It all seems to trace back to a small Iberian Cathar heretical cult and some guy with a bit too much time on his hands…

Alight, so there is this thing that has been bothering me for some time now. See, I grew up in a Catholic family and had to go to Catholic Catechism class every Wednesday and Sunday in order to get ?a proper education.? Mom wasn?t so into me going to Catechism, but dad had a hard on for it. I just wanted to watch cartoons or Unsolved mysteries or whatnot, but instead I got to sit in a cramped class with other tortured souls learning from some soccer mom volunteer.

We never really learned anything new. After the age of 10 you usually get the same shit over and over until you can fill in those damned religious workbooks by rote. Still though, once in a while the teachers would inadvertently stumble onto something interesting. So it was with crucifixion. Ever since we first discussed that stuff, it totally fascinated me.

Thing is, I don?t think they ever taught it right. Yeah, yeah, look past all that Jesus shit for the time being; I?ll get to that in a bit. Just concentrate on the actual act of crucifixion, okay? The Romans did it all the time right? It was there way of really punishing some dick that they really wanted to get to- a way of torturing and humiliating them at the same time. So, even if they were not always consistent with their practices they probably had a pattern to it. You know, stuff to do, stuff to avoid.

In class that always taught us that Jesus was crucified through the ankles and palms after being tortured and whipped beforehand. But hell, that just does not make any sense. Any reliable account of any other crucifixion has the nails driven through the wrists and not the hands. Seriously, if this was such a big event to the Christians- Paul and Mary and all them- how the hell did they get that so freaking wrong?

Sure Pontious Pilot and the Romans maybe had a bout of creativity hit them and decide to break tradition for this one particular crucifixion? but why? Nails in the hands are less painful than in the wrists, so that is not an answer, and I?ll be damned if I can?t think of another logical reason for it. Logic aside, surely one of the Disciples would?ve noted the change or the reason somewhere in all that shit they wrote. But I cannot find any such reference, King James or Apocrypha.

More to the point, it is just not a good idea to crucify someone by their hands. I?ve read a couple of reports and from what I can ascertain if you nail someone?s hands to a board and then require them to place a good portion of their weight on those hands to hold the body up- the skin starts to rip. Crucifying takes hours to complete, it is a slow death, and nails through the hands is just asking to have the crucified dude fall off. The Romans had done this whole crucifying thing before, and I am willing that Pilot wasn?t too keen on climbing back up there and re-nailing Jesus. Thus, the only conclusion anyone with half a brain comes to is that Jesus was nailed by the wrists, not the hands. Right? Right.

So where does all this stigmata bullshit come from?

Oh, did I say that I was only bothered by one thing? Make that a couple. Bear with me though since this is a bit complicated. Here, have some more beer nuts.

Okay, so we keep seeing some fucker come on the TV or plastered over the papers saying that they received stigmata, usually with them bleeding out of their palms. So what the hell gives? Probably someone at some point made some shit up to get some attention and the idea caught on.

Thing is, I just do not buy that it was sheer ignorance on the part of that original fuckwit. Even if they were just making it up as they went, someone was bound to come along before me and point out the discrepancy. The church? Yeah, they could just look the other way, but what do they have to loose by revealing a couple of phonies? Hell, the Vatican seems to take every opportunity to debunk everything this side of the Shroud of Turin, so why the persistence of the bleeding palms?

The way I figure it, the Cathars have something to do with it. Yeah, the Cathars. The same guys that got their start during the medieval period claiming to be dualists and Gnostics. The Cathars hated the Old Testament, and eventually, the holy catholic and apostolic church. Shit man, they even argued that the cross itself was a symbol of the devil- something to do with the God of the old Testament being synonymous with the Devil. They were digging on Jesus, but had issues with the portrayal of his crucifixion. Oh, and they had a hell of a lot support, from the Balkans to the middle Iberian.

It?s the Iberian that I think holds the key. See, there were these guys, a sub sect of the Cathars that called themselves the Solo Manos. You can do the damned translation yourself.

As far as I can tell, it was these guys that brought a lot of the bad mojo to the Cathars during the Inquisition, as there are a lot of Dominican monks who reported that the Manos were able to perform miracles with a regularity that just screamed ?I truck with the Devil!?

I think the Solo Manos with at least Thaumaturges, and probably Epideromancers. The Cathars saw the world as the work of Iyadloboth or somesuch, and referred to all matter as tools of the Devil. Cathars and the Solo Manos seemed to really distrust their own bodies, which to them, was simply a vehicle in which to enact your base desires.

The texts I have by the Dominicans are fairly explicit and quite telling. They talk all about the Solo Manos and their willingness to fuck with their bodies, in order to master the flesh and eventually lord over the Devil himself. It is not a big mental leap to get from ritually fucking with your body to full blown Epideromancy. The way the Dominicans talk about it, I can?t help but keep thinking that the Solo Manos were an early form of the adept school we all know and love.

So what does this have to do with stigmata? Look, put it all together and you come to one simple, undeniable conclusion. The Solo Manos had a lot of hate. The Manos hated the crucifixion and the symbols associated with the act. They hated their bodies. They hated the Devil. One hate leads to another, and once you have them thinking like an Epideromancer, you get a group that gained significant power from fucking with the idea of stigmata.

The Solo Manos changed the idea of stigmata to suit their own ends. Instead of accurately portraying Jesus?s wounds, they promote a ritual where they are purposefully wrong, undermining the whole concept of the crucifixion. Add to that the mystical power the Manos would gain from a ritual in which they disfigure their own body, and you get the magicakal equivalent of a one-two punch.

The Cathars were pretty powerful in their day, and had the resources to withstand some physical and ideological attacks by the Catholic church? enough so that this act of blasphemy may have just enough momentum to catch on and carry into the modern day.

Think about it, other than the Cathars who has to gain from misinterpreting the crucifixion? Isn?t it just a huge coincidence that the first widespread reports of stigmata focus on the late 1100s and early 1200s? And isn?t it just too convenient that a certain sect of Iberian Cathars, later accused of mutilating their bodies and witchcraft, had a lot to gain from wounding themselves and others through the palms? Yup, modern stigmata is a tool of some overly religious epideromancers? epideromancers that are probably still active today if the reports of stigmata are any indication.

Yeah, it is circumstantial evidence at best, but it sure is a hell of a lot of circumstantial evidence. Either way, I am hedging my bets and taking a trip to Barcelona in a few months to see what I can see. I am going to need some help, which is where you come in?