Jump to content

Bilocation

From Catholicism Wiki

Bilocation, or sometimes multilocation, is an alleged psychic or miraculous ability wherein an individual or object is located (or appears to be located) in two distinct places at the same time.[1] Reports of bilocational phenomena have been made in a wide variety of historical and religious contexts, ranging from ancient Greek legends and Christian traditions to modern occultism.

In ancient Greece

The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras was said to have been capable of bilocation. According to Porphyry (writing several centuries after Pythagoras):

Almost unanimous is the report that on one and the same day he was present at Metapontum in Italy, and at Tauromenium in Sicily, in each place conversing with his friends, though the places are separated by many miles, both at sea and land, demanding many days' journey.[2][3]

A similar story is told of Apollonius of Tyana, who was supposedly present simultaneously in Smyrna and Ephesus.[4]

In religion and mysticism

The concept of bilocation has been linked with shamanism,[5] Theosophy,[6] Islam (especially Sufism)[7] and Jewish mysticism.[8]

Hinduism and Buddhism

It is also one of the siddhis of Hinduism and Buddhism.[9][10] Several prominent Hindu gurus, including Neem Karoli Baba,[11] Sri Yukteswar[12] and Lahiri Mahasaya,[12] have been reported to have this ability.

Christianity

The history of Christianity contains many reports of miraculous bilocations. Among the earliest of these is the apparition of Our Lady of the Pillar. This is an alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary in Caesaraugusta, Spain, in the year 40 AD, at a time when she is believed to have been still alive and living in Jerusalem.[13]

Other Christian figures said to have experienced bilocation include Catherine de' Ricci, Saint Drogo,[14] Anthony of Padua,[15] Francis of Paola,[16] Francis Xavier,[17] Martin de Porres,[18] María de Ágreda,[19][20] Natuzza Evolo[21] Alphonsus Liguori,[22] Gerard Majella[23] and Padre Pio.[24]

However, some Catholic philosophers disagree as to whether a person can really be physically located in two places at once, or whether the bilocations of the saints only take the form of non-substantial apparitions.[25][26]

Witchcraft

In the 17th century, persons accused of witchcraft were often reported to appear to their victims in visions, even if they were known to be elsewhere at the time. The trials at Bury St. Edmunds and Salem included this "spectral evidence" against defendants. Matthew Hopkins described the phenomenon in his book The Discovery of Witches.

Occultism

Émilie Sagée, a French teacher working in 1845 in a boarding school in Latvia, was supposed to have had the ability of bilocation.[27]

New Religious Movements

The English occultist Aleister Crowley was reported by acquaintances to have the ability to bilocate, even though he said he was not conscious of its happening at the time.[28]

Skepticism

Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell has written that there is no scientific evidence that bilocation is a real phenomenon and that cases are often from anecdotal reports that cannot be verified.[29]

Cultural influence

Bilocation figures heavily in David Lynch's film Lost Highway (1997) and both Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day (2006) and Tim Powers' novel Declare (2000). Bilocation also plays a part in the Christopher Priest novel The Prestige. Additionally, the phenomenon is explored in an episode of The X-Files, "Fight Club", and several season two episodes of Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond, including "Dead Ringer".

A mystical story that involved Soviet author Yevgeny Petrov served as inspiration for the film Envelope (2012), starring Kevin Spacey.

The phenomenon is one of the main ideas in Stephen King's fiction novel The Outsider, even mentioning real-life references on one occasion.

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Bilocation — (Latin bis, twice, and locatio, place.)

