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 Teaching Healing Rituals/Ritual Healing

Susan S. Sered and Linda L. Barnes

in Teaching Ritual

This chapter deals with one of the earliest and most ubiquitous forms of ritual activity in the human record: seeking the aid of a greater power in a quest for healing. Because of the enormity of the ... More

This chapter deals with one of the earliest and most ubiquitous forms of ritual activity in the human record: seeking the aid of a greater power in a quest for healing. Because of the enormity of the topic and the importance of keeping their students' experiences in mind, the authors developed a cross-cultural typology as an tool for organizing the key analytic features of ritual healing for individual and collective illness. Using the pedagogical exercises this typology affords, students discover nearly universal ritual strategies and motivations.Less

Postcript: Ritual Healing and Modernity

William S. Sax

in God of Justice: Ritual Healing and Social Justice in the Central Himalayas

This chapter begins with a brief description of the outrage elicited by the author's remarks, that ritual healing sometimes “works” by addressing the social causes of stress-related disorders. It ... More

This chapter begins with a brief description of the outrage elicited by the author's remarks, that ritual healing sometimes “works” by addressing the social causes of stress-related disorders. It then discusses modernity in social theory. It considers how under conditions of modernity in the West, “ritual” has become a term of suspicion. It suggests that modernist assumptions are flawed, and that sometimes ritual healing may indeed work.Less

Landscape, Memory, and Ritual

William S. Sax

in God of Justice: Ritual Healing and Social Justice in the Central Himalayas

This chapter focuses on healers, specifically oracular consultations and the major healing rituals. Local notions of place and landscape are of fundamental importance in oracular consultations as ... More

This chapter focuses on healers, specifically oracular consultations and the major healing rituals. Local notions of place and landscape are of fundamental importance in oracular consultations as well as in healing rituals. These are used as a kind of lens through which to observe and understand the healing cult in general. The experience and transmission of the cult of Bhairav is inseparable from local understandings of place and landscape, especially the way that landscape embodies history, memory, and notions of the person. That is why, in order to grasp the cult “from the inside,”, the chapter considers the ideas and practices associated with place and landscape.Less

Rituals of Family Unity

William S. Sax

in God of Justice: Ritual Healing and Social Justice in the Central Himalayas

This chapter takes a closer look at some healing rituals to see what they tell us about the relationship between persons their families. It presents several transcripts of oracular consulting, ... More

This chapter takes a closer look at some healing rituals to see what they tell us about the relationship between persons their families. It presents several transcripts of oracular consulting, including a consultation with Gaurja Mai, a high-caste oracle described in Chapter 4 and a consultation with Jamnu Baba, a lowcaste oracle living in a rather isolated location not far from Nauti. It argues that healing rituals unite what has been torn apart: the family, the village, the person. They unite the physical with the social, the social with the cosmological, and even with the spiritual.Less

Oracles, Gurus, and Distributed Agency

William S. Sax

in God of Justice: Ritual Healing and Social Justice in the Central Himalayas

This chapter examines oracles and gurus, the two main types of ritual specialists in the healing cult of Bhairav. It shows that they are distinguished above all in terms of agency and patiency. The ... More

This chapter examines oracles and gurus, the two main types of ritual specialists in the healing cult of Bhairav. It shows that they are distinguished above all in terms of agency and patiency. The oracles are the gods' patients: they subordinate their personal agency to that of the gods whose vessels they are, and their reputation and success depends on the degree to which they are thought to embody completely the god. The gurus, on the other hand, are masters of the spirits, and their reputation and success depends on the degree to which they are believed to control supernatural beings, turning them into their “disciples,” that is, their patients. The chapter introduces several oracles and gurus, mostly in their own words, and attempt to shows how such relations of agency and patiency work themselves out in practice.Less

Gender and Healing in Navajo Society

Thomas J. Csordas

in Religion and Healing in America

The Navajo are among the three largest indigenous tribes in North America (the Cherokee and Lakota, or Sioux, are the others) and as a people possess a land and natural resource base larger than that ... More

The Navajo are among the three largest indigenous tribes in North America (the Cherokee and Lakota, or Sioux, are the others) and as a people possess a land and natural resource base larger than that of any other tribe. Ritual healing, in the context of either traditional Navajo ceremonies, Native American Church peyote prayer meetings, or Pentecostal Christian revivalism, is a prominent feature of contemporary Navajo life for both men and women. Navajo women have been recognized as having relatively high status and considerable social power in relation to men, yet they are only infrequently encountered among ceremonial practitioners of the prestigious chantways. This chapter is a step toward understanding the motivation and experience of those Navajo women who do become healers. For contemporary Navajos, the issue of gender per se—that is, of women in relation to men—is in some sense subordinate to the pivotal issues of the healer's identity as a Navajo and in relation to biomedical professionals of the dominant society.Less

