DEFINITION.—Ecstasy is a derangement of the nervous system characterized by an exalted visionary state, absence of volition, insensibility to surroundings, a radiant expression, and immobility in statuesque positions. The term ecstasy is derived from two Greek words, ἐκ and στάσις, which means to be out of one's senses or to be beside one's self. Commonly, ecstasy and catalepsy, or ecstasy and hystero-epilepsy, or all three of these disorders, alternate, coexist, or occur at intervals in the same individual. Occasionally, however, the ecstatic seizure is the only disorder which attracts attention. Usually, in ecstasy the concentration of mind and the visionary appearance have reference to religious or spiritual objects.
SYNONYMS.—Trance is sometimes used as synonymous with ecstasy. While, however, ecstasy is a trance-like condition, conditions of trance occur which are not forms of ecstasy. Other synonyms are Carus-extasis, Catochus, Catalepsia spuria.
HISTORY AND LITERATURE.—Accounts of cases of ecstasy abound in both ancient and modern medical and religious literature. The epidemics of the Middle Ages, the days of the New England witchcraft, the revivals in England and America, have afforded many striking illustrations. Not a few special cases of ecstasy have become historical. Elizabeth of Hungary and Joan of Arc were both cataleptics and ecstatics. Saint Gertrude, Saint Bridget, Saint Theresa, Saint Catharine, and many other saintly individuals of minor importance have owed their canonization and their fame to the facility with which they could pass into states of ecstasy, catalepsy, or hystero-epilepsy.
Gibbon1 has well described the occurrence of ecstasy in the monks of the Oriental Church in the following passage: “The fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental Church were alike persuaded that in total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions and practices of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. ‘When thou art alone in thy cell,’ says the ascetic teacher, ‘shut thy door and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and thy chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light.’ This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus the monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology, who possessed the languages of the Greeks and Latins, and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds according to the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the soul in the navel—of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy.”
1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Esq., in 8 vols., vol. viii. p. 64, London, 1838.
Some of Swedenborg's supernatural visions were, so far as can be judged, simply accounts of attacks of ecstasy; and of like character were the visions of John Engelbrecht as related by Arnold.2
2 Observations, etc., London, 1806.
In a very curious American book3 published in 1815 a history is given of the wonderful performances of a woman named Rachel Baker, who was undoubtedly in the habit of passing into conditions of religious ecstasy, during which were present many of the phenomena which occur in ecstatics, Catholic or Protestant, religious or otherwise. When seventeen years old she witnessed the baptism of a young lady, which impressed her strongly and caused her to become much dejected and affected about her religious state. She began to have evening reveries or night talks which soon attracted attention. She united with the Presbyterian Church. These reveries after a while expanded into evening exercises which began with prayer, after which she exhorted and made a closing prayer. She removed from Marcellus to Scipio, New York, in 1813, and shortly afterward, in the same year, she went to New York City for medical advice. While there she gave many opportunities to witness her powers when in what her editors quaintly call her somnial paroxysms. Her discourses were good illustrations of what is sometimes termed trance-preaching.
3 Devotional Somnium; or, A Collection of Prayers and Exhortations Uttered by Miss Rachel Baker, by Several Medical Gentlemen, New York, 1815.