Spirit Mediumship Research Articles

Hidden histories of science and medicine: spirit mediumship and the ‘psychology without a soul’

Mental health professionals working with the dying and bereaved may occasionally feel that a belief in the mind’s persistence after death can function as an important coping device for some of their patients. To facilitate an unbiased reading of the empirical articles in this thematic issue, this essay therefore uses the history of a particularly contested area of ‘survival research’, spirit mediumship, to highlight widely forgotten but pivotal historical contexts and complexities which have failed to inform and balance standard academic receptions of empirical approaches to the mind’s hypothetic survival of death. After sketching diametrically opposed attitudes to mediumship by the founders of modern psychology, William James and Wilhelm Wundt, and psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler’s defences of research with mediums against the dismissive stance exemplified by Emil Kraepelin and Henry Maudsley, I conclude that standard interpretations of any open-minded scientific interest in mediumship and survival research as wishful thinking are asymmetrical and psychologically simplistic.

What the Writer Found There: David Peace's Occupied City

Abstract This essay seeks to understand the writing strategies and structures that David Peace uses in Occupied City, the second novel of his Tokyo Trilogy set in the American occupation period (1945–52). Focusing on the (still unsolved) historical crime of the Teikoku Bank mass murders of 1948 and its linkages to the Japanese army's Unit 731 wartime experiments with plague and germ warfare in China—war crimes that were covered up by the Americans—Peace sustains Artaud's notions of plague and theater as he uses spirit mediumship within implicit textual figurations of the Rashōmon complex (as medieval tale, as modernist literary icon Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's retelling, and Akira Kurosawa's occupation-era filmic allegory) to stage multiple haunted and contesting testimonies about these unjustly repressed and unresolved crimes of war and postwar.

Three Spirit Mediums

Based on interviews with three American spirit mediums during the COVID-19 pandemic, this research note serves as a case study on the role of spirit mediumship during the pandemic. Because they serve clients rather than congregations, spirit mediums were able to develop more nuanced and immediate responses to clients’ grief surrounding the loss of a loved one to COVID-19. Spirit mediums also had an important role during the pandemic as interpreters for creating theodicies explaining why a loved one died and individuals experienced grief. In this meaning-making work, spirit mediums sometimes reflected a “conspiritual” perspective, framing the pandemic’s origins and subsequent vaccine development through conspiratorial thinking. This research note ultimately suggests, therefore, that spirit mediums have an important role in American grief that has been largely overlooked and needs further dedicated research.

Mediums, Objects, and the Problem of Presence in the Western Himalayas

ABSTRACT In some religious contexts, mainly Protestant Christianity, anthropologists often contend with the problem of presence that preoccupies believers – the simultaneous presence and absence of God. However, in the Hinduism of the Western Himalayas the problem of presence is quite different. The royal deities in this region are profoundly present, embodied in mediums and palanquins. Thus, followers of these deities are not puzzled by the concept of an absent god. Instead, they need to navigate in a world where gods are very tangible, in ways that can cause discomfort and anxiety. In this article I demonstrate the different roles of mediums and palanquins in the religious experience, and how palanquins are considered more reliable manifestations of the deities. I suggest that this is due to the need of the locals to maintain some degree of distance from the spirit mediumship in order to avoid excess presence of the deities.

Peter J. Hoesing. Kusamira Music in Uganda: Spirit Mediumship and Ritual Healing. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. xviii + 201 pp. List of Illustrations. Notes on Languages and Orthography. Acknowledgments. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0252085819.

Peter J. Hoesing. Kusamira Music in Uganda: Spirit Mediumship and Ritual Healing. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. xviii + 201 pp. List of Illustrations. Notes on Languages and Orthography. Acknowledgments. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0252085819.

