Daimonic reality a field guide to the otherworld pdf

Creative Process

One ( 20 Points) How have your views on creativity been changed by this course, by your engagement with course materials and/or by your work in this course? Or take another approach, perhaps one that argues the course reinforced views you already held, or did nothing to add to or change your views of creativity. You may respond creatively and/or refer to readings as you choose.

Two (20 Points)

All three required course texts discuss the role of "imagination" in terms of inspiration for, and development of creativity in human societies. Briefly, discuss how each of these texts offer differing views of imagination as essential to creativity. Cite at least one passage from each text to support your view about creativity and imagination.

"Reflect on your own creativity. Where does imagination come into play in your own sense of personal creativity? What does it mean for you to be imaginative, to imagine and what sorts of experiences, objects or processes inspire you to be imaginative?

3

To Mum and Dad

4

5

Prologue i

i Shape-Shifters

THE BEGINNING OF ICELAND - THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH - FALLEN ANGELS - WISE WOMEN AND CUNNING MEN - THE LITTLE PEOPLE 3

2 The Seal-Woman's Skin

FEEDING THE DEAD - THE PRINCESS AND THE DEER - DAIMON LOVERS 13

3 Concerning Zombis

THE FATE OF THE REVEREND KIRK - CHANGELINGS - THE BOKOS'JARS - THE SHADOW OF THE BODY 19

4 St Patrick's Purgatory

GATEWAYS TO THE OTHERWORLD - WHERE THE DEAD LIVE - HEL AND VALHALLA - PLATO'S CAVE 27

; The Soul of the World

PRIMARY IMAGINATION - THE ANIMATED WORLD - THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS - ARCHETYPES - DREAMING 35

6 Inside Out

IN SEARCH OF TIR-NA-NOG - HOW THE UNCONSCIOUS BEGAN - PISHOGUE AND GLAMOUR - PEER GYNT AND THE TROLLS - SALVATION THROUGH SCIENCE 45

7 Matter and Spirits

THE VIOLATION OF DAME KIND - TURNING THE TABLES -

6

THE ATOMS OF HADES - FUZZY PICTURES 53

8 'How Natives Think'

HARD WORLD, SOFT WORLD - LIFE AS A TIGER - THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING - GOOD TO EAT, GOOD TO THINK 61

() The Daimons' Tales

APOLLO AND HIS BROTHER - THE STRUCTURE OF MYTH - FEMININE SUN, MASCULINE MOON - DREAMTIME - THE SELF-TRANSCENDING HUMAN 70

r 0 The Hero and the Virgin

HISTORY AND MYTH - THE METAPHORICAL AND THE LITERAL - PAINTING DRYADS 79

i i Rites of Passage

PUBERTY RITES - WHY WE COOK CHILDREN - THE CRAVING FOR INITIATION - POSTSCRIPT: NATURE AS DAIMONIC 86

12 The Animals Who Stared Darwin in the Face

DARWIN'S NAUSEA - THE IMBECILE STEPMOTHER - THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 93

13 The Transmutation of Species

THE FACTS OF LIFE - EVOLUTION AND DEVOLUTION - MISSING LINKS - THE SCIENTIFIC PRIESTHOOD - GENES AS DAIMONS 100

14 The Composition of the Magi

HERMES TRISMEGISTUS - FICINO'S STAR MAGIC - WHAT PETRARCH SAW ON MOUNT VENTOUX - THE ART OF THE CABALA 110

7

15 Conjuring Angels

JOHN DEE'S JOURNEYS - BRUNO'S FUROR - SCIENCE AND MAGIC - THE UNCANNINESS OF NUMBERS - THE VEGAN SPIDER 120

16 The Boar from the Underworld

VENUS AND ADONIS - SHAKESPEARE THE SHAMAN - CROMWELL'S DREAM, ENGLAND'S NIGHTMARE I28

t ; Mercurius

RED MERCURY - THE TRANSMUTING POWDER - THE GREAT WORK - THE RAVEN'S HEAD - VOLATILE AND FIXED - THE MIRROR OF ALCHEMY 134

18 The Philosophers' Retorts

MERCURY AND SULPHUR - COOKING METALS - THE GROANING OF CREATION - THE FOUR-FOLD UNITY - NEWTON'S GOLDEN TREES - THE SECRET 145

19 The Cosmos and the Universe

SAVING THE APPEARANCES - THE LIGHTED CATHEDRAL - PARALLEL WORLDS - THE BIG PICTURE - DARK MATTER 155

20 The Weight of the World

THE EGO AND THE HERO - GRAVITY - NEWTON AND EINSTEIN - SINGULARITIES 164

21 Fafnir's Blood

THE LIVER-EATING VULTURE - HERACLES IN THE UNDERWORLD - THE CHARRED ANKLE-BONE - BALDUR'S DREAM 173

22 The Myths of Machinery

8

THE CLOCK, THE MAGNETIC COMPASS AND THE PRINTING PRESS - WHY TRIBES REJECT TECHNOLOGY - TEKHNE AS ART - THE GLAMOUR OF TELEVISION - THE FLIGHT OF THE SHAMAN 18o

2 The Invention of Walking

COLERIDGE LEAPS THE GATE - A `PASSION OF AWE' - THE COUNTRY LIFE OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU - THE CALL OF THE WILDERNESS 191

.'4 The Romantic Philosophy

THE TABULA RASA - KANT'S IMAGINATION - THE UNIVERSAL MIND 199

GOD'S MIRROR - `ENERGY IS ETERNAL DELIGHT' - LOCKE'S SPECTRES - DOUBLE VISION 204

_h Remembrance of Things Past

PROUST'S MADELEINE - THE MEMORY PALACE OF MATTEO RICCI - FREUD'S FANTASIES - THE HYPNOTIC MEMORY - FORGOTTEN MEMORY 211

27 The Still Sad Music of Humanity

ANAMNESIS - TINTERN ABBEY - TIME REGAINED 220

28 The Desert and the Rose Garden

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING - SPIRIT AND SOUL - THE ONE AND THE MANY - THE PERMUTATIONS OF PROTEUS 225

'q Syzygies

THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES - THE DAMNATION OF THE SIDHE - THE SACRED MARRIAGE - NEW AGES - THE MYSTERY OF LOVE 233

9

;o The Bear that Bites the Heart

THE WORLD-TREE AND THE SWORD-BRIDGE - THE SHAMAN'S IRON BONES - THE VISION QUEST - THE SACRED HEART 244

,; r 'The Night-mare Life-in-Death was She'

