July 16, 2015 • 35 mins
In the previous episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explored the Christian tradition of the stigmata and its 13th century originator, Saint Francis of Assisi. But what are we to make of of all the stigmatics to follow in the saint's footsteps? Are these holy wounds the work of deceptive self-harm, masochistic devotion or psychosomatic anomaly?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, just a quick note before we kick this episode off.
We actually had to re record one segment of it. Yeah,
the beginning of the episode is actually recorded after the
second part of the episode, but we managed to put
it all together, especially with the help of our great
producer Noel, and we just wanted to let you know
there might be some contextual stuff that seems a little
(00:22):
weird because of the time frame, but when we talk
about the stigmatic padre Pio, there is some stuff that
was said before and then after and it makes sense though.
We've listened to it and feel pretty good about it. Yeah,
so you should be able to roll with it. But
just in case there are any questions, that's what's uped
(00:42):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert lamp Hey, I'm Christian Sager,
and this is part two of our exploration of the
stig Mata. Part one dealt primarily with patient zero for
the stigmata St. Francis of us Easy. Yeah, as we
(01:04):
talked about in the first episode, he is primarily recognized
as as the stigmatic of history. But today we're going
to talk about just stigmata beyond St. Francis, sort of
the pop culture that we've seen a stigmata take place in,
but also some more explanations that are somewhat scientific for
(01:26):
what what's possibly going on here? Why are there so
many people who are bleeding from these very specific areas. Yeah,
the first episode dealt more directly with just the religious
idea of the supernatural idea of these wounds of Christ
manifesting in the flesh, and then the historical um as
well as biological aspects trying to figure out what disease
(01:49):
Francis might have suffered from. And this is going to
go in a more um psychological direction, right, there's other
explanations beyond pathogen's viruses, back area whatever that could potentially
cause this for somebody. So somebody really thinks that they've
been bestowed the wounds of Christ on their body. But
before we get into the psychology of of the matter,
(02:12):
let's discuss some of the pop culture aspects here, because
we didn't even have time to to mention any of
them in the previous episode. Yeah, So the big one
that I always think of is that movie Stigmata with
Gabriel Byrne and I always forget her name. Um, Rosanna Arquette,
it's the sister Patricia Arquette. Yeah, yeah, Um, she's a stigmatic,
(02:35):
and contrary to a lot of the history of stigmatics,
in that movie, it's portrayed as being like a like
a bad omen like it's somehow I can't remember, it's
been a long time, but somehow her being a stigmatic
is like going to open a gateway for Satan to
come to the material plane or something like that. Gabriel
(02:58):
Burne is like an accult investigator for the Catholic Church
and his I think his job is to go around
the world and investigate mystical occurrences like stigmata. I think
he also like maybe at one point finds like a
statue of Christ that's bleeding. Um, But his job is
to go and investigate the Patricia Arqueat incident. It's so
(03:20):
weird that they would cast it as this demonic device
rather than exploring it more as Yeah, whereas in every
other instance in in history it's it's been seen as
a holy thing, well most instances. Yeah, I mean, it
seems like you would just have your protagonists suffer from
the stigmata and then battle your demonic characters. And I
don't know, maybe that's where the films of Landing any life,
(03:41):
but it's it's hard for me to remember, but I
did before we recorded this. Go and watch the trailer
again on YouTube, and there is a moment where they're
surprised that she's not devout of faith that I think,
like they're on a train in New York City or
something like that, and Gabriel burn shocked when he finds
out that she she's like an atheist or something like that. Uh, well,
(04:03):
you know, I have a hard time remembering exactly where
I encountered the stigmata for the first time, in fiction
or otherwise, because I certainly didn't grow up Catholic, but
I must have ran across it somewhere. I'm sure it's
one of those things that's used as a trope throughout
horror literature and movies without even actually being referred to
as stigmata. A lot of situations just the idea of
(04:26):
bleeding from open source, spontaneously or from your eyes. But
the one that I remember is the I can't remember
the name of the episode, but it's an X Files
episode where Molder and Scully are chasing after a serial
killer who's killing fake stigmatics or like, um, sort of
like tent revivalist preachers, and they fake stigmata with ketchup packets.
(04:51):
I think, and um that the serial killer is going
around the country killing them until he finds an actual
stigmatic ball exactly. And so are they because they switch roles.
Molder's the one who doesn't believe in it and Scully
does because she has the religious background. Now is the
killer in this is Is he himself a stigmata? He's not.
(05:12):
It's very very strange from what I remember. I think
he owns a factory, some kind of tire car factory
or something like that, and he he goes on a
Their explanation is like that he goes on a trip
to the Middle East and he comes back and all
of a sudden he's just like basically possessed with with
the the need to kill stigmat Alright, So a little
(05:36):
Jerusalem syndrome in there, a little just blue collar guy
going off by deep yeah kind of yeah, you know. Now,
I do remember, as a fairly young reader reading Philip K.
Dix The for Stigmata of Palmer Eldrick Stigmata I can't
remember how many stigmata are reference in the title, but
(05:56):
it's a fantastic novel in which you have this kind
of pan alien figure who has died but then manifests
in a sort of stigma. It's not a literal stigmata,
but very much mploying the idea of a of a
of a stigmata. Oh, I don't I haven't read this one.
I love Philip Kadick's work. Is this from around that
(06:16):
period of time when he was writing sort of those
transcendental sci fi books like Ballast? Yeah, I think this
one is from the towards the end of his timeline,
and it's very psychedelic in places. It's it's pretty out there.
That sounds great. Yeah, it's been a while since I've
read it, some little foggy on the details, but I
remembered as being like a really really strong read. And
of course there's the Ministry song Stigmatto, which I want
(06:40):
to say it's um, the mind is a terrible thing
to taste. I might be wrong, but I remember there's
a video that's very nineties kind of video like in Wait,
you know, I did run across this song that's the
very song recently on like an industrial playlist on Spotify
had a bunch of fis and I'm not as familiar
with that particular Ministry album. Okay, yeah, go check that
(07:04):
out on YouTube. I have no idea what it has
to do with stigmata or or what we've been talking
about regarding the history or I'm sure it's a deep
thoughtful consideration. Is known for his insights. Alright, So moving
out of pop culture and into just sort of the
psychological aspects here and now, Obviously there are a number
(07:26):
of reasons one might inflict this kind of self harm.
You know, you have hysteria, very central nervous system disorders. Um.
Just there are a number of reasons that a partially
unhinged mind might turn to mutilation. Right, and and so
from reading the research about stigmatics throughout history post uh St. Francis,
(07:54):
a lot of cases they're associated with something that's referred
to as holy anorexia, which is this idea that, um,
there were young women who were strongly active in the
church and devout in their belief uh, and they were
subsequently seen as female saints. But when we retroactively look
back on their cases, UH, the diagnosis seems to be
(08:17):
interactsia nervosa that they were purposely starving themselves, not eating
anything except for the Eucharist, and uh, you know, this
kind of treatment of their body through dietary restrictions sometimes
led to self mutilation. Yeah, a number of these cases
(08:38):
from stigmatum may result from self mutilation occurring during what's
called dietary constriction related to disassociation. So, as a result,
you have artificial dietary constriction that's resulting in an indifference
to the kind of harm that you're you're inflicting upon yourself.
