My three patients Aleister, Rosaleen and Leo, although not, at a glance, mentally ill, begin to look like voluntary versions, who use or used their will to experience that "fantasy world" but without suffering psychiatric damage. Norton's experiences remind us, nurse, of the world of the full-blown schizophrenic, while what I have shown of Leo's world and (cough) Crowley's world are reminiscent of something milder. Mind you, despite the occultists' freedom of will and apparently undamaged minds, the value of the occult beliefs themselves come into doubt here. Oh yes.

The cause of schizophrenia is commonly held to be brain cells releasing excessive amounts of dopamine. Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter, a brain chemical. Neurotransmitters make the nerve cells of the brain communicate with each other (Are you following this?). Our brain is part of our body: altered perception can have a physical cause. We can hallucinate quite easily through not eating or sleeplessness, for instance (please don't try it). So what value is there to what anyone perceives in an altered state? Occult beliefs—and religious beliefs that have their roots in visions or disembodied voices—are almost entirely validated by the idea that there's something of substance in what is seen/heard/experienced in trance or visionary states, magical ritual or the "Unseen world." Is there nothing to it all but... madness?

My answer to that comes via father-and-son-team Colin and Damon Wilson, who wrote in their account of American psychiatrist Wilson Van Dusen, "Madness is a limitation of our natural potential—which inevitably raises the question: What is our natural potential? Van Dusen's conclusion was that all human beings have the potential to undergo 'mystical' experiences, in which consciousness seems to expand far beyond its normal limitations, and that therefore, in a certain sense, we are all 'mad.'"

Yes, I agree completely, we are all mad.

Barry Kavanaugh is an Irish writer rumoured to be a member of the Lemon Order.

SOURCES (all those things I quoted from, y'know?)

1. Crowley, Aleister. MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS. New Falcon Publications, Tempe, Arizona, USA, 1994.
2. Drury, Nevill. PAN'S DAUGHTER - THE MAGICAL WORLD OF ROSALEEN NORTON. Mandrake of Oxford, UK, 1993.
3. Marks, Isaac M. LIVING WITH FEAR - UNDERSTANDING AND COPING WITH ANXIETY. McGraw-Hill Book Company, USA, 1978.
4. Shaw, William. SPYING IN GURU LAND - INSIDE BRITAIN'S CULTS. Fourth Estate, London, UK, 1994.
5. Sim, Dave. Interview with Alan Moore in CEREBUS No.218. Aardvark Vanaheim Inc., Kitchener, Ontario,Canada, May 1997 issue.
6. Wilson, Colin and Wilson, Damon. UNSOLVED MYSTERIES - PAST AND PRESENT. Headline Book Publishing PLC, London, UK, 1993.