Karo Batak ceremonial curing practices in urban Indonesia take place in a disputed zone of acts and meanings, in which neither social nor cultural coherence can be presumed by the analyst. Examining the therapeutic efforts of an urban Karo spirit possession cult aimed at curing the soul loss suffered by a young man, the Christian son of one of the cult's premier spirit mediums, this paper quest...

This article describes constructions of dybbuk, the Jewish variant of spirit possession, and its roots in sixteenth-century Kabbalist thought. Based on the analysis of documented early cases, this paper examines the possession idioms from psychological and socio-cultural perspectives by describing two case reports herein conceptualized as trance possession disorders. A comparison with the pheno...

Introduction Witchcraft ideation is common in Nepal, among many third world countries and many popular healers practise there, including the jhankri or spirit medium, the tantrik or healer practised in tantrism and the deuta, a healer possessed by a mother goddess, Hartimata 1. Spirit possession is a recognised phenomenon in Nepal and carries no connotations of psychiatric disease. Actual or pr...

The present paper is divided into three large steps around the themes of spirit possession and historical imagination slavery in Cuba. These reflect both ethnographic dimensions these broader theoretical approaches towards them. last step, ‘apomimesis’, one proposed by author, not way replacement but displace­ment. first ‘formulaic’ imagination, covers ground a direct expression as trauma throu...

What does it mean to know one’s own mind, to make up one’s mind, or to be of two minds? The paper explores some of the assumptions Westerners make about mind and confronts them with elements from the ethnography of spirit possession among Malagasy speakers. It challenges the assumption that a unified state of mind, exemplified by pure reason as opposed to passion, is the necessary basis for sou...