From hostage to host: the spirit possession, mediumship, and gender relations in Chitral, Pakistan

This study explains how certain women in Chitral, Pakistan attains the status of spirit mediumship (Pari Khan) – a process where certain women attain the status and qualification to host spirits through which they claim to heal illnesses. For data collection, the study conducted in-depth interviews with spirit media, their assistants and clients, shamans, and clinicians; collected cases studies of possessed persons and their lived experiences of illness and healing; and conducted participant observations with spirit media (Pari Khan) to observe the healing rituals in its natural setting. The study reveals that patriarchal culture and oppressive norms frustrate women to the extent of illnesses that are locally interpreted as ‘spirit possession.’ As per the local practice, the treatment of the illness lies in either exorcism or domestication of the spirit. In the case of domestication, the possessed women (patients) gradually learn to live with the spirit and become its host. Such a woman is locally called Pari Khan, who gains considerable attention and social status by virtue of her alleged spiritual powers to heal various illnesses. The authors argue that spirit possession and mediumship, though provide relative empowerment to women, take away attention from women’s social and psychological deprivation.

The role and challenges of indigenous conflict resolution mechanism: The case of aboled in Borena Woreda, northeast Ethiopia

This study investigates Abold's role in resolving conflict by using qualitative and survey data. Thematic analysis was applied for the analysis of qualitative data and descriptive statistics were applied to analyze the survey data. It was found that the kin council, the spirit mediumship, and religious leaders are involved in conflict resolution. The responsibilities of the kin council, the spirit mediumship and religious leaders are undertaking the overall conflict resolution process, truth-finding and swearing of an oath to realize the reconciliation, respectively. Aboled has not only engaged in settling conflicts but also in conflict prevention and restoration of harmony. In the past four decades, its role, however, had been weakened despite being revived in the past five years due to people's trust lost in the formal conflict resolution system. Disregarding by the government, the erosion of the culture of elders' respect, the decline of witchcraft worshiping and the descent of elders' personalities are the significant challenges to the continuation of Aboled. Thus, the government should provide support to improve its conflict-resolving capacity.

Power division in the sacred world: the Cults of Neak Ta and Arak of the ethnic Khmer in Southeastern region, Vietnam

ABSTRACT Neak Ta and Arak are two indigenous beliefs which have existed together in traditional Khmer spirituality. This article presents the results of fieldwork in Lộc Khánh commune, Lộc Ninh district, Bình Phước province (about 200 km. north of Hồ Chí Minh City) where Khmer people have continuously maintained their traditional social structure including their strong local beliefs in spiritual power. Using qualitative research methods in combination with document analysis, the article shows that Neak Ta is representative of male power that is confirmed by the power and position of the elder council of the village, while Arak is representative of the female power that is displayed only through a woman appointed by the village clan that controls Arak from a theoretical power clan in the village. As result, it is analysed and examined the link of the theocratic power of Neak Ta and Arak through the rituals and the spirit mediumship in Lộc Khánh commune all which is a positive consequence of gender power balance between patriarchy and matriarchy.

The heritagisation of rituals: commodification and transmission. A case study of Nianli Festival in Zhanjiang, China

This article inquires into the effects of heritagisation on popular religious practices in Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China. With the establishment of the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) inventory system in China, numerous popular religious practices, such as procession of local deities, ancestor worship, temple festivals, exorcisms, divination, and spirit mediumship, are free of the stigma of “feudal superstition” and are now recognised as ICH. Based on the fieldwork conducted in the prefecture city of Zhanjiang (Guangdong Province, China) on the local festival tradition of Nianli, I examine how local communities respond to the Party-state’s efforts to safeguard ICH through two processes: the commodification and the transmission of ritual practice. How does the heritage-making process affect the commodification of ritual practice? And what impact has the participation of a plurality of new actors in ICH transmission had on the methods of transmission of local ritual knowledge?

Spirit Mediumship and Mental Health: Therapeutic Self-transformation Among Dang-kis in Singapore.

