In medieval times, a ship of fools carried madmen from port to port, forever associating madness with the liminal mystery of the sea.

And yet, in mysticism, intuition for God’s love is also commonly described as a sea. And at the end of Khalil Gibran’s classic , The Prophet, the old man yearns for the ship that will carry him back out to sea, which arrives in the end, at last.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one

Khalil Gibran

But are madmen mystics?

Or is it rather, that both are connected to the mystic sea, only the madman in the Ship of Fools is bound and chained in place, and carried away by its currents. Whereas in the Ship of Mystics, the mystic actively navigates the same sea, with a daily discipline of chores, rigging and tethering, that keeps him or her sane.