THE ANOREXIC AND THE ASCETIC - THE SUBTLE BODY - THE GREENLAND WIZARD 252

3 2 The Myths of Madness

FOUR KINDS OF MADNESS - ORPHEUS - MADNESS AND INSANITY 258

33 Ungodly Messiahs

ACTION AND RITUAL - THE VOCATION OF THE SERIAL KILLER - THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC - MAN-GODS 264

34 The Cure of Souls

THE KORE IN THE UNDERWORLD - THE VIRUS OF IMAGINATION - THE RAISING OF THE DEAD - THE INITIATION OF MEDICINE - THE RAT BENEATH THE SKIN 272

3.5 The Waste Land

LOSS OF SOUL - THE HOLY GRAIL - THE SHIRT OF NESSUS 281

Epilogue 287

References 288

Selected Bibliography 304

Index 311

10

John Milton: 'Il Penseroso'

11

The English antiquarian Elias Ashmole records in his diary for 1653 that William Backhouse, `lying sick in Fleet-Street, over against St Dunstan's Church, and not knowing whether he should live or die, about eleven o'clock told me in syllables the true matter of the Philosopher's Stone, which he bequeathed to me as a legacy'.'

Ashmole's `true matter' was also often referred to as the secret fire of the Philosophers, as the alchemists called themselves. It was the one essential ingredient for making the lapis philosophorum, the Philosophers' Stone, which transmuted base metal into gold and, as the Elixir of Life, conferred immortality. However, the secret fire extends far beyond alchemy. It was a secret that was passed down from antiquity - some say, from Orpheus; others, from Moses; most, from Hermes Trismegistus - in a long series of links which constituted what the Philosophers called the Golden Chain. This august succession of Philosophers embodied a tradition which we have either ignored or labelled `esoteric', even `occult'; but it continues to run like a vein of quicksilver beneath Western culture, rising up out of the shadows during times of intense cultural transition.

Just as the Philosophers' Stone was known as the `stone that is no stone', so the secret fire was more than a substance, more than a secret which could be communicated `in syllables'. It is not a piece of information; nor is it a code to be cracked or a riddle to be solved. Nor, alas, is it a system of philosophy or body of knowledge which can be expressed directly. Geber, an alchemist probably writing in Spain around 1300, tried to reveal the secret plainly and, ever since, similar attempts have been pronounced by orthodox thinkers as Geber-ish. Gibberish, in other words, is the mode of communication naturally favoured by the secret fire itself, which subverts all efforts to speak of it in the usual Western style of discourse. Any book about the secret, and the Golden Chain which preserves it, necessarily becomes a book in the Golden Chain.

Thus the straight path of Apollonian lucidity I had planned to follow inevitably became a Hermetic labyrinth. The secret which cried out to be revealed at a single stroke, in a vision or work of art, could only be expounded in a roundabout way. The book proceeded less by logic than by

12

analogy, each chapter connected to the next less by linear argument than by what the ancients called correspondence and sympathy. Ideally, the book may be thought of as a kind of revolving prism, in which each chapter presents in turn a facet of the whole. Better still, each may be imagined as a ray of diffracted light whose source - the secret fire - throws rainbows beyond this, or perhaps any, book.

The secret is, above all, a way of seeing. Although it is a way of seeing that Western culture has often lost sight of, it is central to those modern, tribal, pre-literate societies which I shall be calling `traditional'. It is also a way of seeing taken for granted by the traditional European cultures of the past; and it is here that I will begin.

13

One of the last European peoples to be converted to Christianity, around AD iooo, were those Norsemen who had settled Iceland more than a hundred years before. The Book of the Settlement describes the establishment of their new society, and so tells us a great deal about what old European cultures considered of fundamental importance.

The first thing they did was to find holy places which would serve as links to the Otherworld, then they set up shrines to the gods they had brought with them, such as Thor and Freyr, and organized annual feasts when sacrifices would be made to them. Lastly, they had to establish a harmonious relationship with the spirits of the new land.'

The mountains, hills, rocks, rivers, waterfalls and glaciers of Iceland were filled with elves, rock-dwellers and giants, collectively known as land-spirits. However, if the expression `land-spirit' is taken to refer to something ethereal or spectral, it would be misleading. There is nothing insubstantial about the land-spirit Bard, for example, who was said to live at Snaefell in western Iceland. He was a tall figure in a grey cloak and hood, with a belt of hide, and he carried a stick to help him over the ice. He is clearly the model for Gandalf, the wizard in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Young men were sent to Bard's cave beyond the glacier to be taught law and genealogies, `two important branches of knowledge linked with the gods and the wisdom of the Otherworld'.z

The Icelandic land-spirits are very like another race of European beings called the Sidhe (pronounced `Shee'). To paraphrase Lady Augusta Gregory, who described them at the turn of the nineteenth century,' the Sidhe are shape-changers: they can appear small or large, or as birds, beasts or blasts of wind. They inhabit the forths and lisses, the ancient grass-grown mounds; but their own country is Tir-na-nOg, the Country of the Young. It is under the ground or under the sea, or it may not be far from any of us. They will eat what is left out for them or take for their

14

feasts the best of what we have, but they will not touch salt. Fighting is heard among them, and music that is more beautiful than any of this world; if they are seen, they are often dancing or playing their ball games. The Sidhe will help a man with his work or even tell him where to find treasure; they will teach certain wise men and women where to find lost livestock, and how to cure the sick. They call many over to their world through the eye of a neighbour, the evil eye, or by a touch, a blow, a fall, a sudden terror. Those who have received such a stroke will waste away from this world, as their strength is lent to the Sidhe. Young men are taken to help with their games and their wars; young mothers are taken to suckle their newborn children; girls that they may themselves become mothers there. The dead are often seen among them. The Sidhe have been, like the angels, from before the making of the earth.

Lady Gregory compiled this description of the Sidhe's nature and attributes from reports, both of sightings and beliefs, gathered from the country people who lived on and around her estate in County Galway in the west of Ireland. The poet W. B. Yeats drew on her accounts for his stories and poems, sometimes accompanying her to the homes of her informants. He did not, however, speak the Irish language and had to rely on Lady Gregory for translations.

The Sidhe were also called the Tuatha de Danann, a race of mythological people who are as close as Irish myth comes to speaking of the gods. They are also called the Gentry and - more in hope than expectation - the Good People. Also, the fairies.

