SPIRIT POSSESSION: AN OVERVIEW

Spirit possession may be broadly defined as any altered or unusual state of consciousness and allied behavior that is indigenously understood in terms of the influence of an alien spirit, demon, or deity. The possessed act as though another personality—a spirit or soul—has entered their body and taken control. Dramatic changes in their physiognomy, voice, and manner usually occur. Their behavior often is grotesque and blasphemous. Justinus Kerner, a nineteenth-century German physician and disciple of the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, describes a demonically possessed woman in his native Swabia:

In this state the eyes were tightly shut, the face grimacing, often excessively and horribly changed, the voice repugnant, full of shrill cries, deep groans, coarse words; the speech expressing the joy of inflicting hurt or cursing God and the universe, addressing terrible threats now to the doctor, now to the patient herself.… The most dreadful thing was the way in which she raged when she had to submit to be touched or rubbed down during the fits; she defended herself with her hands, threatening all those who approached, insulting and abusing them in the vilest terms; her body bent backward like a bow was flung out of the chair and writhed upon the ground, then lay there stretched out full length, stiff and cold, assuming the very experience of death. (quoted in Oesterreich, 1930, p. 22)

Some of the possessed, those who suffer what the German scholar Traugott K. Oesterreich has called a somnambulistic form of possession, remember nothing of their possession. Others experience a more "lucid" form and remember it. In this case the possessed become passive spectators of an "internal" drama. Often they are said to be inhabited simultaneously or sequentially by several spirits, and their behavior varies according to the different possessing spirits. Although possession is sometimes considered desirable, as in spirit mediumship, more often, at least initially, it is considered undesirable, an affliction requiring a cure. Cures, or exorcisms, may be simple affairs involving only the exorcist and his patient, or they may be elaborate, highly theatrical performances involving the patient's whole community.

In one form or another, spirit possession occurs over most of the world. The anthropologist Erika Bourguignon found that in a sample of 488 societies 74 percent believe in spirit possession. The highest incidence is found in Pacific cultures and the lowest in North and South American Indian cultures. Belief in possession is widespread among peoples of Eurasia, Africa, and the circum-Mediterranean region and among descendants of Africans in the Americas. It occurs more frequently in agricultural societies than in hunting and gathering ones, and women seem to be possessed more often than men. However, altered states of consciousness, such as trance, are not always interpreted as spirit possession. In Bourguignon's 488 societies, 437 societies (90%) have one or more institutionalized forms of altered states of consciousness, but only 251 of these (52% of the total) understand them in terms of spirit possession.

Scholars have attempted to classify possession phenomena in many ways. Some have based their classification on the moral evaluation of the spirit. The French scholar Henri Jeanmarie argues that exorcism aims at the permanent expulsion of the possessing spirit in societies that regard the spirit as essentially evil, whereas exorcism in societies that regard the spirit as morally neutral aims at the transformation of the "malign" spirit into a "benign" one. Other scholars have looked to the cultural evaluation of the possession state itself. In Ecstatic Religion (1971) the anthropologist I. M. Lewis distinguishes between central and peripheral spirit possession. The former are highly valued by at least a segment of society and support the society's moral, political, and religious assumptions. In these cases possession is considered desirable, and the spirits are generally thought to be sympathetic. Peripheral possession does not support, at least directly, the moral, political, and religious order. In these cases possession is considered undesirable and requires some form of cure, and the spirits are thought to be malign. Still other scholars, such as Oesterreich, have sought the basis for classification in the phenomenology of the experience. Oesterreich divides possession into involuntary or spontaneous possession and voluntary or artificial possession.

Oesterreich's distinction plays an implicit role in many other classification systems. For example, in Tikopia Ritual and Belief (1967, p. 296), the anthropologist Raymond Firth distinguishes "spirit possession," "spirit mediumship," and "shamanism" on the basis of the host's control of the spirit. According to Firth, spirit possession refers to "phenomena of abnormal behavior which are interpreted by other members of the society as evidence that a spirit is controlling the person's actions and probably inhabiting his body." Spirit mediumship involves the "use of such behavior by members of the society as a means of communication with what they understand to be entities in the spirit world." The medium's behavior must be fairly regular and intelligible. Firth applies the term shamanism "to those phenomena where a person, either a spirit medium or not, is regarded as controlling spirits, exercising his mastery over them in socially recognized ways." In the case of spirit mediumship and shamanism, at least after the initial possession, the state of possession is often deliberately induced by inhalation of incense or mephitic fumes (as at the Delphic oracle in ancient Greece), by ingestion of drugs (as in North Africa and the Middle East) or emotionally laden substances (such as the blood of a sacrificial victim in parts of India), or by mechanical means (such as drumming, dancing, hyperventilation, or the incantation of repetitive prayers).