While some early studies suggested that spirit mediums were psychiatrically ill individuals who found a culturally sanctioned role, subsequent work has found that they are generally in good physical and mental health. While the calling to be a healer often involves an initiatory illness, practitioners go on to play demanding social roles, suggesting that involvement in mediumship may be therapeutic for the practitioner. This study focuses on dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese spirit mediumship practiced in Singapore to explore whether participation in dang-ki healing is therapeutic for the mediums. We interviewed eight dang-kis from five temples about their life trajectories and assessed their mental health status with standardized psychological questionnaires. Most of the dang-kis did not appear to suffer from clinically significant emotional distress. Their narratives suggest that involvement in dang-ki mediumship may have therapeutic effects in which the embodied experience of self plays a central role. The dang-kis experienced changes in social identity, bodily experiences during spirit possession, and their overall sense of self through recurrent possession rituals. In general, the practice of spirit mediumship illustrates how the experiences and meanings of the self are constructed and reconstructed through body-world relations in ways that may confer a sense of wellness and social efficacy.

Connecting with Deities: The Practice of Spirit Mediumship among the Chinese in Kuantan, Pahang

The belief towards the spirit medium is one of the oldest beliefs in Chinese folk religion. This research explored spirit mediumship practices among the Chinese in Kuantan, Pahang, and interviewed 10 spirit mediums by applying interpretive phenomenological analysis. The findings indicate that the ability to interact with deities is either due to unavoidable illness, hereditary, naturally acquired, or learned. Indeed, a spirit medium may or may not convey messages to the audience or the deities from ritual performances. However, the ritual had revealed an “indispensable and official” status among mediums and worshippers. Although some expectations of this practice have faded due to modernity, it is still popular among the Chinese, especially in bonding the Chinese together as one community.

Ritual futures: Spirit mediumship as chronotopic labor.

This essay reflects on the still‐present difficulty in approaching contemporary rural mediumship as coeval with their urban psychotherapeutic counterparts. Drawing on ethnographic work in rural Henan province in central China, I describe how both rurality and spirit mediumship have been rendered anachronistic through national imaginaries, anti‐superstition campaigns, and psychiatric discourses. The essay centers on the case of a spirit medium located in the psychiatric unit, and the social evolutionary and developmentalist temporalities condensed in her cultural psychiatric diagnosis. I then turn to the medium's ritual work and cosmological account, which invert mediumship's position in space and time. The essay approaches mediumship's rituals as a form of chronotopic labor, which reworks the spatio‐temporal coordinates they inherit from within. It closes by bringing together the conundrums of rural mediumship and those of urban psychotherapeutic and diasporic worlds, to consider psychic landscapes of dislocation, and other formulations of futures to come.

Review: Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer, by Emily Pierini

Review: <i>Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer</i>, by Emily Pierini

Spectral Revolution: Notes on a Maoist Cosmology

This essay describes the cosmological role of Mao in ritual and spirit mediumship in rural China. It considers the occulted forces hosted by the Chairman’s image and words, across movements of display, concealment, and circulation. Here, the Party-state has a cosmic double, and Maoist anti-religious policies are not what they seem.

Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer, written by Emily Pierini

Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer, written by Emily Pierini

The Moving Parts in Michèle Magema's Body of Work

The Moving Parts in Michèle Magema's Body of Work

Spirit mediumship and the state in mainland Southeast Asia: A comparative perspective

This comparative study examines the complex, changing configurations of the relationships between the state and mediumship cults, under different regimes and histories in three Southeast Asian states and China. Spirit mediums are endowed with charismatic authority, owing to their access to the supernatural sphere, which stands in implicit tension with the authority of the state. This tension underlies state–mediumship relationships in Southeast Asia, but leads to diverse dynamics, according to the place of religion in each state. In the atheist, communist/post-communist states (China and Vietnam) mediumship is primarily approached as a political issue; in Buddhist Thailand as a religious issue, and in multicultural Malaysia, where Islam is the official religion, as a legal issue. Tensions prevail particularly in the communist/post-communist states, where there has been a resurgence of mediumship cults, even as these are officially proscribed as ‘superstitions’. In Thailand tensions have been ameliorated by a gradual amalgamation of the cults and popular Buddhism, while in Malaysia tensions are prevented by controls over religious practices. Further research on the relatively neglected issue of the relationship between the state and mediumship cults in the emergent regions of the world is suggested.

