Cú Chulainn initially does not know what is going on at all, and despite his great warriorship, is helpless against the fairy women's assault. Mis is utterly unable to deal with her father's death. Thus, all of them are in a state of powerlessness. This makes perfect sense, as spiritual growth is often precipitated when a person is faced with a situation they cannot deal with in their usual way. It is often said that there are no atheists on a sinking ship!

It also makes sense from a psychological perspective as some scholars have viewed the shamanic vocation as compensatory mechanism for a felt state of powerlessness or lack of social prestige. It may also be seen as a way of fulfilling socially unacceptable desires, including, for lack of a better term, "Dionysian" ones.⁶⁷ As we can see in the case of Mis, she behaves well outside the norm, especially for a woman of her time, both violently and sexually.

There is ongoing controversy amongst anthropologists about the source of the symptoms the shaman experiences in his crisis, as well as their significance. For example, the psychologist, Julian Silverman essentially views the shaman as a culturally supported schizophrenic.⁶⁸ In referring to the schizophrenic process of the shaman, he quotes Sullivan, saying, "What we discover in the self system of a person undergoing schizophrenic change or schizophrenic processes is . . . an attempt to cope with what is essentially a failure at being human - a failure at being anything one could respect as worth being."⁶⁹

In this assessment, the pre-shaman, or pre-schizophrenic, while in the throes of the onset of initiatory illness is in fact engaged in a desperate coping mechanism. They are attempting to replace a bad self-image with a divinised, archetypal one. They are trying to replace a desperate sense of unworthiness, felt as a consequence of their "failure at being human," with a sense of extreme worthiness, religious mission, divine election, etc.

In later Celtic society, the Covenanters might be seen as another manifestation of this sort of experience. The person at the initial stage of the conversion experience felt an intense and painful awareness of sinfulness and separation from God.⁷⁰ Visions of attack by demons and despair are a common theme. Phenomena of this sort were considered quite ordinary and proper in the beginning of the 18th Century among Covenanting families. So much so, that when a servant, mourning and weeping, awaked Mr. Wodrow, the minister, and his wife, they thought it was just a normal part of the trauma that attends spiritual rebirth. The poor woman was actually pregnant because of rape.⁷¹

Bessie Clarkson, another Covenanter, had three years of crisis during which she says she would have been burnt alive to assure her salvation.⁷²

This stage of crisis was followed by a shift, where the person in crisis was led to perceive themselves as one of the saved,⁷³ and have experiences of blissful union with God.

So, in one of my examples, Cú Chulainn might have replaced a sense of inadequacy borne of his poor marksmanship with the realisation that he is good enough to be desired by the wife of a god.

Some psychologists say it is due to this mental shift, from inadequacy to ego inflation, that the person concerned experiences an eruption of archaic and uncanny imagery.⁷⁴ In my three examples, a sense of powerlessness is followed by an experience of the supernatural. Of course, with Óengus, his initial vision occurs before the sense of powerlessness sets in.

Another feature common to this stage of shamanic initiatory illness is a call of some sort issued by a spirit mate. Both Óengus and Cú Chulainn have a precipitating encounter with other world women. Each of them fall into a state of illness during the time it takes them to achieve union with the spirit woman.

A close comparison to this situation is found in Burma, where the shaman is chosen by a spirit desiring them as mate. If they do not immediately marry the nat, as these spirits are called, the results can be severe misfortune, illness, madness, and even death.

Daw Pya, a female shaman, delayed her nat marriage, and took a human husband. At thirty-seven, her spirit mate insisted she divorce her husband. During this time, she lost all her property and became ill. Her symptoms included seizures, palpitations, vomiting, and, as with Óengus, the inability to digest solid foods. The inability to digest certain, or any, foods is a feature of initiatory illness in various cultures, among them the Zulu and the Korean.⁷⁵ Daw Pya married her nat, afraid of going mad and returned to full health, regaining her property.⁷⁶

If, in psychological terms, the divine marriage can be seen as an empowering act, in which psychological and spiritual polarities are resolved,⁷⁷ one can see how resistance to the archetypal figures that have arisen in the psyche could be met aggressively by the subconscious. Time is also required to assimilate these figures.

