In Epidemics of the Middle Ages, published in 1844, J. F. C. Hecker described how a nun in a large convent in France began to meow like a cat. Soon afterwards, other nuns joined her. Eventually all the nuns meowed together daily at certain times, often for hours.
As bizarre as it sounds, it wasn’t an isolated case. Hecker tells of dozens of such cases of mass hysteria in European convents.
A nun in a German nunnery one day started biting other nuns. Before long, all the nuns began biting each other. The news of this strange behavior spread, and it wasn’t long before nuns in other convents in Germany began biting each other. The mania spread to Holland and even infected Rome.
At the time it was believed that certain animals, such as wolves, could possess people and in France cats were considered familiar with the Devil. Demons and witches were blamed for these mass outbreaks of hysterical and delusional behavior.
So it’s fascinating to read in the paper recently that in the twenty-first century such mass disorders still occur.
In the Middle Ages, young girls were often forced to join isolated religious orders that practiced ‘tough love’ in confined, all-female living quarters. Along with vows of chastity and poverty, many nuns endured near-starvation diets, repetitious prayer rituals and lengthy fasts. They were flogged and incarcerated for even minor transgressions.
No wonder they lost it. In such conditions, they easily could have been open to possession from lower entities. (Young initiates in shamanism are also typically experience sensory deprivation in order to make contact with the spirit world. But in shamanism, the initiates are guided toward positive spirit contact.)
Of course, mainstream medical authorities don’t accept the demon explanation or even refer to such cases as mass hysteria. They call it a stress-induced psychological disorder – ‘mass sociogenic illness’ – or ‘conversion disorder’ – a puzzling name.
Whatever it’s called – and whatever the source – such cases are still happening. The most recent one involved 15 teenage girls who underwent a mysterious outbreak of spasms, tics and seizures in upstate New York. A few weeks ago, 600 girls in a Catholic boarding school in Chalco, Mexico suffered fever, nausea and buckling knees that caused many of them to lose their ability to walk. In 2007, eight girls in Roanoke, Virginia high school developed symptoms like the upstate New York teens, and in 2002, ten teenage girls in a rural North Carolina high school had epileptic-like seizures and fainting spells.
One consistent finding among these recent cases was that doctors were unable to find any physical cause for the mass incidents. Also, most cases involve teenage girls.
Some researchers think that the way girls are socialized to deal with stress plays a role. In fact, one pediatric neurologist who interviewed ten of the girls in Le Roy, N.Y., the site of the latest case, said they all had ‘something big that happened,’ such as divorcing parents or some other major life transition.
Such mass disorders are also an example of synchronicity. Inner experiences of some sort are manifesting as physical symptoms and mysteriously spread from one person to another. The inability of modern medicine to find a source to such mass disorders leaves open the possibility of a link between unseen worlds and our everyday world.
Rob,
Trish,
Since i do not see a common place to put everyday stuff. I have to post here.
Since talking about trauma and synchro, here is a quote I saw today:
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens
That is me….
Have to tell you about my script analysis class synchro from my Sedona days at film / multimedia school. I just do not know where on this blog to put it.
Be well
Laurence
p.s. it ties in with so much that happened when I moved to that area of AZ.
Laurence – will drop you an email!
Hhhmmmmm. On a less phenomenal level, yet not, we also must consider the fact, which is scientically proven, that any group of women, whether working together in an office, several sisters and Mom in a home, females in a dormitory at a school, or wherever groups of women are together CONTINUOUSLY, their menstrual periods eventually always arrive at exactly the same time. This also happens between two females who are “best friends”, and also with sibling sisters who may lives hundreds of miles apart. So what’s at work here? We know that Moon phases affect menstrual flows and timings, and hormones affect and are affected by, the menstrual cycle. It’s a point of keen interest to me that the hormones of groups of several individual women
react in such a manner that their menstrual cycles coincide with regularity. Lots of studies have been done on this, with scientists trying to figure out the clinical reasons. Maybe the reasons aren’t clinical at all. But, does it have anything to do with beliefs and expectations, or more with the synchronicity of similar events and the connected web in which we all exist, to the degree that the hormonal systems of the women align themselves with each other? And pity the poor MEN who must attempt to function in the environment of several women during that “time”!!! Estrogen flowing in massive amounts, and testosterone doesn’t have a chance!! Poor guys!! A case in point: My three granddaughters each began to have periods at the age of ten, and very soon all three of them had periods cioinciding with their mother’s. Our son said he had to go fishing for a week every month or go stir-crazy from the PMS! 😉
All of the above?? Fishing as an antidote to PMS!!
I think all kinds of forces can be at work, including environmental toxins and the interference of opportunistic entities. But hysteria is a profoundly powerful thing, and especially with young girls or boys, who are full of raging hormones, the fearsome transition into adulthood, and unconscious suggestibility, especially where there are peers to join in. A young nun in such a harsh time and place might well bite or bark like a dog in response to unconscious sexual urges she perceived as unacceptable. Repressed sexuality is pretty potent stuff – witness the hysteria that brought on the Salem witch trials – for that matter, the millions of people, mostly women, that died in the Inquisition, the “burning times”.
I don’t know what Is causing the ticks but…Erin Brockovich found out that in 1970 there was a train derailment that spilled cyanide and trichloroethane about 3 miles from the school. They were absorbed into the soil and some side effects are neurological ticks etc. Also, recently a 35 yr old woman has come forward with same symptoms and lives in the same area.
My question is have any boys been affected?
I’ve heard that poisonings affect women more because of our childbearing fat stores and hormones.
I have never heard of the nuns hysteria, interesting!
We’ll have to ask Mike Perry about that cyberdermis and guys.
I’m sure there are environmental triggers for some of these things. But again, doesn’t that come back to belief? Expectations?
Talk about synchronicity:
I have not thought about morphic fields in years, then this followed by cyberdemic! Truly there is a pattern that is impacting ourlives. Even the term resonance implies ( at least in my mind) synchronicity. Patterns and Perception, that is the key. HA!
Be well
Laurence
Cyberdemic….definitely seems like a fit with morphic resonance
Rob,
Trish,
You might also want to look down this avenue, Rupert
Sheldrake’s work and the morphic resonance. The reason is this. I was at the Digifoo weekend back in 2004 and a question came up about young girls who were very science / math curious , who at a certain age( mostly around menarche ) seemed to abandon their curiousity.
I sent an email to Rupert’s assistant and told her of my theory and how Rupert’s work related.
It is thus: We in the western world think that all advancement or life revolves around our way of thinking. We in a sense completely disregard the billions of others that occupy this planet. Could not the answer to this be a morphic resonance based action? That in the majority of young females there is the pressure to eithr reproduce or marry or what ever before they turn 15.
So called mass hysteria could be based upon other females that are at the same time or have created a pattern in the morphic field that is so strong it over rides cultural or societal norms.
Just an idea…
Be well
Laurence
We love Sheldrake’s work. Morphic resonance does seem to fit here. Thanks, Laurence!
Just been reading the Sunday newspapers and an article which describes a ‘new agonising skin condition’ as a ‘cyberdemic’. The ‘experts’ reckon it’s the result of mass hysteria spread by the Internet! Most of the sufferers are younger women in countries that are Internet-literate.
A synchro! What a fascinating case of mass hysteria. Cyberdermic. Hadn’t heard about this!