The 17th century Saint Joseph of Copertino was said to have performed astonishing feats of levitation on a regular basis, often attested by multiple witnesses. How can these aerial antics be accounted for? Joe Nickell, the chief investigator of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, thinks he has the answer, but BOB RICKARDquestions Nickell’s disingenuous strategy and reductive explanations.
The idea of human levitation is, by its very nature, subversive and surreal. The phenomenon – if we temporarily accept such a thing in order to examine it – involves events that imply that our understanding of physical ‘reality’ is incomplete. At the same time, the idea of levitation as a symbol of transcendence is both profound and ancient. Narrative accounts of it are reported from most cultures and ages.
Despite this persistence, there has been little scholarly discourse about reports of the human body rising into the air. 1 In most societies this feat is the prerogative of a shaman, or holy mystic; a token of divine favour; and imitated by magicians and occult adepts. In the context of anthropology, it becomes an element of a shamanic symbolic journey. In the context of modern scientific discourse, though, it is aggressively dismissed as an embarrassing error by the ill-informed and the credulous.
I recognise why sceptics and scientists regard this subject as contentious, apart from its inherent challenge to orthodox physics. It is, like so many seductive and interesting phenomena, exceedingly rare in both incidents and observations. It is also characteristically spontaneous; therefore, eyewitness reports of it deserve to be treated with appropriate care. In St Joseph of Copertino’s remarkable case, his levitations were repeated so frequently for nearly three decades that they provided many opportunities for good observation and documentation.
This critique is a response to two short articles written by Joe Nickell, a Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) 2who dismisses the voluminous and complex subject of human levitation – and the evidence for St Joseph’s elevations in particular 3– in a manner that falls below the standard that he (and the CSI) demand of others. It is not my intention, here, to make a case for the reality of
LEFT: There are no known contemporary portraits of Joseph. The many extant guesses are probably based upon his ‘death mask’. FACING PAGE:
This altarpiece by Placido Costanzi (1702-1759), was painted in 1750 fo
