Barbelith Underground > Temple > Body modification/Magick?

I've heard this theory, although I think there's a split even among sceptics as to whether the wounds are entirely caused by self-harm or whether existing, spontaneously manifesting symptoms of a more mild character are exacerbated by the stigmatic (whether for increased acclaim or unknowingly, in an ecstatic state, etc).

I have no particular axe to grind here and I'm in no position to 'defend' stigmata. I've never done any systematic research of my own and stigmata's ties to religion and the Church make it an emotionally loaded area for sceptics and believers alike, so almost everything you find is biased one way or the other. Hell, the Catholics are as quick to debunk 'explanations' of it as the skeptics and I don't trust either. It's difficult to 'test' stigmata with any sort of objectively, so I doubt there's any solid evidence either way, although I wish I could remember where I saw that film of the hypnotised stigmatic ... it was years ago, but was the most persuasive evidence I've seen.

Alright, I'll run with the link between hypnosis and stigmata a little.

'Abreaction' is a psychological state where a subject relives, extremely emotionally, a previous trauma (a repressed trauma, I suppose a psychotherapist would say). Terrance Watts, the British psychotherapist, reported in an article (http://www.hypnosense.com/abreaction.htm) that it's not unknown for physical symptoms to appear on a subject during abreaction. In fact, he claims to have personally observed fingermarks appearing on the face of a victim in the process of reliving a slap to that area.

Paul Thorsen, another researcher, worked extensively on the physical phenomena associated with hypnosis in the 1950s and claimed to have performed experiments where subjects in that state exhibited blistering and reddening when convinced that a cold pencil touching them was a red-hot skewer. His claim that one subject manifested a red mark in the shape of the letter 'A' on her skin, when, although never touching her, he convinced her that he was impressing the letter into her skin with a finger, perhaps shows how precise these symptoms could be. This is in Paul Thorsen's 'Die Hypnose in Dienste der Menschheit'.

The patterning and writings reported on the bodies of stigmatics don't seem too outrageous in this context.

As for the bleeding or contusions associated with stigmata, such accounts do exist in research with hypnosis, although these studies are apparently fairly controversial, certainly more so than those which show the appearance of reddening or inflammation, which seems to be fairly well attested. As an example of a more extreme spontaneous physical reaction, two professors at Rochefort medical school in France (H. Bourru and P. Burot, check Rene Sudre's 'Traite de Parapsychologie'), claim to have witnessed the bleeding of a hypnotised subject's arm after he was lightly brushed with a pencil, having been told it was a knife. J. A. Hatfields's famous experiment on a sailor (originally published in The Lancet as 'The Influence of Hypnotic Suggestion on Inflammatory Conditions') which produced a fully developed fluid-filled blister after the hypnotised subject was told he was being touched by an red-hot iron bar (it was actually a light brush with a finger), would be another good example.

So, for want of further evidence, let's assume for a moment that these studies are kosher. We have spontaneous reddening, inflammation and even bleeding and blistering in areas symbolic of past or assumed trauma. We also have the possibility of the formation of meaningful letters and symbols on the skin. This takes care of a good deal of the phenomena associated with stigmata. As for the most extreme physical phenomena observed on some (but not all) stigmatics, if I had to take a position, I think I'd assume that these existing, milder symptoms were either being made more severe by the stigmatic through self-harm, or that the stigmatic, as an exceptional individual manifesting these phenomena without the influence of a hypnotist, simply possessed the ability to produce more potent symptoms.

Now, what I find interesting is how physical symptoms (re)appearing on patients in extreme emotional states reliving (let's assume) real-life traumas in their own past, are so similar to the physical symptoms manifested by stigmatics experiencing the equally emotional (ecstatic) reliving of the 'trauma' of a completely different (and possibly even imaginary) person – Jesus Christ. Obviously, this suggests that the real or imaginary nature of the reexperienced trauma is irrelevant. Rather, it's the particular state of mind of the individual that matters.

The question of how extreme these physical phenomena can be and whether this state can be consciously harnessed in an otherwise healthy individual, would be the subject of this thread, I suppose.