And you know, a variety of data links dramatic dietary
(08:59):
constriction um uh to to reduced serotonic functioning, altered states
of consciousness, and uh self injurious behavior. So let's see
if we can trace this here. So the behavior starts
off as a dietary restriction and basically starving yourself, and
that leads to a dissociative state that one could construe
(09:23):
as being transcendent. Right that you've you've, you've, you've the
hunger has brought you to a place of being one
with God. Yeah, and I should probably you know, drive
home a little bit about what a disassociative experience consists
of because a disassociative experience can range from mild detachment
from immediate surroundings to severe detachment from not only physical
(09:46):
but emotional experience. So like a full blown detachment from reality,
talking to spirits, you know, venturing into the astral plane
kind of thing, amnesia, disassociated feud states where you know,
you don't remember what you did or what happened, and
you quite in your mind when you were doing it.
But also on the like the low end of the spectrum,
just daydreaming while you're driving to work is essentially low
(10:09):
level disassociative state, and you know, a coping method for boredom,
but still an altered, a very mild altered state of consciousness. Okay,
so the extreme end version of this, I think the
logical argument that that was made in their research was
that these transcendent states would lead to self mutilation in
(10:30):
some cases, which displayed as stigmata, and then the the
the patient I guess was would be how you would
refer to it. In this case, I wouldn't remember doing
it to themselves because of the state that they were in,
so they would of course assume that it had been
bestowed upon them in some DFCT manner. Yeah. Yeah, they
would either have an altered memory of what happened, or
(10:51):
they would they would have no memory of what had
happened that had caused these you know again mild discolorations
in the palm or just fall on wounds. Yeah, and
and so there there's evidence in the research to that
talks about how you know, a lot of these cases
were in the Middle Ages, Uh, and for women at
that time, it was one of the few ways that
(11:11):
they could administer control over their lives because of the
you know, the general misogyny and the culture of the time.
So they were able to by by by not eating
and by you know, achieving these transcendent states and whatever
happened beyond that sort of uh, lift themselves up into
a position where that they gained empowerment somewhat, you know,
(11:33):
they had a voice to speak from, or rather a
platform to speak from where they could you know, have
some kind of authority where they normally wouldn't. Yeah, and
ultimately also engaging in just this mystical experience that results
in physical evidence of the divine or at least and
or at least physical evidence of their their own connection
(11:54):
to the divine, So it's curious. I think now about
like some of the more modern cases that I read about,
like Padre Pio Um. There's this guy who's active right
now named I'm going to butcher this name. I believe
his name is Lato Um. And both of them, you know,
padre Pio died in the sixties, but Laco's such is
(12:15):
around now and Um. Both of them display stigmata. There's
photographic evidence of it. UM. I would assume in case,
you could probably even watch YouTube videos of him proselytizing.
But they I don't get the impression that they're suffering
from the dietary constriction version. Yeah. Uh. One another thing
(12:40):
that was common about these cases, and in both those
guys cases too, is that they claim that they had
other things going on, other mystical experiences going on beyond
the stigmata UM. In padre Pio's case, people said that
his stigmata smelled like perfume, like when he was bleeding,
the room would filled with the smell of flowers. Well
(13:02):
that that sounds actually oddly suspicious, and it was so weird.
It didn't smell like blood at all. Like catchup, I
don't know, it's just a miracle, yeah, yeah, Or how
about this one he has both these guys claim that
they have the ability to buy locate, so that means
that they can be in two places at the same time.
M hmm. Well that's that's interesting as well, trying to
(13:27):
figure out exactly how that would work. I mean, certainly
in a disassociated state, you could have that kind of
those that's where you feel like you're in two places
at once. Yeah. Yeah. And then there there's other people
who have claimed, you know, as such with exorcisms, they
claim that they've seen stigmatics levitate as well. Well, of
course they are. They're a whole host of reasons. One
might have some sort of hallucinatory experience that that could
(13:50):
involve either of those sensations. So who knows. Yeah, but
there's there's a lot going on with stigmatics throughout history
beyond the the sort of I guess case study that St.
Francis supplied to come back to a fasting for just
a moment, doing a link that you know, outside of
(14:11):
observations and accounts of religious experience of pain uh and
um and fasting, we we see plenty of links between
starvation and self mutilation elsewhere, particularly among Allied prisoners of
war in the Second World War, Japanese pow camps in
the Netherlands during during famine times during the Second World War,
(14:32):
and among anorexic individuals, and have a great to have
a great quote here from u c l A anthropologist
Daniel mt. Fessler, who says that the stigmata provides quote
a ready meaning system that likely shapes the experiences, actions,
and accounts of developed Catholics having a psychological predisposition to
dietary constriction and attendant disassociation and self mutilation. So, yeah,
(14:57):
that system of meaning comes back again. It It definitely
makes me think about issues of identity um and almost
in a sort of like systematic way of you know,
recalculating who you are as an individual your role in
the world, which is something all of us go through.
(15:18):
It's very existential, right, yeah, and we're informed by the
stories in our lives, by the images in our lives,
and certainly individuals who are experienced in the stigmata, they're
looking to the art, right, They're looking to the accounts,
and so that's why you see the nail in the palm,
which is in a which is in keeping with the
artistic traditions and the storytelling tradition, as opposed to the risk,
(15:39):
which is where the nail would have actually gone according
to most of the stories. Yeah, that's the interesting part,
right is that? And not a whole lot of people
call stigmatics out on that, but exactly that the wounds
almost always appear in the palm rather than the risks. Um.
My only guess is that, like, if you were self
mutile ating and and you went for the risks, that
(16:02):
there would be a higher likelihood of dying from that.
And my understanding, especially from reading the literature comparing self
cutters to stigmatics, was that, you know, obviously the intent
is not suicide. The intent is not to kill yourself. Um,
so you wouldn't want to do something like that. But
that that's the only connection I can make. Yeah, I
think it's just the the iconography, you know. I mean
(16:24):
it's like, that's the vision of Christ that we're bombarded with,
is that of the Christ with the artistic one? Yeah,
that's that's interesting. Yeah, which gets back to the whole
idea that the art itself was was some kind of
iconographic thing that supplanted the actual Jesus Christ. You know,
(16:46):
there there were ideas that the art had holy power
to it and that it in its own way was
converting people. It's like almost like your brainwash from staring
at this image to too long, in the same way
that you could say, don't watch that horror movie. You're
watching too many horror intentional it's gonna crazy your mind
at But yeah, from what I understood from the reading
(17:08):
that there were leaders within the church who were critical
of some pieces of art because they saw it as
basically being marketing for for the religious movement, and they
didn't want certain images to be associated with it because
that that was how people were interpreting the religion, that's
how they were understanding it. Oh yeah, there's there's a
(17:29):
whole fascinating history of the depiction of Christ and in
the Catholic tradition, and and when what happens when certain
depictions go a little too far, uh, and people start
reining in or even throwing the word heresy out. For instance,
the feminine Christ that I mentioned earlier, the three headed
Christ that was possible but it was popular at one time. Wow,
I've never heard of that one. Because they're using images
(17:51):
to to describe and tell these stories to, you know,
often lay people and uh. And so you're trying to
talk about the trinity, the Holy Trinity. So you depict
a Christ that has three faces, oh, essentially making a
monster Christ weird and it makes me think of the
human character manny faces. I had those little action figure
(18:11):
when had he had three faces that you could spin
around with like a top kind of like that. Yeah,
it's there was a Holy Spirit face, and God face
and a Jesus Christ face. They all the the the
ones I looked at. They all look the same, and
they're kind of merged together in this kind of weird,
trippy fashion. U fact with stuff. I think we have
(18:31):
an image out and how stuff works I'll have to
link to interesting. I wonder how that may potentially connect
to to the other two uh, individuals who are crucified
at the time of Christ. That's true, I mean, just
a good thief and all that. Yeah, you start throwing
around three and yo iconography and I can just go nuts. Huh.
