Theos-Talk Archives (January 2006 Message tt00113)

1/7/2006 11:00 AM

RE: Stigmata & Tetrology

Here are examples given by HPB:



STIGMATA .DOC
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STIGMATA & TETROLOGY

“But, despite materialistic skepticism, man does possess such a power, aswe
see manifested in the above instances. When psychology and physiology become
worthy of the name of sciences, Europeans will be convinced of the weird and
formidable potency existing in the human will and imagination, whether
exercised consciously or otherwise. And yet, how easy to realize such power
in spirit, if we only think of that grand truism in nature that every most
insignificant atom in it is moved by spirit, which is one in its essence,
for the least particle of it represents the whole; and that matter is but
the concrete copy of the abstract idea, after all. In this connection, let
us cite a few instances of the imperial power of even the unconscious will,
to create according to the imagination or rather the faculty of discerning
images in the astral light. 

We have but to recall the very familiar phenomenon of stigmata, or
birth-marks, where effects are produced by the involuntary agency of the
maternal imagination under a state of excitement. 

The fact that the mother can control the appearance of her unborn child was
so well known among the ancients, that it was the custom among wealthy
Greeks to place fine statues near the bed, so that she might have a perfect
model constantly before her eyes. The cunning trick by which the Hebrew
patriarch Jacob caused ring-streaked and speckled calves to be dropped, is
an illustration of the law among animals; and Aricante tells "of four
successive litters of puppies, born of healthy parents, some of which, in
each litter, were well formed, whilst the remainder were without anterior
extremities and had harelip." 

The works of Geoffroi St. Hilaire, Burdach, and Elam, contain accounts of
great numbers of such cases, and in Dr. Prosper Lucas's important volume,
Sur l'Heredité Naturelle, there are many. Elam quotes from Prichard an
instance where the child of a negro and white was marked with black and
white color upon separate parts of the body. He adds, with laudable
sincerity, "These are singularities of which, in the present state of
science, no explanation can be given." * It is a pity that his example was
not more generally imitated. Among the ancients Empedocles, Aristotle,
Pliny, Hippocrates, Galen, Marcus Damascenus, and others give us accounts
quite as wonderful as our contemporary authors. “
I U I 384


“Science tells us that the law of gravitation assures us that any
displacement which takes place in the very heart of the earth will be felt
throughout the universe, "and we may even imagine that the same thing will
hold true of those molecular motions which accompany thought." * Speaking
of the transmission of energy throughout the universal ether or astral
light, the same authority says: "Continual photographs of all occurrences
are thus produced and retained. 

A large portion of the energy of the universe may thus be said to be
invested in such pictures." 
Dr. Fournié, of the National Deaf and Dumb Institute of France, in chapter
ii. of his work, † in discussing the question of the fœtus, says that the
most powerful microscope is unable to show us the slightest difference
between the ovarian cell of a mammifer and a man; and, respecting the first
or last movement of the ovule, asks: "What is it? has it particular
characters which distinguish it from every other ovule?" and justly answers
thus: "Until now, science has not replied to these questions, and, without
being a pessimist, I do not think that she ever will reply; from the day
when her methods of investigation will permit her to surprise the hidden
mechanism of the conflict of the principle of life with matter, she will
know life itself, and be able to produce it." If our author had read the
sermon of Pere Felix, how appropriately he might utter his Amen! to the
priest's exclamation — MYSTERY! MYSTERY! 

Let us consider the assertion of Magendie in the light of recorded instances
of the power of imagination in producing monstrous deformities, where the
question does not involve pregnant women. He admits that these occur daily
in the offspring of the lower animals; how does he account for the hatching
of chickens with hawk-heads, except upon the theory that the appearance of
the hereditary enemy acted upon the hen's imagination, which, in its turn,
imparted to the matter composing the germ a certain motion which, before
expanding itself, produced the monstrous chicks? 

