9 papers in the library · 1 citation · publishing 2024
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Svetlana Ryzhakova 1 citation
Abstract Possession in India can be studied at the meeting points of psychology, religious rites, and performing arts. The daivārādhane worship of local deities is the major social and religious institution of Tuḷunādu in South India. Ritual knowledge comes from sacred spirits who can visit humankind in visible forms and through the bodies of mediums. They can possess anyone, address anyone,...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Marsha Aileen Hewitt
Abstract A comparativist approach in the psychoanalytic study of religion illuminates hermeneutic pathways to unconscious subjective experience. This approach contributes to recognizing and theorizing the culturally situated modalities of human suffering and the ambivalent nature of desire. A psychoanalytic reading of ethnographic case studies examines these themes as they appear through...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Bettina E. Schmidt
Abstract Drawing on fieldwork in different religious communities in Brazil, this chapter explores spirit possession as cultural practice, with a particular focus on candomblé, one of the most celebrated African-derived religions in Brazil. The chapter includes an interview with one member about his difficult journey into this religion and his experience with the divine. Drawing on comments from...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Yoram Bilu
Abstract The historical trajectory of the dybbuk, the Jewish variant of spirit possession, begins in the sixteenth century and declines at the beginning of the twentieth century. The dybbuk emerged in an “ecological niche” where the mystical doctrines of gilgul (the transmigration of souls) and ibbur (impregnation) became widespread, and the body became the object of scrutiny and control....
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Ulrike Steinert, Jonathan (Jonny) Russell
Abstract This contribution adds to anthropological and historical studies on spirit possession with textual sources from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, asking to what extent concepts of possession can be grasped in these two cultures and whether these concepts resemble each other in any systematic way. The discussion focuses on exemplary cases of “negative” possession encountered in healing...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Lukas K. Pokorny
Abstract Kōfuku no Kagaku (internationally known as Happy Science) is a major Japanese new religious movement with branches operating worldwide. A central theme in recent years has been the potential of possession by evil spirits. In this respect, Kōfuku no Kagaku offers a variety of exorcistic and apotropaic rituals. This chapter examines how spirit possession is understood in Kōfuku no Kagaku...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Matt Goldish
Abstract Recent scholarship on spirit possession has tended to focus on the differences between cultural contexts alongside the claim that an event is only a possession if the subject and his or her society designate it as a possession. One of the results of this fracturing trend is that it becomes difficult to maintain a viable unified category of spirit possession across cultures and in...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Jeannette Mageo
Abstract Following European colonization, Polynesians and Micronesians often became enthusiastically Christian. With Christianity as the dominant religion, local spirits became “demons.” Spirit possession shifted from a specialization of priests and those of high status to an affliction suffered mainly by girls or women, and from a blessing to a curse. Spirits and stories about them were...
Ideas of Possession October 29, 2024 Julia Rehn
Abstract New Shamanism provides healing with the help of spirits that function as authorities and shape our understanding of human existence in the natural world. “Possession” with its idea of total external control proves particularly fascinating for those socialized in secular societies. Rituals give these states a spatial and temporal framework, and their treatment of mental disorders has...