All right, So we're gonna take a quick break and
(18:52):
when we come back, we're going to look at some
possible psycho somatic explanations for the stigmata. All right, we're back,
So there was before we get into the psycho somatic
(19:14):
explanations for stigmata. There's one more example that I wanted
to touch upon, which is, from my understanding, one of
the most famous stigmatics in history outside of St. Francis
was Padre Pio Uh and he lived from eighteen eighty
seven to ninety was a stigmatic, but there were many
(19:34):
skeptics about his uh stigmata, including two popes, so it
was not recognized as being authentically divine, especially because there
was a point in time where it was found that
he plagiarized his own writings about his stigmata from like
the diary entries of a young girl from the Middle
(19:56):
Ages who was stigmatic. So there was a lot of
question about his own stigmata, which leads you to wonder too,
Like we were speaking about the self mutilation mainly in
terms of people sort of doing it in transcendent sort
of dissociative states, but in this guy's case, it might
have been possible that he was actually wounding himself for
(20:17):
the attention and maybe so yeah, and then again you
get into especially when you start comparing it to plagiarism.
You get into that whole weird area of like to
what extent was it conscious and subconscious? Was it a
deliberate act? Was it like a slippery slope to to
the point where you're actually you know, carving your wounds? Yeah,
(20:39):
And Padre Pierre, you know, like I said, he died
in nine so we have like photographic evidence of this
guy with the wounds and everything. So it's, um, that's
one of those cases where it's it's it's you know,
it gets incredibly complicated psychologically and sort of ethically. Yea,
But let's move on to the psychosomatic explanation because I
think this is really fascinating, and this we're talking about
(21:01):
the essentially psychosomatic illness. Uh. This is when a physical
illness or other condition such as stigmatic potentially is caused
or aggravated by a mental factor such as internal conflict
or high levels of stress. Now, the easiest to grasp
examples of this, you know, without getting into like a
really fringey territory. Examples of are examples of stress related symptoms.
(21:27):
So I mean, like for me personally, I know that
in the past I've had hives when I'm gott stressed out,
So that's a psychosomatic response, right, yeah, or um, you know,
two big ones are peptic ulcers or irritable bowe sundrome.
These were once thought to ibs and peptic ulcers were
both thought to once be entirely psychosomatic, and we know
it is in the case now, but there's definitely a
(21:48):
you know, psychosomatic element to their manifestation. Um. Another key
area to look at is, uh, you know, the the
no sebo effect for the dark side of the placebo effect,
because in the strictest sense and no no cebo response
is when a drug trial subjects symptoms are worsened by
the administration of an inert sham or dummy drugs. So yeah,
(22:12):
no sebo is one of those uh fascinating things that
keeps coming up over and over again here at how
stuff works. It That specific example has been um just
used in a lot of our podcasts and videos, and
I believe that we have a no cebo article I
think as well, and the new no cbo podcast launching
no sea stuff. But yeah, basically what's happening is you're
(22:35):
you're taking just this you know, sugar pill, but you
believe that it could hurt you. You've read these You've
you've read the possible side effects, right, and so when
you take it negative physical manifestations occur because I believe
that they will. Like the link between the mind and
body in that regard is uh, you know, is established.
(22:57):
It just gets into questions of to what extent that
connection goes. I don't think that that's something we fully
understand yet. You know, we're sitting here talking about how
our modern medicine is so much better than the Middle Ages.
But I think that there's a point to be made
that our understanding of psychosomatic responses is still probably in
it in its infancy. You end up looking at at
(23:19):
other areas to such a psycho psychogenic illness, such as
conveyed syndrome or since sympathetic pregnancy. It's not a recognized
metal condition and it's debated, uh, but some believe it's
a true psychosomatic condition that you you you see this
person in your life swelling with pregnancy, and you begin
(23:39):
to swell as well to take really to take on
you know, you're not actually there's nothing growing. For a
moment there, I thought you were going to say, like
sympathetic pregnancy was like somebody said that they they immaculately
conceived because of you know, like their friend was also pregnant,
and now this is like, you know, the wife is
pregnant in a husband got starts getting a big fallen
(24:02):
now that I could see, or probably more likely just
because of dietary changes around the house, but based on
certainly high levels of stress and concern. That helps too, Yeah, definitely. Um.
One of the things that I found in the readings
that was interesting about the Middle Ages and the stigmatics
connecting to the psychosomatic explanation, was that there was a
(24:23):
movement that was referred to as the imitatio of Christy
that was a terrible Italian but I think that's how
you say it. But the idea here was that the
individuals at the time, like St. Francis himself, were striving
so much to live their lives like Jesus Christ, that
they actually began to manifest the stigmatic wounds or getting
(24:49):
back to the self harm, they would mutilate themselves. So
there were examples of monks that practice stigmata as penance
for their sins um so they would, you know, do
it manually. I don't know, maybe they even helped one another.
That that's the thing too, Like we've we've been talking
about how like you know, people self crucifying. That sounds
incredibly difficult to you gotta have help on that. Somebody's
(25:11):
got to help you get up there, right, I don't know, jeez. Yeah,
I think the footage I've seen of the festivities in
the Philippines, Uh, it's it's a group effort, you know,
it's so yeah, so there's a community behind it, which
probably helps. So the imitatio christie was sort of a
(25:31):
form of mimesis right. The idea was that they were
identifying so much with someone else, in this case Jesus Christ,
that they wanted to take on all of their traits,
not just the traits of their personality, but also their
physical traits. M here's an example that comes to mind here,
This is probably horrible example, remove and edits. But uh,
(25:52):
you're familiar with you're familiar with Limmy from Motorhead, Oh yeah, okay,
and you're familiar enough with wrestling to know a Triple H. Yeah.
Triple H was the one who was in Blade three, right, yes, okay,
uh yeah, and he's he's like a big hauncho with
w big now and a talented performer, but he's also
a big motor Head fan. Is that right? Yeah, huge
(26:13):
motor Head fan, Like he's brought in motor Head to
do like his his entrance music, like three different versions
of his own and uh for a period of time,
he like he grew out. He had the long hair,
Triple HH did grew out like LEMMI facial hair. So
so he had the big like lamb chops and the
the Lemmy. He had everything. He did not manifest the
(26:36):
mole or is it two moles? He has at least
one really big mole. But yeah, so Triple H was
not able to use mimesist to psychosomatically generate a mole.
