The Science of Miracles

by Joe Nickell

  Keeping in mind that Ryden is an artist (“About Vassula Ryden” 1995), it seems noteworthy that the “guided” handwriting has the characteristics of a script that is artistically drawn rather than naturally and freely written. It is a “mannered” or affected hand, rendered in a self-consciously nonslanted style—rather like the so-called “vertical writing” that was taught in American and Canadian schools from 1890 to 1900 but was deemed too time consuming to produce practically and subsequently abandoned (Nickell 1990, 124, 126; Osborn 1978, 140). Most mainstream scripts, intended for right-handed persons to render with some speed, slope in the forward direction, as does Ryden's ordinary handwriting. Interestingly, an alteration in slant is one of the most common ploys used for disguising handwriting (Hilton 1982, 169; Osborn 1978, 147, 149, 211). Use of this simple change can thus instantly impart a new look to an entire page. The “stately” hand also differs from Ryden's in size (being larger than hers), another common disguise ploy (Nickell 1996, 49).

  Apart from the “stately” affectation, the supposedly supernatural handwriting is essentially a formal, copybook version of Ryden's own naturally jotted script that alternates with the “stately” hand in her notebooks. The “stately” hand avoids some of her script's idiosyncrasies, yet it still has mostly printed capitals just like her own handwriting. On occasion, one of the copybook forms sneaks back into her natural script (replacing, for instance, her individualistic f, which has a backwardly made loop, with the standard copybook f) (see Ryden 1995, 171, 223).

  Consistent with its neat, drawn appearance is the fact that the “guided” handwriting is done on lined paper, with the lines showing in some of the reproduced pages (Ryden 1995, for example, 232–33). This is consistent with the use of eye-hand coordination. One suspects that if Ryden were prevented from seeing what was being written, the entities supposedly guiding her hand would be unable to so faithfully follow the lines! I invite Ryden to accept my invitation to perform a scientific test to refute or confirm this suspicion.

  TEXT

  On January 25, 1987, Ryden wrote:

  Courage daughter, I, Jesus Christ have instructed you that the cross you bear is My Cross of Peace and Love, but to bear My precious Cross, daughter, you will have to do much self-sacrifice; be strong and bear my Cross with love; with Me you will share it and you will share My sufferings; I was pleased to hear your prayer of surrender; in surrendering to Me I will lift you to the heights and show you how I work; I will mould you, if you let Me, into a better person; you have given Me your consent to become My bride, so what [sic] more natural for a bride to follow her Spouse? I am glad you realize your worthlessness, do not fear, I love you anyway. (Ryden 1995, 233–34)

  Is this really a message from Jesus guiding Ryden's hand? Not only is the handwriting the identical, mannered script that is also used for her “Daniel,” “Yahweh,” and “Mary,” but the perpetual use of semicolons is another similarity from alleged speaker to alleged speaker. All—except, appropriately, Daniel—call her “daughter” (Ryden 1995, 153, 188, 225), and they refer to themselves with the same construction: “I, Jesus,” “I, God,” “I ‘i Panayia’” (Greek for “Our Lady, most Holy”) (Ryden 1995, 155, 231, 293).

  Ryden's purported messages can be compared with other alleged communications from Jesus. One set of writings was “received from Jesus” by Lilian Bernas (1999), a purported stigmatic. (Stigmata are the supposedly supernaturally received wounds resembling those of Christ. However, Bernas's wounds—which I have seen up close—appear to be consistent with self-infliction [Nickell 2007, 59–66].) In one communication with Bernas, Jesus supposedly said (Bernas 1999, 23):

  My Suffering Soul—

  This is your Beloved. I have come as promised to embrace you with the spirit of peace. Take this time, and have respite from the wicked assaults of the evil one. My child, you have bent, but you have not broken. This pleases your Beloved….

  My child—humble yourself now, and ascend the hill of your Beloved with your Beloved….

  Nancy Fowler, a homemaker in Conyers, Georgia, claimed for several years to be receiving messages from both Jesus and, more often, the Virgin Mary. (The latter appeared punctually on the thirteenth of each month, and I was able to attend a session [Nickell 1993, 196–97]). One message from “Jesus” instructed the faithful (Fowler 1993):

  Come through My Mother on your journey back to Me. From this very cross I give the world My perfect love. I give the world, I give everyone in the world, My dear, Holy Mother. Please, if you accept My Love, then how can you reject, ignore, not honor, not love My Mother. I come through My Mother and I want you, dear children, to come through My Mother on your journey back to Me.

  I choose the word “Come” intentionally, not past tense. I still come through My Mother. Graces are poured forth through My Mother, the Graces come from Me.

  I am especially familiar with these two groups of writings, although they are supposedly received by clairaudience (trance hearing) rather than by automatic writing. (Therefore, errors of grammar and the like could be attributed to mistaken transcription by the percipient.)

