divine madness; medieval mystics; a voice from somewhere else

— transmission begins —

i should preface this first with two things:

one, that the most widely-accepted definitions of divine madness generally associate it with frantic religiosity, irrationality, religious ecstasy/ecstatic mysticism, and - in some cases - it is described as something that “would be” seen as symptomatic of mental illness today. it is present in many forms throughout the world, in philosophical and theological texts, and is viewed wildly differently throughout time and across the globe. for the purposes of this post, i am largely discussing christian mysticism and christian-culture views (not theological; rather that of a modern culturally-christian society) on divine madness.

second, the lens through which i approach this subject is firmly that of a childhood schizophrenic & resolutely anti-psychiatry psych abuse survivor. i say this because both things color my understanding and analysis of divine madness both past and present, especially the ways in which certain madnesses are normalized and others are not. more on this later - now, the fun stuff!

a non-exhaustive list of my favorite medieval christian mystics

first off, my beloved saint catherine of siena. well-known as a healer of the church, she lived in the mid to late 14th century and had a dream at age 21 in which she married jesus, and received a(n invisible) wedding ring of his foreskin. later, she received the (also invisible) stigmata, and towards the end of her life her habit of extreme fasting and asceticism grew more and more severe, eventually leading to her death. we have nearly four hundred extant letters in which she details her ecstatic experiences, as well as a book called ‘the dialogues.’ she was wildly politically involved during her life and at several points influenced the pope!

next is hildegard of bingen, who lived during the eleventh century, and was a polymath and prolific composer alongside being a mystic visionary. most famously, she is known for lingua ignota, a constructed language whose name directly translates from latin as “unknown language.” very little is left from this language - just a glossary with 1011 words, and a few brief passages - and it is unknown what its purpose was, or who else knew it besides hildegard. she received visions throughout her life and was a prolific author, writing not just theology and music but also a number of scientific and medical texts.

julian of norwich and margery kempe are two other medieval mystics that are as well-known as the others listed here, but for the sake of brevity i will resist detailing their experiences individually and instead (somewhat ungracefully) link them together by experiences of transient illness. julian fell ill (it is not clear with what) and nearly died; while sick she experienced a series of intense visions before recovering a few days later and going on to detail all that she had seen. kempe experienced what was likely postpartum psychosis and had a series of troubling visions that sent her into a life of near-hysterical religiosity. i associate these two because they both experienced episodes of what would likely be considered acute hallucinations today, and the possible medicalization of their experiences - in my opinion - takes a somewhat different shape than catherine or hildegard, whose “conditions” were lifelong and began in childhood.

compared to the other five mystics in this post, relatively little is actually known about marguerite porete. she wrote a book titled the mirror of simple souls, which examines divine love and the nature of the soul. of all the “famous” medieval mystical women, she is the only one that is not explicitly described as having visions or other experiences of divine madness. however, i include her alongside them because the mirror of simple souls reads like something written by a woman that had brain sex with god, and i love her for that. also, she was burned at the stake as a heretic during the inquisition - which brings me to one last addition to this list.

my final mystic of note - though here that title is used loosely, as she neither preached nor wrote her beliefs - is my dearly-beloved joan of arc. again for brevity i will not detail her visions here; it is well known that she heard voices and saw visions that drove her to helm a wildly-successful military campaign, and was later burned as a heretic. joan of arc is perhaps the most well-known and widely-speculated-upon mystic figure, and the widespread wondering at the cause of her visions segues well into one of my chief personal interests…

divine madness and the medicalization of unknowable experiences

as a note before i begin - i am jewish but cannot claim to be an expert in jewish mysticism beyond my own ecstatic experiences (i will freely admit i have not studied hard and would be remiss to consider myself even a learned mystic), and i cannot pretend to possess more than a surface-level grasp of islam and even less of other religions. christianity offers the most widely-available information and thus much of what i know about how it is handled and viewed is through the lens of a christian society; this is not, in my opinion, to the detriment of my analysis considering i live in a christian-dominated society whose culture is downright puritanical to the root. (yes i was raised in new england thank you for asking)