The idea that beliefs recorded in different parts of the world can be compared is currently frowned on in many academic circles.' But as Stewart Sanderson points out in his introduction to Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth, it is uncontroversial to assert that `there appears to be no country in the world where fairies by one name or another are not found, no traditional society, whatever its cultural patterns or historical development, where some such creatures do not figure in folk belief'.' The fairies were known to the Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen as elves, hulder- folk and land-spirits; to the Cornish as pixies; to the Bretons as corrigans; to the Welsh as Tylwyth Teg, the fair folk. Every county in England had a different name for the fairies, from the derricks of Dorset to the farisees of

15

Norfolk.

In the ancient world, by the second century AD, `virtually everyone, pagan, Jewish, Christian or Gnostic', notes Oxford Professor E. R. Dodds, `believed in the existence of these beings and in their function as mediators, whether he called them daemons or angels or aions or simple "spirits" [pneumatal'.6 The Romans, for example, conceived of `an almost infinite number of divine beings ... every grove, spring, cluster of rocks or other significant natural feature had its attendant spirit'.7 They usually had personal names, but were generally known as genii loci, the geniuses of the place, such as the Fauni of the woods or the Lares and Penates of farms and houses. The latter `had to be accorded honours by humans, to an extent much greater and more formal than those given by later Europeans to the fairies, pixies and elves whom these Roman beings resembled. Indeed, households were expected to offer food to the Lares and Penates at every meal."

Outside Europe, the belief in fairies or their equivalent is just as widespread. The Chinese, for instance, recognize a race of beings directly analogous to the Sidhe which can be transliterated as Kwei-shins. Kwei literally means `that which belongs to man', and shin, `that which belongs to heaven', suggesting a fusion of mortal and immortal.9 Kwei-shin has many meanings, including the genii of hills and rocks; spirits presiding over land and grain; the spirits of the ancestors; the finer part of the human soul; and invisible beings in general." They were accepted as being `both superior and inferior to form, or between the two' as well as `between the material and immaterial'." In pre-Islamic Arabia the Jinn were `haunting- demons of the deserts and wildernesses'.'2 Hairy, malformed or shaped like ostriches or serpents, they were dangerous to unprotected persons. The Prophet Mohammed acknowledged the existence of these beings in the Koran (37:158) and incorporated them into the religion he founded. Existing between angels formed of light and men formed of the dust of the earth, Jinn are composed of subtle fire, able to take on whatever shape they please and make themselves visible to mortals."

In short, everyone outside modern Western culture has always believed, as the native American Ojibwa believe, in `a universe of supernatural beings ... Some are tied down to definite localities, some move from place to place at will; some are friendly to Indians, other [sic] hostile. 114 Yet they are not entirely supernatural because, like the Sidhe, they are as

16

natural a part of the world as humans are. They are analogous to humans, possessing similar intelligence and emotions, being both male and female, and in some cases having families of their own.

`Fairy' would be a suitable name for all these beings, particularly since the word embodies the very shape-shifting nature of what it describes - ninety-three different forms and spellings have been found prior to 1829. The word `fairy' is `neither an object with clear boundaries nor possessed of a meaning with clear boundaries'.15 The clearest connotation that can be attached to it is the idea of fatedness, here defined as `a quality in the world which can control and direct the actions of humanity'." The fairies are believed to be connected to the destiny of the tribe whose well-being depends on a close, often propitiatory relationship with them. They are also linked to the fate of individuals, just like the personal daimones, described by Plato in The Republic, which are assigned to us at birth and control our destiny." And I am going to follow Plato in calling all these fairy-like beings daimons (sometimes spelt daemons) - which are not of course to be confused with the demons Christianity turned them into. All daimons share the attributes of the Sidhe. They are emphatically not 'spirits'- the word anthropologists use, for want of a better, to describe them - because they are, like the land-spirit Bard, as much physical as spiritual. The notion that daimons are both material and immaterial is the most difficult of their many contradictions to grasp. The Reverend Robert Kirk who published in 16g i the first study of fairies, The Secret Commonwealth, wrestled with this paradox. He describes them as being `of a middle nature betwixt man and angell', having `light changeable bodies (like those called astral) somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud and best seen in the twilight ..."' The Kwei-shins are inscrutably described as `incorporeal but not immaterial'.19

I am stressing the outstanding characteristics of daimons - elusive, contradictory, shape-shifting - because I hope to show that they provide root metaphors for certain central aspects of modern Western culture, aspects which are otherwise incomprehensible owing to our culture's exclusion of daimons. However, their exclusion is an illusion. True to their shape-changing nature, they continue to appear in our culture, but in a form so far removed from their traditional personified shape that we do not immediately recognize them.

17

The banishment of the daimons in Europe began with Christianity. In the earliest of the New Testament writings, the epistles of St Paul, the gentiles are reproached for sacrificing `to devils, and not to God'.20 The word Paul used for devils was daimonia: daimons. The chief offence of the daimons was their intermediacy. All pagans recognized a multitude of daimons which mediated between them and their many gods. But for Christianity,. there can only be one mediator between mankind and the one God: Jesus Christ.

Thus, throughout the Middle Ages, periodic attempts were made in the spirit of St Paul to cast out the daimons. For example, in one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath describes how an army of friars, `as thick as motes in the sunbeam', was dispatched to bless everything from woods and streams, to cities and castles, to halls, kitchens and dairies `that maketh that ther ben no fayries'.Z' Any daimons who escaped the net were demonized, as the Sidhe were, and dubbed `fallen angels' who had been thrown out of Heaven along with Satan.

However, there was a gentler method of dealing with the daimons. They could be assimilated to Christianity by renaming them. The old daimons of hills, rivers and rocks, the genii loci, were Christianized into saints and the Virgin Mary - who supplanted many a nymph of stream and holy well. In this way, the daimons have retained their mediatory function in a Christian disguise, conciliating God on our behalf.

In both cases the demonizing and Christianizing of the daimons imply a polarizing of their essentially contradictory nature. Like all monotheistic religions, Christianity is intolerant of daimonic ambiguity. Daimons cannot, for instance, be allowed to be both benevolent and malign; they must be divided into either devils or angels. The man responsible for introducing angels into Christianity was the anonymous fifth-century mystic known as Dionysius the Areopagite. Although he was a Christian, his works were heavily indebted to the Neoplatonists, and particularly to Proclus, who taught in Athens around AD 430. Dionysius appropriated the Neoplatonic daimons, but did away with their ambiguity, making them into purely spiritual, angelic beings.

