Visionary Experience Research Articles

A Multiplicity of Washing Rites and a Multiplicity of Experiences

If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience.

Portrait: Gananath Obeyesekere

In my most recent book, The Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience (2012), I end my wandering mind with mention of my own anticipated end—a farewell, as it were, to an overlong life, much of it devoted to scholarly work on the study of religion in practice. However, I find it hard to divorce practice from a sympathetic understanding that some of us natives think of as Buddhism, for example. As for me, I would like to open our ethnographies and histories to the multiple ways in which we write and to celebrate our work and praise our foolishness, for none of us are omniscient and foolishness is part of our work and our species’ sentience. In much of my work I also celebrate comparison because for me it is hard to accept that as thinking beings we have to confine our thought to some narrow sphere.

デザインの先導的役割とプロトタイピング(消費者,<メカライフ特集>社会と機械)

デザインの先導的役割とプロトタイピング(消費者,<メカライフ特集>社会と機械)

The Witches’ Sabbath in Scotland

There are ample surviving references in the witchcraft trial material to indicate that the witches' sabbath became an important feature of the crime of witchcraft in Scotland. Comparison of the trial material has revealed numerous discrepancies between individual and group accounts of the witches sabbath. The frequent inability of the witches to agree upon a time, date or place that the witches' sabbath took place have indicated that, in the case studied, the witches' sabbath was not a genuine historical event. Elite beliefs and ideas about the witches' sabbath were frequently introduced during interrogations, and certainly left their mark upon the witchcraft records. However the examination process was often a negotiation between witches and their interrogators, and as such allowed many witches to incorporate their own beliefs and ideas into their descriptions of the witches' sabbath. Close reading of the trial material, combined with an analysis of contemporary presbytery records and popular ballads, provides evidence that many witches were drawing upon popular beliefs about fairies, magic and the supernatural, as well as their experiences at real life celebrations and festivities, to compose their descriptions of the witches' sabbath. The majority of confessions that contain descriptions of the witches' Sabbath are the product of this interrogation and negotiation process, but this research has also explored the possibility that the witches' Sabbath might have been a real visionary experience for some witches, and that these visionary experiences were fantasies induced by psychological trauma, or a waking or sleeping vision similar to those experienced by tribal shamans. This research has demonstrated that may pre-existing popular beliefs contributed to the formulation of the witches' descriptions of the witches' Sabbath and also stresses the importance of the influence of the interrogation process on the initial presence of the witches' sabbath in confessions. Although this research has been carried out within the context of Early Modern Scotland, it is likely to have wider implications for the study of the witches' sabbath in a European context.

Book Review: Gananath Obeyesekere, The Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience

Book Review: Gananath Obeyesekere, <i>The Awakened Ones: Phenomenology of Visionary Experience</i>

Dreams of Death in Medieval Castilian Hagiography: Martyrdom and Ideology in the Gran Flos Sanctorum

