|
Index to All Eight Articles on Mary
Index to All Five Sections of Apparitions of The Virgin Mary
(1) Worldwide Apparitions, (2) Solar Phenomena, (3) Psychological Factors.
(4) Return of The goddesses, (5) Conclusion
Psychological Factors
(This section is an excerpt from The Marian Apparitions: Divine Intervention or Delusion? By Miriam Lambouras a member of the orthodox church. All Emphasis Added).
In the majority of the apparitions considered, children or adolescents were the sole or main visionaries, making it likely that an element of child psychology might well be involved. For a thorough evaluation of the visions and messages, it would be necessary to know a great deal more about the children - what kind of religious art they had been exposed to, what sermons they had listened to, what teaching they had received at school and catechism classes, and what religious books they had read.
In the case of Bernadette, for instance, her visions did not come out of the blue, as is often thought. She was already familiar with the Miraculous Medal (as a nun, she was said to have worn it constantly), and the Immaculate Conception had been declared an official dogma in 1854, so for four years she must have heard it repeatedly mentioned both at church and at catechism classes, even if she did not fully understand its meaning.
In addition, visions were a familiar occurrence in the Lourdes area. The essential elements of the Lourdes vision - a Lady, a shepherdess (Bernadette had at one time been engaged temporarily to mind sheep in the nearby village of Bartnes), a chapel, processions, and a spring with miraculous powers - had all featured in shrines across the Pyrenees, which in Medieval times had been on the route to Compostella.
In 1475, a young shepherd at Betharvam had seen a vision of a Lady who asked for a chapel to be erected.
In 1520, a young shepherdess at Gavaison had seen a vision of a Lady and the request for a chapel was repeated.
Besides Gavaison, other nearby shrines of the Virgin were Poeylanum, Heas and Pietat.
There was also Our Lady of Sarrance, of Bourisp, of Medous, of Nestes, of Buglose.
There were also four other pilgrimage centres in the region, making fourteen established centres close to Lourdes. Whether genuine or not, Bernadette's vision fitted easily into the local pattern.
The area had earlier been infected with the Albigensian heresy. In a crusade against this particular heresy by Pope Innocent III, the heretics had been put to the sword, and the Inquisition moved in. The usual methods of the Inquisition had been employed leaving behind a people orthodox in (Latin) doctrine, but no lovers of the clergy. Consequently visions were very popular, as they dispensed with the need for clerical mediation.
It is well known that children of a certain stage of mental development, which can vary considerably with different children, love to have a secret world inaccessible to adults, and often play out in their minds situations where they can be important. There are a number of similarities between La Salette and Fatima, and Lucia admitted that her mother had read her the story of La Salette.
And how far were Bernadette's visions an unconscious form of compensation? The Lady was small, no taller than Bernadette herself, and addressed the sickly, under-sized girl, generally referred to as "the little idiot," very politely as vous. The attention given to the youthful "seers" on account of their visions would be further enhanced by the "secrets" delivered to them - a standard feature of apparitions to adolescents and children from La Salette onwards - increasing their importance in adult eyes.
Also well known is the fact that a small number of people - nearly always children and adolescents - demonstrate considerable eidetic ability, that is, vivid visual images of specific objects that are not present in actuality, but are present to their conscious or sub-conscious imagination, are "seen" by the persons concerned.
Hilda Graef mentions in her book Mary - A History of Doctrine and Devotion, a very interesting experiment carried out by a psychologist, C. M. Staehlin, in which he tested the suggestibility of six boys aged fifteen to eighteen, letting there appear to them by suggestion a battle of medieval warriors above a tree. Two boys saw nothing at all, two "saw" the battle but heard nothing, and two both saw and heard the noise, even the shouts of individual knights. None of the boys had been able to communicate with each other, yet even the two who saw and heard agreed in every detail.
In the apparitions we have the same thing - the agreement of children, their apparent telepathic communication with each other, the fact that some only saw, while others both saw and heard the apparition speak.
How much were suggestibility and eidetic gifts in evidence when twelve year old Eugene Barbadette saw a Lady in a blue robe with gold stars in the sky at Pontmain, France, in 1871? The ceiling of his parish church was painted blue with gold stars. Adult neighbours who gathered saw nothing, although other children claimed to see the apparition.
Once the local priest arrived on the scene, the vision became more elaborate, with a blue oval frame with writing inside it (echoes of the Miraculous Medal), small white crosses, a large red cross, and four candies that lit themselves. The parish priest had previously had white crosses erected all over the parish, he was leading the small crowd in the recitation of the "red rosary" in honour of twenty-six Japanese martyrs (which may have suggested the red cross), and he himself always lit four candles after Sunday vespers in front of a statue of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.
However, eidetic ability and ordinary developmental factors are not sufficient by themselves to account for the children sticking to their stories when in some cases they were repeatedly questioned, mocked, physically punished for "lying," and even imprisoned. Nor would they account for the trances, sometimes lasting for hours, during which the young people - at Garabandal, for instance - were impervious to flashing lights, cigarette burns, and having pins stuck in them.
A neurologist from Barcelona medical school, who examined the Garabandal visionaries during and after at least twenty trances, could find no explanation, declaring them to be perfectly normal young people.
Trance is acknowledged by psychologists to be connected with religious ecstasy and visionary experiences, but also to be linked with mediumistic ability, whereby paranormal physical effects and materializations can be produced. Trance states are, of course, well-known to pagan shamans and medicine men.
On the occasions when many adults saw the apparitions or accompanying solar phenomena, not all those present did, in fact, see anything. An interesting example of adult susceptibility to telepathic suggestion or mass hallucination is recorded in Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr Seraphim Rose.
At the end of the nineteenth century some passengers, mainly English, were aboard a ship that docked at a Ceylonese port en route to India. Having some time to spare, they visited a local magician-fakir who, while appearing not to notice them, caused the crown of the tree under which he was sifting to fade, and an incredible scene to appear of their ship sailing the seas.
The amazed spectators had a bird's eye view of the deck and could see themselves laughing and talking, the Captain giving orders, the crew working, and even the ship's monkey, Nelly, eating bananas. The source of the story, a Russian priest-monk, in fear began silently to pray the Jesus Prayer, as he had previously dabbled in the occult and realized who the real power was behind the false vision. For him the scene disappeared, while the others continued to see it and marvel.
|