All these classifications impose on the reality of spirit possession a conceptual rigidity that distorts the essential fluidity of the phenomena. Often the host moves in and out of all of Firth's three states—if not in one séance then in the course of his relationship with the spirit. The anthropologist Esther Pressel found that in the African American cults of Brazil initial possessions tended to be involuntary and subsequent ones voluntary as the host gained control of his or her spirit. One Moroccan woman with whom this writer worked suffered periodic possessions in which she was very much the victim of her possessing spirit (jinī). At times, however, she was able to gain some control over the spirit and convey its messages to those about her. It was rumored, though this writer never witnessed this, that she would sometimes force her possessing spirit to perform nefarious deeds for her and her secret clientele.

Too rigid a definition of spirit possession precludes recognition of its power as an authentic and believable metaphor for other conditions not usually associated by the Western observer with altered states of consciousness or with trance. For example, possession metaphors were used in Morocco to describe extreme rage, sexual excitement, love, prolonged erections, morbid depressions, and on occasion those conditions in which the subject did not want to accept the consequences of his or her own desires. In the West, possession metaphors also occur—for love, extreme anger, depersonalization, multiple personality, autonomous behavior—in short, for any experience in which the subject feels "beside himself." Such metaphors may be a residue of an earlier belief in spirit possession.

The discussion in the remainder of this article will be restricted to spirit possession as defined by Firth. Exorcisms will be divided into the permanent and the transformational. Permanent exorcisms aim at the complete expulsion of the possessing spirit; the patient is liberated from all spirit influence. Transformational exorcisms strive to change the nature of the spirit from malign to benign; as a result the relationship between spirit and host also changes. In transformational exorcisms, the patient is usually incorporated into a cult that sponsors periodic ritual occasions when the patient can again experience possession and reaffirm his relationship with his possessing spirit.

Altered States of Consciousness

An altered state of consciousness refers to any mental state subjectively recognized or objectively observed as a significant deviation from "normal" waking consciousness. Sleep, dreaming, hypnosis, brainwashing, mental absorption, meditation, and various mystical experiences are all altered states of consciousness. These states are characterized by disturbances in concentration, attention, judgment, and memory; by archaic modes of thought; by perceptual distortions, including those of space, time, and body; by an increased evaluation of subjective experiences, a sense of the ineffable, feelings of rejuvenation, loss of a sense of control, and hypersuggestibility.

The altered state of consciousness most frequently associated with spirit possession is trance (Lat., trans, "across," and ire, "to go"; cf. OFr., transir, "to pass from life to death"), defined as "a condition of dissociation, characterized by the lack of voluntary movement and frequently by automatisms in act and thought, illustrated by hypnotic and mediumistic conditions" (Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, Harmondsworth, 1971, p. 38). The subject experiences a detachment from the structured frames of reference that support his usual interpretation and understanding of the world about him. The subject is, as the Balinese say, "away," quite literally dissociated (Lat., de, "from," and socius, "companion"), removed from companionship and from society.

Ritual trance, the trance of possession, is induced by various physiological, psychological, and pharmacological means. The most common techniques involve sensory bombardment (an increase in exteroceptive stimulation), sensory deprivation (a decrease in exteroceptive stimulation), or an alternation between the two. Techniques of bombardment include singing, chanting, drumming, clapping, monotonous dancing, inhaling incense and other fumes, and experiencing the repetitive play of light and darkness. Techniques of deprivation include ideational and perceptual restrictions, blindfolding, and isolation. Fasting and other dietary restrictions, hypo- and hyperventilation (during incantations, for example), and ingestion of drugs (tobacco, cannabis, and various psychedelic substances) may also be used. Psychosocial factors—group excitement, heightened expectations, theatricality, costumes and masks, a generally permissive atmosphere, and the presence of strong behavioral models—all facilitate trance.