Dreams of Death in Medieval Castilian Hagiography: Martyrdom and Ideology in the Gran Flos Sanctorum Andrew M. Beresford Critical discourses dealing with the explosion of oneiric and visionary activity in the Middle Ages have offered crucial insights into questions of symbolism and representation, the systems of theory and classification that inform and underpin the development of individual narratives, and the relevance of visions and dreams to broader psychological, sociological, and theological discussions. A salient element of these discourses, however, is that, almost without exception, they have tended to deal with texts, whether verbal or pictorial, in terms of the primacy of the oneiric or the visionary within the global structure or intellectual fabric of the narrative. The pioneering work of Constance B. Hieatt and A. C. Spearing, for instance, focuses on the dream as a meta-framework, and engages with texts in which oneiric experience functions as the essential unifying device. Later contributions, such as those of Kathryn L. Lynch, Steven F. Kruger, and Isabel Moreira, have provided [End Page 159] more detailed and nuanced readings, while Barbara Newman’s timely survey has offered a series of salutary insights into the relationship between theory and methodology, particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective. Comparably informative approaches have been adopted in discussions of early Castilian production, and of particular note are the studies of Harriet Goldberg, Julian Palley, Jacques Joset, and Teresa Gómez Trueba, whose focus is predominantly literary, and that of Victor I. Stoichita, which offers an engaging assessment of the impact of the visual tradition. This work has been constructive in formulating approaches to individual texts, and has led more broadly to an informed appreciation of the chronological and intellectual shaping of dream-vision conventions per se. However, it has been less beneficial in providing a mechanism for appraising the content of the vast body of texts that are only partially conditioned by oneiric or visionary activity, or where the functional significance of dream visions is reduced to that of a convenient narrative device. The question in part is one of the perceived reality encoded into texts of different generic types. In fully developed dream visions the rules of construction depart from those of normative reality: objects speak; abstractions are given life; the logic of the physical universe becomes subservient to the demands of allegory. The inconceivable becomes possible, and the indescribable, all but routine. Readers of body-and-soul debates, for instance, instantly accept that a purulent corpse can talk and that a soul can assume the form of a dove or a small child. In Razón de amor and the Vida de Santa Oria we are confronted by talking goblets in a pomegranate tree and celestial ladders in the sky. In fully developed dream frameworks we embrace such codes without hesitation and seldom query the broader fundamentals of construction. Only the most esoteric suggestions, such as those traced by Alan Deyermond in the enigmatic and contradictory text of the Libro de Buen Amor, initiate a search for elusive contextualizing parameters. It is understandable that the main thrust of critical discourse should have been in this area: the departure from reality establishes a sense of wonder and awe that merits detailed inspection. Yet the corollary is that the clash between vision and normative reality in texts that deal predominantly with [End Page 160] the latter has been all but ignored. Momentary intrusions that rupture, but do not permanently alter, the temporal fabric of medieval Castilian narratives have seldom been accounted for or discussed systematically. The result, inevitably, has been an element of distortion, as the focus of criticism has fallen on the most visually evocative examples of oneiric and visionary experience rather than its broader aetiology. Specific forms such as the tripartite journey (where the dreamer is transported from a situation of waking reality to a complex symbolic locus of meaning followed by a moralizing conclusion) have been discussed at the expense of texts which are less imaginatively constituted, particularly in their use of imagery and symbolism. In hagiography, attention has been lavished on journeys to the otherworld in works devoted largely to them, but seldom to elements of the otherworld intruding into the quotidian life of the...

Changing conceptions of “mandala” in tang china: ritual and the role of images

ABSTRACT“Changing Conceptions of ‘Mandala’ in Tang China: Ritual and the Role of Images” is concerned with the intersection of visionary experience with visual forms. The focus of the study is a Buddhist incantation, or Dhāranī, titled the Revered and Victorious Dhāranī of the Buddha's Usnīsa. This particular dhāranī was widely circulated in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907); for this reason, it may be approached as an important case study for studying the conceptualization of mandalas in China prior to their transmission to Japan in the early ninth century. Through a detailed examination of successive translations and ritual manuals associated with the Revered and Victorious Dhāranī of the Buddha's Usnīsa, different conceptions of mandalas and the roles that were played by images may be observed. This, in turn, responds to larger questions in East Asian Buddhism and studies of Buddhist art regarding the functions of painted mandalas during Buddhist rituals. Lastly, this article seeks to shed light on lesser-known aspects of esoteric Buddhist art in Asia, as the scholarship to date on Buddhist mandalas has primarily focused upon studies of Japanese and Himalayan works.

