Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (348 page)

In classical times incubation leading to relaxation was preceded by bathing. (Lourdes and elsewhere!)

'The actual incubation was carried out peacefully in the abaton, the holy of holies of the temple."

(What other effect do churches and altars have?) Dr. Von Schumann[23] says that muscle relaxation and falling asleep during incubation (as in autogene training) must be in close correlation, for then the suggestible and credulous patients, uncritically wide open for a religio-magical cure, can be healed and liberated of their disorders. The person seeking a cure behaves passively during incubation and 'awaits

... a magical cure from the God Asclepios'. If for example we substitute the name 'Bernadette Soubirous' for the god Asclepios, we think we are reading an account of what goes on at Lourdes.

The god Asclepios (Aesculapius) was active in the sanctuary dedicated to him at Epidaurus, a city on the Saronic gulf famous in antiquity. But he also 'worked' in the temples of Cnidos, Cos, Pergamon, Sikyon, Naupaktos and Athens. He ran many branch sanctuaries in which cures were effected for every kind of thing that cropped up. They were visited by blind, crippled and dumb people, by dropsical patients, by those with organic diseases, patients who had tape-worms and those plagued with falling hair. The busy god had to keep on performing miracles - just like the statues of saints at modern pilgrimage shrines. Rabbi Ben Akiba used to say: It has all been done before. ...

The temple of Epidaurus with its inscription 'Enter as a good man, depart as a better one', was a place of pilgrimage by cure-seekers from 500 B.C. onwards, the Lourdes of the 'Golden Age' of Greek civilization. In addition to the head 'doctor' - Asclepios - 'friendly gods of healing' also worked miracles during the healing sleep.

Kurt Pollack [24] writes: 'The miraculous cures mainly took place in the case of the blind, deaf, crippled, sleepless and other sufferers, who would be classified today in the great army of neurotics and vegetatively stigmatized. The divine doctor cured many people whom earthly practitioners had not been able to help.... The able members of the Asclepian priesthood became experienced observers of human nature who knew exactly how to exercise psychic influence on the sick. In a certain sense, whether they knew it or not, they were predecessors of present-day psychotherapists.' Need one comment on this kind of miracle? The Church knows its history.

The psychotherapeutic effect of music too was well known to the Pythagoreans of the sixth century B.C. (I can hear the laments at Lourdes!) The Syrian philosopher lamblichus tells us: The Pythagoreans used music as a cure; and there were special melodies against psychic suffering, namely those against depression and anxiety, which were considered the most helpful - others against violent emotions and passions and against every kind of psychic confusion. In certain kinds of tones and rhythms, by which the disposition and mood of men is improved and their psychic state restored to its original state, Pythagoras found the means for pacifying and healing illnesses of body and soul.

How similar the two pictures are!

The miracles that saints and their adjurants perform today were performed by Asclepios and his disciples at Epidaurus with identical or similar methods, and without any Christian help!

Fortunately because it is demonstrable, those cured in classical temples also felt themselves obliged to express their thanks in a similar way to those cured at the shrines of visions and miracles. They, too,