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Interpretation of visual migraine aura symptoms as divine relevation

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SYMPTOMS | PATHOMECHANISMS | HISTORY

Symptoms

Transitory aura symptoms

Persistent aura symptoms

Psychological experience

Author: Klaus Podoll	21. February 2007
Edited by: Klaus Podoll

Interpretation of visual migraine aura symptoms as divine relevation

Moses's Headache

How do we know that Moses was the first Jew to have a headache?
What do you really think G-d gave him two tablets for?

(Members.Tripod.com, Jewish Jokes)

My Other World

By Eleanor Spinney

Pain
possesse me,
it sears my being.
Pain is my whole world,
each heartbeat magnified
pulsing through my eye
throbbing – through my temple
my ear, my nose.
My God!
Perhaps if I kneel
just so
with my head laid carefully
and don't move
don't breathe
it may just let me go.

Let no one move out there
in that other world –
or speak
My world's within
and this pain will never end.

"I have many times been afraid to go to sleep because I honestly thought all the blood vessels in my head would explode during my migraines. So yes, this makes absolute sense. Laying down during the migraine is like deciding to have someone bash my skull in for me. And they become almost a religious experience. I have hallucinated during these things - and I'm not talking about the weird light effects. Ain't life grand."

(KCat, cited by Gwyneth, Newsgroups: alt.support.depression, Subject: ugh – migraine, June 16, 1997)

Paul the Apostle

"For example, Paul the apostle may have been insane, delusional or just a happy prevaricator, but without reason, he would not have been able to embark upon the most successful evangelical effort in the history of mankind."

(stribs, Newsgroups: rec.arts.prose, alt.surrealism, Subject: various comments on g.v.w.'s posts to alt.surrealism, April 12, 1999)

"Migraine sufferer, actually [see Göbel et al., 1995]. Blinding flashes, aural hallucinations, seizures. Probably ate chocolate before leaving for Damascus. But he knew it was off-limits, so he only had himself to blame. Still, chocolate, a Snickers for the road. Fucking tempting, innit?"

(Alan Hope, Newsgroups: rec.arts.prose, alt.surrealism, Subject: various comments on g.v.w.'s posts to alt.surrealism, April 12, 1999; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

Writing PurlMoo Under Migraine Water

By Alan Sondheim

1 Writing PurlMoo Under Migraine Water

2 To: nikuko (#934)
3 Subject: Hello dark feather

4 thou dark feather gone on me.
5 thou must dislike this fallen bough of gone materials.
6 nothing is written through this migraine and Screen is invisible.
7 I will call Screen, Screen, and there is no answer.
8 nothing comes and there are no arrivals or departures.
9 alas, my breasts are heavy with milk falling down upon Screen.
10 Screen raises her mouth, does Screen.
11 I am engulfed.
12 goodbye and hello desire and goodbye invisible Screen.
13 thy jagged edges, visible migraine.
14 thou art gone upon me.
15 teeth.
16 now and then I still may dream of an unsustained image.
17 imaginary Screen, come and pour upon me.
18 Screen, Screen.
19 your darling, Nikuko
20 -------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------

(Alan Sondheim, Newsgroups: fa.fiction-of-philosophy, Subject: 1 Writing PurlMoo Under Migraine Water, June 3, 1999)

God Speaks to Me in Headache

By LoveMinusO

When I get a migraine, I feel fundamentally religious
and drop to my knees in the pre-formatted position
for prayer: forgiveness, relief and reconciliation.

My temple is filled with holy resonance
and spiritual compression; eyes shut - doors sealed.
Hands grasp desperately over my ears, searching for
The Door.

Inner-light consumes my vision and punctuates its seriousness
on my sight through static thunderbolts,
spiked into my repentant retinas.

"Forgive me Lord…Forgive me…Jeeeeeeeeeeesus!"

The walls shake like Jericho and I convulse
rhythmically to the wordless rapping
of His Almighty's melodious hammering.

I hear His call through my cry so I fly
down the aisle-corridor towards
the blessed beckoning of the sacred bathroom;

in a religious rage of pharmaceutical fervor constrained
to a cabinet-altar, I dip my hands into holy water
and reach towards an apparition of piety, purity, and peace.

Blessed but Strange art Thou, Lord our God,
Who allows us the application of Aspirin

When we feel you knocking untimely at our door.

© 2000 LoveMinusO (LoveMinusO, Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comment, Subject: Poem~God Speaks to Me in Headache, April 7, 2000)

"Philip O'Carroll was 9 and out playing with friends when the vision first appeared: bright filaments floating before his eyes in a shimmering sea of light. 'I thought that either I was mad or touched by God,' says O'Carroll, a neurologist in Newport Beach, Calif."

(Benedict Carey, Migraines & M.D.'s - Doctors can offer sufferers (including themselves) lots of advice, no magic bullet, Los Angeles Times, cited by Stephanie, Newsgroups: alt.support.headaches.migraine, November 5, 2001)

Saint Hildegard of Bingen

"Saint Hildegard of Bingen's mystic visions of the City of God are compatible with the visual effects of hemicrania [sine dolore] ..., which is a form of migraine with visual disturbances but no pain [see Singer, 1958]. As I occasionally suffer from that myself, I can attest that if I were a 12th century mystical nun I could well believe that I was being vouchsafed a glimpse of something mysterious beyond this world. As I'm a 20th/21st century materialist cynic I find having half my visual field trashed a pain in the posterior and nowhere near as much fun as recreational chemicals."

