• Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.

Behavior on the cross

Go to CruxDreams.com
Juan1234 said:
I've often contemplated how people actually behaved as they hung on a cross for hour after hour, even day after day. I think maybe many people have a foundational misconception from graceful crucifix art that people would strike a graceful pose and suffer in silence, but I doubt that's true. It seems to be popular, partly from historical speculation, partly from its erotic appeal to many, to think of people "dancing" on the cross. But even if this is true (dancing out of necessity to get oxygen), surely there was much more going on. Surely the PAIN was the primary thing, right? I'm fairly certain that at least for the first while, a crucified person would be screaming, sobbing, frantic, out of control trying to come to terms with the agony.

Of course it couldn't last that way forever. They wouldn't have the energy to scream for 2-3 days straight. But the pain would never lessen, would it? Does anybody have a medical perspective on whether endorphins would eventually bring them to some sort of equilibrium? Or would their mind just have to check out at some point? Would they be literally insane after an hour or so, as their body's way of trying to cope? Or would they remain lucid and fully experiencing the ever-deepening agony, gradually just losing the ability to express it? It's hard to imagine. Would love to hear thoughts from others.
Click to expand...
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the movement of the nailed limbs around the nail. If the executioner chooses to leave even a small part of the nail out, that means the victim will slide in and out of the wound, in addition to twisting around it. Swelling and bleeding would occur and there would be shocks of pain with every movement, including shocks of pain with holding still, because the nerves would be exposed to the rigid metal. The cross is so terrifying a torture because you cannot in any way improve the ordeal.

Holding still creates insufferable pain, movement does too. And asphyxiation is a constant problem, meaning you can't hold still even if this is preferred (it's not - there's not any preference, it's all awful). This is why I think square nails would be most torturous - the extra edges provide something to wrestle with inside the wound, while a round nail would slide around more easily. With each tug to pull themselves up, the victim slips and slides with the lubrication of their own blood along the nail. In this way, it would feel to the victim very unstable and like they are constant falling.

I think as time passes, the desperation and exhaustion play a dreadful game of tug-of-war against each other, and the victim loses all capacity to make decisions. The body fights and dances to stay alive of its own volition, as much as the victim would long to just get it over with and die. This is the same as someone struggling against being held underwater or strangled. They can't help but struggle to breathe, and I think the wriggling and jerky movements would be quite horrifying to watch, much less experience. The assumption that you could hold still is based in the misunderstanding that breathing would be at all easy.

There is no coming to terms with the agony. There is no relief, no release, and definitely no decision to die (even as a Christian child, I despised that part of the Jesus story - like he could just check out early because he gave up). Just a struggle that gets more frantic until death comes, and unlike in the movies, death is a slow process. It's not like someone is alive one moment and dead the next, it's a whole communication between the brain and heart and other body parts.

As for screaming, I don't think it's about having the energy to do so, it's about having the energy to NOT do so. Screaming, breathing hard, whimpering, crying - these would take place on and off, with long periods of not being able to breathe.

I often think about how hard it is to use the weight machines at the gym, as I am not a strong person. My legs, arms, chest, and shoulders burn within a few repetitions of pulling my arms in or my legs up. That burning and cramping that happens when exercising is like tasting a mere teaspoon of a hot drink, where being crucified for a few minutes with ropes would be like being doused in that hot drink over and over, and the addition of that intense workout used against nails through wounds is impossible to imagine.

No, the pain would never lessen. It would increase and increase and increase, leaving the mind reeling at the impossibility of defying all expectation from the moment the nails are pounded in and the cross is raised or assembled. It would overwhelm the psyche in a way that, I think, the person would lose their sense of being in a human body. The pain would overwhelm everything, and the pain of being asphyxiated would be worse than the tortures of the whip, nails, and workout.

I remember seeing a documentary once that took a medical perspective but it looks like it's not online anymore. It described how the muscles would tear, as they do with any exercise and strain, and the victim would continue to use these torn muscles to struggle to breathe.

No equilibrium is reached from endorphins. That is fantasy. It is just a huge black hole of torture until death. The mind would definitely fade in and out, but unfortunately for the victim, no amount of dissociation can shut out the experience.

All of that said, I think gradually increasing insanity would be inevitable. The victim would be reduced to a blubbering, muttering mess. Trying to hold a conversation after the first day would be like trying to talk to someone talking in their sleep during a very bad nightmare.
 
