There are later references in Celtic folklore, particularly in some of the witch trial accounts of acquiring the power to heal, which refer to the witch being healed of the same illness herself. In 1597 in Lothian, Jonet Steill was accused of witchcraft. She had been healed of the plague, and thus gained the power to heal, by being cured by a strange man. These healer figures are sometimes referred to as being from the land of the Fairies, particularly in the earlier Scottish cases, and of course are later classed as diabolical.¹⁷²

The shamans use to their communities distinguishes them quite clearly from psychotics or schizophrenics. The content of their visionary experience is also relevant to the human condition and often profound. For example, one shaman Rasmussen interviewed, Najagneq, received a message from the spirit called Sila, the upholder of the universe.

"The inhabitant or soul of the universe is never seen, its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman, a voice so fine and gentle that even a child cannot be afraid. And this is what it says, Sila ersinarsinivdluge, 'Be not afraid of the universe.' "¹⁷³

This statement does not seem to stem from the "fear marked puzzlement" Silverman refers to as the state of the schizophrenic,¹⁷⁴ rather, its opposite, a wisdom that corresponds to much of the perennial philosophy. It also contains a sense of peace that some mystics, such as Suso, St. Catherine of Sienna, and St. John of the Cross, describe attaining after the dark night of the soul.¹⁷⁵

A poem attributed to Suibhne Geilt reads:

Over my house rain never falls,
There comes no terror of the spear;
It is a garden without walls,
And everlasting light shines here.¹⁷⁶

This peace is very different from the schizophrenic or psychotic who remains trapped by his own unmastered psychological energies.

It is also very different from purely drug-induced states. It is like the story of a friend of mine, convinced during a drug trip that he had discovered the meaning of the cosmos. Amazingly, he found a pen, and wrote it down. In the morning, he discovered that it said, "The room smells funny."

Thus, again, we must use the applicability of visionary experience to the life of the visionary, and to his community, to judge whether it is disease at work, or an evolutionary process of another sort.

Joseph Campbell describes the difference between a psychotic or drug experience and mystical experience this way, "The plunges are all into the same deep inward sea; of that there can be no doubt. The symbolic figures encountered are in many instances identical...But there is an important difference. The difference — to put it sharply — is equivalent simply to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot." The mystic swims in the same waters the schizophrenic drowns in.¹⁷⁷ The mystic also has the power to return to the shore.

The Covenanters believed that the product of the conversion experience had to somehow be taken back into the world. The spiritually acquired knowledge had to be "affectionate and practical knowledge which stirs up to endeavours and earnestness."¹⁷⁸ It calls to mind the way in which the importance of Suibhne Geilt was held to be not from the tale of his famous madness, but because of "the stories and poems he left in Ireland after him."¹⁷⁹ that is, the product of his experience.

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Footnotes