South Asian Rituals of Self-torture

The expression “South Asian rituals of self-torture,” chosen as the all-encompassing title of this bibliographic article, indicates a complex of inherently painful, injurious, hazardous, or, in any event, trying religious practices falling either within the domain of the mystic-ecstatic experience or within that of possession in both theistic (i.e., Hindu) and shamanistic (i.e., tribal) cult traditions of South Asia. Such practices, generally not observed within Brahmanical contexts, are also commonly termed “religious ordeals.” The English-language term ordeal is a modern reflex of Proto-Germanic *uz-dailjam, lit. “that which is dealt out (by the gods),” namely, “God’s judgment,” and it etymologically denotes an ancient mode of trial by divine judgment consisting of an arduous physical test a person charged with guilt could be occasionally forced to undergo; the result of the test was believed to determine that person’s guilt or innocence by immediate judgment of the deity. By introducing a shift in meaning that excludes from the definition of ordeal such judicial concepts as “guilt,” “trial,” “test,” and “judgment,” a number of historians of religion have used this term to designate self-torture rituals as a whole within diverse religious traditions. In the South Asian context, Hindu votive (or devotional) ordeals aim at purifying or healing the bodies and souls of devotees keeping a religious vow who have resolved to practice self-torture in order to enter into a spiritual communion with their own elected deity (by whom they are often considered to be possessed during their performance of the ordeal) so as to be temporarily identified with him/her. Whereas in theistic Hindu cults religious ordeals are performed in fulfilment of a vow and out of devotion to acquire the favor and power of a personal deity and, in certain cases, to become his/her oracles, in shamanistic tribal cults they are undertaken as rites of passage performed to authenticate a change of state in both the body and the soul of a sacred specialist (who can be variously a shamanistic figure, a medium, a diviner, or a traditional healer); the goal of the ordeal is, in this case also, the transcending of the profane human condition. In either case undergoing an extreme physical experience is equated with being initiated into a new and closer relationship with the divine, which is reflected in a person’s manifest ability to bear the physical discomfort caused by acts of self-torture while in a self-transcending or in a possession/trance state that is interpreted by both the actors and the audience as a radically transforming experience. Thus, the aim of both votive/devotional and shamanistic ordeals is achieved only when the vow-keeper’s or the shamanistic specialist’s indifference to self-torture is exhibited before an audience of devotees, and this substantial fact marks the difference between them and the individualistic, private penances involving self-torture carried out by Hindu ascetics. In this article, sections dealing with the diverse South Asian rituals of self-torture are organized in terms of both phenomenal typology and geographical area (the most parsimonious method for classifying them).

Djinnati syndrome as the first manifestation of temporal lobe epilepsy: A case report

Culture-bound syndromes are a group of abnormal behavior patterns occurring only in definite cultural groups. As a form of culture-bound syndromes, possession trance is known as the “replacement of personal identity customary sense by a new identity.” Djinnati syndrome is a possession state restricted to specific areas of Iranian and Pakistani Baluchestan. Preceding studies suggested that complex behavioral manifestations of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) were likely to contain dissociative states symptoms. Nonetheless, people in numerous developing countries hold a belief that Jinn possession causes epilepsy even in quite well-educated people. The aims of the present report are to describe a patient who presented Djinnati syndrome as the very first manifestation of TLE and address the feasible detrimental impacts of cultural misconceptions on diagnosing and treating epileptic seizures.

Mysticism among the Pedandas of Bali

On the island of Bali in Indonesia, the traditional Hindu religious leaders are the pedandas, or brahmin high priests. Their religious status is largely based on their mystical states, during which they create the highest and most valuable form of holy water, which is needed for all religious rituals on the island. It is one of the rare examples in world religions where mysticism is not only integrated into the daily life of the community but is vital to it. These are the religious authorities who maintain the ancient forms of Indonesian Hinduism, standing against the encroachment of Westernization, Islamization and modernization. Little ethnographic research has been done on them—there are no books about their lives and experiences in any Western languages, and only a few biographies in Indonesian. In this paper, we examine the lives of some Shiva pedandas, discussing their mystical experiences, and the ways that their states fit in with other sorts of mystical experiences in Bali. These other sorts of experiences include those of Buddhist priests, local healers or balians, and the debatably mystical experiences of possession trance.

Healing through Gender Inversion in Korean Possession Trance Rituals

Korean shamanism ( musok) considers problems of physical, social, and mental health to be a result of supernatural intervention. The unique position of male practitioners who become healers within a female-dominated sphere is especially telling as they perform cross-gender behavior that is perceived as related to homosexuality, which is stigmatized in Korea and often labeled as a “mental illness.” In contrast, musok frames these behaviors as responses to demands from the spirit world.

The Fulcrum of Experience in Indian Yoga and Possession Trance

The “inner organ” (antaḥkaraṇa) in the Indian philosophical school called Sāṃkhya is applied in two different experiential contexts: in the act of transcendence according to the path of yoga explored in the Yogasūtras of Patañjali (ca. 350 CE) and in the process of identity shift that occurs in possession by a deity in a broader range of Indian cultural practices. The act of transcendence will be better understood if we look at the antaḥkaraṇa through an emic lens, which is to say as an actual organ that is activated by experiential shifts, rather than as a concept or explanation that is indicative of a collocation of characteristics of the individuating consciousness or merely by reducing it to nonepistemic objective or subjective factors.

CHRISTS AND THE THEOTOKOSES OF THE CHRIST-FAITH: THE RITUAL ROLE AND THE SACRED STATUS AS A RECORDING OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

This article deals with the question of the origin of Christs and the Theotokoses in the communities of Christ-Faith. Existing explanations for this phenomenon is by no means exhaustive. In this article we will attempt to confirm the very fact of deification of leaders, as well as to find out what are the reasons for the existence of this phenomenon. According to the sources which are to us, we can conclude that certain features of veneration of Christ-Faiths leaders in the 18th-19th centuries go far beyond the veneration of local saints and "teachers of faith". In some cases, the sacred status was even inherited. In order to understand the reasons behind phenomenon, it is proposed to consider the ecstatic ritual of the Christ-Faith as a psychodynamic complex, which is aimed at the generation and reproduction of powerful religious experience. A ritual drama in mystic-ecstatic practices can be accompanied by a multitude of types of experiences, among them possession trance and trance of visions...