Cave Rituals and the Brain's Theatre

Cave Rituals and the Brain's Theatre Mark Pizzato (bio) The term "theatre" comes from the ancient Greek theatron, the "seeing place" for the audience. But theatre in its most basic sense, as the space and activity of a spectator and a performer with reflective awareness between them, extends much further back into prehistory. Such reflective awareness of Self and Other in performance also relates to the theatres of imagination, memories, dreams, and reality representations within the brains of each actor and spectator. This inner theatre extends back to prehistory, too, with brain structures that we have inherited along with evolving rituals of transcendence and reflective performance spaces. A primal form of theatrical performance and awareness of Self and Other emerged in certain caves thirty-t wo thousand to eleven thousand years ago during the Ice Age (or Upper Paleolithic Period), as evidenced by the art on the cave walls and other artifacts. One of the earliest, with some of the finest art, is shown in Werner Herzog's 2010 3-D documentary film Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It explores prehistoric art in the Chauvet Cave in France, which was discovered in 1994 and has since been off-limits to the public. This essay considers that film and cave, plus details from lesser-known caves in France and Spain, which I visited in June 2011.1 Such caves offer evidence of a primal form of reflective performance: the evolution of human subjectivity based in, yet moving beyond, primate playfulness through shared emotions, neural filters, and simulations of the Other. How did the selection of specific cave spaces for paintings and engravings on the walls, along with the types of images made, express not only the performances in them but also the birth [End Page 116] of a distinct sense of Self, of human character being like and unlike observed animals, using the cave wall as a map and mirror? Theories of Cave Theatre In his recent book, Palaeoperformance, and in earlier essays, Yann-Pierre Montelle explores the evidence for many aspects of theatricality in the prehistoric caves of France: not only the paintings, etchings, and carvings on the rock walls but also the various sizes and shapes of caverns; the bone flutes, scrapers, and bullroarers found in them; and the resonant tones produced today by tapping stalactites of different lengths.2 Prior to Montelle, Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams developed a theory, based on such evidence along with neuroscience research and anthropological comparisons with recent African traditions, that prehistoric cave art shows the recording, display, and ritual use of hallucinatory trance experiences involving animal-spirit guides.3 Ice Age peoples may have produced cave art through visions that occurred spontaneously in the extreme darkness with its echoing sounds, evoked by the flickering fires of torches and animal-fat lamps, painful treks deep into the earth, loss of oxygen and increase of other gases, and the rock's natural shapes and crevices.4 Shamanic drugs might also have been involved. The mysterious geometric lines and dots in prehistoric cave art, along with realistic animal figures and hybrid human-animal creatures, correspond to the types and stages of hallucinatory visions that can be evoked today in the laboratory through sensory deprivation or flashing lights. Such hallucinations, though now involving objects in our own cultural context, are also experienced by people with migraines and other disorders. Thus, cave art may reveal two possible manifestations of prehistoric theatre: (1) visionary experiences of geometric, abstract, and supernatural figures from within a human brain projected onto or through the rock surface and (2) shared performances in the cave using the rock art as scenic background, mythic illustrations, or moving characters in the firelight and its shadows. The types of cave-art spaces also demonstrate various aspects of prehistoric theatre. Some are easily accessible in huge chambers. Others are hundreds of meters inside the earth, requiring crouched walking or crawling through narrow passages. In more accessible chambers, processions and large ritual gatherings may have occurred. But for those with tight corridors deep into the darkness, with slippery surfaces, low ceilings, and sudden cliffs, and with bears, hyenas, and lions potentially present, great courage and painful ordeals...

Bonaventure’s “Visions of the Cross” in the Saint Francis Cycle at Assisi

This essay focuses on four episodes in the Saint Francis cycle at Assisi, examining how their representation is affected by Bonaventure’s figural interpretation of them in the Legenda maior as ‘visions of the cross’. The iconographic innovations introduced into the Stigmatization scene (the final vision); the subtle manipulation of the iconography, compositions and spatial disposition of the three preceding visions of the cross in the cycle; and the forging of meaningful diagonal links between the Saint Francis cycle and the biblical scenes in the register of wall paintings above it, can all be understood as part of a singleminded strategy on the part of the Franciscan Order at Assisi, in the final decade of the Duecento, to promote the stigmata of Saint Francis and his unique identity as an alter Christus. The visions of the cross in the Assisi cycle also demonstrate the sophisticated ways in which artists and iconographers engaged with the complex problem of how to represent visionary experiences, and the relationship between the visible appearances of things and the invisible truth beneath the surface.