Although trance is considered the hallmark of possession, it is important to recognize that "possession" has been used to describe nontrance states and that the experience of possession is neither continuous nor unchanging. The possessed person moves in and out of dissociation. There are some moments of ordinary lucidity, other moments when consciousness appears to have surrendered to the possessing spirit, and still other moments of complete unconsciousness. Frequently there is a "doubling of consciousness" (Verdoppelungserlebnis ), whereby one of the two (or more) consciousnesses looks on passively at what is happening and is quite capable of remembering what Oesterreich has called "the terrible spectacle" of possession. At other times consciousness is submerged, and the actor loses all awareness and memory of the spectacle; recall of the trance experience is confused, dreamlike, and often stereotypic. The possessed person makes frequent use of mythic plots and symbols when recounting the experience, although his tales are not as elaborate as those of the shaman describing, for example, his voyage to the netherworld.

The Possession Idiom

The interpretation of dissociation, ritual trance, and other altered states of consciousness as spirit possession is a cultural construct that varies with the belief system prevalent in a culture. Although the relationship between spirit and host has been described in many different ways, most indigenous descriptions suggest the spirit's entrance, intrusion, or incorporation into the host. The relationship is one of container to contained. Usually, in any single culture a wide variety of metaphorical expressions are employed. The spirit is said to mount the host (who is likened to a horse or some other beast of burden), to enter, to take possession of, to have a proprietary interest in, to haunt, to inhabit, to besiege, to be a guest of, to strike or slap, to seduce, to marry, or to have sexual relations with the host. In part, this variety reflects changes in the spirit-host relationship, a relationship that should not be regarded as static, well-defined, and permanent but rather as dynamic, ill-defined, and transitory.

Although it is often of analytic significance to distinguish between the psychobiological condition of the possessed (the trance state) and the cultural construct ("spirit possession"), it should be recognized that the construct itself affects the structure and evaluation of the psychobiological condition. The construct articulates the experience, separating it from the flow of experience and giving it meaning. The experience itself instantiates the interpretive schema. The process involves the subjectification of the "external" elements, the symbols, of the spirit idiom.

It is important to stress the belief in the existence of the spirits on the part of the possessed and those about him or her in order to grasp adequately the spirits' articulatory function. The spirit idiom provides a means of self-articulation that may well radically differ from the self-articulation of the Westerner. Much of what the Westerner "locates" within the individual may be "located" outside the individual in those societies in which the spirit idiom is current. This movement inward is perhaps seen on a literary level in the gradual internalization of the "double" in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American literature.

Spirits, as exterior to the individual, are not projections in the psychoanalytic sense of the word. For the psychoanalyst, projection is the subject's attribution to another of feelings and desires the subject refuses to recognize in him or her self. Projection occurs only after introjection. The movement is centrifugal, from inner to outer. If "external" spirits represent as "outside" what the Westerner would regard as within, then, strictly speaking, there can be no projection, for there is nothing within to project. The movement here is centripetal, from outer to inner.

A construction of human experience so radically different from that of the Westerner is difficult to convey; nonetheless, it has been suggested by many scholars who have worked with the spirit-possessed. The anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt, for example, refers in his study of the Dinka, a Nilotic people, to "Powers" (spirits) as extrapolations or images that are the active counterpart of the passive element in Dinka experience. Since the Dinka have no conception of mind as a mediator between self and world, the images—the powers or spirits—mediate between self and world:

Without these Powers or images or an alternative to them there would be for the Dinka no differentiation between the experience of the self and of the world which acts upon it. Suffering, for example, would be merely "lived" or endured. With the imaging of the grounds of suffering in a particular Power, the Dinka can grasp its nature intellectually in a way which satisfies them, and thus to some extent transcend and dominate it in this act of knowledge. With this knowledge, this separation of a subject and an object in experience, there arises for them also the possibility of creating a form of experience they desire and of freeing themselves symbolically from what they must otherwise passively endure. (Lienhardt, 1961, p. 170)

Of utmost significance in both projection and articulation through "external" spirits is the status accorded the vehicle within the individual's culture. A Western paranoid who believes he or she is pursued by secret agents responds to dominant cultural images, just as does an African who believes himself hounded by ancestral spirits. Both give expression to feelings of persecution and suffer the consequences of that expression. In the first instance, the secret agents are not generally thought to exist by anyone other than the paranoid. In the second instance, the ancestral spirits are generally recognized by others. The consequences of this difference are immense. The haunted person does not necessarily suffer the same social isolation, loneliness, derision, and feelings of abandonment as does the paranoid. He or she enters a new symbolic order. The paranoid learns the language of the spirits and of possession and submits to its grammar; and is afforded the possibility of therapeutic intervention.