The cultivation of ‘wild channeling’: lived religion as a normalizing force

ABSTRACT Channeling, a New Age form of spirit mediumship, is a hyper-individualized religiosity, with proponents claiming that each person can create his/her own reality. Yet, most channels hold to very similar beliefs and practise their craft in a uniform manner. This, for most channels, involves moving through two stages: first, in the wild phase, they undergo powerful experiences of direct encounters with non-material beings who can be harsh and demanding, sensations are strongly embodied, the experience can be horrifying and its meaning remains obscure. In the second, cultivated stage, channels come to understand these raw experiences through pre-existing narratives of meaning learned from friends and literature, the entities channeled are benevolent, and both the content and the form of the sessions come to emphasize empowerment. Both the phenomenology and repetition of lived religion, it is shown, can serve as a regulating force, creating institutionalization of religious practices and beliefs, even when these advocate individualism and are situated in a milieu lacking any formal institutions.

RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AFRICA: THREE STUDIES ON NIGERIA

Until the second half of the twentieth century, the role of religion in Africa was profoundly neglected. There were no university centers devoted to the study of religion in Africa; there was only a handful of scholars who focused primarily on religious studies and most of them were not historians; and there were relatively few serious empirical studies on Christianity, Islam, and African traditional religions. This paucity of rigorous research began to be remedied in the 1960s and by the last decade of the twentieth century, the body of literature on religion in Africa had expanded significantly. The burgeoning research and serious coverage of the role of religion in African societies has initially drawn great impetus from university centers located in the West and in various parts of Africa that were committed to demonstrating that Africa has a rich history even before European contact. Accordingly scholars associated with such university centers have since the 1960s acquired and systematically catalogued private religious manuscripts and written numerous pan-African, regional, national, and local studies on diverse topics including spirit mediumship, witchcraft, African systems of thought, African evangelists and catechists, Mahdism, Pentecostalism, slavery, conversion, African religious diasporas and their impact on host societies, and religion and politics. Although the three works under review here deal with the role of religion in an African context, they mainly contribute to addressing three major questions in the study of religion and politics: How do Islam and other religious orientations shape public support for democracy? What is the primary cause of conflict or religious violence? What strategies should be employed to resolve such conflicts and violence?

The mind and the Devil: porosity and discernment in two Chinese charismatic‐style churches

AbstractThis essay explores otherworldly encounters and notions of mind across two charismatic‐style churches in China. In Zhao Village Church in rural Henan province, Christian congregants more often approached the mind as porous to the Devil's corruption. In Living Church in Shanghai, congregants were more influenced by bounded, psychological notions of the mind as an entity; although the mind was also held to be permeable to spiritual personae, its interior workings stood as the central hindrance to discernment, rather than the externality of the Devil. And while those in Shanghai stressed a gradual, retroactive verification of potential spiritual signs, those in Henan strove for a rhythm of immediate response. Meanwhile, Shanghai congregants described fewer sensory and embodied encounters with divine voice, pain, and healing than congregants in Henan. Such divergent theories of mind, virtuous rhythms, and distributions within the Christian spiritual sensorium might be understood in part through styles of engagement accentuated at these churches, and in part through the uneven unfolding of religious abolition and revival in China, including the heightened urban presence of psychotherapeutic genres and the rural presence of spirit mediumship in recent decades. These variations in personhood and otherworldly encounter, including deeply porous ones, were thus co‐present in an atheist secular milieu, after what have been seen as some of the most thorough secularization campaigns conducted by a modern state.