SOBERANA

As soon as I began researching about the Sovereign Mother I understood that more than a religious manifestation, cultural and historic, this is – just as the genetic and inherent bound that links the Mother to her son – part of a colective body, a people’s identity. The filiation between the Louletanos (the people of Loulé) and their Mother is lost in time and space, it’s embedded in the blood, in the season’s cycles, in the daily battles, in the joy and pain they live, under an unique intimate connection of protection and cumplicity. In a profoundly divine relationship of affection and, simultaneously, profoundly humane. And like the living cult that it is, it is itself, a live organism. It grows, transforms and revitalizes itself in the body of their carriers. Hence the challenge and the risk of writing about Her. Because when you write about the Sovereign Mother you are, after all, writing about all Louletanos, about their lives and their past, about their hopes and memories. And this is an endless task. Therefore, considering that wich is allowed for me to adress, I travelled through some events envolving the Mother and Her children, I tried to listen how they entrench in this extra-human vibration, that goes beyond the body, the voice and any documental record. Like a song with no writer, that everybody knows. And all that’s left for me to do is hope, hope for this song to sing lovingly in the soul of those that, in an inexplicable language, live daily with the Sovereign Mother’s Love.

Ana Lázaro