their food clothing and education. Click here.

Aramaic Healing Concert: Magdalene – Christos Flame. February 13th at St. Margaret´s Chapel in Glastonbury.

In person tickets: Click here

Live Stream: Click Here

Magdalene Ministry: Mary Magdalene Priestess and Priest Training will have Temple Doors open to register for just a few more days. Registration closes on February 2nd until next year, 2027. This is a one year online initiation and ordination. CLICK HERE

Magdalene Holy Gathering in Avalon – Glastonbury in July! Please write to me at info@anaotero.com and be the first to receive the information for this powerful gathering.

AHAVA,

Ana Otero