I was just looking for something else and came across a poem that I wrote earlier this year that has an image in it that I like a whole fucking lot. About plugging wires into stigmata. Imagine what you would hear if you plugged your headphones into someone’s stigmata. I imagine you would hear a throbbing bleeding organic matrix of pure information, pain and love.

That reminds me of a passage from Symbols of Transformation that I wanted to save for future use. It’s by an 18th century “hysterical” German nun named Anna Catherina Emmerich, who received the stigmata (p 287):

I had a contemplation of the sufferings of Christ, and I besought him to let me feel his sorrows with him, and prayed five paternosters in adoration of the five sacred wounds. Lying on my bed with arms outstretched, I entered into a great sweetness and into an endless thirst for the torments of Jesus. Then I saw a radiance descending towards me; it came slanting down from above. It was a crucified body, alive and transparent, the arms extended, but without the Cross. The wounds shone more brightly than the body; they were five circles of glory emanating from the glory of the whole. I was enraptured, and my heart was moved with great pain and yet with great sweetness, from my longing to share the torments of my Saviour. And at the sight of the wounds my longing for the sufferings of the Redeemer increased more and more, as if streaming out of my breast, through my hands, side, and feet towards his holy wounds. Then from the hands, then from the side, then from the feet of the figure triple beams of shining red light shot forth into my hands, my side, and my feet, ending in an arrow.