7. Taking The Role Of Supernatural ‘Other’: Spirit Possession In A Japanese Healing Cult

2007 ◽  
pp. 77-89
Keyword(s):  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Healing Cult

Waiting

2021 ◽  
pp. 342-368
Author(s):  
Anne Storch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
Getting Lost ◽  
Epistemic Approach ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The One

This chapter explores the dialectics of walking and resting, and of mobility and waiting, with regards to creativity in language. It thereby focuses on the interruption and unintended break as an opportunity for interactions and encounters across linguistic epistemes, boundaries and norms. Walking as a methodology and epistemic approach has been discussed in anthropology, the social sciences and literary critique, but met very little interest in linguistics. This chapter on the one hand consequently attempts to address walking as a substantial approach to the study of multilingualism and improvisation, but on the other aims at highlighting disruption and stillness as creating the very liminal space and practice through which language creativity can emerge and be realized. It touches upon various practices that are crucial: being stuck, passing time, getting lost. Points of special interests interest include the role of language in the love songs and other genres, especially in the context of the Mediterranean, disruptions associated with migrations and peoples’ movements, the context of tourism, and the linguistic effects of spirit possession.

“When Red Pigeons Gathered on Tang's House”: A Warring States Period Tale of Shamanic Possession and Building Construction set at the turn of the Xia and Shang Dynasties

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH ALLAN
Keyword(s):  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Building Construction ◽  
Warring States Period ◽  
Shang Dynasty ◽  
Warring States

Abstract“When Red Pigeons Gathered on Tang's House” (Chi jiu zhi ji Tang zhi wu 赤之集湯之屋) is a Warring States period bamboo manuscript written in the script of the Chu state. It concerns figures that are well known in historical legend: Tang 湯, the founder of the Shang dynasty; his wife; his minister Yi Yin 伊尹, here called by the title xiaochen 小臣 [minor servitor]; and the last king of the Xia dynasty, here called simply the Xia Lord (xia hou 夏后). These figures have their familiar identities, but the tale recorded in the manuscript is unique and has no apparent political or philosophical import. The protagonist, Xiaochen, is Tang's cook, but he does not play the role of founding minister raised up by a future king. Moreover, he is associated with a nexus of motifs associated with shamans, including spirit possession. He acquires clairvoyance after eating a soup of magic red birds (jiu 鳩, [pigeons] or hu 鵠 [cranes]) intended for Tang. After fleeing from an angry Tang, he is possessed by a spirit-medium raven. He then cures the illness of the Xia Lord by having him move his house and kill the yellow snakes and white rabbits under his bed. One rabbit escapes and the story concludes that this is why parapets are placed on houses, suggesting that the context of the story was the construction of a building. Thus, it may have been similar to a historiola, narrated in a ritual to sanctify houses after the placement of the parapet, thus preventing illness among the inhabitants.

Possession cults on the Swahili coast: a re-examination of theories of marginality

Africa ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Giles
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Area ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Dissertation Research ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Cultural Structure

Opening ParagraphThis article examines the role of spirit possession cults in the Swahili coastal area of Kenya and Tanzania, based on three years (1982–85) of doctoral dissertation research in seven field sites (including the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba). It provides a reassessment of the conventional theoretical viewpoint that such cults are peripheral to the wider society's value and socio-cultural structure, asserting that in this case they are, in fact, not only central to it but actually one of its most illuminating expressions.

From Abyssinia to Cairo: The Zar Ritual Complex

Zar ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hager El Hadidi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter traces the history and origins of zar in order to elucidate how it migrated with Abyssinian slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to Egypt. It lays the basis for understanding zar spirit possession as practiced in Cairo from the nineteenth century until today. Following a short overview of the history and origin of zar in the Red Sea region and the reasoning behind thinking about zar in Egypt as a transnational phenomenon, the chapter discusses zar practices in Cairo based on the author's fieldwork. It also considers the relationship between zar and Islam, the zar ritual placation process, spirit afflictions and their symptoms, and the role of gender and class in zar participation. Finally, it looks at zar professionals (leaders and musicians), zar music and dance, and zar paraphernalia.

