Note: This was a class assignment for Death and the Maiden
Life is bookended by two great spiritual and physical transitions: birth and death. And it is women who tend to these passings. It is women who experience the quickening of new life inside their wombs. It is women who feel the pain of childbirth. And it is often women who tend to the dead. In Ancient Egypt it was women who washed and cleansed the bodies of the dead and it was women, known as the Kites of Nephthys, who keened for the souls who were lost (SCALERA, n.d.). It was women who came to Christ’s tomb to tend his body in a final act of love only to find he had been resurrected. And centuries later, it was women who performed the role of watcher to certify a person’s death and tend to their body (Gershon, 2019).
With women so intimately involved in both birth and death, which are physical as well as spiritual passages, it makes sense that women’s mystical experiences are also somatic. Although Bynum wrote that modern reader may find that the medieval divide between spiritual and physical was violated by depictions of Christ as female or a mutilated body (Bynum, 1991, p. 182) or that such depictions are distasteful, there are parallels for the medieval mystic experience in more recent history. One of the most hallowed of birthday traditions, at least pre-pandemic, is blowing out the candles and making a wish. In some ways, this echoes the practice of holy people blowing on people to convey grace (Bynum, 1991, p. 184) as both are an act of exsufflation with the express purpose of making something good happen. The Holy Virgins of the Low Country lactated and effected cures with their breast milk (Bynum, 1991, p. 184)and while this is written as a spiritual act, there is a possibility that the Holy Virgins manifested the lactation through their sincere belief that they could lactate. This would be similar to pseudocyesis which occurs when a strong belief that she is pregnant tricks a woman’s body into manifesting the symptoms of pregnancy, including a swollen belly and lactating breasts (Watson, 2022).
The connection between body and spirit could also explain the hallucinations, visions, and ecstaticg dancing that medieval mystics sometimes experienced (Bynum, 1991). This behavior is similar to that experienced by the “bewitched” in Salem who danced ecstatically and had visions. There is a possibility that medieval mystics were experiencing rye ergot, which creates hallucinogenic properties in moldy bread (Lienhard, 1997). Self-inflicted suffering, such as self-flagellation and denial of food, used by medieval mystics (Bynum, 1991, p. 186) also has parallels in the ritual of tattooing, which some in the modern day use as form of spiritual expression (Gustavo Morello, 2021). From personal experience, I know that tattooing is a spiritual practice as the tattoos I chose to adorn my body represent spiritual expressions: the symbol of Nephthys on my arm represents my connection to the goddess, the phoenix on my shoulder is my rising above the pain of my divorce, and the scorpion on my ankle represents beauty covering the ugliness of scar. Sitting for the tattoo is also a spiritual experience as to get the ink right, you are required to sit through the pain and the pain of tattooing opens up spiritual channels which can feel like visitations from the Gods.
Death frees the spirit from the body, but through mysticism and shamanism some people are able to soar above their body to commune with the divine. Images of Jesus, either on the cross or as chopped up meat (Bynum, 1991, p. 182), are one way that death connects mystics to the divine. Another is through relics, pieces of the bodies of dead saints. Some religious people believe that these relics contain the essence of holy people and that by connecting with the relics, they too can touch the divine. This practice lives on in the modern day practice of communion where the communion wafer takes on the essence of Christ so that followers can commune with the essence of Christ (Bynum, 1991, p. 185).
Although not highlighted in the readings this week, there are similarities between mysticism and shamanism including illness as a calling (Kinsley, 1996, p. 14) and visions of death and decapitation as part of the initiatory experience (Kinsley, 1996, p. 89). Both of these were also experiences of medieval mystics as when female mystics prayed for disease as a sign from god (Bynum, 1991, p. 188) and when Christ appeared to Collette as a bowl of chopped meat and visions of Christ on the cross. Giving the similarities between mystics and shamans and the history of women tending to the dead, it would not be too farfetched to believe that medieval female mystics played the shamanic role of psychopomp, or guide, for the dying.
References
Bynum, C. W. (1991). The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages. In C. W. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays On Gender and the Human Body In Medieval Religion (pp. 181-238). New York: Zone Books.
Gershon, L. (2019, January 11). When Death Was Women’s Business. Retrieved from JStor Daily: https://daily.jstor.org/when-death-was-womens-business/
Gustavo Morello, S. (2021, December 2). For many, a tattoo isn’t just ink. It’s a religious experience. Retrieved from America: The Jesuit Society: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/12/02/religious-tattoos-241412
Kinsley, D. (1996). Health, Healing, and Religion: A Cross Cultural Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Lienhard, J. H. (1997). No. 1037: RYE ERGOT AND WITCHES. Retrieved from Engines of our Ingenuity: https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1037.htm#:~:text=In%201976%20Linnda%20Caporael%20offered,followed%20by%20a%20wet%20spring.
SCALERA, R. (n.d.). DEATH BECOMES HER. Retrieved from The Culture Crush: https://www.theculturecrush.com/feature/2019/12/3/death-becomes-her
Watson, S. (2022, August 12). False Pregnancy (Pseudocyesis). Retrieved from WebMD: https://www.webmd.com/baby/false-pregnancy-pseudocyesis#:~:text=False%20pregnancy%2C%20clinically%20termed%20pseudocyesis,exception%20of%20an%20actual%20fetus.