Taghairm
Taghairm was a historical Scottish Gaelic mode of divination. Several kinds of taghairm are described; each seemed to involve summoning spirits and entering altered states of consciousness.
In A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, Scottish writer Màrtainn MacGille Mhàrtainn describes the ways of consulting spirits in the Hebrides during the 17th century. One involved a man being wrapped in a bull hide, with only his head outside of it, to sit in a wild and lonely spot overnight, in order to divine wisdom. Another was to swing the man against a boundary riverbank; it was thought that invisible "friends" would come and answer questions for him. A third version of taghairm was quite different from the others and involved animal sacrifice.
An 1825 text described the taghairm:
There is a similar description of the taghairm being carried out in Trotternish in a 1772 account, and a number of closely matching accounts with hides and waterfalls can also be found, with some additionally including the diviner being beaten for a while with a pole or a staff after being covered by the animal skin.
According to the London Literary Gazette of March 1824, one form of the taghairm involved a group of people spending four days roasting cats alive, one cat after another, without eating. This was meant to summon a legion of demons in the shape of screeching black cats, with their master at their head, who would grant them two wishes. The last ceremony of this kind was said to have been performed on the Isle of Mull at the beginning of the 17th century. The ritual is described in Gustav Meyrink’s book on John Dee, The Angel of the West Window.
Scottish historical novelist Sir Walter Scott scornfully described a third method in a footnote to his influential poem Lady of the Lake. He further adds that it could involve another situation "where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror." However, Scott could not speak Scottish Gaelic and his concepts of Gaelic culture were sometimes distorted.