Incorruptibility (also known as an incorruptible corpse) is a term used to refer to a phenomena, most-noted among Catholic sSaints, who have died and many years later, after they were exhumed, their bodies were found to be perfectly preserved. Under the topic of our current theme, Wikipedia offers this definition of iincorruptibility:
“Incorruptibility is a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief that divine intervention allows some human bodies (specifically saints and beati) to avoid the normal process of decomposition after death as a sign of their holiness. Bodies that undergo little or no decomposition, or delayed decomposition, are sometimes referred to as incorrupt or incorruptible.
Incorruptibility is thought to occur even in the presence of factors which normally hasten decomposition, as in the cases of saints Catherine of Genoa, Julie Billiart and Francis Xavier.”
In Roman Catholicism, if a body is judged as incorruptible after death, this is generally seen as a sign that the individual is a saint. One example of this is Saint Catherine Laboure, who died on 31st December 1876. When her body was exhumed 56 years later it was unblemished. Her eyes were still blue as they were in life. St. Catherine Labouré’s remains are in the chapel Rue du Bac 140, in Paris. There are over 250 bodies incorrupt bodies of Catholic saints.
While the incorruptible corpses of centuries-old saints continue to baffle the academic world, this supernatural process can be found in other areas of life besides Catholicism. Below is a picture of a 15-year old girl, who is known as “La Doncella,” which means “The Maiden.” She lived nearly 500 years ago and her body was discovered in near-perfect condition in 1999:
Scientists believe that the condition of the environment , the cool temperatures and dry, low-oxygen air of the Andes preserved La Doncella’s body. One thing that i found interesting about incorrupt corpse is that many of them may begin to deteriorate due to the quality of air they are exposed to. In an online article published by The Order of the Good Death, we read:
“In the past, deterioration of incorrupt corpses could be attributed to exposing the body to bad air. According to a team of modern paleopathologists from the University of Pisa, that’s actually not too far from the truth. With the Vatican’s support, the team studied microenviornments in the former tombs of incorrupt corpses. They discovered that small differences in temperature, moisture, and construction techniques lead to some tombs producing naturally preserved bodies while others in the same church didn’t. Now you can debate God’s role in choosing which bodies went into which tombs before these differences were known, but I’m going to stick with the corpses. Once the incorrupt bodies were removed from these climates or if the climates changed, they deteriorated. This may have been what happened to St. Francesca Romana who was deemed incorrupt four months after her death in 1440 only to be found fully skeletonized in 1698 (though you still hear people refer to her as incorrupt).”
Although many scientists contribute certain factors in the environment, in order to explain this phenomena, there are certain account of incorruptible corpses that cannot be explained. Published in 1892, by author Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome describes the discovery of a 1,500 year-old corpse that was in perfect condition:
‘In the course of excavations which were made on the Appian Way, to find stones and marbles, three marble tombs have been discovered during these last days, sunk twelve feet below the ground. One was of Terentia Tulliola, daughter of Cicero; the other had no epitaph. One of them contained a young girl, intact in all her members, covered from head to foot with a coating of aromatic paste, one inch thick. On the removal of this coating, which we believe to be composed of myrrh, frankincense, aloe, and other priceless drugs, a face appeared, so lovely, so pleasing, so attractive, that, although the girl had certainly been dead fifteen hundred years, she appeared to have been laid to rest that very day.”
Out of all the theories tha have been debated and discussed among scholars, an incorruptible corpse may indicate the degree and level of chi energy once cultivated in a person’s life. Spirit of Change Magazine, in an article about the life Paramhansa Yogananda, we read the following concerning his life:
“On March 7, 1952, Yogananda went into “Mahasamadhi,” an advanced yogi’s conscious transition for the body into the omniscient spirit. After his passing, Yogananda demonstrated what regular Yogoda practice can do. Workers at Forest Lawn Mortuary of Glendale, CA wrote a testimonial letter about the incorruptibility of Yogananda’s body after his death, citing,”
It is due to the cultivation of lifeforce energy that ancient legends of vampires were feared. Not only were they known to prey on humankind for blood, but energy. And it is for this reason that we find the Romans declared incorrupt bodies as saints while the Eastern Orthodox church declared them to be vampires. In an online article appearing on the MeditationExpert.Com website, entitled, A Stage of Gong-fu: Incorruptibility After Death, states:
“By the way, this happened for many Christian saints (St Francis), and Hindu saints (Yogananda) and Buddhist masters and saints of other traditions as well. It only occurs when the individual has cleaned out their chi channels from extensive meditation work and transformed the five elements of their body, that’s all. This is explained in Measuring Meditation and in my Stages course. It’s simply a non-denominational result that falls out of the successful transformation of the five elements of the physical body. Unfortunately, people don’t even have a tiny bit of cultivation understanding and make it into something beyond what it really represents. It’s nothing miraculous or mysterious. What I’ve described is a non-denominational result of cultivation science. It’s just that science, which doesn’t even recognize samadhi, has not gotten this far yet.”
Perhaps the Temple of the Vampire got it right afterall. It’s been well-publicized that the Vampire Temple not only encourages lifeforce cultivation, but cryonics also.