This is not meant to suggest that the idiom of spirit possession is more conducive to cure than the "psychological" idiom of the modern Western world. Both have their successes and failures. In societies with spirit possession some individuals articulate their experiences in terms of spirits in purely idiosyncratic ways and hence do not respond to indigenous therapeutic intervention. In Medusa's Hair Gananath Obeyesekere compares two patients who were exorcised at a shrine in Sri Lanka:

One woman possessed by a demonic spirit ran around the ritual arena threatening to tear her clothes off. Her behavior was perfectly intelligible in terms of the preta [spirits of the dead] or demonic myth model. The other patient, a male, was pulling and pinching her skin, saying that demons were residing under it. Later on he abused the gods, the very beings who should help him to banish the demons. None of this was intelligible to the exorcist and his subculture in terms of available myth models. Demons do not get under one's skin in this culture, and it is unheard of for the gods to be abused in this manner. (Obeyesekere, 1981, p. 161)

The first patient was amenable to cure; the second was not. When Obeyesekere asked the exorcist what could be done for the second patient, the exorcist suggested taking him to a Western-trained psychiatrist! Exorcists are usually clever diagnosticians and avoid treating those patients whom they cannot cure.

The spirit idiom must be flexible enough to accommodate the individual if it is to establish itself and remain powerful. It may be composed of a highly elaborate demonology, as in Sri Lanka, Brazil, or Haiti. In these cultures the spirits have attributes and make specific demands on their hosts. In Haitian Voodoo, for example, the lwa, or possessing spirits, have highly developed characters. Legba, the master of the mystic barrier between men and spirits, is described as a feeble old man in rags who smokes a pipe, slings a knapsack over his shoulder, and walks painfully with a crutch. He is terribly strong, however, and anyone possessed by him suffers a violent trance. Dambala-wédo, another lwa, is pictured as a snake; he forces those whom he possesses to dart their tongue in and out, crawl on the ground sinuously, and fall like a boa from roof beams headfirst. Ezili-Freda-Dahomey, a sea spirit, personifies feminine grace and beauty. (She has been likened to Aphrodite.) Men and women possessed by her behave in a saucy, flirtatious manner. By contrast, in other cultures, for example in North Africa, spirits are ill defined and ambiguous. Unlike their Haitian counterparts, many North African spirits have no "biographies."

While the spirits must not be so specifically characterized as to discourage individual elaboration and specification, this does not entail that they be simply random refractions of individual desires, as some scholars, notably the German classicist Hermann Usener, have argued. The spirits must resonate with both the psychological and the social circumstances of the possessed. Psychologically, they may mirror some aspect of the individual that he refuses to accept or some desire that he denies. Or they may compensate for deficiencies in his relations with others. Thus, I. M. Lewis (1971) relates the high frequency of possession among women and marginal men to their "inferior" position in society. The spirits relate to the social world of the individual. In his study of Tikopian spirit mediumship Raymond Firth writes, "The idiom in which these personal phenomena of anxiety, conflict, illness, and recovery was couched was one in which the physical and psychological syndrome of trance was described in terms of social constructs, including notions of spirit powers and spirit action" (Firth, 1967, p. 329). Whether elaborated or unelaborated, the spirits may relate to specific social groupings. In many societies that are organized into lineages, in Africa for example, the spirits are thought to be lineage members or to have some other significant relationship with a lineage. Often they are conceived of as ancestral shades or lineage or household spirits. Diagnosis of the spirit possessed involves discovering the spirit's identity, the cause of his displeasure that led to the possession, and the nature of his demands. Therapy involves the regulation of the relationship between the possessed and the spirit. (Many anthropologists have understood this regulation as symbolic of a regulation of the possessed's "real" social relations.). In societies with looser social organizations, for example in many urban centers, the spirits are not so closely related to specific social groups. They are "open" to a larger variety of social relations, but they are not devoid of symbolic social attachment.