Resisting Daniel: The Church's Fear of Bearing Witness to a Difficult Book

Three obstacles contribute to American Christianity's resistance to reading the book of Daniel: 1) a backlash against the overuse of Daniel in certain presentations of end times doctrine; 2) Daniel's complicated references to previous biblical prophetic traditions and visionary experiences; and 3) the depictions of suffering in the latter chapters of the book. A reading of Daniel 10 illustrates the latter two obstacles, calling for readers to hearken to Daniel's testimony to the suffering of the Jewish community in the second century BCE. Overcoming the resistance to the book by Christian ministers is a daunting task that requires readers to deconstruct popular notions of apocalyptic eschatology, attend to issues of genre and biblical authorship, and develop a working knowledge of the historical context from which the writers of Daniel operated. While demanding, such an effort would allow readers to hear the book as an expression of a community living under unjust rule, to begin perceiving and evaluating the relationship between human and divine power, and to practice attending to the testimony of the oppressed.

New paradigm, a socio‐spirituality research on succession in leadership

PurposeIn the literature there is very little exploration on how the Tibetan approach in leadership may be relevant for management. Here, for the first time, the paper discusses the ancient yet continuing practice of succession in leadership of the Kagyu Karma School of Tibetan Buddhism within the context of management practices. In so doing, the author suggests a theory of continuous consciousness for succession in leadership.Design/methodology/approachA multi‐method design is utilized in the research paper. First, the biographical literature on the 17 Karmapas is reviewed and content analyzed for insights: Who is the Karmapa? Second, the author, through a process of planned personal, activity‐based research, including field visits of ritual ceremonies, gathers insights on the Karmapa leadership in action. Furthermore, he was invited to host for HH The 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje a forum on, “Living a Meaningful Life in the Contemporary Age”. Third, comparative analyses of tenure of leadership are made of different succession approaches: Karmapa versus other systems of succession, for example Chinese dynastic system (Yuan, Ming, Qing and Chinese Communist Party) are presented. Fourth, traits in the leadership of the Karmapa are portrayed: symbolically, the divine parasol through a rare photograph. A parallel symbolism of leadership, especially the motif of the Sun is drawn between the Tibetan Karmapa and Han Chinese Mao Zedong. For this, the artistic method of montage is utilized to the findings. Fifth, drawing upon research on psychology (nineteenth century German psychologist, Ebbinghaus), the author suggests the memory tests employed by the Tibetans for selection of successor have some scientific basis. Finally, in discussion on corporate vision; from a review of past biographies of 16 Karmapas and for the first time a taxonomical portrayal of the visionary experiences of His Holiness is presented.FindingsThe continuity in the leadership of the Karmapas over almost 912 years (1100 BCE to present) is certainly one of the most remarkable in the history of mankind. It is the longest lineage of spiritual leaders within the Chinese minority, of the Tibetan culture. Among the theory of leadership, the case of Karmapa reinforces strongly the role of personality traits. Every Karmapa, including the present 17th has to manifest certain traits or signs to gain continuing acceptance as leader of the spiritual community. In a very sharp contrast to the very short tenure of American CEOs (statistically, graphically presented), the tenure of leadership for Kagyu Karma School of Buddhism is life‐long. Indeed, uniquely as a Tibetan practices in succession, multi‐lifetimes. In this paper, the author discusses how modern corporations may draw insights from this as unique case of institutionalizing the sustainability of leadership. Perhaps, there is a case for expanding the current paradigm of leadership research?Originality/valueThis paper highlights the value of management learning through research from ancient religious or spiritual traditions. In this case, the focus is on leadership succession and it is hoped this paper will foster inter‐disciplinary (management and spirituality) research by scholars.

Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal (review)

Reviewed by: Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal A. Katie Harris Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal. By Bryan Givens. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2011. Pp. x, 255. $48.00. ISBN 978-0-8071-3702-4.) In late February 1665, Maria de Macedo found herself before the Lisbon tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, accused of falsely claiming to be a [End Page 817] visionary. In response to the judges’ questions, she confirmed that since childhood, she had experienced visions of mysterious “enchanted Moors” from a “Hidden Isle” (p. 116). The strange visitors brought her to the island, where she encountered figures such as the prophets Elijah and Enoch, St. John the Evangelist, and King Arthur. She also met Sebastian, Portugal’s legendary king who had been lost in battle in Morocco in 1578 and whose supporters, known as sebastianistas, awaited his imminent return to restore Portugal to greatness. Sebastian’s arrival in Lisbon, said Macedo, would be marked by “revolutions and punishments” (p. 68) and sunshine at night. He would bring “different laws, of which there will only be five, written by his hand and confirmed by Our Lord Jesus Christ” and would “reform the World, conquer the Moors and Turks, convert the heretics, put everything right, and, being the Hidden One, would go to the Holy House [of Jerusalem]” (pp. 68–69, 127). Sebastian would rule until his death at age 120, after which his son would rule until the coming of the Last Judgment. In Judging Maria de Macedo, Bryan Givens explores Macedo’s visions within their social, political, and intellectual contexts and examines the proceedings against her. He takes a microhistorical approach, unpacking the ideas embedded in her visionary experiences, tracing their roots, and comparing her cultural values to those of the inquisitors who judged her. He devotes special attention to a manuscript pamphlet of her visions that Macedo dictated to her husband. This unusual source, included in the trial record but created some fifteen years before her arrest, allows unusually direct access to Macedo’s voice, unmediated by inquisitorial personnel. The translated pamphlet text appears in full within the text; a transcription of the Portuguese original is included in an index. Givens’s reading of Macedo’s ideas as expressed in the pamphlet and in her interrogation is careful and sensitive. Using small details as a means to opening up the cultural strands within her visions, he examines Macedo’s folkloric and millenarian sources. Overall, his analysis is convincing, although there are places where a more expanded discussion of Macedo’s cultural context could have lent greater nuance. The interventions of Macedo’s husband in the redaction of the pamphlet and his defensive rhetorical strategies also deserve examination. For the most part, Givens avoids a simplistic division between “popular” and “elite” religious belief and practice, preferring to speak of “cultural recycling” (p. 185)—the circulation, appropriation, and transformation of ideas among elites and non-elites. He sees Macedo as a member of the “middling sorts” (p. 3), receptive to cultural influences from above and below. Her judges, however, ascribed very different values to the ideas she cherished. Macedo was convicted not for the sebastianista content of her visions, but for falsely claiming to have had visions at all. Her visions seem to have curiously little overt political content. Instead, Givens’s analysis grounds Macedo’s visionary experience in her deep personal piety and her identity as a Catholic Christian. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the case of Maria de Macedo [End Page 818] is not her unusual visions but the very typicality of the views and values to which she adhered. This book will be of interest not just to readers interested in Sebastianism and millenarianism as well as in the workings of the various early-modern Inquisitions but also to those interested in the devotional life of the laity in the changing climate of Counter-Reformation Catholicism. A. Katie Harris University of California, Davis Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Gender and Prophecy in Late Medieval Valencia

