A New Vision: The Amazing Transformation of the Virgin Mary Tree of Salt Lake City

Gothic Deseret

In May 1997, in a downtown Salt Lake City

A New Vision: The Amazing Transformation of the Virgin Mary Tree of Salt Lake City

neighborhood, a city worker discovered an image of the Virgin Mary in a tree stump that had been struck by lightning. News of the abberation spread quickly throughout the largely Hispanic area, and a platform and stairs were soon erected by the city to accommodate the steady stream of worshippers. Ten years later, the faithful still find their way to the tree, and the area is festooned with rows of candles, objections of devotion, and a kneeling altar.

In 1997, I was working at Barnes and Noble near downtown Salt Lake City. I was an evening manager of a section which included new age and paranormal books, and thereby had my fair share of interesting conversations with odd customers, and vice versa. After a while, nothing fazed me or got me very excited. But, one night, a woman and her son were looking for some books on healing, and asked me if I had yet seen the "Virgin Mary vision" downtown.

In rapturous frenzy, I pummeled the poor woman with questions, and after closing the store at midnight, my friend Kristi and I eagerly drove the few blocks to the site. There was a ladder up against a tree as the woman described. Kristi and I took turns climbing. The only light in this rundown, crack-house-infested neighborhood was a lone, flickering streetlamp. But, there did seem to be a darker, detailed oval figure in the smooth stump-which could pass even in the bad lighting for the traditional Virgin of Guadalupe. And it was wet-- 'crying', as the woman described.

In such a very Mormon city, the seeming irony of a very Catholic icon appearing in the heart of Salt Lake is obvious. But Marian apparition itself may be the bigger and most telling mystery. In his fabulous book, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld, Patrick Harpur suggests appearances of the Virgin Mary are essentially appearances of the divine feminine emerging poignantly from the collective unconscious, that may be shaped by expectation and mythologies emerging in progression from the original, indistinct appearance.