I. The question whether the same finite being (especially a body) can be at once in two (bilocation) or more (replication, multilocation) totally different places grew out of the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist. According to this Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in every consecrated Host wheresoever located. In the endeavour to connect this fact of faith with the other conceptions of the Catholic mind theologians make the following distinctions:

  • The place of a body is the surface of the body or bodies immediately surrounding and in contact with the located body.
  • A physical body is in place commensurably (circumscriptively) inasmuch as the individual portions of its exterior surfaces answer singly to the corresponding portions of the immediately environing surfaces of the body or bodies that constitute its place.
  • A being is definitively in place when it is entire in every portion of the space it occupies. This is the mode of location proper to unembodied spirits and to the human soul in the organism whereof it is the "substantial form", i.e. the actuating and vitalizing principle. A spirit cannot, of course, be in loco circumscriptively since, having no integrant parts, it cannot be in extensional contact with the surrounding dimensions. It may be said, therefore, to locate itself by its spiritual activity (will) and rather to occupy than to be occupied by place, and consequently to be virtually rather than formally in loco. Such a mode of location cannot be natural to a physical body. Whether it can be so absolutely, supernaturally, miraculously, by an interference on the part of Omnipotence will be considered below.
  • A mixed mode of location would be that of a being which is circumscriptively in one place (as is Christ in heaven), and definitively (sacramentally) elsewhere (as is Christ in the consecrated Host).

II. That bilocation (multilocation) is physically impossible, that is, contrary to all the conditions of matter at present known to us, is the practically unanimous teaching of Catholic philosophers in accordance with universal experience and natural science. As to the absolute or metaphysical impossibility, that is, whether bilocation involves an intrinsic contradiction, so that by no exertion even of Omnipotence could the same body be at once in wholly different places - to this question the foregoing distinctions are pertinent.

  • Catholic philosophers maintain that there is no absolute impossibility in the same body being at once circumscriptively in one place and definitively elsewhere (mixed mode of location). The basis of this opinion is that local extension is not essential to material substance. The latter is and remains what it is wheresoever located. Local extension is consequent on a naturally universal, but still not essentially necessary, property of material substance. It is the immediate resultant of the "quantity" inherent in a body's material composition and consists in a contactual relation of the body with the circumambient surfaces. Being a resultant or quasi effect of quantity it may be suspended in its actualization; at least such suspension involves no absolute impossibility and may therefore be effected by Omnipotent agency. Should, therefore, God choose to deprive a body of its extensional relation to its place and thus, so to speak, delocalize the material substance, the latter would be quasi spiritualized and would thus, besides its natural circumscriptive location, be capable of receiving definitive and consequently multiple location; for in this case the obstacle to bilocation, viz., actual local extension, would have been removed. Replication does not involve multiplication of the body's substance but only the multiplication of its local relations to other bodies. The existence of its substance in one place is contradicted only by non-existence in that same place, but says nothing per se about existence or non-existence elsewhere.
  • If mixed replication involves no absolute contradiction, definitive replication a fortiori does not.
  • Regarding the absolute possibility of a body being present circumscriptively in more than one place, St. Thomas, Vasquez, Silv. Maurus, and many others deny such possibility. The instances of bilocation narrated in lives of the saints can be explained, they hold, by phantasmal replications or by aerial materializations. Scotus, Bellarmine, Suarez, DeLugo, Franzelin, and many others defend the possibility of circumscriptive replication. Their arguments as well as the various subtle questions and difficulties pertinent to the whole subject will be found in works cited below.

BALMES, Fundamental Philosophy (New York, 1864); DALGAIRNS, The Holy Communion (London, 1868); FABER, The Bl. Sacrament (Baltimore, 1855); GUTBERLET, Die Metaphysik (Münster, 1880); NYS, Cosmologie (Louvain, 1906); LA FARGE, L'idée de continu (Paris. 1894); PESCH, Philosophia Nat. (Freiburg, 1897); URRABURU, Cosmologia (Valladolid, 1892).

