"Actually, have you heard of stigmata before?" I asked.
"No. What's that?"
"It's when saints and deeply religious people manifest the wounds of Christ. Like, their body literally creates wounds. Some stigmatists manifest wounds going straight through their hands. Some wounds manifest nail-like structures in them, similar to the nails that would have strung Jesus to the cross. Others manifest wounds that can open and close on command. It's my understanding that the wounds of stigmatists never decay or become infected. It's a bizarre phenomenon that many believe is proof of the Christian God."
"But that's just surprise-minimization again, isn't it?" Zac asked. "It's the same thing that those with Multiple Personality Disorder experience when their body changes."
"Yes," I smiled. "It's just surprise-minimization. They're getting a physical experience of their devout religious faith while also allowing other followers of Christ to play out their religious game. Here, listen to this passage from The Holographic Universe…"
There is strong evidence that belief, not divine intervention, is the prime mover in at least some so-called miraculous occurrences. Recall that Mohotty attained his supernormal self-control by praying to Kataragama, and unless we are willing to accept the existence of Kataragama, Mohotty’s abilities seem better explained by his deep abiding belief that he was divinely protected. The same seems to be true of many miracles produced by Christian wonder-workers and saints.
One Christian miracle that appears to be generated by the power of the mind is stigmata. Most church scholars agree that St. Francis of Assisi was the first person to manifest spontaneously the wounds of the crucifixion, but since his death there have been literally hundreds of other stigmatists. Although no two ascetics exhibit the stigmata in quite the same way, all have one thing in common. From St. Francis on, all have had wounds on their hands and feet that represent where Christ was nailed to the cross. This is not what one would expect if stigmata were God-given. As parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo, a member of the graduate faculty of John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California, points out, it was Roman custom to place the nails through the wrists, and skeletal remains from the time of Christ bear this out. Nails inserted through the hands cannot support the weight of a body hanging on a cross.
Why did St. Francis and all the other stigmatists who came after him believe the nail holes passed through the hands? Because that is the way the wounds have been depicted by artists since the eighth century. That the position and even size and shape of the stigmata have been influenced by art is especially apparent in the case of an Italian stigmatist named Gemma Galgani, who died in 1903. Gemma’s wounds precisely mirrored the stigmata on her own favorite crucifix.
Michael Talbot
