10 Of The Strangest Religious Artifacts

10 Of The Strangest Religious Artifacts

Bones, skin, hearts, and severed heads: it sounds like the contents of a cabinet of curiosities, the sort of death-obsessed exploitation of bell-jarred oddities that one would find next to unicorn horns and taxidermied birds of paradise. But we’re not talking about a cabinet of wonders. We’re talking about religious relics and artifacts. The bones and bodies of saints have been preserved, celebrated, worshipped, and stolen. They have long represented a transcendental bridge between God and man, and atavism and science. In other words, the bones of Saint Peter have power, as does the head of Saint Catherine of Siena and the Shroud of Turin. While many holy objects have been discredited, thousands of people still line up to pay respects to the gilded tongue of St Anthony of Padua and other grizzly displays of religious iconography.

If relics and artifacts are the physical embodiment of God’s work on earth, then what does one make of the relics and artifacts that are mysterious and other-worldly, not the work of God, or man, but of something else? Conspiracy and religion go hand-in-hand, and there are several religious relics that seem as if they’ve been left behind by other civilizations, from strange orbs and spheres to the Mayan artifacts released in 2012 by the Mexican government that possibly depict aliens and alien aircraft. Here are 10 of the strangest religious artifacts.