Initial Possession

A first possession may be conceived of as an articulatory act. The possessed is thrust into a new symbolic order. His or her initiation frequently takes the shape of a dramatic illness—paralysis, mutism, sudden blindness, or profound dissociation—or contrary behavior, such as a wild and seemingly destructive flight into the bush or, for women, nursing the feet of a newborn infant. Many psychiatrically oriented observers have considered these symptoms to be of a hysterical nature, but careful study reveals that they may be symptoms of other forms of mental disturbance or reactions to the stresses and strains inherent in the individual's social position. Even with such dramatic symptoms, the diagnosis of possession is not necessarily immediate. There may be other options within the "medical" system of the particular society. The initial symptoms may, however, be far less dramatic. The neophyte may have been attending a possession ceremony when seized by the spirit. Such "contagious possession" has been frequently described in the literature of spirit possession. (Aldous Huxley gives a particularly readable account of contagious possession in The Devils of Loudun, 1952, a study of demonic possession in seventeenth-century France.)

Often the initial possession is articulated in retrospective accounts in a stereotyped manner. These may be elaborate, particularly where the possessed becomes a curer, the account providing the possessed with a culturally acceptable charter for his or her profession, or they may be a simple sentence or two. Alice Morton records the story given her by an Ethiopian curer, Mama Azaletch.

In 1936, I was caught by a certain spirit. I ran away from my home in Bale to the desert, and there I lived in a cave. I would not see anyone or speak to anyone, and I became very wild. But there was one woman of high rank there who was interested in my case, and she would send her son to bring me beans and unsalted bread. I stayed there in that place, eating very little and seeing no one, for four years and eight months. If they had tried to take me from that cave and put me in a house with other people, I would have broken any bonds and escaped back to the desert. It was the spirit that made me wild that way. (Crapanzano and Garrison, 1977, p. 202)

Morton calls attention to Mama Azaletch's stereotypic flight into the wild, her fasting in the desert, and her renunciation of family. Mama Azaletch's story was told in both public and private. Many Moroccans with whom the writer of this article had worked had less elaborate but stereotypic stories of their "slippage" into the spirit idiom. They were at a possession ceremony, mocked the possessed or possessing spirit, and were immediately struck by the spirit.

The initiatory illness itself is an eloquent symbol, for not only does it focus attention on the possessed (who must be cured!), but it also requires definition. Such definition occurs through a variety of diagnostic and healing procedures. The initiate has to learn to be possessed and undergo exorcism. This is particularly evident where possession involves incorporation into a cult. Technically, the initiate must learn to enter trance easily, to carry out expected behavior gracefully, and to meet the demands of his spirit. Almost all reports of spirit possession emphasize the clumsiness of the neophyte and the necessity of learning how to be a good carrier for the spirit. Members of the Moroccan religious brotherhood, the Hamadsha, who mutilate themselves when in possession trance, can explain how they learned to slash their scalps with knives and halberds without inflicting serious injury. Many have serious scars from their initial possession when, as they put it, they had not yet learned to hit themselves correctly. Similar stories have been reported from Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Fiji by adepts of the Hindu god Murukan who skewer themselves with hooks and wires. For possessions involving complex theatrical behavior, dancing, and impersonification, as in Sri Lanka or Indonesia, the learning process can be quite rigorous.

The neophyte must learn to recast conflicts in the spirit idiom and to articulate essentially inchoate feelings in that idiom, feelings of persecution or inferiority, of fear or bravado, of hatred or love. This process may proceed by trial and error, or it may occur through the guidance of a curer. The Puerto Rican Espiritistas "work" their patients through various levels of possession and develop in them, when possible, mediumistic faculties. (Such development resembles the mystic's passage through various stages of ecstasy.) The movement from initial illness to accommodation with the spirit and incorporation into the cult is often accompanied by an indeterminate period during which the possessed resists the call of the spirit and suffers depression, extreme alienation, dissociation, and even fugues. Such a period, analogous in many respects to what mystics refer to as the "dark night of the soul," may be symbolized as a period of wandering or isolation. Mama Azaletch's life in the cave may refer to such a period.

Exorcism

Spirit possession has the tripartite ritual structure first delineated by the folklorist Arnold van Gennep in 1908. The possessed is removed from the everyday world by the possessing spirit. The possessed enters a liminal world—the world of possession, dissociation, trance—and through exorcism (which replicates the tripartite structure of possession itself) is returned to the ordinary world. Exorcisms may be permanent or "transformational." In permanent exorcism, the patient is returned to the world from which the patient came, ideally as he or she was before he was possessed. Not much is known about such patients. Have they undergone some sort of social or psychological transformation through possession and exorcism? It would seem that they have been marked by the spirit: They have been possessed, and they have been cured. In transformational exorcism, the patient is explicitly transformed. He or she has undergone a change in identity and are now, to speak figuratively, more than their self; he or she is in intimate relationship with a spirit whose demands must be recognized. Usually the possessed is incorporated into a cult, which not only provides legitimate occasions for future possessions but also supplies a new social identity. Often, as a member of such a cult, the possessed becomes an exorcist or a member of a team of exorcists.