The Neoplatonic understanding of the daimons' ambiguity, and of their crucial role as intermediaries, goes back to Plato. In his dialogue, The Symposium, Socrates stresses that we have no contact with the gods or

18

God except through the daimons who `interpret and convey the wishes of men to the gods and the will of gods to men . . . Only through the daimons', he says, `is there conversation between men and gods, whether in the waking state or during sleep.' Anyone who is an expert in such intercourse is 'a daimonic man 1.22

In the early centuries of the Christian era there were many types of daimonic men and women. Prophetai relayed messages from the Otherworld, though not necessarily predictions; while ekstatikoi (ecstatics) was a neutral psychological term applied to anyone in whom normal consciousness was temporarily or permanently disturbed. The early Fathers of the Church were either prophetai or pneumatikoi, `filled with the spirit'.23 Entheoi, `filled with god', applied to any medium, seer or shaman - as we now tend to call the wise woman and cunning man, the medicine-man and witch-doctor, who are so central to traditional cultures.

Shamans - the word comes from the Tungus of Siberia - are a combination of poet, priest and doctor. These three functions have in our culture been divided up among professionals who are no longer trained in daimonic intercourse. Priests usually mediate between us and God via the sacraments, without themselves seeing the need to enter an ecstatic trance; but there will always be charismatics and spiritualists who do.

Oddly enough, our nearest equivalent to the traditional shaman is probably the depth psychologist, who recognizes an autonomous and dynamic unconscious, analogous to the Otherworld of the daimons. The Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung, for example, was clearly a daimonic man. He dreamed of a daimon, a winged being sailing across the sky, who turned out to be an old man with horns.24 He soon began to visit Jung during waking hours as well. `At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality', wrote Jung. `I went walking up and down the garden with him ... He brought me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which have their own life ... like animals in the forest or people in a room ... It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche.'25

We notice that Jung's daimon appears equally while he is asleep and awake, just as Plato described. It is during sleep, in dreams, that those of

19

us who have no daimonic vocation nevertheless encounter daimons. We may not have many shamanic visions or those `big dreams' which prophetically concern the whole tribe rather than just the individual; but we have all had, I suppose, one or two. Besides, as Jung has shown, there is a sense in which all dreams, no matter how personal, potentially open out into impersonal territory - that is, into myth.

In a previous book, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld, I recounted a great many reports of encounters by ordinary people with daimons in the form of strangely lit flying objects, large hairy monsters, white ladies, black dogs, tall angelic beings, small ugly `aliens' - all of which have been regularly and globally sighted. My interest in this book is more to do with daimonic manifestation other than in this direct, visionary and apparitional, way. But since it should not be forgotten that daimons still appear in their traditional and, it seems, preferred personified form, it might be appropriate to provide a short reminder of the immediacy of daimonic encounters which, if we allow them, present such a challenge to our usual view of reality. I have deliberately chosen a category of daimon which has been most open to ridicule: the so-called Little People. But I am aware too that just as all attempts at categorizing the daimons are confounded by the shape-changing daimons themselves, this category is no exception. The Little People may not be so little; for, as a fairy once remarked to a Sligo man, `I am bigger than I appear to you now. We can make the old young, the big small, the small big.'26

The Little People are about eighteen inches tall, perfectly proportioned, with hair that grows down to their heels. Some wear gold caps; others go bare-headed. Their footsteps and voices wake people at night, but if you get up you find nothing - although food may be missing. Sometimes, standing by a stream, you might hear what sounds like children laughing; but when you look, there is no one there, and you know it was the Little People.27 This is how two Cherokee women described the Yunw Tsunsdi who live a hidden existence side by side with the Cherokee people of North Carolina. They are very like the daimons who inhabit all Europe but who have survived best, perhaps, in their Celtic strongholds from Brittany to Ireland, where the most detailed modern descriptions come from.

Marie Ezanno of Carnac described the corrigans of Brittany as

20

mischievous little dwarves who lived under dolmens, danced in circles, made a whistling sound, and behaved brutally to anyone they had a grudge against.' Gwen Hubert wrote in 1928 that she had seen a pixy close to Shaugh Bridge on Dartmoor in Devon. It was like a little old man, about eighteen inches high, with a little pointed hat, a doublet and `little short knicker things. Its face was brown and wrinkled and wizened,' she said. `I saw it for a moment and then it vanished.'"

In June 1952, Mrs C. Woods saw a little man standing beside some large boulders on Haytor, a rocky outcrop on the moors near Newton Abbot in Devonshire. `He moved out from the rock and seemed to be watching her, shading his eyes from the sun ...'30 She approached him cautiously. `He was dressed in what looked like a brown smock ... [which] came almost to his knees, and his legs appeared to be covered in some brown material. If he had anything on his head it was a flat brown cap, or else he had brown hair. He appeared to be three or four feet tall and seemed elderly rather than young.'31 When she was within forty yards of him, he dived out of sight under a boulder.

The Little People who helped the Inuit (Eskimo) shaman, described by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, were called aua - little women no longer than an arm's length, with pointed caps, short bearskin trousers and high boots, which held upward-turned feet so that they seemed to walk only on their heels.32 The Little People of Ghana, West Africa, are known as Asamanukpai. They are slightly bigger than a monkey; coloured black, white or red; and their feet are turned back to front. The older ones are the largest and have beards. They eat and dance on outcrops of smooth rock, which they polish. If you enter their haunts, it is advisable to propitiate them with offerings of rum placed against their dancingstones and with pans of clear water in which they like to bathe and splash. If they are disturbed or annoyed, they will stone the offender, lead him into the depths of the forest and lose him there. Occasionally, however, they will teach him all they know. They will squeeze into his eyes, ears and mouth the juice of a plant which enables him thereafter to hear everyone's thoughts, to foresee all events, and to sing and talk with the Asamanukpai.33

In 1970, a forester called Aarno Heinonen and a farmer called Esko Viljo were out skiing in the woods near Imjarvi, southern Finland, when they came on a strange little man.34 He was only about a metre tall, with thin arms and legs, a pale waxy face, small ears that narrowed towards the

21

head and he was dressed in green with a conical hat. Aarno felt as if he had been seized by the waist and pulled backwards. Afterwards, his right side felt numb and his leg would not support him - Esko had to drag him home. He attributed these effects to a yellow pulsating light aimed at him from a black box the little man was holding.

