Crossword-Solution: ECSTASIS 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 10

Ladies;--servant, you have read Pliny and Paracelsus; ne'er a word now to comfort a poor gentlewoman? Ay me, what fortune had I, to marry a distracted man! DAW: I will tell you, mistress-- TRUE: How rarely she holds it up! [ASIDE TO CLER.] MOR: What mean you, gentlemen? EPI: What will you tell me, servant? DAW: The disease in Greek is called mania, in Latin insania, furor, vel ecstasis melancholica, that is, egressio, when a man ex melancholico evadit fanaticus.

Pritchard, in an essay on "Somnambulism and Animal Magnetism," in the "Cyclopædia of Medicine," gives the following remarkable case of ecstasis:-- A gentleman about thirty-five years of age, of active habits and good constitution, living in the neighbourhood of London, had complained for about five weeks of a slight headache.

The state in which all forms of divination are most apt to show themselves is by theologians called _ecstasis_, when it is caused by means specially employed for the purpose and appears as a literally "being beside one's self"; by its side they speak of _raptus_, when the abnormal state suddenly begins during an act of ordinary life, such as walking, working, or even praying.

Some of these ascetics pass from a simple trance to a state of catalepsy, in which their bodies become insensible to pain--but this kind of _ecstasis_ is not accompanied by divination.

They spoke of four degrees of ecstasis: the first indication, the inspiring breath, the prediction, and the gifts; the last was the highest.