Stigmata

We here at littleboxes have a little book club. Just this last month we all read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by John Krakauer. We all loved this book. It brings up some interesting questions regarding the nature of religious faith, especially the nature of "communication" with god.

We came across this article on Stigmata and found it rather interesting. As the Krakauer book notes, the line between fakery and genuine religious experience can be a thin one. More commonly, the line between a divine experience and insanity can be especially thin. Often insanity is only endowed on one who lacks followers. If someone who talks with God has thousands of followers they are less likely to be labeled insane than someone with no followers. [Of course the amount of followers may be directly related to the sanity of the person who "talks with God."]

Anyway, all this reading got us interested in other manifestations of religious fanatacism. For the uninitiated:

"Popularly associated with saintliness, stigmata refers to the wounds of Christ's crucifixion supposedly reproduced spontaneously on the body of a Christian. Following the death of Jesus, about a.d. 29 or 30, the phenomenon waited nearly twelve centuries to appear (putting aside a cryptic Biblical reference to St. Paul [Galatians 6:17]). St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) is credited with being the first "true" stigmatist (after a man with the crucifixion wounds was arrested for imposture two years earlier)."

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