This classic elf or fairy had appeared, however, in unfairy-like circumstances: moments before, the two men had been stopped in their tracks by a round craft which hovered above them. Then `the huge disc began to descend', said Esko, `so near I could have touched it with my stick'.35 It sent an intense beam of white light downwards on to the forest floor. It was then that Aarno was pulled backwards. At the same moment he saw the little man standing in the light beam. Eventually the `craft' gave off a red-grey mist which enveloped both the creature and the men, such that they could no longer see each other. When it dispersed, light, creature and craft had disappeared.

The intriguing thing about this encounter is the way it combines traditional European fairy motifs with modern ufological features, as if it were a transitional species. The so-called extraterrestrials who appeared in conjunction with `spacecraft' to innocent bystanders in the 19506 were relatively benign; but they became smaller and darker with the passing of the decades until in the i98os and 199os there was an epidemic - in the USA, at least - of little grey aliens with skinny bodies and features which were at best rudimentary, apart from their enormous, almondshaped and completely black eyes.36 The `greys' - or `grays' - as they have come to be known may be a new species of daimon, peculiar to the very Western culture whose orthodox world-view denies the existence of daimons. But it is more likely that they are the old immortal daimons who masquerade in whatever guise suits the times. Banished from their original natural habitats, they return from outside Nature, from `outer space', brandishing an `advanced technology' which duplicates the supernatural power of the Sidhe.

22

No matter how eccentric the aspect of daimons, they tend to appear as beings analogous to humans. But they can appear in three other ways: as the ancestors or the Dead; as animals; or as humans who are witches or witch-doctors, sorcerers or shamans. Each of these three categories can, in one culture or another, play the part of daimons and assume all their attributes; or else overlap with the daimons. For example, the Dead are sometimes seen among the fairies. Someone who has been `taken' is as likely to have been abducted, taken by the fairies, as to have died, taken by God. In Brittany, the fairies have been completely replaced by the Dead, who are said to be more slender than the living; who have secret paths; who need food to be left out for them; who take people; who shape-shift - all exactly like the fairies.'

In traditional societies physical death is not thought of as a breach with the living. Life and death are not opposites; rather, it is birth which is the opposite of death, while life remains continuous. The Dead remain part of the tribe. Our words for describing the Dead - ghost, spirit, shade - distort the sense of the traditional term which is usually just `dead man'.2 Death merely signifies a change in the individual; it is only the last in the series of initiatory `deaths' which have accompanied him or her through life. Just as the living can be considered essentially dead if their soul has been stolen by daimons or eaten by witches, so the Dead are thought of as still active in the community - often to an undesirable extent.' In the Far East the Dead often appear as `hungry ghosts' who have to be fed - appeased and propitiated - in the same way that the Sidhe have to be fed if they are not to grow importunate and even dangerous. This was especially important at Samhain, now Hallowe'en, when this world and the otherworld draw closer together.

Although literal food may well be left out for the daimons, there is no sense in which they literally need feeding. At most they are said to eat the likeness or essence of the food.4 Afterwards, the milk or butter left out for

23

the fairies has no nourishment left. The food given to the Dead in what used to be British New Guinea was consumed at the funerary feast; but it was understood that its goodness had been extracted.'

Feeding signifies heeding, the attention the daimons demand, and also the kind of vitality peculiar to humans. Sometimes the daimons need stronger stuff than milk and butter. When a Gol'd shaman of Siberia is possessed `like smoke or vapour' by his daimon lover, his ayami, he drinks pig's blood, taboo for everyone else. But it is really the ayami who drinks it.' We remember too how Odysseus dug a trench and filled it with ox blood before summoning the spirits of the Dead, none of whom was substantial enough to speak until they had each drunk some of the blood.' There is always a touch of the vampire about the Otherworld. Daimons are hungry for this world, just as we are hungry for theirs. Not for their food - it is fatal to eat in fairyland or Hades alike lest we become trapped there - but for their psychic nourishment, as if they craved our bodily life as we long for the life of the soul.

The Chinese feed both the Kwei-shins who are the ancestors and those who are the daimons of hills and rivers. But they are explicit about the metaphorical nature of the feeding. The most important food for the ancestors is filial piety; and for the daimons, respect." The `first dictate of wisdom' according to Confucius, is to `attend to the affairs of the people, respect the Kwei-shins, and keep them at a distance'.' They should be treated, he says, `with stern dignity, not with undue familiarity'.10 For there is always this sense that, as Yeats remarked, the fairies do not want too much to be known about them." They are especially dangerous if they see you before you see them.12

It is extremely common for traditional cultures to believe that animals organize themselves into societies which mirror human society. Animals are also the ancestors: tribal clans from Canada to Australia claim descent from bears and seals, say, or kangaroos and wombats. Yet such animals tend in mythology to be anthropomorphized, not exactly animals, not quite humans - in other words, daimons. Indeed, any animal can suddenly seem not right as the Irish say - can seem, that is, uncanny. The deer that leads a knight through the forest to the enchanted castle is really the princess who lives there. Whereas the Irish say that such an animal is a fairy in the shape

24

of an animal, it is more commonly believed to be a human being - either a dead one whose spirit has taken animal form, or a living witch or shaman who can change at will into animal form." The strange children, or changelings, whom the fairies leave in exchange for the human child they have taken, are said in many tribal cultures to be the offspring of animals."

Just as the dead man in Melanesia who comes back as a shark" is believed to be simultaneously in the land of the Dead, so a witch or shaman can be both at home in his or her hut and also roaming the forest as a wild beast. British witches changed into hares. Their familiars - black cats, for instance - were analogous to the `spirit-animals' who assist shamans in their business of curing (or cursing). But there was always a sense in which the familiars were the emanation of the witch herself. Humans and animals are interchangeable. It is not so much that a human soul enters an animal; it is more that human and animal are a single being, but present in two places at once, whether as a wereleopard in West Africa, a werejaguar in Brazil,16 a werewolf in eastern Europe ('wer' is the Anglo-Saxon word for `man').

The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski tried to get to the bottom of Trobriand Island beliefs about witches. Called yoyova in everyday life, they became mulukmansi when they actively practised witchcraft. He established that they cast off their bodies - or, as they said, `peeled off their skins' - which remained sleeping in their beds while the witch flew off naked. But he wanted to know more precisely: was it the witch herself who flew away or was it her `emanation'? What exactly is mulukwansi that flies through the air as a firefly or a shooting star? Who is it that stays behind?" He never got definite replies to these questions, which I shall shortly be answering.

