Spirit Possession

The term possession covers a wide variety of human behaviors in which spirits are believed to enter and inhabit human bodies. These behaviors include spirit mediumship, automatic writing, shamanic soul travel, ecstatic prophecy, and other phenomena that take place in an altered state of consciousness and that often bring dramatic changes in a person's gestures, voice, and other expressions of personality. The interpretation and evaluation of these phenomena vary greatly according to particular contexts. In some places, possessing spirits are friendly beings to be welcomed, and possession is a condition to be actively pursued through means such as drumming, dancing, incantations, and breathing exercises. Often, however, possession is seen as an affliction to be avoided. Jewish and Christian traditions have generally associated possession with malevolent forces. Jewish lore speaks of a hungry ghost known as the dybbuk, whose possession of an individual results in madness and who can be exorcized by pronouncing the name of God. Many Christian traditions associate possession with Satan or his agents and prescribe special exorcism rituals to rebuke evil spirits by the use of liturgical implements or by simply invoking the name of Jesus.

While visionaries, prophets, and shamans have always inhabited the American landscape, spirit possession has drawn relatively little scholarly attention in North America, perhaps because of its association with marginalized religious movements. One form of possession, spirit mediumship, has been particularly popular in North America. It was commonly practiced among Shakers, especially during the period of ecstatic revival in the 1830s and 1840s known as Mother's Work; in spiritualism, a new religious movement that reached its apogee by the mid–nineteenth century; in theosophy; and in some forms of contemporary New Age spiritual practices such as trance channeling. In all these instances, spirits were believed to inhabit the bodies of adepts, dispensing spiritual guidance from worlds other than our own.

Spirit possession is a central ritual practice in Afro-Caribbean Christian traditions such as Santería and vodun, which represent a fusion of West and Central African spiritualities with European Catholicism. In Mama Lola (1991) Karen McCarthy Brown describes the possession rituals of vodun communities in New York City as elaborate healing rites that foster relations among spirit beings, the living, and the dead. At these events the spirits, who are related to both African deities and Catholic saints, mount and ride the bodies of their servers, dispensing practical advice, humor, and spiritual guidance. Possession is also a central ritual event in a number of other traditions of the African diaspora in America, including the spiritual churches of New Orleans.

The problem of scope in defining spirit possession comes sharply into focus in the case of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. Within these traditions, which are among the fastest-growing religious groups in contemporary North America, possession is associated with demonic forces who inhabit human bodies and cause physical, emotional, and spiritual distress. However, these Christians experience a phenomenon they call "baptism in the Holy Spirit," which may lead to trance states and ecstatic behaviors such as glossolalia, that is, speaking in unknown tongues. Among scholars there is no agreement about whether to include Christian spirit baptism as an example of possession. Yet as Felicitas Goodman has persuasively argued, the inclusion of Pentecostal spirit baptism in the range of human behaviors studied as possession would greatly enhance cross-cultural and comparative studies.

See alsoAfro-Cuban Religion; Baptism in the Holy Spirit; Channeling; Devils, Demons, and Spirits; Ecstasy; Exorcism; New Age Spirituality; Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity; SanterÍa; Shamanism; Spirit Guides; Spiritualism; Trence; Vodun (Voodoo).

Bibliography

Boddy, Janice. "Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality." Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 407–434.

Bourginon, Erika. Possession. 1991.

Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestessin Brooklyn. 1991.

Garrett, Clarke. Spirit Possession and Popular Religion. 1987.

Goodman, Felicitas. What about Demons? Possession andExorcism in the Modern World. 1988.

Jacobs, Claude F., and Andrew J. Kaslow. The SpiritualChurches of New Orleans. 1991.

Jesse T. Todd