Your Sensory Superpowers, Medieval Style

The medieval senses were bonkers

One of the things I continue to experience while researching medieval medicine is just how much their ideas resonate today—and not only resonate, but maybe we really need to hear them again.

Recently, I’ve been captivated by the way medievals understood the senses. Today, we tend to believe that our senses are receivers. We take in information, and it gets processed by the brain, boom.

But in the medieval period, the senses were more like a two-way street. You still received data from the world around you, but it wasn’t just an assault. You were also reaching out and scooping things up with your sensory apparatuses.

In other words, you weren’t just taking it all in, you were giving out. Your senses could pick up the qualities of the world, but they were really working for it, sprawling out and gathering up data. Along the way, they could share your personal qualities with the world.

So let’s just go over these god-like powers.

First, you could do the basic fetching-of-data. You don’t just see something because light hits your eye, you have this power in your vision that allows you to reach out and focus on something, embrace it with your energy, so to speak, and draw its contents back to you.

You’re not just pulling in neutral data, either, you’re pulling in the essence of what you see.

You can do this with touch, sound, taste, and smell as well.

Let’s say you gaze at a tree. You are instantly entangling your energy with the energy of the tree, and drawing the tree’s energy into your own field.

How does the tree’s energy affect you? We’re not generally taught to consider this, although we might describe how we enjoy being in nature, or how certain landscapes make us feel. We just don’t have a knowledge base for entanglement, so we don’t explore these sensations more fully.

But when you start to understand that each tree has its own energy, just like every person has their own energy, you may begin to notice that specific trees provoke very nuanced feelings.

Second, you now have the ability to absorb qualities of the things around you. You aren’t just standing apart, appreciating a tree, you are taking in the energy of another living thing. You are becoming yourself-plus-tree.

What qualities do you take on? The bright color of the leaves, that make you think of spring? The sinuous curve of the trunks, which are also sturdy and strong? The way the trees crowd the street and make it beautiful?

You may notice that a tree’s energy doesn’t stay with you for very long, or maybe that it stays beyond what you expected.

You may even notice that, over time, the energy changes, like in any relationship.

This is actually a terrifying superpower, if you think about all the shit we see.

On my path to becoming a full-blooded mystic, one of the first things to drop away was any movie or TV show that involved wanton violence. This dude could not abide.

Third, you can send your own energy into something else. Angry at the friend of yours who cancelled dinner at the last minute? You are blasting her with disgruntlement, maybe even disgust.

Next time you see her, she’ll apologize, and you’ll be like “don’t even worry about it!” but you’ll both know what happens when you flake on each other. That seething storm of ugly, angry disappointment that you shared is not something anyone wants to repeat.

This particular aspect of your godhood is actually really useful if, say, you are interested in healing. You can send your purest, most loving energy into everything around you, and watch your houseplants go crazy. Even your sofa will love you.

One subset of this superpower is that you can invest objects with your energy. Let’s say you’re Jesus, and you die on this nailed-up two-by-four, thus filling it with all of your heroic desire to erase humanity’s suffering.

Guess how many medieval churches are going to claim that they’re in possession of even a splinter of that wood? Because everyone knows that to be able to look at or touch something that sacred will transmit some of your blessed energy to them.

In case you think we don’t do this today—one word: Cars. Have you ever let someone else drive your car, only to have it break down? And you hated that person forever, or at least thought they were a dilettante? Or maybe, like me, this has happened to you with every car you have ever owned? What exactly is going on here?

At the very least, it appears to be a disruption in some pattern that you have established with your Subaru.

In energetic terms, I think you drive your car every day, and that sets up a lot of energy exchange—your energy flowing into it. When someone else’s energy flows into it, the car reacts.

When you begin to realize that you’re exchanging energy with everything around you, you start to understand how healing it can be to walk in the woods, for example, or sit on the beach watching the waves.

I hope you explore your god-like powers today.

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