In the meantime, it is worth remembering that tales of skin-shedding are extremely widespread. For example, all along the northern seaboard of Europe the story is told of the young man who sees a flock of seals swimming towards a deserted shore under a full moon.18 They step out of their skins to reveal themselves as beautiful young women who dance naked on the sand. The young man steals one of the skins, preventing its owner from resuming her seal form. He marries her and they have children. But she constantly searches for the seal skin her husband has hidden, until at last she finds it. `One hot day', a Scottish version from North Uist tells us, `her human child comes to her, saying "0 mother, is not

25

this the strange thing I have found in the old barley-kist, a thing softer than mist to my touch." Quickly, deftly, the seal woman put it on and took the straight track to the shore. And, with a dip down and keck up she went, lilting her sea-joy in the cool sea water."9

In West Africa it is crocodiles who, the Toradjas believe, take off their skins when ashore and assume human shape.20 The Dowayos of Cameroon believe the reverse: sorcerers take off their skins at night to become leopards.21 Such beliefs are as old as they are widespread. In Norse mythology, for instance, the hero Sigmund and his nephew Sinfiotl find two wolf-skins in the forest and, putting them on, become wolves whose adventures seem to constitute an initiation for Sinfiotl.22 Skinshedding is a variation, rich in metaphor, for shape-changing; for it tells us, among other things, that there is only the softest, mistiest skin between this world and the Other.

One of the chief expressions of our relationship with the daimonic is marriage. Union with the Dead is usually an unholy business in which, like hungry ghosts, like incubi, they return to drain our vitality or steal our souls, holding us in thrall. Union with animals, on the other hand, is usually fruitful. `We know what the animals do,' said a Carrier tribesman of the Bulkeley River, `... because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives.'23

In myth and folklore, men travel like Orpheus into the Otherworld. They go out of love or desire, voluntarily or in dread. A leannan sidhe can lure you against your will into Tir-na-nOg; in Irish mythology Oisin went of his own accord for the love of pearl-pale Niamh.24 Sigurd, the Norse hero, braved a ring of fire to find the valkyr Brynhild. But just as mermaids and seal-wives can be held in this world, so heroes can remain trapped or enchanted in the otherworld, like Odysseus on Calypso's isle or mighty Heracles at the court of Omphale, queen of Lydia, where he grew soft and timorous and dressed in girl's clothing.

Analytical psychology talks of the need to unite masculine consciousness with the feminine unconscious, personified by the anima archetype. Poets talk less abstractly of a muse who is both a seductive source of inspiration and a dangerous, heartless and demanding sorceress.

26

Keats describes her in La Belle Dame sans Merci and in Lamia. She is the personal daimon who, once awakened, will try to become the centre of the personality. From earliest times, she `came to the poet as a god, took possession of him, delivered the poem, then left him', writes the poet Ted Hughes feelingly.25 It was axiomatic, he goes on, that she lived her own life separate from the poet's everyday personality; that she was entirely outside his control; and that she was, above all, supernatural. Both W. B. Yeats and C. G. Jung speak of her in similar terms, as a daimon who ruthlessly had her way with them;26 whom they had no choice but to follow, often to the detriment of their human life; and whom they struggled with and wooed all their days - `for man and Daimon feed the hunger in one another's hearts'.27

Hughes explicitly relates poets to shamans, and their muses to the female daimons who, in Siberia for example, summon the shaman to his vocation, offer him love and even cohabit with him.28 Among the Teleuts, the daimon lover like a fairy queen enchants the fledgling shaman with lavish hospitality, including delicious food served on gold and silver dishes. The male Siberian shaman's costume usually incorporates female symbols, while among the Chuckchi, shamans can take on the whole identity of their daimons, dressing as women, doing women's work and using the special language spoken only by women. They may even marry other men. There is a similar tradition of male transvestism among native Americans, who call it berdache. `Among the Navajo the berdache is called nadle meaning "one who is transformed" . . . When berdaches became shamans they were regarded as exceptionally powerful.'

The daimonic realm, then, is sometimes imagined as the Otherworld of the animal kingdom, or of the Dead, or of a separate race, like the Sidhe - but all of them have a reciprocal relationship with this world, expressed through metaphors of nourishing and marriage. Now that the human unconscious has become the locus of the Otherworld, psychotherapists might do well to keep these metaphors in mind: we feed the daimons in order to prevent them becoming unruly, and we maintain a close, even erotic relationship with them so that they need not relate to us by force, taking matters into their own hands. Indeed, the involuntary relationship with the Otherworld - daimonic abduction - is what I want to consider next.

27

The Reverend Robert Kirk, author of The Secret Commonwealth, was taking the air outside his manse at Aberfoyle in Scotland one night in 1692. Dressed only in his nightshirt, he wandered over to a favourite spot nearby - a fairy hill or `fort'. He was only around fifty at the time, and in good health, but he suddenly collapsed. His body was carried home and in due course buried in Aberfoyle kirkyard.

Some time later, tradition has it, Kirk appeared to one of his relatives and gave him a message for his cousin, Graham of Duchray: Kirk declared that he was not dead but a captive among the fairies. He announced that he would appear again at the christening of the child his wife had borne him after his alleged death. As soon as he was seen, Graham was to throw a knife over him, thus breaking the fairy enchantment and restoring him to this world. Sure enough, while everyone was seated at the table for the christening feast, Kirk appeared. Graham, however, was so astonished that he omitted to throw the knife. Kirk retired, never to be seen again.'

The belief that Kirk is in fairyland endured. More than two hundred years later, the woman who kept the key to the churchyard told W. Y. Evans-Wentz, a young American researcher into fairylore, that Kirk's tomb contained a coffin full of stones. Kirk himself, she said, had been taken into the fairy hill, which she pointed out.' In 1943, the folklorist Katharine Briggs met a young woman at Methven who had rented the manse at Aberfoyle. Expecting a baby, the woman was anxious to get back to the manse before her baby was born because it was said that, if a baby was born and christened there - and providing a dirk was thrust into the seat of his chair - Kirk could yet be freed from fairyland.'

There is a strong intimation here that Kirk paid the price of looking too closely into the affairs of the fairies, who do not wish too much to be known about them.

28

Although tales of the abduction of mortals by daimons are perhaps most associated with the old Celtic areas, they are universal. But abductees are not always taken, like Kirk, for ever. Here are two accounts from the New World, one native and the other immigrant.