Gender and Prophecy in Late Medieval Valencia Ronald E. Surtz This essay contrasts and compares the careers of two visionaries, one male (Agostí Ferrandis), the other female (Tecla Servent). Both had prophetic careers in the same geographic area, the Kingdom of Valencia, at the end of the fifteenth century, and the authenticity of the messages of both was questioned by the ecclesiastical establishment. I will argue that, while the issue of gender is always relevant to the visionary experience and to the discernment of spirits, Ferrandis’s status as a male cleric did not guarantee the automatic acceptance of his divine messages, nor was Servent’s status as a laywomen automatically detrimental to her prophetic career. Agostí Ferrandis, vicar of the Dominican monastery of Corpus Christi in Lutxent, announced in a sermon delivered in that town around Christmas of 1475 that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him and warned that people should mend their ways, for her son was greatly angered at humankind.1 In [End Page 299] the sermon the friar preached on New Year’s Day in the cathedral of Xàtiva, he predicted that a frightful sign of divine anger would be visible everywhere in the world, but only God knew whether that portent would consist of floods, fire, or earthquakes. The Virgin Mary urged people, he alleged, to repent, go to confession, receive the Eucharist, and pardon wrongs done to them so as to be in a state of grace when the terrible moment came. Those who repented would be saved, while sinners would perish. Ferrandis also predicted that as a sign that his predictions would come true, he would disappear from the world before the month of March (Dietari 374). The aldermen of Valencia sent the nobleman Joan de Pròxita to invite Ferrandis to preach in that city. The friar arrived there on 25 January 1476, lodging in the home of the lawyer Miquel Albert.2 On Sunday, 27 January, he delivered a sermon in the cathedral of Valencia in which he reiterated that he had seen the Virgin Mary, and he exhorted all to repent, claiming that only those in a state of grace would be saved from the approaching calamity. The following Monday he preached once again in the cathedral and claimed that the Virgin had appeared to him twice the preceding night; his sermon moved the members of the congregation to forgive one another, confess their sins, and receive communion. Ferrandis then went on to disseminate his message of repentance in nearby cities and towns, where numerous people from Valencia followed him and his words inspired many to convert to a holier life. On Friday, 9 February, the friar returned to Valencia, but Guillem de Vich (the vicar general of cardinal Rodrigo de Borja, the city’s archbishop) and the royal governor Joan Roiz de Corella forbade him to continue to preach in Valencia, and so on 13 February he returned to his monastery in Lutxent (374–75).3 [End Page 300] Miquel Albert reported by letter to the town council of Valencia that he had followed Ferrandis to Lutxent and that on 22 February it was discovered that the friar had disappeared from his cell.4 A few days later he was located in the hermitage of Santa Ana, to which, no longer wishing to preach, he had retired to engage in penitential acts (376).5 Was this what Ferrandis had meant when he had announced at Christmas in Xàtiva that he would disappear from the world? On 4 July the canons of the cathedral chapter met and voted that Ferrandis’s supernatural experiences were due to diabolic temptation, not divine inspiration (“que hera temptacio e no cosa divina” [376]).6 Only master Bernat Peres considered the friar’s lifestyle holy (“era de santa vida”) and believed that all he had said was the truth. On 10 August Joan de Pròxita, who had been a great admirer of Ferrandis, died, and his widow bid Ferrandis come to Valencia and requested that he and the other friars pray for her husband’s soul (376).7 Taking advantage of the friar’s presence in Valencia, the diocese’s vicar...

The awakened ones: phenomenology of visionary experience

PrefaceList of AbbreviationsIntroductionBook 1. The Visionary Experience: Theoretical UnderstandingsBook 2. Mah?y?na: Salvific Emptiness, Fullness of VisionBook 3. The Cosmic It: The Abstract Being of the IntellectualsBook 4. Penitential Ecstasy: The Dark Night of the SoulBook 5. Christian Dissent: The Protest Against ReasonBook 6. Theosophies: West Meets EastBook 7. Modernity and the DreamingBook 8. Contemporary Dreaming: Secular Spirituality and Revelatory TruthEnvoi-Intimations of Mortality: The Ethnographer's Dream and the Return of the VulturesNotesGlossaryIndex

Experimenting with Opicinus de Canistris (1296–ca. 1354)

The maps, drawings, and diagrams made by the fourteenth-century Italian priest and artist Opicinus de Canistris defy art historical categorization and challenge many modern notions of what and how medieval artists could represent. The drawings show embodied allegorical maps of the Mediterranean world, in which countries and continents are given human identities and relationships. This essay argues against the marginalization of Opicinus as a “psychotic” artist, looking instead at his work as a response to a visionary experience and demonstrating the close dialogue between his drawings and broader trends in fourteenth-century visual culture, including debates on empiricism, allegory, and optical science. Through a close reading of three examples, the essay demonstrates the importance of looking at the drawings’ most basic structures, forms, and arrangements to explain what the superimposition of maps and bodies, the empirical and the imaginary, allowed Opicinus to express about the world and the self.