JudithJesus said:
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the movement of the nailed limbs around the nail. If the executioner chooses to leave even a small part of the nail out, that means the victim will slide in and out of the wound, in addition to twisting around it. Swelling and bleeding would occur and there would be shocks of pain with every movement, including shocks of pain with holding still, because the nerves would be exposed to the rigid metal. The cross is so terrifying a torture because you cannot in any way improve the ordeal.

Holding still creates insufferable pain, movement does too. And asphyxiation is a constant problem, meaning you can't hold still even if this is preferred (it's not - there's not any preference, it's all awful). This is why I think square nails would be most torturous - the extra edges provide something to wrestle with inside the wound, while a round nail would slide around more easily. With each tug to pull themselves up, the victim slips and slides with the lubrication of their own blood along the nail. In this way, it would feel to the victim very unstable and like they are constant falling.

I think as time passes, the desperation and exhaustion play a dreadful game of tug-of-war against each other, and the victim loses all capacity to make decisions. The body fights and dances to stay alive of its own volition, as much as the victim would long to just get it over with and die. This is the same as someone struggling against being held underwater or strangled. They can't help but struggle to breathe, and I think the wriggling and jerky movements would be quite horrifying to watch, much less experience. The assumption that you could hold still is based in the misunderstanding that breathing would be at all easy.

There is no coming to terms with the agony. There is no relief, no release, and definitely no decision to die (even as a Christian child, I despised that part of the Jesus story - like he could just check out early because he gave up). Just a struggle that gets more frantic until death comes, and unlike in the movies, death is a slow process. It's not like someone is alive one moment and dead the next, it's a whole communication between the brain and heart and other body parts.

As for screaming, I don't think it's about having the energy to do so, it's about having the energy to NOT do so. Screaming, breathing hard, whimpering, crying - these would take place on and off, with long periods of not being able to breathe.

I often think about how hard it is to use the weight machines at the gym, as I am not a strong person. My legs, arms, chest, and shoulders burn within a few repetitions of pulling my arms in or my legs up. That burning and cramping that happens when exercising is like tasting a mere teaspoon of a hot drink, where being crucified for a few minutes with ropes would be like being doused in that hot drink over and over, and the addition of that intense workout used against nails through wounds is impossible to imagine.

No, the pain would never lessen. It would increase and increase and increase, leaving the mind reeling at the impossibility of defying all expectation from the moment the nails are pounded in and the cross is raised or assembled. It would overwhelm the psyche in a way that, I think, the person would lose their sense of being in a human body. The pain would overwhelm everything, and the pain of being asphyxiated would be worse than the tortures of the whip, nails, and workout.

I remember seeing a documentary once that took a medical perspective but it looks like it's not online anymore. It described how the muscles would tear, as they do with any exercise and strain, and the victim would continue to use these torn muscles to struggle to breathe.

No equilibrium is reached from endorphins. That is fantasy. It is just a huge black hole of torture until death. The mind would definitely fade in and out, but unfortunately for the victim, no amount of dissociation can shut out the experience.

All of that said, I think gradually increasing insanity would be inevitable. The victim would be reduced to a blubbering, muttering mess. Trying to hold a conversation after the first day would be like trying to talk to someone talking in their sleep during a very bad nightmare.
Click to expand...
good description of the procedure!
 
JudithJesus said:
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the movement of the nailed limbs around the nail. If the executioner chooses to leave even a small part of the nail out, that means the victim will slide in and out of the wound, in addition to twisting around it. Swelling and bleeding would occur and there would be shocks of pain with every movement, including shocks of pain with holding still, because the nerves would be exposed to the rigid metal. The cross is so terrifying a torture because you cannot in any way improve the ordeal.

Holding still creates insufferable pain, movement does too. And asphyxiation is a constant problem, meaning you can't hold still even if this is preferred (it's not - there's not any preference, it's all awful). This is why I think square nails would be most torturous - the extra edges provide something to wrestle with inside the wound, while a round nail would slide around more easily. With each tug to pull themselves up, the victim slips and slides with the lubrication of their own blood along the nail. In this way, it would feel to the victim very unstable and like they are constant falling.