In his book Myths of the Cherokees (i go i ), James Mooney tells the tale of a hunter who discovered in the mountain snows some tiny footprints which the Cherokees had no trouble in identifying as those of the Yunw Tsunsdi. He followed the prints to a cave where little people were dancing and drumming. They took him in, gave him food and a place to sleep, and he stayed there for sixteen days. His friends, who had been searching for him, thought he must have died.

But, Mooney continued, `after he was well rested, they had brought him a part of the way home until they had come to a small creek about knee deep, when they told him to wade across to reach the main trail on the other side. He waded across and turned to look back, but the Little People were gone, and the creek was a deep river. When he reached home, his legs were frozen, and he lived only a few days."

A miner called Tom from Bell Island, Conception Bay, Newfoundland, described how his buddy Jimmy had asked him to cover for him at work for ten minutes while he popped into the woods. It was eleven a.m. Jimmy did not come back. Search parties were sent out, the police were involved, everything, for two or three days. On the third day Jimmy reappeared `a- beaming like an electric light bulb' and claiming to have been gone for only an hour. He had met `the nicest little people' who `had food and beer, and danced and played the accordion. Real friendly, he said ... Yes sir, he was the only one that was ever treated that good by the fairies. But people always thought him a little queer after that. And you know, he swore it was the truth right up until he died. And you know something else, I believe him."

The Sidhe most often take young adults or babies. A young man from County Donegal called Neil Colton was out picking bilberries with his brother and his female cousin when they heard music. `We hurried around the rocks, and there we were within a few hundred feet of six or eight of the gentle folk [fairies], and they dancing. When they saw us, a little

29

woman dressed all in red came running out from them towards us, and she struck my cousin across the face with what seemed to be a green rush. We ran for home as hard as we could, and when my cousin reached the house, she fell dead. Father saddled a horse and went for Father Regan [the priest]. When Father Regan arrived, he put a stole about his neck and began praying over my cousin and reading psalms and striking her with the stole; and in that way brought her back. He said if she had not caught hold of my brother, she would have been taken for ever.'6

Death is not as absolute in traditional cultures as it is in Christian, or other monotheistic, societies. It is more like a prolonged stay in the otherworld, and the Dead are always liable to come back in daimonic form. Abductees usually do come back, sometimes after a few hours, sometimes after a few years. Berry-pickers in Newfoundland, for instance, were often led astray by the Good People, to be discovered later in a state of dishevelment, bruising and amnesia? - very like those who claim to have been abducted by aliens after a UFO sighting. And like the UFO abductees, the berry-pickers only begin to remember after a time what happened: the unearthly music that lured them in the first place, the dance they were swept up in.8

Others returned after a longer time, hardly recognizable or terribly aged, scarred or simple-minded.' In Ireland the fairy abductees were sometimes allowed to return to their villages after a while, seven years perhaps, or multiples of seven. But they were only sent back when their years on earth had run out -'old spent men and women, thought to have been dead a long time, given back to die and be buried on the face of the earth'.10 The otherworld, whether of the daimons or the Dead, is at certain moments or places transparent to this world.

When babies are taken, changelings are left in their place. Human daimons also take babies: witches traditionally boil them up for salves and potions. But throughout history, whenever a group of people has been thought of as daimonic - marginal, uncanny, alien - it has also been immediately suspected of abducting babies. The Romans accused the Christians, the Christians accused the Jews, everyone accused the Gypsies." We are always quick to make daimons - and, more often, demons - of other people. It is common for a tribe to attribute to a neighbouring tribe all the activities usually associated with witches, such as baby-eating, incest and the evil eye.'Z

30

All over the world witchcraft is held responsible for the theft of souls. The victims fall ill, waste away and even die unless a good sorcerer or shaman can be found to travel into the Otherworld and retrieve the lost soul. The Sidhe similarly abduct young adults `through the eye of a neighbour, the evil eye', perhaps, `or by a touch, a blow, a fall, a sudden terror'." Those who suffer such a `stroke' waste away from this world, `lending their strength to the invisible ones'." A person taken by the Sidhe is said to be away. What remains, says Lady Gregory, `is a body in their likeness, or the likeness of a body'.15 It may be a log that is left, or a broomstick, or just a heap of shavings.

The Sidhe need human robustness, wrote Yeats," while we need their wisdom. Just as they take young mothers to suckle their babies and young women for wives, so the modern `aliens' - the so-called greys - take female ova or foetuses in order to strengthen their race." The lack of reciprocity in early versions of this interesting folklore was later amended when it became widely believed that the aliens were in cahoots with the government, who sanctioned their activities in exchange for their `wisdom' - in this case an advanced extraterrestrial technology.

Thus the motif of abduction by witches, fairies, the Dead - by any sort of daimon - seems to be universal, and even persists in the shadows of our own enlightened culture. Moreover it does not always appear in an obvious way, as my next example shows.

In Haiti, the stealing of souls by sorcerers is a crime under the Penal Code and is considered to be murder.18 A boko, or sorcerer, extracts a person's soul by magic or else captures it after natural death. He keeps it in a bottle or jar. But he also - and this is a peculiarly Haitian innovation - steals the body from its tomb and revives it. The body retains its animating principle (gwo-bon and) but has lost its agency, awareness and memory. In short, it has become a zombi which is easily enslaved and put to work in the bokos' slave camps. No one ever sees these camps, even though the mountains are said to be as full of bokos as any Nature daimons. No one ever stumbles across them, even though the population density of Haiti is very high. Yet these secret camps are believed to exist, holding vast numbers of zombis who cannot escape unless the boko dies or the jars containing their souls, or zombi astrals, break.

31

Notwithstanding, up to a thousand zombis are estimated to turn up every year. The population recognizes them immediately by their fixed stare, by their repeated, purposeless and clumsy actions and by their limited repetitious speech. They are objects of pity rather than fear, which is reserved for the bokos.

In 1997, Professor Littlewood and Dr Douyon investigated three cases of zombification, including Wilfrid Dorissant, the first zombi to be accredited by a Haitian high court. He escaped from his boko's clutches nineteen months after his death of a sudden fever at the age of eighteen. He returned home as a zombi. He recognized his father and accused his uncle of zombifying him. He was tied to a log to stop him wandering off. Although he has a mannerism which Wilfrid possessed and a broken finger which his mother identified as Wilfrid's, his friends say he is different. He has had `a change of soul'. His father is convinced that Wilfrid is his son, but says that `he has lost his soul', as if he also acknowledged some essential change in the boy.19

The second case Littlewood and Douyon investigated was that of a woman known as F. I. She died at the age of thirty and was buried the same day in the family tomb next to her house. Three years later a friend recognized her wandering near the village. Her mother confirmed her identity by a facial mark - as did her daughter, siblings, husband and local priest. She could not speak or feed herself. Her husband was accused of zombifying her after she had had an affair. `After the local court authorized the opening of her tomb, which was full of stones, her parents were undecided whether to take her home ...'20 She was placed in a psychiatric hospital in Port-au-Prince. Littlewood examined her and diagnosed catatonic schizophrenia. The people at a market where she was taken on an outing, on the other hand, immediately recognized her as a zombi.