The Spirit in the Book of Revelation

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-255
Author(s):  
John Christopher Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

This piece offers a review and assessment of scholarly trends in the study of the role of the Spirit in the book of Revelation focusing on five major sections. The identity of “the seven Spirits” of God as either angelic beings or the singular Spirit of God is explored. The phrase “I was in the Spirit” is examined as a literary structural marker and as a description of John’s experience of the Spirit, which has been explained as an ecstatic or trance like state, as spirit possession, as denoting a prophetic revelatory experience, and/or as indicating a context of worship. The “in the Spirit” phrase is also explored in relationship to John’s activity of writing “in the Spirit” to determine if such writing should to be understood as a literary fiction or as an actual expression of the church’s spiritual experience. An examination of “the Spirit of Prophecy” explores the issue via the identification of the book’s literary genre and its relationship to: the witness or testimony of Jesus, the phenomenon of prophecy in the church, pneumatic witness, and pneumatic discernment. A final section focuses upon the way in which Jesus and the Spirit are both interconnected and distinct characters within the book.

scholarly journals Diviners, seers and spirits in eastern Africa: towards an historical anthropology

Africa ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Anderson ◽  
Douglas H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
African Religions ◽  
Growing Body

Anthropologists and historians of eastern African societies have long shared a common interest in the description and analysis of African religions and beliefs. Spirit possession, mediumship, witchcraft beliefs, diviners and divinatory techniques, the role of prophets and the nature of prophetic traditions are all subjects for which there is now an extensive, and still growing, body of literature. For virtually no group of the present ethnographic map of eastern Africa do these topics remain unstudied. Yet the sheer diversity of the material has contributed to a degree of confusion i n the analytical categories and labels that have been employed in describing such religious phenomena.

scholarly journals Spiritual Possession and the Role of Traditional Healers in Nepal

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 131-132
Author(s):  
Sandeep Acharya
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Effect ◽  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Traditional Healers ◽  
Common Phenomenon ◽  
The World ◽  
Spiritual Possession

Spiritual possession is a relatively common phenomenon, and occurs in many cultures around the world. It is a frequent claim in Nepal that illness is caused by spiritual possession, and ill people often seek out traditional healers for treatment. Traditional healers are often not medically trained, and this could have an adverse effect on a person’s health as serious illnesses may not be managed appropriately. However, there is perhaps a role that traditional healers can play in the management of patients.Keywords: Culture; Nepal; spirit possession; traditional medicine.

scholarly journals Dynamics of the spirit possession phenomenon in Eastern Tanzania

1976 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 90-101
Author(s):  
Marja-Liisa Swantz
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
General Question ◽  
National Society ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The People ◽  
Social And Economic Development

The discussion on the spirit possession phenomenon is related in this study to the more general question of the role of religious institutions as part in the development process of a people living in a limited geographical area of a wider national society. It is assumed that religion, like culture in general, has its specific institutional forms as result of the historical development of a society, but at the same time religion is a force shaping that history. People's cultural resources influence their social and economic development and form a potential creative element in it'. Some of the questions to be asked are: "How are specific religious practices related to the dynamics of change in the societies in question? What is the social and religious context in which the spirit possession phenomenon occurs in them? What social and economic relations get their expression in them? To what extent is spirit possession in this case a means of exerting values and creatively overcoming a crisis or conflict which the changing social and economic relations impose on the people? The established spirit possession cults are here seen as the institutional forms of religious experience. At the same time it becomes evident that there is institutionalization in process as well as deinstitutionalization of spirit possession where it occurs outside established institutional forms. Institution is taken as a socially shared form of behaviour the significance of which is commonly recognized by those who share it. By the term spirit possession cult is meant a ritual form of spirit possession of a group which is loosely organized and without strict membership. The context of the study is four ethnic groups in Eastern Tanzania, near the coast of the Indian Ocean. The general theme of the project is The Role of Culture in the Restructuring of Tanzanian Rural Areas. The restructuring refers to a villagisation programme carried out in the whole country. People are being moved from their scattered homesteads to new villages and old villages are enlarged by incorporating several villages into one. People are going through a process of fundamental social change.

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