  Now, whereas Vassula Ryden's “Jesus” frequently identifies himself as “I, Jesus,” Lilian Bernas's Jesus persona never does, nor does the one channeled by Nancy Fowler. There are many other differences among the three sets of texts; for example, the dominant themes of each: Fowler's is the near deification of the Virgin Mary (an emphasis sometimes disparagingly referred to as “Mariolatry”), Bernas's is the importance of suffering, and Ryden's is the need for divine love and guidance.

  Style also differs from channeler to channeler. Ryden's “God” and “Jesus” (as well as “Daniel”) speak similarly, often using convoluted diction (for example, “do not leave yourself be drifted away” [144], instead of “do not let yourself drift away”); wrong prepositions (for example, “irrespective to their deeds” [146], rather than “irrespective of”); missing prepositions (such as in “I, Yahweh will remind them in this call many events” [150], wherein “of” is missing after “call”); subject/verb agreement error (for example, “the reasons that makes” [44]); faulty auxiliary verbs (such as “I have restored you since the time you have accepted Me” [158], the second “have” being unnecessary); incorrect verb forms (for example, “I will progress you” [163], “I fragranced you” [34], and “Jesus flourished you” [42]); and so on.

  Ryden's messages also have occasional misspellings: for example, “God” says, “work with Me writting [sic] down My messages” (231), and he also uses the misspellings “joyfull” (138) and “analising” (101, 105). If God deigns to use the English language, should we not expect it to be rendered accurately?

  Before we become invested in imagining what a deity might or might not do, we should note that Ryden's own written text has similar faults—for example, using “sprung” when “sprang” would be correct, the misspelling “panick,” faulty subject/verb agreement (for example, “Joy and Peace is”), and many others. At times the respective errors are eerily similar, as when “God” uses “do” for “make” (for example, “do not get discouraged when you do errors”) just as Ryden does (for example, “I do so many mistakes”) (see Ryden 1995, 22, 89, 93, 235).

  FANTASY PRONENESS

  From the evidence, it looks like Ryden's channeled automatic writings are merely emanations from a single source: her imagination. Indeed, she exhibits many traits of what is known as a “fantasy-prone” personality: sane and normal but with a propensity to fantasize, as described in a pioneering study by Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber (1983). Since childhood, Ryden has had various “mystical” experiences. She has encountered apparitions (such as the souls of “dead people”), had vivid or “waking” dreams (with paranormal imagery), experienced religious visions, interacted with invisible companions, received messages from higher entities, and had other experiences common to many fantasizers (Carroll 1995; Ryden 1995, xx–xxl).

  Taken together, the contrived handwritin
g, the linguistic lapses, and the indications of fantasizing all suggest that Vassula Ryden is not in touch with supernatural entities but is simply engaging in self-deception that in turn deceives the credulous. Her automatic writings therefore are not works of revelation but simply of pious imagination.

  The “Mormon” church—that is, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—was founded by a man who had allegedly been visited by an angel. His is an illuminating story.

  BACKGROUND

  Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844) was born in Sharon, Vermont, the third of nine children of Joseph and Lucy (Mack) Smith. A poor, unchurched, but religious family, the Smiths migrated in 1816 to Palmyra, New York. A contemporary recalled the young Joe as a disheveled boy, dressed in patched clothing, with homemade suspenders and a battered hat.

  He was a good talker, and would have made a fine stump speaker if he had had the training. He was known among the young men I associated with as a romancer of the first water. I never knew so ignorant a man as Joe was to have such a fertile imagination. He never could tell a common occurrence in his daily life without embellishing the story with his imagination; yet I remember that he was grieved one day when old Parson Reed told Joe that he was going to hell for his lying habits. (quoted in Taves 1984, 16)

  At the age of fourteen, Smith later wrote, he became troubled by the various religious revivals in the area, and so he sought a wooded area where he hoped to commune directly with God.

  It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally…. I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction. But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

  Smith continued:

  It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said—pointing to the other—“This is my beloved Son, hear Him.”

  My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, that I asked the personages who stood above me in the light, which of all sects was right—and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in His sight: that those professors were all corrupt; that “they drawn near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they teach for doctrines the commandments of men: having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” He again forbade me to join with any of them: and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time. When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back, looking up into heaven. (quoted in Brodie 1993, 21–22)

  Although Smith would give different versions of his visions (Persuitte 2000), his biographer Fawn M. Brodie notes that somewhat similar experiences “were common in the folklore of the area”—an indication that Joseph's experience was probably genuinely real to him. In fact, Smith's account suggests he probably dozed off and had a common hypnagogic hallucination (or waking dream). His reference to an entity having “held me bound” suggests the immobility that often accompanies such an experience. It is due to “sleep paralysis”—one's inability to move because the body is still in the sleep mode. The reported light and the fantastic beings are also common to such an occurrence, which combines features of both wakefulness and dreaming.

