Possession Trance Research Articles

Music and Dance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music and Possession.

Trance ritual selalu dikaitkan erat dengan musik-tapi mengapa, dan bagaimana? Gilbert Rouget menawarkan dan analisis diperpanjang musik dan trance, menyimpulkan bahwa tidak ada hukum universal dapat menjelaskan hubungan antara musik dan trance; mereka sangat bervariasi dan tergantung pada sistem makna dari konteks budaya mereka. Rouget ketat memeriksa korpus seluruh dunia data dari literatur etnografi, tetapi ia juga mengacu pada Alkitab, lapangan sendiri di Afrika Barat, dan tulisan-tulisan Plato, Ghazali, dan Rousseau. Untuk mengatur toko besar informasi ini, ia mengembangkan tipologi trans berdasarkan simbolisme dan manifestasi eksternal. Dia menguraikan perbedaan mendasar antara trance dan ekstasi, perdukunan dan kepemilikan semangat, dan trance komunal dan emosional. Musik dianalisis dalam hal pemain, praktik, instrumen, dan asosiasi dengan tarian. Setiap jenis trans menarik kekuatan dari musik dengan cara yang berbeda di berbagai titik dalam ritual, Rouget menyimpulkan. Dalam kepemilikan trance, musik menginduksi mahir untuk mengidentifikasi dirinya dengan dewa dan memungkinkan dia untuk mengekspresikan identifikasi ini melalui tarian. Paksa menolak pseudo-science dan reduksionisme, Rouget demystifies yang disebut teori efek neurofisiologis dari drum pada trans. Ritual trance has always been closely associated with music—but why, and how? Gilbert Rouget offers and extended analysis of music and trance, concluding that no universal law can explain the relations between music and trance; they vary greatly and depend on the system of meaning of their cultural context. Rouget rigorously examines a worldwide corpus of data from ethnographic literature, but he also draws on the Bible, his own fieldwork in West Africa, and the writings of Plato, Ghazzali, and Rousseau. To organize this immense store of information, he develops a typology of trance based on symbolism and external manifestations. He outlines the fundamental distinctions between trance and ecstasy, shamanism and spirit possession, and communal and emotional trance. Music is analyzed in terms of performers, practices, instruments, and associations with dance. Each kind of trance draws strength from music in different ways at different points in a ritual, Rouget concludes. In possession trance, music induces the adept to identify himself with his deity and allows him to express this identification through dance. Forcefully rejecting pseudo-science and reductionism, Rouget demystifies the so-called theory of the neurophysiological effects of drumming on trance. He concludes that music's physiological and emotional effects are inseparable from patterns of collective representations and behavior, and that music and trance are linked in as many ways as there are cultural structures

Veiled Self, Transparent Meanings: Tuareg Headdress as Social Expression

Many societies display a concern with the human head as central to personal and social identity. Treated as a dominant part of the body symbolically in art and literature, it often denotes the leader or chief, and has other connotations. A special sanctity is associated with the head, believed to be the seat or center of spiritual forces. Many authors point out that this central focus is influenced by concepts of the body and self as well as modes of perception (Biebuyck and Van den Abeele 1984:21-23; Seeger 1981; Borker 1978; Ben-Amos 1976). For this reason, the human head and its elaboration lend themselves well to recent anthropological interest in negotiation of meaning and personhood. The natural body is shaped into a cultural entity to convey different messages about the person. The elaborate care and adornment of the head suggests its extraordinary, metonymic significance. More than iconic, this significance has a vitality derived from everyday experience, so studies of head adornment need to be integrated closely with social organization and process. Here I seek to illuminate the significance of Tuareg headwear and the processes by which its meanings are constructed. This task requires examining headdress in context as social practice, rather than in isolation as static icon. Tuareg practices provide insights into these processes in the dynamics of men's faceveiling and women's headcovering. This article examines the role of headdress in the social construction of self among a seminomadic herding, gardening, and caravanning, socially stratified, Moslem people: the Kel Ewey Tuareg of northeastern Niger.1 Relations between the sexes are examined through the meaning of the women's headscarf (afar) and its male counterpart, the faceveil (tagelmust). In addition, I briefly consider female inversion of these practices: faceveiling during possession trance exorcism rituals. Why Tuareg women wear headscarves and men faceveils, how these headdresses contribute to everyday construction of person, and what constitutes their meaning as social experience are of central concern here. For both men and women, covering the head connotes transition in jural status and separating individual goals from group responsibilities. This takes the form of hiding personal sentiments, the literal and intended effect of headdress. Although noble masculine pride emphasizes self control, women are also pressured, through gossip and ridicule, to conceal emotions at life transitions. Thus both male and female headdress serve the importance of reserve. I argue that Tuareg headdress is a metonym for a larger whole; access to property. In this, men and women have distinct but interrelated positions and concerns in the inheritance system as domestic groups change. At transitional points in life, individuals take on roles guarding the transfer of property. These situations necessitate the practice of reserve and respect. Headdress embodies this,

Multiple Personality, Possession Trance, and the Psychic Unity of Mankind

. the psychic unity of mankind is a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory since, without this axiom, all psychoanalytic extrapolations from clinical data to cultural material remain idle speculation. ... in a given ethnic group, a particular idea can surface consciously and be culturally implemented, while in another it occurs only on the unconscious level and finds no direct cultural expression. . . . the same impulse or fundamental fantasy can be stimulated by various cultural influences, and conversely, can use equally well a great variety of cultural outlets and fields of action . . . something which is out in the open and even culturally implemented in one society is often repressed in other societies. George Devereux, Culture and the Unconscious (1978[1955])

The nature of the shamanic state of consciousness: a review.

