Healing Shrines Research Articles

Appropriation and Contestation of Akan Traditional Healing Approaches in the Healing of Mentally Ill Patients at Prayer Camps in Ghana

Abstract Prayer camps are Pentecostal healing centres established across various parts of Ghana. Prayer camps in Ghana have become notable centres offering mainly spiritual help to people with mental health conditions. Arguably, prayer camps serve as a breakpoint or watershed between traditional healing shrines and the ‘gardens’ operated by Spiritual churches, popularly known as Sunsum sorè, in Ghana. Analysing data collected from fieldwork between 2019 and 2021, this article shows that the healing rituals for the mentally ill at prayer camps in Ghana share similarities with traditional healing shrine practices. The article argues that while such practices reveal the appropriation of traditional healing approaches at prayer camps, they also bring the tension and contestation inherent to the concept of appropriation into perspective.

Reading Ancient Temples through the Lens of Disability Studies and Mobility Design

Modern archaeological scholarship typically overlooks the experiences of people with disabilities, assuming that ancient societies, like contemporary ones, focused on the able-bodied. However, recent developments in the field have demonstrated the possibility of uncovering previously hidden aspects, such as prostheses and votive offerings related to disabilities at healing shrines. Nevertheless, excavations and material culture interpretations still often neglect the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities in antiquity. This article proposes a novel approach that integrates disability studies and mobility design into archaeology to shed light on the lives of the disabled. It applies these concepts to examine access to temples for people with disabilities in ancient Greece, Egypt, and Canaan/Israel, serving as a proof of concept to show that archaeologists can uncover insights into disability by understanding the theological underpinnings of religious site construction.

‘I do not feel well here as such. But it has become my home’: abandonment and care in healing shrines

In thinking about care, much research has focused on kin relations, family-related care, and formal (medical) or informal care providers. Yet, how do we understand care responsibilities in contexts where kin care is absent despite being a desired social norm, and people turn to other community sources or practices? This paper draws on ethnographic research in a Sufi religious shrine in western India well-known for providing succor to those in distress, including those with mental illness. Interviews were conducted with pilgrims who had left homes due to strained relationships with kin members. For many of them, the shrine emerged as a sanctuary, even while not entirely a safe one, allowing women to live alone. While both academic research on mental health institutions and state responses have delved into the abandoned or ‘dumped woman’ in long-stay institutions or care homes, this paper argues that ‘abandonment’ is not a straightforward condition, but rather a dynamic discourse that works in different ways. For women bereft of kinship ties, narratives of being abandoned by kin became ways of justifying long (and sometimes permanent) residence in religious shrines, which were able to absorb such ‘abandoned’ pilgrims who had nowhere else to go, even if half-heartedly so. Importantly, these alternative forms of living made possible by shrines reflect women’s agency, enabling women to live alone even while belonging to a community. In a context with limited social security options for women in precarious family situations, these care arrangements become significant, even if they are informal and ambivalent forms of care. Keywords: kinship; abandonment; agency; care; religious healing

The philosophical operative conditions of healing shrines in Igbo-African worldhood

This paper has studied the philosophical operative conditions of healing shrines in Igbo-African societies. The concept of philosophical operative condition is introduced into the study of Igbo-African healing shrines with the purpose of pointing out the philosophical principles behind the activities in these shrines. This philosophical dimension of African healing shrines is possible because of the nature of the relationship between religion and philosophy. This work, therefore, studied healing and healers in traditional African societies and the place and nature of healing shrines in Igbo societies. Though so much has been written about healing shrines and sacred places in traditional African societies, there is a seeming insufficiency of documents or literature on the Igbo-African healing shrines and the roles they played in restoring well-being to the people. More so, there is hardly a literature that focuses on the philosophical spirit behind the activities in Igbo-African healing shrines. This is the gap in literature that this present work fills. For the purpose of this study, this piece adopted the phenomenological, hermeneutic and historical approaches. This study is a qualitative research that has used both primary and secondary sources of data. It discovered that there is an inescapable element of philosophy in every dimension of African religion.

Healing Borders and the Mapping of Referral Systems

Abstract The outbreak of COVID 19 and other global pandemics readily shows the importance of ethno-cultural channels of communication. However, modern discourses on medical referrals have narrowly focused their attention on the diverse challenges of referral services in biomedical establishments, but have generally ignored the cultural mechanics and religious dynamism in the contemporary operations of ethno-medical referrals in sub-Saharan Africa. Departing from these studies, the present paper underscores the active networks of referrals in African healing shrines that appropriate the diverse resources and expertise of different healing spaces in their treatments of sick clients. Using an ethnographical approach, the paper investigates the mechanics of ethno-medical referrals from the perspectives of more than 250 sick clients in African healing shrines, over 50 practitioners in ethno-medical shrines, several doctors and nurses, and church workers/Christian healers in Nigeria and Ghana respectively. The findings of this research suggest that there are lively networks of referrals between African healing shrines, hospitals, and Christian healing/prayerhouses, which dramatically turned these diverse healing spaces into an animated transborder space of creative negotiation.