I think as time passes, the desperation and exhaustion play a dreadful game of tug-of-war against each other, and the victim loses all capacity to make decisions. The body fights and dances to stay alive of its own volition, as much as the victim would long to just get it over with and die. This is the same as someone struggling against being held underwater or strangled. They can't help but struggle to breathe, and I think the wriggling and jerky movements would be quite horrifying to watch, much less experience. The assumption that you could hold still is based in the misunderstanding that breathing would be at all easy.

There is no coming to terms with the agony. There is no relief, no release, and definitely no decision to die (even as a Christian child, I despised that part of the Jesus story - like he could just check out early because he gave up). Just a struggle that gets more frantic until death comes, and unlike in the movies, death is a slow process. It's not like someone is alive one moment and dead the next, it's a whole communication between the brain and heart and other body parts.

As for screaming, I don't think it's about having the energy to do so, it's about having the energy to NOT do so. Screaming, breathing hard, whimpering, crying - these would take place on and off, with long periods of not being able to breathe.

I often think about how hard it is to use the weight machines at the gym, as I am not a strong person. My legs, arms, chest, and shoulders burn within a few repetitions of pulling my arms in or my legs up. That burning and cramping that happens when exercising is like tasting a mere teaspoon of a hot drink, where being crucified for a few minutes with ropes would be like being doused in that hot drink over and over, and the addition of that intense workout used against nails through wounds is impossible to imagine.

No, the pain would never lessen. It would increase and increase and increase, leaving the mind reeling at the impossibility of defying all expectation from the moment the nails are pounded in and the cross is raised or assembled. It would overwhelm the psyche in a way that, I think, the person would lose their sense of being in a human body. The pain would overwhelm everything, and the pain of being asphyxiated would be worse than the tortures of the whip, nails, and workout.

I remember seeing a documentary once that took a medical perspective but it looks like it's not online anymore. It described how the muscles would tear, as they do with any exercise and strain, and the victim would continue to use these torn muscles to struggle to breathe.

No equilibrium is reached from endorphins. That is fantasy. It is just a huge black hole of torture until death. The mind would definitely fade in and out, but unfortunately for the victim, no amount of dissociation can shut out the experience.

All of that said, I think gradually increasing insanity would be inevitable. The victim would be reduced to a blubbering, muttering mess. Trying to hold a conversation after the first day would be like trying to talk to someone talking in their sleep during a very bad nightmare.
Click to expand...
Cool contemplation Judith,

unfortunately we can't go back in time to watch a crucifixion.

Maybe it was important for the Romans that the victims experienced their death as much aware as possible? Would they have offered you myrrh mixed with wine, to make sure that you don't suffer too much? Was there little attachments on the cross, like maybe a Sedile or peg for your ass, to sit on? It would help you immensely. Additionally a footrest, that would make it even more easier for you.

Like that, you'd be able to control the pain with your decisions (stand up, sit, lean forward, to the side, move or bang your head to relax the neck, and so on....). You'd become the closest witness of your execution, the more, the better. Forced to watch your body slowly fading away. You see how your boobs rise and fall when you are breathing. Looking further down, there is the nail, fixing your feet.

The spectators are laughing at you, because you are naked. Why did they crucify you naked? Are you ashamed, humiliated, or is it entertaining for the crowd?
Isn't it a thrilling thought to insult the spectators right now, or scream at the ones crucified alongside with you?.......:D

When you have the chance to support your body, then your death on the cross will be entertaining for the crowd and will stay super intense for you.
But like I said, who knows......
 
cire said:
Cool contemplation Judith,

unfortunately we can't go back in time to watch a crucifixion.

Maybe it was important for the Romans that the victims experienced their death as much aware as possible? Would they have offered you myrrh mixed with wine, to make sure that you don't suffer too much? Was there little attachments on the cross, like maybe a Sedile or peg for your ass, to sit on? It would help you immensely. Additionally a footrest, that would make it even more easier for you.

Like that, you'd be able to control the pain with your decisions (stand up, sit, lean forward, to the side, move or bang your head to relax the neck, and so on....). You'd become the closest witness of your execution, the more, the better. Forced to watch your body slowly fading away. You see how your boobs rise and fall when you are breathing. Looking further down, there is the nail, fixing your feet.