(Maneki Neko, Newsgroups: cam.misc, Subject: Psychology of religion experiments, March 14, 2002; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

"Shoot! First time I had one I thought it was a religious experience (age 50-ish) until a doctor (over a bridge game) brought me down to earth. I've enjoyed 'em ever since (age 74). But -- no headaches, and they're over in 20 minutes."

(stan, www.redshifter.org, October 31, 2004)

Blaise Pascal

"What is rarely mentioned in apologist appreciations of Pascal is that he lived most of his adult life in great pain and was troubled by migraines from his youth [see Onfray, 1917, 1949]. What eventually killed him at the young age of 39 was a painful stomach cancer that spread to his brain. The evening of his 'definite conversion' (November 23 [1654]) is what Pascal called a 'night of fire.' This was the occasion of what Pascal remembered as a two-hour mystical vision, but what might just have been a misinterpretation of the aura and shimmering lights that occasionally precede a migraine headache. Some of the common triggers for migraines are being tired, stressed or depressed and the let-down after a stressful event - like nearly falling off a bridge."

(Ronald Bruce Meyer, Blaise Pascal's Conversion (1654), November 23, 2004; additions in square brackets by Klaus Podoll)

George D. Stewart, How It Is, 2007 (see here)

"I’d like to draw your attention to my website http://www.georgedstewart.com.

I claim in my book that those suffering from migraine headaches are God’s saints. The symptoms they experience are of supernatural origin. The auras that many experience are used, by spirits, similarly to tools of a hypnotist to change the conscious state of the subject.

I assure you that all research into a physiological cause of migraine headaches will fail."

(George D. Stewart, Email to Markus Dahlem and Klaus Podoll, March 9, 2007)

"Sofia,

You’ll find the answer to your research in my book, which you’ll find on my website: http://www.georgedstewart.com.

Enjoy.

George"

(George D. Stewart, Email to Sofia Greene, March 9, 2007)

"I am effectively a migraineur. I say effectively, because they are very rare for me and of little consequence. I have only experienced visual aura once, and think of it as a learning experience for the book I have written."

(George D. Stewart, Email to Klaus Podoll, March 12, 2007)

"Oddly enough, I see 'angel auras.' People literally have halos, or occasionally they have this sparkly light thing around them like in a Madonna painting. My migraines are Catholic, apparently :P"

(typhoids_ashes, LifeJournal for Support Group for Migraine Sufferers, subject: Auras, May 15, 2007)

"Greetings Dr. Podoll,

I have recently learned about your work with migraine and artistic insight. I am a medical doctor, poet, and visual artist who suffered with migraines for many years. My migraines have been associated with episodes of precognition that I used when I practiced medicine. If someone was ill and a certain type of migraine occurred while evaluating that person, then I knew that the situation was more grave than was immediately apparent. As a matter of fact, it was my signal that the 'Angel of Death' was near. My differential diagnosis became extended to include those things which could present as the current clinical picture while being potentially fatal. In several instances, death was averted. I am a Christian whose habit is to pray. Communication with my Heavenly Father is of highest importance to me. That which I experience is seen in this context, and not just as a neurophysiological phenomenon.

Have you encountered other instances such as what I have described? If so, has this been studied, and is there any scholarly discourse that addresses this possibility? I would be most grateful if you will share your thoughts.

Thank you.

NN"

(NN, E-Mail to Klaus Podoll, October 8, 2010)

References

Elliott RH. Migraine. Postgrad Med J 1932; 8: 328-336, 363-374.
Elliott RH. Migraine and mysticism. Postgrad Med J 1932; 8: 449-459.
Göbel H, Isler H, Hasenfratz HP. Headache classification and the Bible: Was St Paul's thorn in the flesh migraine? Cephalalgia 1995; 15: 180-181.
Nicola U, Podoll K. L'aura di Giorgio de Chirico. Arte emicranica e pittura metafisica. [The aura of Giorgio de Chirico. Migraine art and metaphysical art.] Mimesis, Milano 2003, p. 42-44.
Onfray R. Où l‘on voit que Pascal avait des migraines ophtalmiques. Presse Méd 1926; 34: 715-716.
Onfray R. Les migraines ophtalmiques de Pascal. Pascal sténographe. Presse Méd 1926; 34: 1293-1294.
Onfray R. L'abîme de Pascal. Imprimérie Alençonnaise, Alençon 1949.
Podoll K, Robinson D. Migräne und spirituelle Erfahrung. Ariadne, Aachen 2001.
Podoll K, Robinson D. The migrainous nature of the visions of Hildegard of Bingen. Neurol Psychiat Brain Res 2002; 10: 95-100.
Sacks OW. Migraine: The evolution of a common disorder. University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1970.
Sacks OW. Migraine. Revised and expanded. University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford 1992. Link to Singer C. Studies in the history and method of science, First series. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1917.
Singer C. From magic to science. Essays on the scientific twilight. Dover Edition. Dover, New York 1958.
Stewart GD. How It Is. Booksurge LLC, Charleston, NC, USA, 2007.

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