there is one part of my initial definition of divine madness that i want to highlight in this section: “something that would be seen as symptomatic of mental illness today.” i think there is an important caveat here that this is not universally true. as with anything, it is altered and shaped by individual experiences - religion, race, class, gender, ability, ‘coherence’ among many other factors will impact whether one is assumed to be mentally ill or experiencing a genuine religious event. additionally, the norms of the context in which ecstatic events occur are important.

charismatic christianity - of which several strands are present in varying widespread-ness throughout the united states - heavily involves experiences that might be considered madness to an outside observer (such as prophecy and speaking in tongues) but because it is acceptable and “the norm” within charismatic churches, it is not viewed as mental illness in any capacity. this acceptance, however, is not universal: speaking in tongues in church is celebrated, but doing it on the street would likely be considered symptomatic.

i am fascinated in particular by this grey area because my own experiences fall neatly within it. i was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 8 and had violent daily hallucinations, including a persistent bone-deep terror that lead to years of sleepless nights. i was kept in intensive psychiatric treatment for much of my childhood, including several years in the troubled teen industry, but was able to eventually leave and have remained free from the clutches of psychiatry - including medication - ever since. i was lucky in that the psychiatrist that diagnosed me did so “unofficially,” explaining to my parents that an on-paper diagnosis would follow me and significantly alter the course of my life - not because of social stigma, or because it would make me less crazy, but because the state could get its hands on me and never let me go. my freedom came at the direct cost of not understanding what was wrong with me (i was not told until i was 21 that this diagnosis had been whispered about for years), and i owe it all to my ability to mask what i was experiencing internally. i never spoke a word of my hallucinations or regular delusions, and thus my psychosis, despite affecting me constantly, flew under the radar. i was treated for anger issues and c-ptsd, and allowed to go home completely unmedicated - the first in my program to do so. this is not a point of pride; hiding so much of my internal experience was brutal, and though i am thankful for the privilege it delivered me, i long daily for a world in which i could exist without the suffocating pressure of appearing normal, conferred upon me by the threat of institutionalization.

all of this is a very long-winded way of saying: you can be crazy, so long as you are crazy in the right ways, or can un-crazy yourself long enough to be marked as “competent” by an arm of the state that, like no other, strips people who are crazy-in-the-wrong-way of their humanity entirely. the line between un-crazy and too-crazy is blurred and ever-shifting, and the cost of pretending is often stark.

i find it deeply fascinating how these medieval mystics have come to be figures of varying reverence within the church, but had they been alive today, there is a not-insignificant chance most or all of them would be involuntarily committed, their visions and divine wonderings medicated into submission. had i been born in the thirteenth century, would i have become a saint? this is something i wonder often. what would my life look like now had i not understood implicitly as a child that i could not tell anyone how the stars spoke to me at night, or the shadows grew hands and eyes and mouths?

i use the term schizophrenic only because it clearly communicates a set of experiences in a way that no other word or phrase can quite capture. its connotation is that of detachment, disarray, disorganization; word salad and unreality are central to its general image. personally, i prefer crazy, mad, godtouched, and a number of other words, but none carry quite the same weight and ease of explanation. was joan of arc schizophrenic? was catherine of siena anorexic? who knows. if they needed treatment and their insurance company wanted to know what for and how much to pay, i’m sure they would be handed one diagnostic code or another, but personally, i find very little use in boxing up experiences beyond the norm in the way that modern psychiatry insists we must. i still refuse to put on paper - or tell any of my doctors - what i experience when the sky whispers its secrets in my ear, or the shadows come alive. i am lucky to be able to hide it; there are many more who cannot. was the oracle of delphi like me?

i like to imagine myself a carrier of their legacy.

published july 27, 2023

« all transmissions »