Not quite, but I think he was working on it
like a little longer and he could have manifested the
mole um. That's fascinating. I have a friend who has
a term which I like to use for describing Lemmy,
(26:59):
which is that he has a ba's like a bucket
full of elbows. Now, just clarify, we're not making a
direct comparison between Lenny and christ. But you know an
individual that you're devoted to, an idea that you're devoted
to to, At what point does that devotion began to
have its own kind of bluebo or no sebo effect
on your body. Yeah, that's interesting, like Elvis impersonators of today,
(27:22):
that would be a good one. In in Elvis stigmata. Yeah, yeah,
like combination of if they had like a mimesis connected
to both Jesus and Elvis or something something. But I'm
trying to think of other like modern day manifestations of this.
You know, obviously there's nothing so uh preda natural as
(27:44):
you know, wounds forming, but there are many forms of
identification connected to other figures, you know, especially figures in
popular culture. Well, I mean nowadays, of course, if you're
particularly devoted to an individual, you can just have them
tattooed on your body. Oh yeah, suctually as Jesus himself
is appears on good point back an arm. I wonder
(28:05):
if there's I'm surely there must be somebody out there.
We'll have to Google image search this after the recording.
Surely there must be somebody out there who has had
stigmatic wounds tattooed on their body. Well, I have I
have one of them actually, Oh is that right? Yeah?
I have actually have the spear wounds. I've never seen
you in their shirt off. What's the thing I tend
to I tend to wear a shirt at work like St. Francis,
(28:26):
you cover up your humble about your your holy wounds.
But no, I really do. I'm not just making a joke.
I have the spear wounds on my side. Really. Okay, yeah,
I mean I thought you were a kiding. No, No,
it's real. There I have there. It's not like a
purely You're a number of layers to it. Like I
only have one tattoo, and I put a lot of
thought into what I would get and what it would symbolize,
(28:49):
and so they're varying levels of a symbolism at play.
Oh okay, okay, interesting, Well, now our listeners are probably
out there. They're very interested in your tattoo. Maybe appearance
catching at the y or something. Now, another example of
psychogenic illness I want to mention real quick, is conversion disorder. UM.
(29:10):
This is UH. In this, we see patients suffering from
neurological symptoms such as numbness, blindness, paralysis, or fits without
any kind of definable organic cause. And it's thought that
these symptoms arise in response to stressful situations affecting a
patient's mental health. UM. And this is a that's considered
(29:31):
a psychiatric disorder in actually the ds M D s
M five, So it's recognized by the UM, you know,
the discipline of psychology. Yeah. So, like enough mental stress
and anguish or you know, potentially devotion could uh could
blind you. You know, so you know, factoring that into
(29:53):
our attempt to understand stigmata, uh, it begins to seem
ever more possible that you could manifest these wounds psychosomatically. Well, okay,
so I have a personal story here. I'll try to
be brief with it, but that maybe it helps me
to understand this. So when I was thirteen years old,
(30:14):
I went to a Southern Baptist private school and we
had a lot of uh church study, a lot of
reading of the Bible. Uh. There was also a lot
of talk about demon possession, which I believe we referenced
in the episode where we talked about Satanic panic. There
was an incident when I went skiing with my family, UH,
(30:35):
and I got snow blindness. I didn't know what this
was then. I think I might have told you that
I can't remember if you mentioned on the podcast, if
you definitely told me about it. Yeah, and uh so
what happens is, you know, sunlight reflects off the snow,
your your eyes literally get sunburned, and you temporarily go blind.
And I didn't know what was going on. So I
went to sleep that night. When I woke up, I
(30:55):
was blind, and I was so scared, and I had
in my head, had all of the the fear from
the Southern Baptist school that I was in that I
thought that God had stricken me blind. So you know,
my site returned by that afternoon. Um. But you know,
thinking back on all of this psychosomatic talk, I was
(31:19):
just a thirteen year old kid and I was only
in that school for like a year. Can you imagine
if your entire life was devoted to the church in
such a way. I can imagine that it would be
easy for for some of these things to occur, or
for other things to cause them, and to think that
they were manifested by God. Yeah. I mean, when you
(31:39):
start start considering the power that our world views and
the symbols that we we have in our life, that
the power that they have over us, and then start
thinking about these various psychosomatic effects it. Yeah, I moved
closer and closer to to buying purely psychosomatic uh stigmata.
But then I then I then I also began to
(32:00):
know like I'm maybe getting a little too fringey, and
then I pull back and to start thinking about self madulation. Maybe. Well,
I'm sure in all the there's all different types of cases.
But like I said in the first episode of this podcast,
I don't necessarily believe in stigmata, but I believe that
these people believe in their stigmata. Yeah, I do. To them.
(32:20):
It's a vast majority of them. I believe it is
real with you know, a few Charlottean's in the bunch.
But but even then it's often I think, you know,
when you really look close at at cases where someone's
faking something like taking something big in their life, it
becomes complicated when you try and take it apart and say, oh,
you're just putting on a show. Yeah. Absolutely, Like in
(32:40):
the case of Padre Pio that we were talking about earlier,
if it if it was indeed something that he was
doing uh to deceive people, then that speaks to an
even larger psychological problem. Yeah, um on a scale that's
probably you know, commensurate with with that of going into
(33:00):
a transcendent state and hurting yourself. All right, So there
you have it, stigmata. Hopefully we have given a nice
overview of what it is from a you know, from
a religious standpoint, from an historical standpoint, and look at
some of the various ways you can consider it from
a medical point of view, mythical, even a little sci
(33:23):
fi thrown in there as well. Yeah, and and like
we said, you know, we're not experts in any of
these particular things. I'm not a theologian, I'm certainly not
a doctor. I'm not a psychologist. So I would love
to hear from those of you out there that maybe
have experience with these or have ideas of your own
about stigmata. You can always get in touch with us
through our Facebook page, Twitter, Tumbler, and then we are
(33:47):
also available at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com. Send us an email there and let us
know what you think. Yeah, indeed, and hey, we want
to hear about the uses of stigmata in fiction as well.
If you have at fictional stigmata, you know, horror movie,
sci fi, what happened only touched on those two the
movie and then the X Files episode. I'm sure there's
gotta be dozens. Oh yeah, Like there's there's one movie
(34:09):
from the seventies called God Told Me To I've never
heard of that Mary Cohen film, um who did like
to the Wing Serpent and it lives second okay, And
it's a subtly fabulous piece that involves like a murder
investigation in New York and Andy Kaufman has a small
cameo and it centers around this um angelic christ like
(34:35):
timaphroditic alien being that has been born in the nineteen
seventies New York City and is like mind controlling people. Well,
I definitely want to see this now. So this is
why I'd like you all the right in because these
sounds like a great movie recommendation. Yeah, there has to
be some more stigmatau ploytation cinema out there to consider. Yeah, exactly, alright,
(34:58):
So yeah again, head on over to stuff blow your
mind dot com. Check out all the offerings there and
what's that email address? Again? Blow the mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com,
Hey, just a quick note before we kick this episode off.
