Pilgrims at the Church of the 'Beautiful Virgin' at Regensburg 1610

This is Michael Ostendorfer's woodcut of the Church of the 'Beautiful Virgin' at Regensburg. The dominant image is that of a pilgrimage site, a place of healing, faith, and collective hope, filled with symbols of supplication. The statue of the Virgin Mary, centrally placed, radiates an aura of divine compassion. This archetype of the nurturing mother goddess can be traced back to antiquity, to figures like Isis or Demeter. Here, in this Christian context, she offers solace, a visual echo of humanity's longing for protection. Pilgrims reach out, some crawling, some prostrate, enacting rituals of devotion, their gestures are laden with millennia of embodied religious practice. Consider how the raised hands, a gesture of entreaty, appear across cultures, from ancient Egyptian art to Renaissance paintings. These are not mere physical actions but powerful expressions of inner yearning, subconscious echoes of our shared human history. The emotional power of this image lies in its ability to tap into these deeply ingrained psychological patterns, engaging the viewer on a visceral level. The image of the pilgrimage site, with its promise of spiritual and physical healing, resurfaces through history, evolving yet retaining its core appeal to the human psyche.