The spectators are laughing at you, because you are naked. Why did they crucify you naked? Are you ashamed, humiliated, or is it entertaining for the crowd?
Isn't it a thrilling thought to insult the spectators right now, or scream at the ones crucified alongside with you?.......:D

When you have the chance to support your body, then your death on the cross will be entertaining for the crowd and will stay super intense for you.
But like I said, who knows......
Click to expand...
I see two possibilities : either the condemned was so engulfed by extreme pain, that nothing mattered anymore : nudity, humiliation, crowd, other condemned,... For the spectators, the warning was in the extreme pain the condemned suffered. It was just a way of torture to death.

The other way was indeed rather 'experiencing' the execution. This brings in an element of mental torture, but therefore, the condemned must still be aware of nudity, humiliation, the crowd, the prospect of death, and everything around. Such needed measures to contain the extreme pain. Were they applied? We don't know. Anyway, it is this last approach that we prefer in our fantasies here on the forums.
 
Loxuru said:
I see two possibilities : either the condemned was so engulfed by extreme pain, that nothing mattered anymore : nudity, humiliation, crowd, other condemned,... For the spectators, the warning was in the extreme pain the condemned suffered. It was just a way of torture to death.

The other way was indeed rather 'experiencing' the execution. This brings in an element of mental torture, but therefore, the condemned must still be aware of nudity, humiliation, the crowd, the prospect of death, and everything around. Such needed measures to contain the extreme pain. Were they applied? We don't know. Anyway, it is this last approach that we prefer in our fantasies here on the forums.
Click to expand...
The Romans loved a spectacle. I think the latter would have suited this better. The cross was similar to the stocks where the purpose was to humiliate the victim by exhibiting them to public ridicule & abuse, the only difference being that the cross was also an instrument of extreme torture (to be publicly witnessed) & ending in eventual death. So there must have been some motive to allow the victims to last as long on the cross as possible (best deterrent to warn the public), so such additions as a very uncomfortable sedile to perch the weight on or the more visually shaming cornu to take the weight internally would make sense to have been used. Death would eventually come over time, or by the whim of the executioners by various means. So as I've said here before, the cross was not the executing instrument, it was just the means for exhibiting the criminal to public abuse.

So those crucified would have been very aware of their situation, possibly exchanging banter with the onlookers. Jesus was certainly aware of his ordeal, engaging with the two other criminals next to him & his mother watching below, he also cried out as to why he was forsaken to endure such agony & humiliation. Of course if we are to believe the Bible.
 
The shaming is naturally a thing of the public opinion, so the shaming via nudity might not work as good in Roman times as today, whilst the shaming via sedile or cornu was more than today (forced anual entries with an inaminate object (colonoscopy) may not be shameful). The Romans and the Greek considered and performed homosexual acts by just rubbing the penis between the legs (or ass cheeks?), so sitting on a sedile might be as shameful as the cornu, as long as the sedile would look "penis like", so one could imagine a crucifixion with a sedile formed in the form of an oversized penis, similar to
miley.jpg
 
PhilX said:
The Romans loved a spectacle. I think the latter would have suited this better. The cross was similar to the stocks where the purpose was to humiliate the victim by exhibiting them to public ridicule & abuse, the only difference being that the cross was also an instrument of extreme torture (to be publicly witnessed) & ending in eventual death. So there must have been some motive to allow the victims to last as long on the cross as possible (best deterrent to warn the public), so such additions as a very uncomfortable sedile to perch the weight on or the more visually shaming cornu to take the weight internally would make sense to have been used. Death would eventually come over time, or by the whim of the executioners by various means. So as I've said here before, the cross was not the executing instrument, it was just the means for exhibiting the criminal to public abuse.

So those crucified would have been very aware of their situation, possibly exchanging banter with the onlookers. Jesus was certainly aware of his ordeal, engaging with the two other criminals next to him & his mother watching below, he also cried out as to why he was forsaken to endure such agony & humiliation. Of course if we are to believe the Bible.
Click to expand...
I like that framing of it. The cross is not the instrument of my death, but rather the instrument of the humiliation that I eventually die on.
 
PhilX said:
The Romans loved a spectacle. I think the latter would have suited this better. The cross was similar to the stocks where the purpose was to humiliate the victim by exhibiting them to public ridicule & abuse, the only difference being that the cross was also an instrument of extreme torture (to be publicly witnessed) & ending in eventual death. So there must have been some motive to allow the victims to last as long on the cross as possible (best deterrent to warn the public), so such additions as a very uncomfortable sedile to perch the weight on or the more visually shaming cornu to take the weight internally would make sense to have been used. Death would eventually come over time, or by the whim of the executioners by various means. So as I've said here before, the cross was not the executing instrument, it was just the means for exhibiting the criminal to public abuse.

