Signifiers of possessed subjectivity that cross the historical spectrum of case studies include nonautonomous models of agency, heteroglossia, and volatility that attracts the attention of a community and relates to gendered notions of the ambivalent power of receptivity. Postcolonial literary scholars (Cooper, 1992; Henderson, 1993) have noted the significance of the possessed woman as a literary trope that signifies the experience of having multiple languages and heritages speak through a subject, particularly women. The broad spectrum of roles humans have played in religious history, from mystics to prophets, are all variations on this very central theme.

So also, the devils associated with the dollars of international mining companies in South America are not merely symbols to be interpreted, but rather are working forces in the religious lives of the miners. Three lonely herdsmen starved of female companionship creates the girl of their dreams, from a broom, some straw and a few rags. In her study of Hinduism, Kathleen Erndl (1984) notes that the Goddess plays those whom she possesses and that the Punjab word for a theatrical play, khel, is the same word used to describe a possession. The controlled comparison of similar phenomena across traditions allows one to identify culturally specific models of religious subjectivity.Truth be told, even in the modern era, there still exists some faint glimmers of the times that were, beings that embody the mystique and wonder of the bygone times. The English word frenzy comes through the Latin phrenesis from the Greek phren, meaning the midriff, the heart, the upper part of the… Macumba , Macumba: see AFRO-BRAZILIAN CULTS. From this perspective, it is not important to create categorizations in which people can be placed; rather, the spectrum in which people experience themselves negotiating with a force of nonhuman origin is the common, formal ground of religious subjectivity in general.

Based on interviews with a Brazilian psychiatrist who is also an initiated elder of Candombl é, this ethnopsychiatric study argues that an approach that attends to both religious and medical motives in spirit possession cults is intrinsic to the goals of contemporary medical anthropology. A young Bohemian female artist falls in love with a nubile human-eating alien and teaches him how to be more human. She suddenly becomes inexplicably obsessed with Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and her personality completely changes. This definition highlights the problem of subjectivity and agency; the possessed person is not a conscious individual but rather has a blotted consciousness and has become an instrument for the will of an alien power. The magic may not be as widespread as it once was, but it exists to this day, used by only a small handful of souls.Studying the case of Deguchi Nao, a genius of Japanese religious history who began her career as a possessed woman in 1892 at the age of fifty-six, Hardacre studies the radical gender equality of Nao's symbolic universe and the limitations of that symbolic to interrupt traditional gender roles. century knights transport a suspected witch to a monastery, where monks deduce that her powers could be the source of the Black Plague.

the performative elements of possession have received great attention in Sri Lanka and across South Asia. Thirteen comparative and interdisciplinary studies of African-based religious systems in the Caribbean, analyzing the nature and liturgies of vodou, Santer ía, Obeah, Quimbois, and Gaga in specific communities in the Caribbean. In eras long since passed, the world had looked no different from your average fantasy novel, from the dragons who raided villages and captured princesses to the knight and sorcerers who banded together to fight them.Detailed descriptions of contrasting events of spirit possession in rural Rajasthan that Gold locates within the context of a sophisticated indigenous ethno-performance theory. Ethnographic study of the relationship between spirit mediums and socialist-inspired fighters during the 1960s and 1970s battle for Zimbabwe's independence from the White Rhodesian Front. If, on the other hand, religious subjectivity is itself understood to be a kind of work, then the efforts made by the Malay women to decrease their vulnerability to the spirits through prayer and vigilance indicates that they are working with the forces of global capitalism and the forces of possessing spirits. Some plays depict fake possessions, which the entire audience recognizes as fake and laughs at, while other theatrical performances might spontaneously produce possessions that the audiences regard as authentic.