Exorcisms may comprise little more than simple prayers or incantations sung over the possessed, as happens in Christian and Islamic contexts. Sometimes exorcisms involve torturing the possessed (pulling the ear, flagellating, or burning) until the possessing spirit has revealed its identity and demands or has released the patient. In many societies that support possession cults, the exorcisms are semipublic or public occasions. Such ceremonies tend to be highly dramatic. There is music, most frequently drumming but also music of woodwind, reed, and string instruments, and dancing, which may be simple or quite complex. In Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Southeast Asia comic or other dramatic interludes often play a role. The exorcist, the possessed, and other performers may don masks, wear special costumes, and take on the part of well-known mythic and legendary figures. The ceremonies are often accompanied by sacrifices and communal meals, and last through the night. This passage from light through darkness to light again seems to parallel the tripartite ritual movement that culminates with the "rebirth" of the patient as cured or transformed.

Patient, exorcist, and other spectators may all fall into trance. There is considerable variation in the depth and style of these trances. In some the possessed fall into an ill-defined, seemingly superficial, dreamy trance. In others they become frenetic and out of control. And in still others they take on the character of the spirit that possesses them, responding only to special songs, dancing characteristic dances, talking in a distinctive language (glossolalia), and demanding special costumes, perfumes, or objects. In many parts of the world, the possessed perform uncanny feats, such as walking over burning coals (in the Greek Anastenaria), piercing themselves with skewers and pins (the followers of Murukan in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Fiji), slashing their heads with knives and halberds (the Hamadsha of Morocco), playing with poisonous snakes (the rattlesnake cults of Appalachia), or stabbing themselves with swords and spears without harm (in Java, Bali, and among the Cape Malay in South Africa).

The exorcisms provide an occasion for both an individual and a transcendent drama of order and disorder, of control and the absence of control. At least in societies that consider the spirit demonic, possession reveals the underside of social, cultural, and psychological order. Possession negates the "rational" order of everyday life; it displays the world in reverse. Ritual and exorcism restore order and rationality to that world. The anthropologist Bruce Kapferer has written that in Sri Lanka the demons embody human suffering and symbolize the destructive possibilities of the social and cultural order. They provide a "terrifying commentary on life's condition and individual experience in it." They cast the individual's experience into a wider social and cultural order, and the encounter with the demonic becomes a metaphor for his or her "personal struggle within an obdurate social world" (Kapferer, 1983).

Exorcisms regulate the relationship between spirit and host. Formally, spirit possession may be understood as a series of transformations of usually negative metaphorical attributions into occasionally positive and at least ritually neutral metonymic ones in a dialectical play of identity formation. The spirit often represents what the possessed is not or does not desire. The Moroccan man who is inhabited by the female spirit ʿAʾisha Qandisha is no woman; the chaste Haitian woman possessed by the promiscuous Ezili-Freda-Dahomey would disclaim any of Ezili's promiscuous desires. The host's identity and desires are here the opposite of the spirit's. During possession, however, the host becomes nearly identical with the spirits. The Moroccan man comes as close to being ʿAʾisha Qandisha, a female, as possible; the Haitian woman as close to the flirtatious, saucy Ezili as possible. A negative metaphor is transformed into a positive metonym, even to the limit of identity within a very special context.

Possession cults aim to transform the relationship between spirit and host much as the Furies were transformed into the gentle Eumenides in Aeschylus's Oresteia. The transformation usually involves the conversion of a "wild" possession, an illness, into an institutionalized, ritualized, and periodized possession in which negative metaphorical attributes become for the occasion metonymic ones. It is as though the host were allowed to play out in a sanctioned manner who he is not and to give expression to desires that he cannot express in everyday life. This movement from metaphor to metonymy is neither direct nor simple. The changing, essentially complex relationship between host and spirit or spirits is given a sort of theatrical representation. The two may enter into conversation with one another in a friendly or inimical manner, they may struggle with each other, or the host may succumb to the spirit. Often, as in Sri Lanka, the possession includes a comic interlude that plays an important part in the exorcism itself. The comedy of exorcism, Bruce Kapferer (1983) has suggested, displays through its very irrationality the rationality of the world and allows the host to reformulate his self in accordance with that rationality. Although this movement toward the discovery or rediscovery of the rationality of the world is not immediately apparent in many simpler possessions, even these tend to bring about a transformation of the way the possessed sees his world. He takes on the view of his cult. He is attached to the demon, who becomes a primary orientation point for his understanding of himself and the world about him.