Health and Integrative Wellness: Mapping Wellness and Its Cultural Psychology in Contemporary Africa

The present work probes the ethnocultural psychology of African people in the creative negotiations of wellness across healing spaces. Using data drawn from ethnographic method, the research engages the cultural dynamics in the emerging ethnomedical conversations among 250 sick clients of African healing shrines, over 50 contemporary practitioners of African healing shrines, 40 biomedical doctors and nurses, and 40 church workers/Christian healers in Nigeria and Ghana. The findings of this research suggest that there are dialogic paths of ecumenical interaction, active routes of referral systems, and social contours of transborder spiritualities across contemporary African healing spaces.

Jesus and the Paralytics

This study explores the Greco-Roman memorialization of healings through material culture as a point of comparison for the Gospels’ miracle traditions. Special attention is given to the ex-votos left at healing shrines and especially the Iamata inscriptions connected with the Asclepius cult. This corpus of evidence brings into focus a series of dynamics that help illuminate the stories of Jesus’ two healings of a paralytic (John 5:1-15; Mark 2:1-10). The comparisons help clarify both the common memorializing supports that informed and sustained the memory of Jesus transmitted in the Gospels, as well as the distinctive relationship of the Christian cult to certain specific places where memories of Jesus where preserved.

The Healing Shrines of St. Phoibammon: Evidence of Cult Activity in Coptic Legal Documents

Abstract:A group of 8th century Coptic child donation documents addressed to the monastery of Apa Phoibammon on the mountain of Jeme in Upper Egypt has been the subject of much discussion. The exclusively male children donated by their parents have always been understood as gifts to the monastery itself, a place where they were, however, not intended to grow up as monks, but to remain as lifelong servants. The reason stated for these donations were miracle healings granted by Apa Phoibammon, the patron saint of that monastery, in his local healing shrine. Such donations of cured former patients are a common feature especially to shrines of healing saints as demonstrated by their frequent descriptions in miracle stories circulating widely in the early Arab period. Juxtaposing phrases used in these Coptic legal texts with those from miracle stories of famous Egyptian healing saints, such as Coluthus, Menas, and Phoibammon himself, can demonstrate the impact hagiography had on daily experience and vice versa. The documentary evidence from Jeme thus forms the missing link between hagiography and reality as it emphasizes the practicalities involved when people were donated as living testimonies of a saint’s miraculous healing power. Due to the desire to legalize such donations, a written contract could only have been drawn up with the saint’s legal representative, in this case the abbot of the monastery at Jeme, who ran the healing shrine of Apa Phoibammon where the donated children would serve.

Women Pilgrims and Their Travelling Companions in Twelfth-Century England

This article investigates a little discussed aspect of female pilgrimage in the High Middle Ages: companionship. Drawing on evidence from miracle collections produced in twelfth-century England, it examines the identities and motivations of individuals recorded as accompanying women on their journeys to local healing shrines. The article establishes that women travelled with a variety of companions ranging from husbands and parents to neighbors and hired guides, but it also reveals that the frequency with which women are depicted on pilgrimage with a companion is surprisingly low. Putting these findings into context, the article assesses both the social reality and the cultural representation of female pilgrimage in these texts, and considers how and why some elements of women’s companionship in twelfth-century miracle accounts challenge our general conceptions of female mobility in the Middle Ages.

Healing Temples, the Anti-Superstition Discourse and Global Mental Health: Some Questions from Mahanubhav Temples in India

The recent murder of anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar highlighted competing discourses on the place of local healing shrines in contemporary India. While healing shrines are dismissed as regressive and exploitative sites by the rationalist movement, mental health discourses seek to either abolish them or utilise them in community psychiatry initiatives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mahanubhav temples in western India, this paper argues that healing shrines are better seen as spaces of refuge for those in distress. Such a position moves away from the rationalist perspective, while also questioning the incorporation of such shrines in the (global) mental health agenda.

Ritual healing and mental health in India

Ritual healing is very widespread in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and is by far the most common option for those with serious behavioral disturbances. Although ritual healing thus accounts for a very large part of the actual health care system, the state and its regulatory agencies have, for the most part, been structurally blind to its existence. A decade of research on in this region, along with a number of shorter research trips to healing shrines and specialists elsewhere in the subcontinent, and a thorough study of the literature, suggest that such techniques are often therapeutically effective. However, several considerations suggest that ritual healing may not be usefully combined with mainstream "Western" psychiatry: (a) psychiatry is deeply influenced by the ideology of individualism, which is incompatible with South Asian understandings of the person; (b) social asymmetries between religious healers and health professionals are too great to allow a truly respectful relationship between them; and (c) neither the science of psychiatry nor the regulatory apparatus of the state can or will acknowledge the validity of "ritual therapy"--and even if they did so, regulation would most likely destroy what is most valuable about ritual healing. This suggests that it is best if the state maintain its structural blindness to ritual healing.