We know of an analogous case, where a tame dove, [398] belonging to a lady
of our acquaintance, was frightened daily by a parrot, and in her next brood
of young there were two squabs with parrots' heads, the resemblance even
extending to the color of the feathers. We might also cite Columella,
Youatt, and other authorities, together with the experience of all animal
breeders, to show that by exciting the imagination of the mother, the
external appearance of the offspring can be largely controlled. These
instances in no degree affect the question of heredity, for they are simply
special variations of type artificially caused. 
Catherine Crowe discusses at considerable length the question of the power
of the mind over matter, and relates, in illustration, many
well-authenticated instances of the same.* Among others, that most curious
phenomenon called the stigmata have a decided bearing upon this point. These
marks come upon the bodies of persons of all ages, and always as the result
of exalted imagination. 

In the cases of the Tyrolese ecstatic, Catherine Emmerich, and many others,
the wounds of the crucifixion are said to be as perfect as nature. A certain
Mme. B. von N. dreamed one night that a person offered her a red and a white
rose, and that she chose the latter. On awaking, she felt a burning pain in
her arm, and by degrees there appeared the figure of a rose, perfect in form
and color; it was rather raised above the skin. The mark increased in
intensity till the eighth day, after which it faded away, and by the
fourteenth, was no longer perceptible. 
Two young ladies, in Poland, were standing by an open window during a storm;
a flash of lightning fell near them, and the gold necklace on the neck of
one of them was melted. A perfect image of it was impressed upon the skin,
and remained throughout life. The other girl, appalled by the accident to
her companion, stood transfixed with horror for several minutes, and then
fainted away. Little by little the same mark of a necklace as had been
instantaneously imprinted upon her friend's body, appeared upon her own, and
remained there for several years, when it gradually disappeared. 

Dr. Justinus Kerner, the distinguished German author, relates a still more
extraordinary case. "At the time of the French invasion, a Cossack having
pursued a Frenchman into a cul-de-sac, an alley without an outlet, there
ensued a terrible conflict between them, in which the latter was severely
wounded. A person who had taken refuge in this close, and could not get
away, was so dreadfully frightened, that when he reached home there broke
out on his body the very same wounds that the Cossack had inflicted on his
enemy!" 

In this case, as in those where organic disorders, and even physical [399]
death result from a sudden excitement of the mind reacting upon the body,
Magendie would find it difficult to attribute the effect to any other cause
than the imagination; and if he were an occultist, like Paracelsus, or Van
Helmont, the question would be stripped of its mystery. He would understand
the power of the human will and imagination — the former conscious, the
latter involuntary — on the universal agent to inflict injury, physical and
mental, not only upon chosen victims, but also, by reflex action, upon one's
self and unconsciously. 

It is one of the fundamental principles of magic, that if a current of this
subtile fluid is not impelled with sufficient force to reach the objective
point, it will react upon the individual sending it, as an India-rubber ball
rebounds to the thrower's hand from the wall against which it strikes
without being able to penetrate it. There are many cases instanced where
would-be sorcerers fell victims themselves. Van Helmont says: "The
imaginative power of a woman vividly excited produces an idea, which is the
connecting medium between the body and spirit. This transfers itself to the
being with whom the woman stands in the most immediate relation, and
impresses upon it that image which the most agitated herself." 

Deleuze has collected, in his Bibliothèque du Magnetisme Animal, a numberof
remarkable facts taken from Van Helmont, among which we will content
ourselves with quoting the following as pendants to the case of the
bird-hunter, Jacques Pelissier. He says that "men by looking steadfastly at
animals oculis intentis for a quarter of an hour may cause their death;
which Rousseau confirms from his own experience in Egypt and the East, as
having killed several toads in this manner. But when he at last tried this
at Lyons, the toad, finding it could not escape from his eye, turned round,
blew itself up, and stared at him so fiercely, without moveing its eyes,
that a weakness came over him even to fainting, and he was for some time
thought to be dead." 