We actually had to re record one segment of it. Yeah,
the beginning of the episode is actually recorded after the
second part of the episode, but we managed to put
it all together, especially with the help of our great
producer Noel, and we just wanted to let you know
there might be some contextual stuff that seems a little
(00:22):
weird because of the time frame, but when we talk
about the stigmatic padre Pio, there is some stuff that
was said before and then after and it makes sense though.
We've listened to it and feel pretty good about it. Yeah,
so you should be able to roll with it. But
just in case there are any questions, that's what's uped
(00:42):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert lamp Hey, I'm Christian Sager,
and this is part two of our exploration of the
stig Mata. Part one dealt primarily with patient zero for
the stigmata St. Francis of us Easy. Yeah, as we
(01:04):
talked about in the first episode, he is primarily recognized
as as the stigmatic of history. But today we're going
to talk about just stigmata beyond St. Francis, sort of
the pop culture that we've seen a stigmata take place in,
but also some more explanations that are somewhat scientific for
(01:26):
what what's possibly going on here? Why are there so
many people who are bleeding from these very specific areas. Yeah,
the first episode dealt more directly with just the religious
idea of the supernatural idea of these wounds of Christ
manifesting in the flesh, and then the historical um as
well as biological aspects trying to figure out what disease
(01:49):
Francis might have suffered from. And this is going to
go in a more um psychological direction, right, there's other
explanations beyond pathogen's viruses, back area whatever that could potentially
cause this for somebody. So somebody really thinks that they've
been bestowed the wounds of Christ on their body. But
before we get into the psychology of of the matter,
(02:12):
let's discuss some of the pop culture aspects here, because
we didn't even have time to to mention any of
them in the previous episode. Yeah, So the big one
that I always think of is that movie Stigmata with
Gabriel Byrne and I always forget her name. Um, Rosanna Arquette,
it's the sister Patricia Arquette. Yeah, yeah, Um, she's a stigmatic,
(02:35):
and contrary to a lot of the history of stigmatics,
in that movie, it's portrayed as being like a like
a bad omen like it's somehow I can't remember, it's
been a long time, but somehow her being a stigmatic
is like going to open a gateway for Satan to
come to the material plane or something like that. Gabriel
(02:58):
Burne is like an accult investigator for the Catholic Church
and his I think his job is to go around
the world and investigate mystical occurrences like stigmata. I think
he also like maybe at one point finds like a
statue of Christ that's bleeding. Um, But his job is
to go and investigate the Patricia Arqueat incident. It's so
(03:20):
weird that they would cast it as this demonic device
rather than exploring it more as Yeah, whereas in every
other instance in in history it's it's been seen as
a holy thing, well most instances. Yeah, I mean, it
seems like you would just have your protagonists suffer from
the stigmata and then battle your demonic characters. And I
don't know, maybe that's where the films of Landing any life,
(03:41):
but it's it's hard for me to remember, but I
did before we recorded this. Go and watch the trailer
again on YouTube, and there is a moment where they're
surprised that she's not devout of faith that I think,
like they're on a train in New York City or
something like that, and Gabriel burn shocked when he finds
out that she she's like an atheist or something like that. Uh, well,
(04:03):
you know, I have a hard time remembering exactly where
I encountered the stigmata for the first time, in fiction
or otherwise, because I certainly didn't grow up Catholic, but
I must have ran across it somewhere. I'm sure it's
one of those things that's used as a trope throughout
horror literature and movies without even actually being referred to
as stigmata. A lot of situations just the idea of
(04:26):
bleeding from open source, spontaneously or from your eyes. But
the one that I remember is the I can't remember
the name of the episode, but it's an X Files
episode where Molder and Scully are chasing after a serial
killer who's killing fake stigmatics or like, um, sort of
like tent revivalist preachers, and they fake stigmata with ketchup packets.
(04:51):
I think, and um that the serial killer is going
around the country killing them until he finds an actual
stigmatic ball exactly. And so are they because they switch roles.
Molder's the one who doesn't believe in it and Scully
does because she has the religious background. Now is the
killer in this is Is he himself a stigmata? He's not.
(05:12):
It's very very strange from what I remember. I think
he owns a factory, some kind of tire car factory
or something like that, and he he goes on a
Their explanation is like that he goes on a trip
to the Middle East and he comes back and all
of a sudden he's just like basically possessed with with
the the need to kill stigmat Alright, So a little
(05:36):
Jerusalem syndrome in there, a little just blue collar guy
going off by deep yeah kind of yeah, you know. Now,
I do remember, as a fairly young reader reading Philip K.
Dix The for Stigmata of Palmer Eldrick Stigmata I can't
remember how many stigmata are reference in the title, but
(05:56):
it's a fantastic novel in which you have this kind
of pan alien figure who has died but then manifests
in a sort of stigma. It's not a literal stigmata,
but very much mploying the idea of a of a
of a stigmata. Oh, I don't I haven't read this one.
I love Philip Kadick's work. Is this from around that
(06:16):
period of time when he was writing sort of those
transcendental sci fi books like Ballast? Yeah, I think this
one is from the towards the end of his timeline,
and it's very psychedelic in places. It's it's pretty out there.
That sounds great. Yeah, it's been a while since I've
read it, some little foggy on the details, but I
remembered as being like a really really strong read. And
of course there's the Ministry song Stigmatto, which I want
(06:40):
to say it's um, the mind is a terrible thing
to taste. I might be wrong, but I remember there's
a video that's very nineties kind of video like in Wait,
you know, I did run across this song that's the
very song recently on like an industrial playlist on Spotify
had a bunch of fis and I'm not as familiar
with that particular Ministry album. Okay, yeah, go check that
(07:04):
out on YouTube. I have no idea what it has
to do with stigmata or or what we've been talking
about regarding the history or I'm sure it's a deep
thoughtful consideration. Is known for his insights. Alright, So moving
out of pop culture and into just sort of the
psychological aspects here and now, Obviously there are a number
(07:26):
of reasons one might inflict this kind of self harm.
You know, you have hysteria, very central nervous system disorders. Um.
Just there are a number of reasons that a partially
unhinged mind might turn to mutilation. Right, and and so
from reading the research about stigmatics throughout history post uh St. Francis,
(07:54):
a lot of cases they're associated with something that's referred
to as holy anorexia, which is this idea that, um,
there were young women who were strongly active in the
church and devout in their belief uh, and they were
subsequently seen as female saints. But when we retroactively look
back on their cases, UH, the diagnosis seems to be
(08:17):
interactsia nervosa that they were purposely starving themselves, not eating
anything except for the Eucharist, and uh, you know, this
kind of treatment of their body through dietary restrictions sometimes
led to self mutilation. Yeah, a number of these cases
(08:38):
from stigmatum may result from self mutilation occurring during what's
called dietary constriction related to disassociation. So, as a result,
you have artificial dietary constriction that's resulting in an indifference
to the kind of harm that you're you're inflicting upon yourself.
