Illnesses of the heart and soul: the case of Asalama

Abstract

Spirits of solitude bring illnesses of the heart and soul. In song verses used in spirit possession rituals, one who is possessed is referred to obliquely through the metaphor of an orphan ( golama ), a term also used to refer to a childless camel, and a female camel who has lost her young. Asalama, the blacksmith woman whose ritual served as a prelude to my quest for understanding possession, told me that this condition or illness afflicts the liver, the area just beneath the ribcage. According to Asalama, the liver is the seat of all sentiments — especially love and anger — and is the place where possessing spirits settle after entering through the stomach, which is the symbol of the matriline, associated in local cosmology with secrets as well as spirits. Spirits are said to return often, circulating among regular hosts. During a visit to the house of a prominent marabout, I learned that there exist two types of spirit: black or blue ones (cured by the drum of the t∂nde n goumaten ritual), and red ones (cured by marabouts). The former are like the “black monkeys on top of Mount Bagzan,” who never approach villages, but remain on the fringes of the wild. The marabout indicated that, although spirits are equally dangerous to men and women, “women's spirits and men's spirits are not the same: the former prefer noisy t∂nde n goumaten rites as medicine; the latter prefer the Koran.”