The third case seems to have been solved. A girl called Marie Moncoeur died at the age of eighteen but reappeared thirteen years later, claiming to have been kept as a zombi in a village a hundred miles to the north, only to be released when the boko died. She did not seem to people like a typical zombi. She was recognized by her family, and especially by her brother.

When Littlewood and Douyon took her to the village where she claimed to have been kept, she was immediately named as a local woman, known

32

to be simple, who had been abducted by a band of musicians. She was greeted by a daughter and a brother. Both this family and her `first' family accused each other of zombifying her. DNA `fingerprinting' suggested that she was related to neither of the men who claimed to be her brothers, but that she was likely to be the mother of the child she said was her daughter.21

Later on, I shall describe the way myths, which may look very different from each other on the surface, turn out to be structured in much the same way underneath: they are symmetrical but inverted versions of each other. This is also true of zombi folklore, which is closer to European folklore than it seems.

A zombi's tomb when opened, for instance, is found to contain stones, just like the Reverend Kirk's. Mysterious scars are found on zombis like those found on alien abductees or on those `touched' by the fairies. A corpse must be decapitated, like a vampire, to prevent it being zombified. Salt is fatal to fairies and, usually, to the Dead; but it is not mentioned as dangerous to the bokos. Instead, it is positively helpful to the zombis - they escape enslavement if they are inadvertently fed it by their boko masters.

But zombis also invert the usual order of abductions. Instead of their souls being snatched while their bodies are left behind, their souls remain behind, as it were, in the bokos' jars while their bodies are abducted into the Otherworld of the slave camps. When they return they are recognized by strangers who believe they are relations, while, with fairy abductions, the people left behind are strangers, mere `likenesses' scarcely recognized by their relations. Western culture regards both cases as delusional. Having debunked their literal reality, it is satisfied that they have no reality at all. It therefore misses the deeper reality of abductions which are working out at a collective level the perennial problem of the relationship between soul and body, and which are testimony to the generally held view that the soul is pre-eminent. No one expects a zombi to look like the person they were before the boko stole their souls. They are like the `logs' left behind by the fairies when they steal the essence of the person, just as they steal the essence of food.

It is as if traditional cultures cannot decide whether the soul or the body

33

is taken, or whether both are taken - certainly there is a reluctance to separate them, even while there is a sense that some sort of separation is inevitable. The same conundrum vexed the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. His Trobriand Island witches `peeled off their skins' and flew away naked. But in Africa there are Basotho who assert that witches in flight simply go in their entirety, both body and soul. The Thonga, however, say that the noyi (witch) is only part of the personality. `When he flies away, his "shadow" remains behind him, lying down on the mat. But it is not truly the body which remains. It appears as such only to the stupid uninitiated. In reality what remains is a wild beast, the one with which the noyi has chosen to identify himself.'u

Victims of alien abduction usually believe that they were physically taken into a spacecraft by extraterrestrials, but sometimes they describe the event as an out-of-the-body experience. Western esotericists believe in a `subtle' or `astral' body, analogous to the `ghost-body' or `dreambody' of so many traditional cultures, which is the seat of consciousness in an `out-of- the-body experience'. It may be that traditional cultures are wise, through their many different versions of such experiences, not to take this sort of body too literally. If you do, you are liable to mistake it for your physical body and so come to believe that you had, for example, been beamed up into a spaceship. On the contrary, it is more usual - almost universal outside our culture - to understand that the physical body is also `subtle' and that it can therefore easily be taken into the Otherworld because it is not in the first instance a literal thing.

In other words, it is a purely Western peculiarity to confuse the literal and the physical. It is the result of the Christian polarizing of soul and body. Outside Christendom, and other monotheistic religions, the soul is as quasi-material as the body is quasi-spiritual - both forming a daimonic whole. We are fluid organisms, passing easily between this world and the other, between life and death.

We are like the seal-woman whom, in an inversion of fairylore, we abduct from her world. We do not take her soul and leave her body behind because no such distinction exists for a daimon. We take her `skin'; and this stands for both soul and body because she is fully herself both with it and without it, but in the first case a seal and in the second, a woman. As traditional cultures suspect, we too may be not so much dual beings as single beings with dual aspects - we differ according to the element we are

34

in. We too are daimonic.

When Christian saints are disinterred and found to have sweetsmelling uncorrupted bodies, the miracle is ascribed to their holiness and purity of life. But the bodies of shamans are similarly said not to decay.23 Indeed, bad shamans or sorcerers are sometimes only detected after death when, continuing their nefarious activities, they are finally suspected and their bodies dug up - only to be found in a pristine state. In other words, those who traffic with the Otherworld become in some sense immune to death. Their souls continue to flit between worlds while their bodies, if not actually animate, are not actually dead either. They are `undead', sympathetically echoing the life of the soul.

I shall return to the question of body and soul towards the end of the book, where I discuss the phenomenon known as `loss of soul'. For the moment I want to consider the realm the daimons are said to inhabit: the Otherworld.

35

St Patrick's Purgatory was one of the most famous places of pilgrimage in Europe during the medieval period. It was a kind of cave, it seems, on an island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, in the north-west of Ireland. Thousands of pilgrims still visit the island every year to do penance. The present Basilica is said to have been built over the original cave which was demolished by Bishop Spottiswoode of Clogher in 1632. He called it `a poor beggarly hole'.' But the earliest accounts represent the cave as `a kind of pit with steps leading down to a considerable depth'.' In 1411, Antonio Mannini described the cave as being three feet by nine feet, and high enough to kneel but not to stand. According to one pilgrim, Knight Owen, who visited it in 1147, the cave appeared small from the outside but was cavernous within. He followed a long dark passageway towards a distant glimmer of light which finally brought him to a vast open cloister. Here he was greeted by fifteen men clothed in white who warned Owen that terrible demons would try to force him to return, but, if he succumbed to their threats, he would die.