Cú Chulainn's beating reminds me of the way in which wrathful Tibetan deities can be experienced as bliss if there is no ego resistance to their will.⁷⁸ When Cú Chulainn returns later to the stone where the women first whipped him, Liban, the fairy woman, emphasizes that the women did not seek to do him injury, but, rather, sought his friendship.⁷⁹ He then experiences a blissful union with Fand.

Experiences of dismemberment, or physical assault, such as the beating Cú Chulainn received, are also common to shamanic initiation.⁸⁰ The wife of one Siberian shaman said that while her husband was ill he had dreams: "He was beaten up several times, sometimes he was taken to strange places."⁸¹

As far as the catatonic state, this is one which many mystic traditions describe. The body may become cold and rigid, frozen in the position it was in when this state first occurred. St. Teresa of Avila said that the hands become cold and stiff as a piece of wood, and the body remains frozen "and the soul ...seems to forget to animate the body and abandons it."⁸² [Italics mine.]

There are a number of comparisons to Mis' situation. Pripuzov describes how the potential Yakut shaman becomes frenzied, then suddenly loses consciousness, withdraws to the forest, and feeds on tree bark.⁸³

The closest comparison I have found to Mis, however, is that of the Kwakiutl hamatsa, or cannibal dancer. Both Mis and the hamatsa become crazed and voracious, living out in the woods. Both will consume human and animal flesh. Both are held to gain supernatural powers by this experience. All the forms of onset and ordeal described in these Celtic tales occur in anthropological accounts of shamanic initiatory illness.⁸⁴

The process can be intensified, and even precipitated by physical stress. In many of the saints' lives we see fasting, long hours of wakefulness and prayer, and more severe forms of mortification of the flesh being used consciously to draw the devotee closer to God.⁸⁵

Igjugarjuk, a Caribou Eskimo shaman interviewed by Knud Rasmussen in the 1920s fasted for a thirty-day period in freezing cold. Eventually, he received a female helping spirit and returned home. He still fasted periodically, and told Rasmussen that "The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can only be reached through suffering."⁸⁶

This relates in an interesting way to some recent research about how the brain may experience mystic states of consciousness. Arnold Mandell, in his article Towards a Psychobiology of Transcendence: God in the Brain⁸⁷ discusses how severe stress may induce transcendent experience. Mandell refers to the earlier research of Pavlov. When his dogs nearly drowned in a flood, he discovered that a curious thing occurred. Some of them seemed in a beatific state. Put under severe stress, (they were nearly up to their noses in water when they were rescued) the hippocampus in the brain had shut down all external stimuli and amplified the internal. This may have created the sort of grand unified experience described by mystics, sometimes after severe penance, fasting, and so forth.

All the dogs did not react in this way to the stress, but the ones that did were much more receptive to learning, i.e., they functioned better, and more tranquilly, in their day to day reality. It had, however, wiped out all their past conditioning, an important finding.

The three figures in the stories here are all subjected to severe stress, most notably Mis, in the trauma of her father's death and her retreat into the wilderness. In addition, Cú Chulainn with his beating, Óengus, with his fasting and both falling into catatonic states.

The purpose of shamanic initiation is to re-make the individual. After the ceremony to return the hamatsa to society he acts as if he had lost his memory, and has to be taught to eat, dress, and walk again.⁸⁸ Mis loses her memory as well, and a feature of her recovery is her gradual remembering of her past life, and being shown how to do things in a civilised way by Dubh Ruis.

A last point to note is that all of them are from noble families. As I pointed out earlier, shamanic gifts are often held to go along family lines, and these families are often considered to be of high status because of their spiritual powers. For example, amongst the Kwakiutl the hamatsa must be a chief or the son of a chief.⁸⁹ All chiefs are also considered shamans in some respects.⁹⁰

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Footnotes