Decades of psychological wisdom have equated mental health with contact with reality and mental illness with deficits in commonsense renderings of reality. Counter to this perspective, recent research indicates that being normal involves a good deal of illusory thinking. These studies suggest that depressed individuals are more likely to process information in a relatively realistic fashion, whereas normal people appear to “view the world through rose-colored glasses.” Yet these studies continue to rely on the assumption that there is one reality that is apprehended by some (depressed persons) and distorted by the rest.

This assumption ignores centuries of philosophical discussion of the relationship between reality and a person’s subjective awareness of objects in the world. It also overlooks insights from sociologists and anthropologists who posit that common sense is cultural in character, fashioned historically and interactionally. Common sense is neither universal nor objective.

Lisa Capps and Elinor Ochs, Constructing Panic: The Discourse of Agoraphobia

In Scotland and parts of the British Isles, we find The Devil’s Acre as a sort of offering to the Wild Adversary, called sometimes ‘The Gudeman’s Croft’ or ‘Cloutie’s Croft’. This is where a good piece of the pasture is left wild, given as an offering to the Devil, out of respect and fear. This piece of ground was not ventured onto nor put into any sort of production, as it was left in the Devil’s service. Ulstermen from Ireland called this ‘The Devil’s Half Acre’ or ‘The Lone Acre’. A name from England for it was ‘Jack’s Land’. Even from New England, it was spoke of as ‘leaving the tithe to nature’. One seed-planting incantation from nineteenth century Suffolk went: ‘Four seeds in a hole, One for the birds, One for the mice, and One for the Master’.

Another from Ashe County, North Carolina simply goes: ‘This is for me, This is for my neighbor, This is for the Devil’. This notion that the Devil must have his share of the bounty of the land is no doubt a remnant from ancient times, where offerings to local land spirits were part of planting and harvesting practices. The power of the Old One, similar to the denizens of the Faerie realm, having the supernatural ability to bestow a blessing or curse upon the land, was taken seriously in times past. Regular offerings and acknowledgement were in order.

Corinne Boyer - Plants of the Devil