And you know, a variety of data links dramatic dietary
(08:59):
constriction um uh to to reduced serotonic functioning, altered states
of consciousness, and uh self injurious behavior. So let's see
if we can trace this here. So the behavior starts
off as a dietary restriction and basically starving yourself, and
that leads to a dissociative state that one could construe
(09:23):
as being transcendent. Right that you've you've, you've, you've the
hunger has brought you to a place of being one
with God. Yeah, and I should probably you know, drive
home a little bit about what a disassociative experience consists
of because a disassociative experience can range from mild detachment
from immediate surroundings to severe detachment from not only physical
(09:46):
but emotional experience. So like a full blown detachment from reality,
talking to spirits, you know, venturing into the astral plane
kind of thing, amnesia, disassociated feud states where you know,
you don't remember what you did or what happened, and
you quite in your mind when you were doing it.
But also on the like the low end of the spectrum,
just daydreaming while you're driving to work is essentially low
(10:09):
level disassociative state, and you know, a coping method for boredom,
but still an altered, a very mild altered state of consciousness. Okay,
so the extreme end version of this, I think the
logical argument that that was made in their research was
that these transcendent states would lead to self mutilation in
(10:30):
some cases, which displayed as stigmata, and then the the
the patient I guess was would be how you would
refer to it. In this case, I wouldn't remember doing
it to themselves because of the state that they were in,
so they would of course assume that it had been
bestowed upon them in some DFCT manner. Yeah. Yeah, they
would either have an altered memory of what happened, or
(10:51):
they would they would have no memory of what had
happened that had caused these you know again mild discolorations
in the palm or just fall on wounds. Yeah, and
and so there there's evidence in the research to that
talks about how you know, a lot of these cases
were in the Middle Ages, Uh, and for women at
that time, it was one of the few ways that
(11:11):
they could administer control over their lives because of the
you know, the general misogyny and the culture of the time.
So they were able to by by by not eating
and by you know, achieving these transcendent states and whatever
happened beyond that sort of uh, lift themselves up into
a position where that they gained empowerment somewhat, you know,
(11:33):
they had a voice to speak from, or rather a
platform to speak from where they could you know, have
some kind of authority where they normally wouldn't. Yeah, and
ultimately also engaging in just this mystical experience that results
in physical evidence of the divine or at least and
or at least physical evidence of their their own connection
(11:54):
to the divine, So it's curious. I think now about
like some of the more modern cases that I read about,
like Padre Pio Um. There's this guy who's active right
now named I'm going to butcher this name. I believe
his name is Lato Um. And both of them, you know,
padre Pio died in the sixties, but Laco's such is
(12:15):
around now and Um. Both of them display stigmata. There's
photographic evidence of it. UM. I would assume in case,
you could probably even watch YouTube videos of him proselytizing.
But they I don't get the impression that they're suffering
from the dietary constriction version. Yeah. Uh. One another thing
(12:40):
that was common about these cases, and in both those
guys cases too, is that they claim that they had
other things going on, other mystical experiences going on beyond
the stigmata UM. In padre Pio's case, people said that
his stigmata smelled like perfume, like when he was bleeding,
the room would filled with the smell of flowers. Well
(13:02):
that that sounds actually oddly suspicious, and it was so weird.
It didn't smell like blood at all. Like catchup, I
don't know, it's just a miracle, yeah, yeah, Or how
about this one he has both these guys claim that
they have the ability to buy locate, so that means
that they can be in two places at the same time.
M hmm. Well that's that's interesting as well, trying to
(13:27):
figure out exactly how that would work. I mean, certainly
in a disassociated state, you could have that kind of
those that's where you feel like you're in two places
at once. Yeah. Yeah. And then there there's other people
who have claimed, you know, as such with exorcisms, they
claim that they've seen stigmatics levitate as well. Well, of
course they are. They're a whole host of reasons. One
might have some sort of hallucinatory experience that that could
(13:50):
involve either of those sensations. So who knows. Yeah, but
there's there's a lot going on with stigmatics throughout history
beyond the the sort of I guess case study that St.
Francis supplied to come back to a fasting for just
a moment, doing a link that you know, outside of
(14:11):
observations and accounts of religious experience of pain uh and
um and fasting, we we see plenty of links between
starvation and self mutilation elsewhere, particularly among Allied prisoners of
war in the Second World War, Japanese pow camps in
the Netherlands during during famine times during the Second World War,
(14:32):
and among anorexic individuals, and have a great to have
a great quote here from u c l A anthropologist
Daniel mt. Fessler, who says that the stigmata provides quote
a ready meaning system that likely shapes the experiences, actions,
and accounts of developed Catholics having a psychological predisposition to
dietary constriction and attendant disassociation and self mutilation. So, yeah,
(14:57):
that system of meaning comes back again. It It definitely
makes me think about issues of identity um and almost
in a sort of like systematic way of you know,
recalculating who you are as an individual your role in
the world, which is something all of us go through.
(15:18):
It's very existential, right, yeah, and we're informed by the
stories in our lives, by the images in our lives,
and certainly individuals who are experienced in the stigmata, they're
looking to the art, right, They're looking to the accounts,
and so that's why you see the nail in the palm,
which is in a which is in keeping with the
artistic traditions and the storytelling tradition, as opposed to the risk,
(15:39):
which is where the nail would have actually gone according
to most of the stories. Yeah, that's the interesting part,
right is that? And not a whole lot of people
call stigmatics out on that, but exactly that the wounds
almost always appear in the palm rather than the risks. Um.
My only guess is that, like, if you were self
mutile ating and and you went for the risks, that
(16:02):
there would be a higher likelihood of dying from that.
And my understanding, especially from reading the literature comparing self
cutters to stigmatics, was that, you know, obviously the intent
is not suicide. The intent is not to kill yourself. Um,
so you wouldn't want to do something like that. But
that that's the only connection I can make. Yeah, I
think it's just the the iconography, you know. I mean
(16:24):
it's like, that's the vision of Christ that we're bombarded with,
is that of the Christ with the artistic one? Yeah,
that's that's interesting. Yeah, which gets back to the whole
idea that the art itself was was some kind of
iconographic thing that supplanted the actual Jesus Christ. You know,
(16:46):
there there were ideas that the art had holy power
to it and that it in its own way was
converting people. It's like almost like your brainwash from staring
at this image to too long, in the same way
that you could say, don't watch that horror movie. You're
watching too many horror intentional it's gonna crazy your mind
at But yeah, from what I understood from the reading
(17:08):
that there were leaders within the church who were critical
of some pieces of art because they saw it as
basically being marketing for for the religious movement, and they
didn't want certain images to be associated with it because
that that was how people were interpreting the religion, that's
how they were understanding it. Oh yeah, there's there's a
(17:29):
whole fascinating history of the depiction of Christ and in
the Catholic tradition, and and when what happens when certain
depictions go a little too far, uh, and people start
reining in or even throwing the word heresy out. For instance,
the feminine Christ that I mentioned earlier, the three headed
Christ that was possible but it was popular at one time. Wow,
I've never heard of that one. Because they're using images
(17:51):
to to describe and tell these stories to, you know,
often lay people and uh. And so you're trying to
talk about the trinity, the Holy Trinity. So you depict
a Christ that has three faces, oh, essentially making a
monster Christ weird and it makes me think of the
human character manny faces. I had those little action figure
(18:11):
when had he had three faces that you could spin
around with like a top kind of like that. Yeah,
it's there was a Holy Spirit face, and God face
and a Jesus Christ face. They all the the the
ones I looked at. They all look the same, and
they're kind of merged together in this kind of weird,
trippy fashion. U fact with stuff. I think we have
(18:31):
an image out and how stuff works I'll have to
link to interesting. I wonder how that may potentially connect
to to the other two uh, individuals who are crucified
at the time of Christ. That's true, I mean, just
a good thief and all that. Yeah, you start throwing
around three and yo iconography and I can just go nuts. Huh.
