The Second Sight of the Scottish Highlands
The Third Eye of spiritual vision, or clairvoyance, is commonly developed by students of esoterica. Yet the age-old Gaelic difficulty has not been to summon dreams and visions but rather to escape happily from involuntarily seeing them. Scottish Highlanders have not traditionally cultivated Second Sight but rather consider it due to the agency of the fairy "good folk" haunting mountains, streams, and groves. Highlanders possessing Second Sight do not boast of it as a privilege, nor are they considered advantageously distinguished for their troublesome supernatural ability. Indeed, Second Sight is deemed a misfortune. In literature on the subject — tracing back to the 1680s — Highlanders liken the onset of Second Sight to a nerve-storm or painful, shuddering mental spasm that comes unsought, for no one desires mysterious visions. The sudden day-trances, unable to be summoned at will, commonly reveal phantom funeral processions or doomed individuals in winding sheets. Feelings of fear, wonder, and sorrow abound, with the visions ending in the complete prostration of the seer.
Without warning and against their wishes, Highlander Second-Sighters see or more abstractly know of something that is to happen, both at a distance of time and place, and thereby can predict a death or accident. The phenomenon is separate from the traditional methods of divination in which ritual tools are employed, and it does not qualify as a form of "ghost seeing" as in Spiritualism. That may be why the phenomenon has historically escaped attribution to witchcraft or compacts with the devil.
Often after dusk and across a fire, the apparitions that Second-Sighters see belong to a special sort of realms of spirits. The phantasm dwells apart from the netherworld of the ghosts of the dead, for it is an apparition of the living. The phantasm is typically seen under exceptional circumstances such as when a sudden or violent death is to occur, when a friend is ill, or when strangers are to arrive. The phantasm, often seen with as much distinctness as external objects, is usually that of a friend or acquaintance but is recognized as being independent of the person whose semblance it bears (down to the person's voice, features, form, and dress). The friend or acquaintance knows nothing of the phantasm's appearance. The spectral double is not technically the person's spirit, and it plays its part without the person's knowledge or wish, independent of the person's thoughts, actions, or emotions. The seer never traces the phantasm to anything within — in other words, the phantom arises outside any suggestion of the seer's hopes or fears and is not a reproduction of any particular state of mind or thought. Its appearance has no counterpart in any past or present event but rather the future and the distant.
The clothing of an apparition can indicate the fate befalling. A spectre dressed in funerary clothes is to die soon, whereas everyday clothes indicate that death will not occur for some time. Cloth covering the entire face indicates death very soon, and partial coverings are proportionately more remote deaths. The time of day of a vision is also indicative — the later in the day, the sooner the death. A death by drowning is indicated by dripping clothes and phosphorescent gleams around the figure.
Not all Second Sight visions are melancholy, however. Pleasant events may be seen, such as an apparition of a future spouse, or the return of an absent friend. Though spectres are prone to indistinct and inarticulate mumbling, they sometimes impart good advice.
When a spirit double is first met, it might be mistaken for the actual person whose semblance it bears. In such a case, if spoken to, the phantasm acquires the power to compel the Second-Sighter who accosted it to hold nightly appointments with it in the future. (This is a parallel to what happens to those who acquire a fairy sweetheart.) The seer, from that moment, becomes "spectre-haunted." Hence, it is a tenet of Second Sight never to be the first to speak upon meeting an acquaintance at night, until satisfied that the glimpsed figure is of this world. If spectre-haunted, a seer does not dare to discuss whose figure is doing the haunting, lest the spectre's anger be aroused and a dreadful thrashing be instigated.
Given that Second Sight is "gift" derived from fairies, it would be unethical to discuss ways to cultivate such a gift. We might instead specify what not to do. Do not look deeply into flowers. Do not seek to discern the different colors of breezes. Do not meditate under direct moonlight. Do not perform breathing exercises that open the heart center. Do not listen for laughter in rain showers, nor for tiny bells. Do not yearn for rarefied wisdom. Avoid mushrooms growing in rings. Do not leave messages under stones. Neither nurture feelings of wonder in any garden nor thank fairies for their work there. Do not blow dandelion seeds. Do not ask fairies to accompany you or ask to be welcomed into fairyland. Avoid very light lunches. Do not intuitively sense whether the way is open to you. Do not apprentice yourself to unseen entities. Do not keep a fairy journal or make sketches of immaterial bridges. Neither whistle nor hum. Do not walk along fairy paths. Leave no gifts of honey cakes. Avoid all vibrations at play in the sea of ethereality.
