The notion of mysticism has confounded and bewildered humanity for the entirety of religion’s existence. The great German historian, Ernst Troeltsch, defines mysticism as “simply the insistence upon direct inward and present religious experience.”(Thayer 234). The problem is that religious experiences are practically impossible to verify through empirical means. To this effect, those people that are seen as mystics or as having mystical abilities are often portrayed as delirious. In Graham Swift’s Waterland, Tom Crick uses mysticism in his stories to explain madness or irrational behaviour. All other rationalizations are abandoned in favour of an unfathomable explanation because Tom does not want to face the truth that accompanies the facts. His experiences with women have been hurtful and in order to shield himself from the pain he tells stories that remove the role of responsibility from these women’s actions by blaming them on irrepressible heavenly intervention. His response is evident in the cases of Sarah Atkinson’s injury, Martha Crick’s portrayal as a “witch” and Mary Crick’s supposed heavenly revelation.
Sarah Atkinson is an ancestor of Tom Crick, and wife of Thomas Atkinson. Thomas suspects that she has had an affair with another man and strikes Sarah in the head, knocking her to the ground and, in the process, her head hits a table. This causes her to “lose” her mind, “For having been struck, Sarah not only fell but in falling knocked her head against the corner of a walnut writing-table with such violence that though, after several hours, she recovered consciousness, she never again recovered her wits.” (Swift 77). After suffering this traumatic experience Sarah is the subject of mystical stories that begin ...
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...iences to deal with. In order to deal with these painful thoughts he turns the past into stories and often replaces rationality in favour of mysticism. This helped him to remove the element of reality from his stories and deal with the pain he had in the here and now.
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In her autobiography The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe tells the story of her spiritual journey in Medieval England over a twenty five year period. It recounts her quest to establish spiritual authority as a result in personal visions and conversations with Jesus and God that she has. It begins around 1393, with Margery’s self-acknowledged onset of psychosis that she calls as her spiritual crisis. In the work The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery shows symptoms of postpartum psychosis that causes her to directly communicate with numerous aspects of the divine.
He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after week- until now there was not an organ of his body that did its work without pain, until the sound of ocean breaks echoes in his head day and night… and from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a deliverance- he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden: he would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his
Boyer, B., Boyer, R., & Basehart, H. 1973. Hallucinogens and Shamanism M. Hamer, Ed.. England: Oxford University Press.
The relationship of science and spirituality can be a debate that many people have conceptualized. Jacalyn Duffin’s uses her historian and physician background to lead her to an important exploration of medical saints who spark miracles in the postmodern world that contribute to her three main observations. Duffin studies why physicians ignore miracles and prayer, why are miracles mostly about illness, and Comas and Damian in Toronto. Her personal scholarly experiences along with her first-hand observation with miraculous cure influence her work and accomplishments with “Medical Saints: Cosmas and Damian in a Postmodern World”. The book leaves the reader with a idea and understanding of the concepts Duffin studies to further develop the authority so more contributions can be made for this field. This book will give the reader an idea of these medical saints and how it is significant in the postmodern world today.
Let us not confuse or conflate the spiritual with the physical: they are inseparable, but they are not interchangeable. Do not allow wishful thinking to lead to delusions. To grasp the idea of prosperity and self-worth
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. “Wicca.” The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft & Wicca. 3rd ed. 2012. Print.
Despite its prevalence, suffering is always seen an intrusion, a personal attack on its victims. However, without its presence, there would never be anyway to differentiate between happiness and sadness, nor good and evil. It is encoded into the daily lives people lead, and cannot be avoided, much like the prophecies described in Antigone. Upon finding out that he’d murdered his father and married his mother,
Machen, through the experiment of Dr. Raymond, invokes to reveal the reality behind the veil in his supernatural tale “The Great God Pan”. In this attempt of removing the veil, Dr. Raymond’s practice of “transcendental medicine” provides the means to reach out the reality behind the veil: Dr. Raymond surgically changes the structure of a woman’s brain...
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Throughout history, it seems that medicine and spirituality have been linked in many circumstances. In a study looking at the use of complementary and alternative therapies in cardiac patients, spiritual healing was one of many practices patient sought to utilize. In another study, 29% of participants chose to use prayer or premeditation as a way to cope with their chronic illness. In both studies, prayer or meditation was more likely to be used by individuals who had a large social network, as well as support from another person in the same health situation. Based on these studies, it seems that many individuals (not just cardiovascular patients) turn to their spirituality in times of health distress.
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