All right, So we're gonna take a quick break and
(18:52):
when we come back, we're going to look at some
possible psycho somatic explanations for the stigmata. All right, we're back,
So there was before we get into the psycho somatic
(19:14):
explanations for stigmata. There's one more example that I wanted
to touch upon, which is, from my understanding, one of
the most famous stigmatics in history outside of St. Francis
was Padre Pio Uh and he lived from eighteen eighty
seven to ninety was a stigmatic, but there were many
(19:34):
skeptics about his uh stigmata, including two popes, so it
was not recognized as being authentically divine, especially because there
was a point in time where it was found that
he plagiarized his own writings about his stigmata from like
the diary entries of a young girl from the Middle
(19:56):
Ages who was stigmatic. So there was a lot of
question about his own stigmata, which leads you to wonder too,
Like we were speaking about the self mutilation mainly in
terms of people sort of doing it in transcendent sort
of dissociative states, but in this guy's case, it might
have been possible that he was actually wounding himself for
(20:17):
the attention and maybe so yeah, and then again you
get into especially when you start comparing it to plagiarism.
You get into that whole weird area of like to
what extent was it conscious and subconscious? Was it a
deliberate act? Was it like a slippery slope to to
the point where you're actually you know, carving your wounds? Yeah,
(20:39):
And Padre Pierre, you know, like I said, he died
in nine so we have like photographic evidence of this
guy with the wounds and everything. So it's, um, that's
one of those cases where it's it's it's you know,
it gets incredibly complicated psychologically and sort of ethically. Yea,
But let's move on to the psychosomatic explanation because I
think this is really fascinating, and this we're talking about
(21:01):
the essentially psychosomatic illness. Uh. This is when a physical
illness or other condition such as stigmatic potentially is caused
or aggravated by a mental factor such as internal conflict
or high levels of stress. Now, the easiest to grasp
examples of this, you know, without getting into like a
really fringey territory. Examples of are examples of stress related symptoms.
(21:27):
So I mean, like for me personally, I know that
in the past I've had hives when I'm gott stressed out,
So that's a psychosomatic response, right, yeah, or um, you know,
two big ones are peptic ulcers or irritable bowe sundrome.
These were once thought to ibs and peptic ulcers were
both thought to once be entirely psychosomatic, and we know
it is in the case now, but there's definitely a
(21:48):
you know, psychosomatic element to their manifestation. Um. Another key
area to look at is, uh, you know, the the
no sebo effect for the dark side of the placebo effect,
because in the strictest sense and no no cebo response
is when a drug trial subjects symptoms are worsened by
the administration of an inert sham or dummy drugs. So yeah,
(22:12):
no sebo is one of those uh fascinating things that
keeps coming up over and over again here at how
stuff works. It That specific example has been um just
used in a lot of our podcasts and videos, and
I believe that we have a no cebo article I
think as well, and the new no cbo podcast launching
no sea stuff. But yeah, basically what's happening is you're
(22:35):
you're taking just this you know, sugar pill, but you
believe that it could hurt you. You've read these You've
you've read the possible side effects, right, and so when
you take it negative physical manifestations occur because I believe
that they will. Like the link between the mind and
body in that regard is uh, you know, is established.
(22:57):
It just gets into questions of to what extent that
connection goes. I don't think that that's something we fully
understand yet. You know, we're sitting here talking about how
our modern medicine is so much better than the Middle Ages.
But I think that there's a point to be made
that our understanding of psychosomatic responses is still probably in
it in its infancy. You end up looking at at
(23:19):
other areas to such a psycho psychogenic illness, such as
conveyed syndrome or since sympathetic pregnancy. It's not a recognized
metal condition and it's debated, uh, but some believe it's
a true psychosomatic condition that you you you see this
person in your life swelling with pregnancy, and you begin
(23:39):
to swell as well to take really to take on
you know, you're not actually there's nothing growing. For a
moment there, I thought you were going to say, like
sympathetic pregnancy was like somebody said that they they immaculately
conceived because of you know, like their friend was also pregnant,
and now this is like, you know, the wife is
pregnant in a husband got starts getting a big fallen
(24:02):
now that I could see, or probably more likely just
because of dietary changes around the house, but based on
certainly high levels of stress and concern. That helps too, Yeah, definitely. Um.
One of the things that I found in the readings
that was interesting about the Middle Ages and the stigmatics
connecting to the psychosomatic explanation, was that there was a
(24:23):
movement that was referred to as the imitatio of Christy
that was a terrible Italian but I think that's how
you say it. But the idea here was that the
individuals at the time, like St. Francis himself, were striving
so much to live their lives like Jesus Christ, that
they actually began to manifest the stigmatic wounds or getting
(24:49):
back to the self harm, they would mutilate themselves. So
there were examples of monks that practice stigmata as penance
for their sins um so they would, you know, do
it manually. I don't know, maybe they even helped one another.
That that's the thing too, Like we've we've been talking
about how like you know, people self crucifying. That sounds
incredibly difficult to you gotta have help on that. Somebody's
(25:11):
got to help you get up there, right, I don't know, jeez. Yeah,
I think the footage I've seen of the festivities in
the Philippines, Uh, it's it's a group effort, you know,
it's so yeah, so there's a community behind it, which
probably helps. So the imitatio christie was sort of a
(25:31):
form of mimesis right. The idea was that they were
identifying so much with someone else, in this case Jesus Christ,
that they wanted to take on all of their traits,
not just the traits of their personality, but also their
physical traits. M here's an example that comes to mind here,
This is probably horrible example, remove and edits. But uh,
(25:52):
you're familiar with you're familiar with Limmy from Motorhead, Oh yeah, okay,
and you're familiar enough with wrestling to know a Triple H. Yeah.
Triple H was the one who was in Blade three, right, yes, okay,
uh yeah, and he's he's like a big hauncho with
w big now and a talented performer, but he's also
a big motor Head fan. Is that right? Yeah, huge
(26:13):
motor Head fan, Like he's brought in motor Head to
do like his his entrance music, like three different versions
of his own and uh for a period of time,
he like he grew out. He had the long hair,
Triple HH did grew out like LEMMI facial hair. So
so he had the big like lamb chops and the
the Lemmy. He had everything. He did not manifest the
(26:36):
mole or is it two moles? He has at least
one really big mole. But yeah, so Triple H was
not able to use mimesist to psychosomatically generate a mole.
