ABSTRACT
In order to set the stage for working with Mairi’s dreams in the next chapter, here I will outline some of the theoretical ways in which mystical experience has been framed and how mystical experience challenges our usual ways of thinking about the mind, the spirit, the psyche, the soul, and the body. To ground these ideas and prevent our discussion from becoming too abstract, I begin with the actual, lived experience of our two women in their own words. More detailed accounts of Mairi and Hadewijch’s mystical experience are found in Chapters 2 and 4 respectively, but brief descriptions of their embodied moments of union follow here.