If the exorcism is successful, the patient has to become fully possessed and then released by the spirit. To be released from the spirit's influence the possessed must meet the spirit's demands, whatever they may be. In Morocco, for example, the spirit requires the host to wear certain colors, burn special incense, make regular pilgrimages to the spirit's favored sanctuaries. Often the demand includes the sacrifice of an animal with which, as the anthropologist Andras Zempléni (1984) has suggested, the spirit's host is identified. Thus the host is separated by the power of the sacrifice from the spirit with which the host has become one. So long as the possessed follows the spirit's commands, the host is blessed, protected, and generally favored. A failure to follow the commands usually leads to a renewal of the possession crisis: The host falls ill, becomes paralyzed, or is blinded. A new exorcism is then required.

Without doubt the spirit and its commands are of symbolic import to the host, resonating with significant events in the host's biography, reflecting the host's present situation, and orienting the host toward the future. The commands may symbolize adherence to the social and moral obligations and commitments the individual has in his or her everyday life; a failure to follow the commands may represent a failure to live up to these obligations and commitments; the possession may make articulate feelings that in other "psychological" idioms are described as feelings of guilt. The roles played by the spirits and their commands, by "wild" and institutionalized possessions, differ in each individual case. Generalizations tend to become overgeneralizations. The spirit idiom is subtle and, as the existentialists would say, reflects the subtility of the individual in situation. It is, of course, important to recognize that possession also plays an important role for those who witness it, providing them with an often theatrical representation, an objectification, of their cultural presuppositions, their social situation, and their psychological conditions. For them and for the possessed, possession confirms belief in the spirits. Exorcism affirms faith in a social and cultural order, an order that gives perhaps only the illusion of mastering the "irrational forces" that surround and on occasion besiege its members.

See Also

Affliction; Consciousness, States of; Demons, article on Psychological Perspectives; Devils; Enthusiasm; Exorcism; Frenzy; Glossolalia; Oracles.

Bibliography

Bastide, Roger. Le condomblé de Bahia. Paris, 1958. A detailed study of Afro-Brazilian possession.

Beattie, John, and John Middleton, eds. Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. New York, 1969. An anthology of social anthropological studies of spirit mediumship and possession in Africa.

Belo, Jane. Trance in Bali. New York, 1960. A detailed, descriptive study of trance in Bali.

Bourguignon, Erika. "The Self, the Behavioral Environment, and the Theory of Spirit Possession." In Context and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology, edited by Melford E. Spiro, pp. 39–60. New York, 1965. Anthropological consideration of the relationship between self- and spirit possession.

Crapanzano, Vincent. The Hamadsha: An Essay in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley, Calif., 1973. An anthropological study of a Moroccan Islamic religious brotherhood whose adepts mutilate themselves when in possession trace.

Crapanzano, Vincent, and Vivian Garrison, eds. Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York, 1977. An anthology of case studies of spirit possession from around the world. For a more detailed account of the arguments in this entry the reader is referred to the introduction to the book.

Firth, Raymond. Tikopia Ritual and Belief. London, 1967. Includes an interesting discussion of spirit possession and mediumship among these Pacific Islanders.

Goodman, Felicitas D. Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia. Chicago, 1972. A study of speech patterns in trance.

Goodman, Felicitas D., Jeanette H. Henney, and Esther Pressel. Trance, Healing and Hallucination. New York, 1974. Three studies of trance and possession, on St. Vincent, Brazil, and the Yucatan.

Huxley, Aldous. The Devils of Loudun. New York, 1952. A semi-novelistic study of spirit possession in seventeenth-century France.

Jeanmarie, Henri. Dionysos: Histoire du culte de Bacchus. 2 vols. Paris, 1951. A study of Dionysian worship in the ancient world that draws parallels with North African possession cults.