So those crucified would have been very aware of their situation, possibly exchanging banter with the onlookers. Jesus was certainly aware of his ordeal, engaging with the two other criminals next to him & his mother watching below, he also cried out as to why he was forsaken to endure such agony & humiliation. Of course if we are to believe the Bible.
Click to expand...
Yeah it's an interesting topic. Over many centuries I suppose that maybe millions of people were crucified. There were probably many different techniques used, depending on this wishes & skills of the execution team. When there were just 1 to 3 victims to be executed in front of a crowd then maybe they put some thought into how to get a good spectacle. When there were hundreds (or thousands) of people to be executed they probably picked whatever techniques were simplest and quickest, without much regard to getting a good spectacle.
 
JustJJ said:
One thing I've been thinking about lately is the movement of the nailed limbs around the nail. If the executioner chooses to leave even a small part of the nail out, that means the victim will slide in and out of the wound, in addition to twisting around it. Swelling and bleeding would occur and there would be shocks of pain with every movement, including shocks of pain with holding still, because the nerves would be exposed to the rigid metal. The cross is so terrifying a torture because you cannot in any way improve the ordeal.

Holding still creates insufferable pain, movement does too. And asphyxiation is a constant problem, meaning you can't hold still even if this is preferred (it's not - there's not any preference, it's all awful). This is why I think square nails would be most torturous - the extra edges provide something to wrestle with inside the wound, while a round nail would slide around more easily. With each tug to pull themselves up, the victim slips and slides with the lubrication of their own blood along the nail. In this way, it would feel to the victim very unstable and like they are constant falling.

I think as time passes, the desperation and exhaustion play a dreadful game of tug-of-war against each other, and the victim loses all capacity to make decisions. The body fights and dances to stay alive of its own volition, as much as the victim would long to just get it over with and die. This is the same as someone struggling against being held underwater or strangled. They can't help but struggle to breathe, and I think the wriggling and jerky movements would be quite horrifying to watch, much less experience. The assumption that you could hold still is based in the misunderstanding that breathing would be at all easy.

There is no coming to terms with the agony. There is no relief, no release, and definitely no decision to die (even as a Christian child, I despised that part of the Jesus story - like he could just check out early because he gave up). Just a struggle that gets more frantic until death comes, and unlike in the movies, death is a slow process. It's not like someone is alive one moment and dead the next, it's a whole communication between the brain and heart and other body parts.

As for screaming, I don't think it's about having the energy to do so, it's about having the energy to NOT do so. Screaming, breathing hard, whimpering, crying - these would take place on and off, with long periods of not being able to breathe.

I often think about how hard it is to use the weight machines at the gym, as I am not a strong person. My legs, arms, chest, and shoulders burn within a few repetitions of pulling my arms in or my legs up. That burning and cramping that happens when exercising is like tasting a mere teaspoon of a hot drink, where being crucified for a few minutes with ropes would be like being doused in that hot drink over and over, and the addition of that intense workout used against nails through wounds is impossible to imagine.

No, the pain would never lessen. It would increase and increase and increase, leaving the mind reeling at the impossibility of defying all expectation from the moment the nails are pounded in and the cross is raised or assembled. It would overwhelm the psyche in a way that, I think, the person would lose their sense of being in a human body. The pain would overwhelm everything, and the pain of being asphyxiated would be worse than the tortures of the whip, nails, and workout.

I remember seeing a documentary once that took a medical perspective but it looks like it's not online anymore. It described how the muscles would tear, as they do with any exercise and strain, and the victim would continue to use these torn muscles to struggle to breathe.

No equilibrium is reached from endorphins. That is fantasy. It is just a huge black hole of torture until death. The mind would definitely fade in and out, but unfortunately for the victim, no amount of dissociation can shut out the experience.

All of that said, I think gradually increasing insanity would be inevitable. The victim would be reduced to a blubbering, muttering mess. Trying to hold a conversation after the first day would be like trying to talk to someone talking in their sleep during a very bad nightmare.
Click to expand...
I completely agree with this point of view. All these stories about women achieving orgasm during crucifixion are a figment of the author’s imagination.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom