Seeing is Believing until your belief is proved wrong

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 In Diana Eck's book Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India she talks about how being able to see and interact with the Gods is a big part of Hinduism. For some reason, it made me think of the weeping paintings/statues of Mary and how they have been proven fake.


                                            A Virgin Mary statue in New Mexico weeping olive oil 

                                             https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/virgin-mary-statue-olive-oil-weeping-new-mexico-catholic-church-a8454546.html

The statues of Mary weeping have been found all across the world weeping different substances such as blood or oil. Thousands of people will flock to see these statues thinking that they are seeing something divine, but unfortunately what they are o seeing is not that at all, but a fraud. The Catholic church will often collect some of the "tears" for testing and inspect the statue for any reason why the state could be "crying". Most often it is because the statue is made up of porous material that when leaking makes it look like the statue has been crying and in the cases of blood, it is often animal or human blood placed inside the statue that leaks out.

This goes to show that what you see can often be proved false

Comments

  1. Ellie RederMay 12, 2022 at 3:44 PM

    This is a really interesting connection you made. It reminds me of this one episode of 'Derry Girls,' a show on Netflix about teens in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. They stay up all night studying for the GSCEs and Erin, one of the main characters, sees her supposedly dead dog on the way to the school. They follow the dog into a church and it pees on the second floor, which drips down onto the statue of Mary below it. It's a really horrific thing to witness, but the girls say they saw a miracle to try to get out of their exams, even though they know it was dog pee. I didn't know that most of these statues had been proven fake, so I think it's really interesting to learn. The part you mentioned about the blood makes me wonder why blood of any sort would be placed inside a statue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sarah McGrailMay 13, 2022 at 11:41 AM

      The owners [placed the blood in the statue to make it seem like it was weeping, sorry for not making that clear

      Delete

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