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