Spirit Possession as Self Transformative Experience in Late Medieval Catholic Europe

Abstract

Abstract Possession by either divine or demonic spirits is a familiar form of self-transformation. Together with devotional ecstasy, shamanism, trance, and voodoo and Zar ceremonies, possession is included by ethnopsychologists and anthropologists in the large variety of altered states of consciousness, numerous mental states that are “indigenously understood in terms of the influence of an alien spirit, demon, or deity.” These diverse conditions and practices enable individuals and communities to reach beyond their mundane bodies and souls and connect with the supernatural, whether divine or diabolic. Anthropologist Erika Bourguignon has counted more than different societies in which such states are acknowledged. Other anthropologists have identified a marked contrast between two types of possession - central and peripheral. In the former, possession is regarded as a positive experience, and the spirits who take temporary hold over human bodies are viewed positively and typically speak through men. In such societies, possession is sometimes selfinduced, and the state of being possessed supports the moral, political, social, and religious order. In peripheral possessions, the phenomenon is viewed as undesirable, signifying personal or social pathology, and the possessed individuals are usually women. In cultures where possession is viewed negatively, as “the state of a person whose body has fallen under the control of the devil,” the possessing agents are assumed to be demons, Satan himself, or revenants - disembodied souls that return from the realm of the dead. Societies that embrace peripheral possession, seen as dangerous or non-normative behavior, developed healing techniques to cure and reintegrate possessed individuals by means of established ceremonies of exorcism.