The Will to Be Unveiled: Sufi Autobiographies in Classical Sufism

While autobiography as a special genre increasingly occupies an important position in modern scholarship, independent Sufi autobiographies still require additional and detailed examination. The current paper seeks to examine two spiritual autobiographies known very well in the history of Sufism: Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī's Badʾ shaʾn, and Rūzbihān al-Baqlī's Kashf al-asrār. References to these works in modern research do not go beyond the assumption that they may represent visionary autobiographies, dreams, and mystical, extraordinary experiences and states. In the framework of this paper, we consider it essential to regard both texts as serious indicators of different realities, contexts, and mystic discourses.

Willing to Know God: Dreamers and Visionaries in the Later Middle Ages

Willing to Know God: Dreamers and Visionaries in the Later Middle Ages

Marian Visionaries in Roman Catholicism as Popular Theologians: ‘The Lady of All Nations’ of Amsterdam

In Roman Catholicism, women as visionaries of the Virgin Mary achieve a global prestige as initiators of devotions, shrines, and large-scale movements. Ida Peerdeman (1905–1996), who described visions of ‘the Lady of All Nations’ in Amsterdam between 1945 and 1959, is the latest seer to gain recognition by the Roman Catholic Church (through the local bishop) and to inspire a large-scale network. This article argues that women in traditional Roman Catholicism have had little opportunity to influence mainstream theological and devotional ideas, except through the medium of visionary experiences. In this sense, they are ‘popular theologians’, articulating the aspirations and sentiments of many Catholics. They draw upon existing Catholic Mariological ideas but work creatively with them. Like other theologians, they are subject to the development of ideas, which may result in contradiction and change. Ida Peerdeman serves as an exemplar in this respect.

Tell Us a Story from Before We Can Remember: Gnostic Reflections on Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life can be considered in relation to the pansophic tradition of Western spirituality, especially Gnosticism. Malick explores humankind in a cosmic ambit that is imaginal, holistic, and deeply reverential, recalling the Gnostics’ use of mythopoesis in elaborating and evoking their revelatory experiences. This is exemplified by a haunting soprano voice within the void that is conspicuously Sophianic. Jung's observation that psychology (like Malik's film) is concerned with an act of seeing, not the construction of new religious truths, invites reference to the roots of perception suggested by the visionary experience of a child, the initiatory dream of a young woman, and the archetypal correspondence of such constellations to the germinal stars–scintillae motif in Gnostic creation mythology, alchemy, and the pansophic tradition generally.

An Interpretation of Sūrat al-Najm (Q. 53)

Sūrat al-Najm (Q. 53) has received a comparatively generous amount of scholarly attention for two reasons: firstly, it is said to have been the original literary context of the so-called ‘Satanic verses’, and secondly, it includes the most elaborate Qur'anic account of a visionary encounter between the Prophet Muḥammad and the Qur'an's divine speaker. While the debate around the Satanic verses has centred on the question of their authenticity, the vision account in Q. 53 is significant for the insights it provides into the Qur'anic understanding of prophecy and because its chronological relationship to another early Qur'anic allusion to a visionary experience of the Messenger, Q. 81:19–23, has not yet been conclusively determined. The present article will revisit both issues in the course of a holistic reading of the entire sura, dealing first with preliminary matters such as the dating of the sura and redactional considerations, then looking at the text's overall structure and its main themes, and finally attempting a microstructural analysis of its most important sections in the light of relevant intertexts, both from within and without the Qur'an.