Observations placeholder
Flying to Einsiedel
Identifier
004262
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Hans Peter Duerr - Dreamtime
The town clerk of Lucerne reports
"I myself have known a peasant from the province, whose wife said that for a short while she had been to Einsiedel and to other places far from home; sometimes she also spoke of those who had died in a foreign country, how she had been with them and had held their hand. But that they were dead, that was not yet known in their homeland. But her body, he said, remained at home in bed, it was only her spirit or soul that was going about" [Renward Cysat 1909].
The description which the witch Cathrina Kellerin provided of her journeys closely resembles the above report…. Comparable reports even appear much later. Thus it was told of a Syrian witch at the beginning of the 19th century that
"she rubbed herself at all the secret places, for a while turned round in a circle with furious gestures and then fell to the ground twitching convulsively. After lying stiffly for half an hour, she awoke tired and exhausted and maintained that she had been on the Schekel berg at a witches gathering" [Graff quoted in Hexen 1974]