References

  1. Back to citation Guiley, Rosemary E. (2001). The Encyclopedia of Saints. Facts on File. p. 383. ISBN 0-8160-4133-4.
  2. Back to citation Porphyry. "The Life of Pythagoras (para. 27)". The Tertullian Project. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
  3. Back to citation Riedweg, Christoph (2005). Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching and Influence. Translated by Rendall, Steven. Cornell University Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-8014-4240-0.
  4. Back to citation Philostratus. "Life of Apollodorus (4.10)". Livius.org. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
  5. Back to citation Znamenski, Andrei A. (2004). Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology. New York: Routledge. pp. 248–249. ISBN 0-415-33248-6.
  6. Back to citation Olcott, Henry Steel (1895). Old Diary Leaves: The True Story of the Theosophical Society. G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 388. ISBN 0-524-07951-X.
  7. Back to citation Smith, Grace Martin; Ernst, Carl W. (2011). Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam. Gorgias Press, LLC. pp. xvii. ISBN 978-1-61143-819-2.
  8. Back to citation Samuel, Gabriella (2007). The Kabbalah Handbook: A Concise Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts in Jewish Mysticism. Jeremy P. Tarcher. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-58542-560-0.
  9. Back to citation Comfort, Alex (1984). Reality and Empathy: Physics, Mind, and Science in the 21st Century. SUNY Press. p. 42. ISBN 0-87395-762-8.
  10. Back to citation McEvilley, Thomas (2002). The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. Allworth Communications. pp. 102, 262. ISBN 1-58115-203-5.
  11. Back to citation Dass, Ram (1979) "Miracle of Love", Dutton edition, in English – 1st ed
  12. Back to citation occurrence 12.0 Back to citation occurrence 12.1 Yogananda, Paramahansa (1997). Autobiography of a Yogi, 1997 Anniversary Edition. Self-Realization Fellowship (Founded by Yogananda) ISBN 0-87612-086-9.
  13. Back to citation Peterson, Larry (12 October 2017). "Did you know the 1st apparition of the Blessed Mother was an act of bilocation?". Aleteia.
  14. Back to citation O'Connell, Christian E. (16 April 2015). "Rediscovering Saint Drogo of Sebourg". Crisis Magazine.
  15. Back to citation Da Rieti, Ubaldus (1895). Life of St. Anthony of Padua. Boston: Angel Guardian Press. pp. 47–48.
  16. Back to citation Guiley 2001, p. 117
  17. Back to citation Bartoli, D; Maffei, J. P. (1858). The Life of St. Francis Xavier. London: Thomas Jones. p. 336.
  18. Back to citation Guiley 2001, p. 228
  19. Back to citation Muller, Michael (1888). "The Catholic Dogma". TraditionalCatholic.net. Chapter V, Part II, §8. “This holy virgin... appeared, by way of bilocation, to the savages, not less than five hundred times, instructing them in all the truths of our holy religion.”
  20. Back to citation Harris, W. R. (1919). Essays in Occultism, Spiritism and Demonology. B. Herder Book Co. p. 64.
  21. Back to citation "A Great Mystic Of Our Time: The Story Of Natuzza Evolo And The Church". Religion Unplugged. 2022-07-15. Retrieved 2026-03-31.
  22. Back to citation Tannoja, Antonio (1855). The Life of St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. pp. 370–371.
  23. Back to citation Saint-Omer, Edward (1907). Life, Virtues, and Miracles of St. Gerard Majella. Boston: Mission Church. pp. 160–164.
  24. Back to citation Day, Malcolm (September 2002). "Blood brother: Padre Pio". Fortean Times. Archived from the original on 2009-02-03.
  25. Back to citation Siegfried, Francis P. (1907). "Bilocation". Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2.
  26. Back to citation Kelly, Brian (28 September 2010). "The Miracle of Bilocation (It Isn't a Problem) and Happy Feast Day Saint Michael". Catholicism.org.
  27. Back to citation Robert Dale Owen (1860). Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. New York: J.B. Lippincott & Company. pp. 348–358.
  28. Back to citation Booth, Martin (2000) "A Magick Life: Biography of Aleister Crowley", Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, ISBN 0-340-71805-6
  29. Back to citation Nickell, Joe. (1993). Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures. Prometheus Books. pp. 216–218. ISBN 1-57392-680-9
Retrieved from "https://catholicism.wiki/index.php?title=Bilocation&oldid=53539"