  ENTER MORONI

  A few years later, at the age of seventeen, Smith had another experience. Although again there are different versions, it is described in terms entirely consistent with an actual hypnagogic hallucination:

  A personage appeared at my bedside, standing in the air…. He had on a loose robe of most exquisite whiteness…. His whole person was glorious beyond description. I was afraid; but the fear soon left me. He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds and tongues. (quoted in Taves 1984, 277)

  In 1823 Joseph Smith claimed that Moroni had revealed the existence of a new gospel—the Book of Mormon—which was engraved on gold plates hidden in a hill near Palmyra, New York. Smith “translated” the text (or, more likely, he imagined it, while borrowing from certain contemporary writings). His bride, Emma, was his first scribe, followed by an early convert named Martin Harris. To effect the translation, Smith sat on one side of the room staring into a special stone (in the type of reverie practiced by scryers; that is, crystal gazers), with Harris on the other side, writing at a table, while a blanket across a rope separated the two (Taves 1984, 35–40). After the translation, Smith claimed, he returned the gold plates to the angel, thus thwarting critics who wished to examine them. A follower of Smith, Martin Harris, was permitted to show a partial “transcript” of the writing to some experts, including Columbia University professor Charles Anthon. Anthon's opinion was that the language was bogus and the tale of the gold plates a hoax. But Smith persuaded the gullible Harris that because of the difficulty in engraving the plates the scribe had switched to a “shorthand” form of Egyptian writing unknown to the professor.

  Like Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), known as the “sleeping prophet,” Smith sometimes temporarily lost his gift of seeing—as notably happened after Harris managed to lose the first 116 pages of the manuscript, leaving the prophet inconsolable for a time. The same waning of power occurred with regard to Smith's ability to perform healings. Although he allegedly cast out a devil from one man and healed a woman of a “rheumatic” arm (Taves 1984, 63–69), on occasion he tried unsuccessfully to heal the sick and even, in one instance, to revive the dead (Taves 1984, 70).

  FRAUD AND FANTASY

  It should be mentioned that Smith had been engaged in “money-digging,” searching for hidden treasure either by scrying or by dowsing (using a witch-hazel wand or mineral rod that was supposedly attracted by whatever was sought). Some have seen this as a form of fraud, but Taves (1984, 19) points out that the practice was an old one and that treasure-laden burial mounds dotted the area. Nevertheless, Joseph Smith Jr. was arrested on the complaint of a neighbor that he was “a disorderly person and an impostor.” The dispensation of the case is unclear, but apparently Smith agreed to leave town (Persuitte 2000, 40–53; Taves 1984, 17–18).

  Brodie describes the young treasure-seeker as having “an extraordinary capacity for fantasy,” which, she says, “with proper training might even have turned him to novel-writing.” She also says that “his imagination spilled over like a spring freshet. When he stared into his crystal and saw gold in every odd-shaped hill, he was escaping from the drudgery of farm labor into a glorious opulence.” She adds, “Had he been able to continue his schooling, subjecting his plastic fancy and tremendous dramatic talent to discipline and molding, his life might never have taken the exotic turn it did” (Brodie 1993, 27).

  In the past, attempts to understand the motivations of visionaries like Smith (including psychics, faith healers, and ot
her mystics) often focused on a single, difficult question: Were they mentally ill, or were they instead charlatans? Increasingly, there is evidence that this is a false dichotomy, that many of the most celebrated mystics may in fact simply have possessed fantasy-prone personalities. Called “fantasizers,” such individuals fall within the normal range and represent an estimated 4 percent of the population.

  This personality type was characterized in 1983 in a pioneering study by Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber. Some thirteen shared traits were identified, several of which Joseph Smith exhibited:

  frequently fantasizing as a child

  easily undergoing self-hypnosis (as during his scrying and translating)

  having imagined sensations that seemed real

  believing he had divinatory powers

  receiving special messages from on high

  believing he had healing powers

  encountering apparitions

  experiencing waking dreams with classical imagery.

  These eight characteristics—possibly among others—confirm Wilson and Barber's earlier diagnosis and thereby reveal Smith to be typical of religious visionaries who share the characteristics of fantasy proneness. As in previous studies (Nickell 1997), I consider the presence of six or more of these traits in an individual to be indicative of fantasy proneness. (Anyone may have a few of these traits, and only the very rare person would exhibit all of them.)

  Wilson and Barber also found evidence suggesting that “individuals manifesting the fantasy-prone syndrome may have been overrepresented among famous mediums, psychics, and religious visionaries of the past” (1983, 371). These researchers further found that biographies could yield evidence that a subject was a fantasizer, and they reached such a determination in the cases of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science; Joan of Arc, the Catholic saint; and Gladys Osborne Leonard, the British Spiritualist, among others. It should be noted that Wilson and Barber also included Theosophy founder Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, although her propensity for trickery during séances is well known. Deception and fantasy are obviously not mutually exclusive, as Smith's case well illustrates. Wilson and Barber specifically include him in their list of historical fantasizers (372).