A review of the literature suggests that a common psychobiological process is associated with various altered states of consciousness (ASC) utilized by shamans, meditators, and mediums. However, the shamanic state of consciousness (SSC) can be differentiated physiologically from possession trance states. The psychophysiological literature on different types of trances and on seizure conditions associated with the temporal lobe discharge syndrome is reviewed. On this basis, it is hypothesized that while both the SSC and possession trances involve hippocampal-septal stimulation, the difference between the SSC and the possession states includes the amygdala involvement associated with the latter. This criterion and others establish a basis for differentiating between the terms "shamanic," "shamanistic," and "mediumistic." The physiological concomitants of the SSC make it appear to be both physiologically and psychologically beneficial as well as indicating that it is most likely that there is a genetic component affecting one's ability to enter the SSC and other ASC.

Neurophysiology and the Curative Possession Trance: The Chinese Case

Spirit possession healing in prerevolutionary China serves as an example of the more general phenomenon of possession trance. After examining universal features of this form of healing, as revealed in Chinese examples, I review social‐psychological and especially neurophysiological explanations for both trance induction and its healing effects. Questions for further investigation are suggested.

Ritual Performance in Africa Today

Ritual has for too long been considered the most conservative and repetitive kind of performance, especially in Africa. In 1968, Victor Turner wrote that wherever individualism, novelty, and change develop, rituals perish within a short time (1968:22-23). He believed that only in stable societies with a strong corporate life-those least influenced by technological change-is ritual able to maintain its function and that only with stabilization would a widespread revival of ritual be possible. Even in his later writings (1982:85) Turner believed that ritual liminality in Africa largely meant the maintenance of an existing social order. My own experience in southern Nigeria, Togo, and Ghana suggests something else-that rapid social change stimulates a traditionalizing process in which rituals and ritual symbols proliferate, constructing their pasts at the same time that they construct themselves (see Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1983:21 ). The studies which follow indicate a more far-reaching basis for this claim. The contributors here view ritual not as a relic from the past somehow mindlessly and uncritically passed on from generation to generation. Rather, they examine ritual as a vital, ongoing process. In gathering the essays for this issue, I made no attempt to cover all of Africa geographically and, as it turned out, most of the essays are focused on West and Central Africa. I also wanted integrated perspectives on entire events as opposed to studies of particular media-like dance or music. What interested me most was the wide spectrum of ritual performances in Africa today, and the different relationships these performances have to different kinds of social orders. The contributors wrote essays on rites of passage-marriage and both male and female initiations-divination, prophecy, masking and puppet performance, as well as possession trance performance. These are not parallel categories; indeed many rituals combine different types and modes of performance, such as initiation and masking, or divination and possession trance, or divination and initiation. What all of the essays demonstrate is that, broadly speaking, African ritual is dialogic in form, always a process of competition, negotiation, and argumentation, never simply a matter of repeating correctly (see Bloch I974). The first essay, by Kolawole Ositola, represents a practitioner's view of the rituals he conducts. He does not talk about ritual in the same way that academics do, nor does he provide a detailed description and analysis of his

Les cultes de possession avec transes au Niger

Trance possession cults in the republic of Niger. Trance possessions cults (waasan boorii/holey hoori) appear only in cultural areas which have undergone certain types of external aggression (various acculturation shocks subsequent to the expansion of Islam and notably as a result of colonial conquest). These cultural shocks have given rise to disturbances in the system of representation and traditional values ; these disturbances are due to the introduction of new systems of reference ; however, these elements are reintegrated according to local criteria. As a disturbed element (a crisis of self-représentation), the cult devotee is the expression of a disturbed social order (a crisis of the group-identity) from which comes the necessity of initiation rites to reconcile the being with himself, and also with the others, through the protecting divinities. These devotees of possession cults are mainly female and to a lesser extent male although no sexual segregation is practised in the recruitment of would-be devotees. The devotee's personality presents certain characteristic features : a daring temperament, a tendency to extroversion, to suggestibility, to theatrical attitudes and sexual disorders for both sexe, and female sterility. These trance possession cults correspond to a protecting system against anguish.

The Celebration of a Feast: Music, Dance, and Possession Trance in the Black Primitive Baptist Footwashing Ritual

Description detaillee du rituel de lavage des pieds, fete bisannuelle d'une eglise baptiste du Mississipi et de l'Alabama : role de la musique et des hymnes dans l'accession a un etat altere de conscience (transe des femmes), role du clerge, fete hors du temple suivant la ceremonie (musique et consommation d'alcool)

Women, Possession Trance Cults, and the Extended Nutrient-Deficiency Hypothesis

(1977) has shown more clearly than I did, in Egypt and elsewhere where it occurs this cult is often associated with the embourgoisement of men and women--involving a curtailment of the latter's freedom (see also Ferchiou 1972:66; Lewis, forthcoming). Finally, while I have no quarrel with Kehoe and Giletti's characterization of my interpretation of possession cults as political, I have never advocated a monocausal explanation of such protean phenomena. By the same token and contrary to their assertions, I have explicitly pointed out (Lewis 1966:325) that in this context the concepts center and periphery are relative and ambiguous. If authors choose to recycle the reductionist explanations of Marvin Harris and his school, they might at least take the trouble to get their facts right.

Possession Trance and Prophecy in Pre-Exilic Israel

Possession Trance and Prophecy in Pre-Exilic Israel

Possession Trance and Prophecy in Pre-Exilic Israel

Possession Trance and Prophecy in Pre-Exilic Israel