Not quite, but I think he was working on it
like a little longer and he could have manifested the
mole um. That's fascinating. I have a friend who has
a term which I like to use for describing Lemmy,
(26:59):
which is that he has a ba's like a bucket
full of elbows. Now, just clarify, we're not making a
direct comparison between Lenny and christ. But you know an
individual that you're devoted to, an idea that you're devoted
to to, At what point does that devotion began to
have its own kind of bluebo or no sebo effect
on your body. Yeah, that's interesting, like Elvis impersonators of today,
(27:22):
that would be a good one. In in Elvis stigmata. Yeah, yeah,
like combination of if they had like a mimesis connected
to both Jesus and Elvis or something something. But I'm
trying to think of other like modern day manifestations of this.
You know, obviously there's nothing so uh preda natural as
(27:44):
you know, wounds forming, but there are many forms of
identification connected to other figures, you know, especially figures in
popular culture. Well, I mean nowadays, of course, if you're
particularly devoted to an individual, you can just have them
tattooed on your body. Oh yeah, suctually as Jesus himself
is appears on good point back an arm. I wonder
(28:05):
if there's I'm surely there must be somebody out there.
We'll have to Google image search this after the recording.
Surely there must be somebody out there who has had
stigmatic wounds tattooed on their body. Well, I have I
have one of them actually, Oh is that right? Yeah?
I have actually have the spear wounds. I've never seen
you in their shirt off. What's the thing I tend
to I tend to wear a shirt at work like St. Francis,
(28:26):
you cover up your humble about your your holy wounds.
But no, I really do. I'm not just making a joke.
I have the spear wounds on my side. Really. Okay, yeah,
I mean I thought you were a kiding. No, No,
it's real. There I have there. It's not like a
purely You're a number of layers to it. Like I
only have one tattoo, and I put a lot of
thought into what I would get and what it would symbolize,
(28:49):
and so they're varying levels of a symbolism at play.
Oh okay, okay, interesting, Well, now our listeners are probably
out there. They're very interested in your tattoo. Maybe appearance
catching at the y or something. Now, another example of
psychogenic illness I want to mention real quick, is conversion disorder. UM.
(29:10):
This is UH. In this, we see patients suffering from
neurological symptoms such as numbness, blindness, paralysis, or fits without
any kind of definable organic cause. And it's thought that
these symptoms arise in response to stressful situations affecting a
patient's mental health. UM. And this is a that's considered
(29:31):
a psychiatric disorder in actually the ds M D s
M five, So it's recognized by the UM, you know,
the discipline of psychology. Yeah. So, like enough mental stress
and anguish or you know, potentially devotion could uh could
blind you. You know, so you know, factoring that into
(29:53):
our attempt to understand stigmata, uh, it begins to seem
ever more possible that you could manifest these wounds psychosomatically. Well, okay,
so I have a personal story here. I'll try to
be brief with it, but that maybe it helps me
to understand this. So when I was thirteen years old,
(30:14):
I went to a Southern Baptist private school and we
had a lot of uh church study, a lot of
reading of the Bible. Uh. There was also a lot
of talk about demon possession, which I believe we referenced
in the episode where we talked about Satanic panic. There
was an incident when I went skiing with my family, UH,
(30:35):
and I got snow blindness. I didn't know what this
was then. I think I might have told you that
I can't remember if you mentioned on the podcast, if
you definitely told me about it. Yeah, and uh so
what happens is, you know, sunlight reflects off the snow,
your your eyes literally get sunburned, and you temporarily go blind.
And I didn't know what was going on. So I
went to sleep that night. When I woke up, I
(30:55):
was blind, and I was so scared, and I had
in my head, had all of the the fear from
the Southern Baptist school that I was in that I
thought that God had stricken me blind. So you know,
my site returned by that afternoon. Um. But you know,
thinking back on all of this psychosomatic talk, I was
(31:19):
just a thirteen year old kid and I was only
in that school for like a year. Can you imagine
if your entire life was devoted to the church in
such a way. I can imagine that it would be
easy for for some of these things to occur, or
for other things to cause them, and to think that
they were manifested by God. Yeah. I mean, when you
(31:39):
start start considering the power that our world views and
the symbols that we we have in our life, that
the power that they have over us, and then start
thinking about these various psychosomatic effects it. Yeah, I moved
closer and closer to to buying purely psychosomatic uh stigmata.
But then I then I then I also began to
(32:00):
know like I'm maybe getting a little too fringey, and
then I pull back and to start thinking about self madulation. Maybe. Well,
I'm sure in all the there's all different types of cases.
But like I said in the first episode of this podcast,
I don't necessarily believe in stigmata, but I believe that
these people believe in their stigmata. Yeah, I do. To them.
(32:20):
It's a vast majority of them. I believe it is
real with you know, a few Charlottean's in the bunch.
But but even then it's often I think, you know,
when you really look close at at cases where someone's
faking something like taking something big in their life, it
becomes complicated when you try and take it apart and say, oh,
you're just putting on a show. Yeah. Absolutely, Like in
(32:40):
the case of Padre Pio that we were talking about earlier,
if it if it was indeed something that he was
doing uh to deceive people, then that speaks to an
even larger psychological problem. Yeah, um on a scale that's
probably you know, commensurate with with that of going into
(33:00):
a transcendent state and hurting yourself. All right, So there
you have it, stigmata. Hopefully we have given a nice
overview of what it is from a you know, from
a religious standpoint, from an historical standpoint, and look at
some of the various ways you can consider it from
a medical point of view, mythical, even a little sci
(33:23):
fi thrown in there as well. Yeah, and and like
we said, you know, we're not experts in any of
these particular things. I'm not a theologian, I'm certainly not
a doctor. I'm not a psychologist. So I would love
to hear from those of you out there that maybe
have experience with these or have ideas of your own
about stigmata. You can always get in touch with us
through our Facebook page, Twitter, Tumbler, and then we are
(33:47):
also available at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com. Send us an email there and let us
know what you think. Yeah, indeed, and hey, we want
to hear about the uses of stigmata in fiction as well.
If you have at fictional stigmata, you know, horror movie,
sci fi, what happened only touched on those two the
movie and then the X Files episode. I'm sure there's
gotta be dozens. Oh yeah, Like there's there's one movie
(34:09):
from the seventies called God Told Me To I've never
heard of that Mary Cohen film, um who did like
to the Wing Serpent and it lives second okay, And
it's a subtly fabulous piece that involves like a murder
investigation in New York and Andy Kaufman has a small
cameo and it centers around this um angelic christ like
(34:35):
timaphroditic alien being that has been born in the nineteen
seventies New York City and is like mind controlling people. Well,
I definitely want to see this now. So this is
why I'd like you all the right in because these
sounds like a great movie recommendation. Yeah, there has to
be some more stigmatau ploytation cinema out there to consider. Yeah, exactly, alright,
(34:58):
So yeah again, head on over to stuff blow your
mind dot com. Check out all the offerings there and
what's that email address? Again? Blow the mind at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com,
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