“This Temple is Our Natal Home!”: Women’s Experiences of Marriage and Possession in Maharashtra

This paper explores women’s experiences of marriage, stress, and spirit possession in the context of healing shrines. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork in three Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra (western India). Women’s narratives emphasized the tensions and conflicts they experience in relation to marriage. These accounts about family stress were not just empirical accounts of stress but narrative devices that legitimize women’s stay in the temple. Thus, in referring to the temple as the “natal home”, women seek to access their privilege to periodically visit the temple “just as” they would visit the natal home. By making available to women alternative spaces and subject positions, these narratives of spirit possession and marriage emerge as powerful expressions of women’s agency.

Wives, mothers and widows on pilgrimage: categories of ‘woman’ recorded at English healing shrines in the High Middle Ages

This article examines the types of women undertaking pilgrimage in medieval England as recorded in a range of twelfth-century miracle collections. Miracle narratives provide details of pilgrims visiting local saints' shrines, and are often used by scholars to conduct sociological surveys of a shrine's clientele. This article extends this methodology by analysing women pilgrims within two common medieval frameworks of collective identity: the six ‘ages of man’, and the four familial/sexual life stages of women. Exploring the ways in which hagiographers identified, categorised and, indeed, stereotyped women pilgrims, the essay re-appraises the customary sociological approach to miracle narratives, and assesses both the social reality and the cultural representation of female pilgrimage in these twelfth-century sources.

The prevalence and severity of mental illnesses handled by traditional healers in two districts in Uganda.

Little is known about the prevalence and severity of DSM-IV mental disorders treated by traditional healers in Uganda. To describe the prevalence and severity of DSM-IV disorders handled by traditional healers in Jinja and Iganga districts, Eastern Uganda. Between January and March 2008, Face-to-Face Interviews were conducted with 400 patients attending traditional healers' shrines for mental health problems, using Self Rating Questionnaire 25 (SRQ-25) for screening, the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI-Plus) for specific DSM-IV diagnosis and the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) for severity of illness. Descriptive data analysis and frequency estimates were performed using SPSS version 15.0 for Windows. Pearson's chi-square tests and odds ratios were used to explore the relationship between severity and combined use of biomedical services and traditional healing. Of 387 respondents, 60.2% had diagnosable current mental illness and 16.3% had had one disorder in their lifetime. Of the diagnosable current mental illnesses, 29.7% were Psychosis; 5.4% Major depressive episode; 5.6% Anxiety disorders; 3.6% mixed Anxiety-Depression; and 3.9% Suicidality. In terms of severity, 37.7% of the current mental illnesses were severe, 35.1% moderate and 13.2% mild. Patients with moderate to severe symptoms were more likely to use both biomedical services and traditional healers. These findings suggest that a considerable number of patients with DSM-IV diagnosable mental disorders attend traditional healing shrines; the majority had moderate to severe symptoms. Mental health professionals therefore need to come up with ways to co-operate with traditional healers, e.g. as officially designated Traditional Mental Attendants (TMA), for the benefit of their patients.

ORDINARY OBJECTS IN CHRISTIAN HEALING SANCTUARIES

The evidence from miracle stories and from archaeology is used in this paper to document the appearance and contents of the healing shrines of Late Antiquity; particularly the prosaic objects of everyday life that would have been present at a shrine alongside liturgical and devotional objects. It explores the evidence relating to the everyday lives of those staying at the shrine, and shows how even the most ordinary object could be sanctified by its presence in a healing sanctuary.

Animal Remains from Temples in Roman Britain

ABSTRACTApproximately twenty temple excavations have yielded significant assemblages of animal bones. All come from Romano-Celtic temples in southern Britain, with the exception of four shrines for eastern cults. This paper picks out major characteristics of the assemblages and draws some general conclusions about the nature of the ritual activity that led to their deposition. At temples such as Uley or Hayling, sacrifices were probably an important part of the rituals, and the animals carefully selected. At other temples, animals had a lesser role, with little evidence of selection. At healing shrines, such as Bath and Lydney, animal sacrifices are not clearly attested, and would probably have taken place away from the areas used for healing humans. In contrast to the Romano-Celtic temples, animal remains at the shrines of eastern cults have very different characteristics: individual deposits can be linked to specific rituals within the cult buildings, and have many similarities to the continental evidence

Healing Power in the Marian Miracle Books of Bavarian Healing Shrines, 1489–1523 A.D.

Journal Article Healing Power in the Marian Miracle Books of Bavarian Healing Shrines, 1489–1523 A.D. Get access D.BRANCH MOODY D.BRANCH MOODY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 47, Issue 1, January 1992, Pages 68–90, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/47.1.68 Published: 01 January 1992