“Spiritual healer” Joe Coleman’s visions of a Marian apparition on the exact spot, in the village of Knock, in County Mayo, Ireland, where villagers claimed they saw the Virgin Mary in 1879, have created what can best be described as an hysterical reaction across the Catholic world.
Apparently up to 10,000 fruitcakes pilgrims have descended upon Knock to see, according to Coleman, a vision appearing in a “dancing sun”. What? The sun – 93,000,000 miles away, and weighing roughly 1,990,000,000,000,000,000,000,000000,000 kg – jigging about in the sky? What sort of deluded imbecile can actually believe that?
On October 11, in Knock, Coleman persuaded a group of gullible idiots – hell, there was no shortage – to stare at the sun (please, don’t do that at home, OK?), when the more – let’s say “impressionable” claimed – no, fuck it, let’s say what it is, the more unhinged (really, to stare at the sun you pretty much have to be) – claimed they saw clouds parting** to reveal a bright sunlit image of a woman in white. Many others saw what was really there – bugger all. All were very lucky not to permanently damage their eyes.
**Umm – if clouds cleared, it must have been cloudy, which makes it hard to stare a the sun…
The thing is though, staring at the sun for any length of time can cause a whole range of undesirable effects including “visions” (aka hallucinations), a fact that isn’t exactly a secret. They probably happen shortly before you go blind.
Coleman, toddling off home to Dublin, yesterday, claimed that the Virgin Mary had appeared (a personal meeting? Wow!), but he was not yet prepared to reveal the message she had sent him for the world (Piss off and stop bothering me, would be my guess!).
Yeah, right… If I were, you know, cynical at all, I might think he was going home to think of something plausible to say. Or, at least, something that won’t have most sensible people falling about laughing.
Oh, and apart from the deluded few heliomaniacs**, there was no apparition – zilch, nada, nothing. Total wipe-out.
Would it be just too, too, cynical of me to suggest that, in the depths of the worst depression since whenever, this was a bloody good money-making exercise? Or is that just me?
** Yes, I know there’s no such word, I just made it up to describe mad buggers who stare at the sun, not liking the more etymologically-sound “solartics” (see lunatics).