But to return to the question of teratology. Wierus tells, in his De
Præstigiis Demonum, of a child born of a woman who not long before its birth
was threatened by her husband, he saying that she had the devil in her and
that he would kill him. The mother's fright was such that her offspring
appeared "well-shaped from the middle downward, but upward spotted with
blackened red spots, with eyes in his forehead, a mouth like a Satyr, ears
like a dog, and bended horns on its head like a goat." 

In a demonological work by Peramatus, there is a story of a monster born at
St. Lawrence, in the West Indies, in the year 1573, the genuineness of which
is certified to by the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. The child, "besides the
horrible deformity of its mouth, ears, and nose, had two horns on the head,
like those of young goats, long hair on his body, a fleshy girdle about his
middle, double, from whence hung a piece [400] of flesh like a purse, and a
bell of flesh in his left hand like those the Indians use when they dance,
white boots of flesh on his legs, doubled down. In brief, the whole shape
was horrid and diabolical, and conceived to proceed from some fright the
mother had taken from the antic dances of the Indians." * Dr. Fisher rejects
all such instances as unauthenticated and fabulous. 

But we will not weary the reader with further selections from the multitude
of teratological cases to be found recorded in the works of standard
authors; the above suffice to show that there is reason to attribute these
aberrations of physiological type to the mutual reaction of the maternal
mind and the universal ether upon each other. 

Lest some should question the authority of Van Helmont, as a man of science,
we will refer them to the work of Fournié, the well-known physiologist,
where (at page 717) the following estimate of his character will be found:
"Van Helmont was a highly distinguished chemist; he had particularly studied
æriform fluids, and gave them the name of gaz; at the same time he pushed
his piety to mysticism, abandoning himself exclusively to a contemplation of
the divinity. . . . 

Van Helmont is distinguished above all his predecessors by connecting the
principle of life, directly and in some sort experimentally, as he tells us,
with the most minute movements of the body. It is the incessant action of
this entity, in no way associated by him with the material elements, but
forming a distinct individuality, that we cannot understand. Nevertheless,
it is upon this entity that a famous school has laid its principal
foundation." 

Van Helmont's "principle of life," or archæus, is neither more nor less than
the astral light of all the kabalists, and the universal ether of modern
science. If the more unimportant signatures of the fœtus are not due to the
imagination of the mother, to what other cause would Magendie attribute the
formation of horny scales, the horns of goats and the hairy coats of
animals, which we have seen in the above instances marking monstrous
progeny? Surely there were no latent germs of these distinguishing features
of the animal kingdom capable of being developed under a sudden impulse of
the maternal fancy. In short, the only possible explanation is the one
offered by the adepts in the occult sciences. 

Before leaving the subject, we wish to say a few words more respecting the
cases where the head, arm, and hand were instantly dissolved, though it was
evident that in each instance the entire body of the child had been
perfectly formed. Of what is a child's body composed at its birth? The
chemists will tell us that it comprises a dozen pounds of solidified gas,
and a few ounces of ashy residuum, some water, oxygen, [401] hydrogen,
nitrogen, carbonic acid, a little lime, magnesia, phosphorus, and a few
other minerals; that is all! Whence came they? How were they gathered
together? How were these particles which Mr. Proctor tells us are drawn in
from "the depths of space surrounding us on all sides," formed and fashioned
into the human being? 

We have seen that it is useless to ask the dominant school of which Magendie
is an illustrious representative; for he confesses that they know nothing of
the nutrition, digestion, or circulation of the fœtus; and physiology
teaches us that while the ovule is enclosed in the Graafian vesicle it
participates — forms an integral part of the general structure of the
mother. Upon the rupture of the vesicle, it becomes almost as independent of
her for what is to build up the body of the future being as the germ in a
bird's egg after the mother has dropped it in the nest. There certainly is
very little in the demonstrated facts of science to contradict the idea that
the relation of the embryonic child to the mother is much different from
that of the tenant to the house, upon whose shelter he depends for health,
warmth, and comfort. 