Kapferer, Bruce. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington, Ind., 1983. A detailed symbolic anthropological study of spirit possession and exorcism in Sri Lanka.

Leiris, Michel. La possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Éthiopiens de Gondar. Paris, 1958. An insightful study of Ethiopian spirit possession by one of France's most original anthropologists and poets.

Lewis, I. M. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Harmondsworth, 1971. A broad social-anthropological study of possession.

Lienhardt, Godfrey. Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka. Oxford, 1961. A brilliant study of the religion, including spirit belief, of a Nilotic people.

Métraux, Alfred. Voodoo in Haiti. Translated by Hugo Charteris. New York, 1959. The classic study of Haitian Voodoo.

Monfouga-Nicholas, Jacqueline. Ambivalence et culte de possession. Paris, 1972. A study of possession among the Hausa of West Africa.

Obeyesekere, Gananath. Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago, 1981. A psychoanalytically oriented anthropological study of ecstasy and possession at the Hindu-Buddhist pilgrimage center of Kataragama in Sri Lanka.

Oesterreich, Traugott K. Possession, Demoniacal and Other, among Primitive Races, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times. Translated from the German by D. Ibberson. New York, 1930. A classic compendium of case material on spirit possession.

Ortigues, Marie Cécile, and Edmond Ortigues. Oedipe africaine. Paris, 1966. A psychoanalytic study, owing much to Jacques Lacan, of spirit possession in Senegal.

Prince, Raymond, ed. Trance and Possession States. Montreal, 1958. An anthology of religious, anthropological, and psychophysiological studies of trance and spirit possession.

Sargant, William Walters. Battle for the Mind. Garden City, N.Y., 1957. A Pavlovian psychophysiological study of, among other things, spirit possession.

Spiro, Melford E. Burmese Supernaturalism. Exp. ed. Philadelphia, 1978. A study of Burmese belief in spirits and spirit possession.

Tart, Charles T. Altered States of Consciousness. New York, 1969. A useful anthology of psychophysiological studies.

Tremearne, A. J. N. The Ban of the Bori: Demons and Demon-Dancing in West and North Africa. London, 1914. An early comparative study of spirit possession among the Hausa and in North Africa.

Wirz, Paul. Exorcism and the Art of Healing in Ceylon. Leiden, 1954. A highly detailed account of Sinhala exorcism and curing.

Walker, Sheila S. Ceremonial Spirit Possession in Africa and Afro-America. Leiden, 1972. An important survey.

Zempléni, Andras. "Possession et sacrifice." Temps de la reflexion 5 (1984): 325–352. A carefully argued analysis of the relationship between spirit possession and sacrifice.

New Sources

Behrend, Heike, and Ute Luig, editors. Spirit Possession: Modernity & Power in Africa. Madison, 1999.

Caciola, Nancy. "Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of Spirit Possession in Medieval Europe." Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 3 (1999): 268–306.

Foster, Byron. Heart Drum: Spirit Possession in the Garifuna Communities of Belize. Belize, 1986.

Garrett, Clarke. Spirit Possession and Popular Religion: Fom the Camisards to the Shakers. Baltimore, 1987.

Lambek, Michael. "Spirit Possession/Spirit Succession: Aspects of Social Continuity among Malagasy Speakers in Mayotte." American Ethnologist 15 (1988): 710–731.

McDaniel, June. "Possession States among the Saktas of West Bengal." Journal of Ritual Studies 2 (Winter 1988): 87–99.

McVeigh, Brian J. "Spirit Possession in Sukyo Mahikari: A Variety of Sociopsychological Experience." Japanese Religions 21 (July 1996): 283–297.

Rasmussen, Susan J. Spirit Possession and Personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.

Rosenthal, Judy. Possession, Ecstasy, and Law in Ewe Voodoo. Charlottesville, 1998.

Smith, Frederick M. "The Current State of Possession Studies as a Cross-Disciplinary Project." Religious Studies Review 27, no. 3 (July 2001): 203–212.

Stoller, Paul. Embodying Colonial Memories: Spirit Possession, Power, and the Hauka in West Africa. New York, 1995.

Sutton, Donald S. "Rituals of Self-Mortification: Taiwanese Spirit-Mediums in Comparative Perspective." Journal of Ritual Studies 4 (Winter 1990): 99–125.

Wafer, Jim. Taste of Blood. Philadelphia, 1991.

Vincent Crapanzano (1987)

Revised Bibliography