According to Demokritus, the soul * results from the aggregation of atoms,
and Plutarch describes his philosophy as follows: "That there are substances
infinite in number, indivisible, undisturbed, which are without differences,
without qualities, and which move in space, where they are disseminated;
that when they approach each other, they unite, interlock, and form by their
aggregation water, fire, a plant, or a man. That all these substances, which
he calls atoms by reason of their solidity, can experience neither change
nor alteration. But," adds Plutarch, "we cannot make a color of that which
is colorless, nor a substance or soul of that which is without soul and
without quality." 

Professor Balfour Stewart says that this doctrine, in the hands of John
Dalton, "has enabled the human mind to lay hold of the laws which regulate
chemical changes, as well as to picture to itself what is there taking
place." After quoting, with approbation, Bacon's idea that men are
perpetually investigating the extreme limits of nature, he then erects a
standard which he and his brother philosophers would do well to measure
their behavior by. "Surely we ought," says he, "to be very cautious before
we dismiss any branch of knowledge or train of thought as essentially
unprofitable." †

Brave words, these. But how many are the men of science who put them into
practice? 

————————————————————————————————————

* By the word soul, neither Demokritus nor the other philosophers understood
the nous or pneuma, the divine immaterial soul, but the psyche, or astral
body; that which Plato always terms the second mortal soul. 
----------------------------------------------------------

[402] Demokritus of Abdera shows us space crammed with atoms, and our
contemporary astronomers allow us to see how these atoms form into worlds,
and afterward into the races, our own included, which people them. Since we
have indicated the existence of a power in the human will, which, by
concentrating currents of those atoms upon an objective point, can create a
child corresponding to the mother's fancy, why is it not perfectly credible
that this same power put forth by the mother, can, by an intense, albeit
unconscious reversal of those currents, dissipate and obliterate any portion
or even the whole of the body of her unborn child? And here comes in the
question of false pregnancies, which have so often completely puzzled both
physician and patient. If the head, arm, and hand of the three children
mentioned by Van Helmont could disappear, as a result of the emotion of
horror, why might not the same or some other emotion, excited in a like
degree, cause the entire extinction of the fœtus in so-called false
pregnancy? Such cases are rare, but they do occur, and moreover baffle
science completely. 

There certainly is no chemical solvent in the mother's circulation powerful
enough to dissolve her child, without destroying herself. We commend the
subject to the medical profession, hoping that as a class they will not
adopt the conclusion of Fournie, who says: "In this succession of phenomena
we must confine ourselves to the office of historian, as we have not even
tried to explain the whys and wherefores of these things, for there lie the
inscrutable mysteries of life, and in proportion as we advance in our
exposition, we will be obliged to recognize that this is to us forbidden
ground." * 

Within the limits of his intellectual capabilities the true philosopher
knows no forbidden ground, and should be content to accept no mystery of
nature as inscrutable or inviolable. 
No student of Hermetic philosophy, nor any spiritualist, will object to the
abstract principle laid down by Hume that a miracle is impossible; for to
suppose such a possibility would make the universe governed through special
instead of general laws. This is one of the fundamental contradictions
between science and theology. 

The former, reasoning upon universal experience, maintains that there is a
general uniformity of the course of nature, while the latter assumes that
the Governing Mind can be invoked to suspend general law to suit special
emergencies. Says John Stuart Mill,†"If we do not already believe in
supernatural agencies, no miracle can prove to us their existence. The
miracle itself, considered merely as an extraordinary fact, may be
satisfactorily certified by our senses or by testimony; but nothing can ever
prove that it is a miracle. “	I U I 397 – 402


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Best Wishes,



Dallas


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Odin [mailto:otownley@gmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 5:21 AM
To: Jerome Wheeler; Reed; Dallas
Subject: Stigmatas

Stigmas indicate their carriers are either saints or insane
Pravda - Moscow,Russia
... carriers. Thousands of people believe that stigma is the charisma.
But one of theosophy schools states that stigma is Satan's sign. The