“Medical Doctors Can't Do You No Good”: Conjure and African American Traditions of Healing

Yvonne P. Chireau

in Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition

This chapter explores the relationship between African American supernaturalism and healing. Ever since the slavery period, black people in the United States have retained distinctive ideas and ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between African American supernaturalism and healing. Ever since the slavery period, black people in the United States have retained distinctive ideas and practices concerning sickness, its causes, and cures. African Americans viewed healing as an integral part of the ongoing struggle of good against the evil that plagued humankind, and, using a language of invisible causes, articulated health concerns by incorporating spiritual healing practices and beliefs into their therapies. Their supernatural healing practices were developed, as they lacked the access to formally trained medical practitioners, contempt of black patients by white physicians, and distrust of white doctors among blacks. In general, healing with herbs, roots, and other organic substances was implemented for common physical ailments, but supernatural healing and rituals were utilized for illnesses that were not responsive to other methods. Two religious groups, the black Pentecostals and the black Spiritual churches, also promoted ritual healing, actively conjoining supernaturalism and Christian piety in African American religious life.Less

‘Are Any Among You Sick?’: Ritual, Possession, and Healing

Risto Uro

in Ritual and Christian Beginnings

This chapter argues that a ritual approach to Jesus’ healing is a meaningful project: the topic converges with many issues that anthropologists of shamanism and spirit possession have discussed under ... More

This chapter argues that a ritual approach to Jesus’ healing is a meaningful project: the topic converges with many issues that anthropologists of shamanism and spirit possession have discussed under the general rubric of ‘ritual healing’. Insights and theories from such studies shed light on Jesus’ healing activity, as well as on the rites of healing and exorcism in the early Church. The chapter takes issue with certain social-scientific interpretations of Jesus as a spirit-possessed healer (which show a bias toward cultural relativism), and make use of recent cognitive research into spirit possession. Jesus’ healings, spirit possession, and more institutionalized forms of ritual healing cannot be lumped together under a single theory of ritual, but the cognitive analysis is helpful in pointing out aspects of ritual healing that have not been recognized in earlier studies.Less

How Ngoma Works: Of Codes and Consciousness

John M. Janzen

in Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa

This chapter seeks to understand how knowledge is constructed and used. It then covers the application of several academic analytic evaluations of ngoma, including the role of metaphor shaping, of ... More

This chapter seeks to understand how knowledge is constructed and used. It then covers the application of several academic analytic evaluations of ngoma, including the role of metaphor shaping, of consensus, and of the range of manipulations that shape affect of sufferer and therapists alike. It then investigates the conscious indigenous theories about ngoma, which are usually based on the hypothesis of spirit possession as the basis of the misfortune. The relationship of scientific or empirical knowledge to ritual healing is covered. Spirit is a manner of speaking, a hypothesis, a format. The “spirit” hypothesis is what brings the individual experience into the orbit of ngoma. However, spirit is not what it appears to be, nor is it equally strong in all expressions.Less

Introduction

Hager El Hadidi

in Zar: Spirit Possession, Music, and Healing Rituals in Egypt

This book examines how different people in metropolitan Cairo experience zar as spirits, as rituals, and as a spiritual and initiatory path. Zar is a healing ritual complex practiced in societies ... More

This book examines how different people in metropolitan Cairo experience zar as spirits, as rituals, and as a spiritual and initiatory path. Zar is a healing ritual complex practiced in societies around the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. It also refers to jinn spirits who possess humans and afflict them with troubles and ailments. In Egypt, the way of zar is one of the healing options that address jinn. People seek out zar initiation when in crisis for a variety of motivations and reasons. Drawing on years of extensive ethnographic fieldwork in different parts of Egypt and on personal experience, this book explores some aspects of Egyptian zar spirit possession that have rarely been addressed in the literature: the zar community (tayfat al-zar), zar rites and rituals, and songs and music within zar communities. This introduction discusses zar and spirit possession from an anthropological perspective and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.Less

The Goddess Plugged In: Pritam Bhartwan and the Commodification of Possession Rituals

Stefan Fiol

in Recasting Folk in the Himalayas: Indian Music, Media, and Social Mobility

Jagar rituals have long been stigmatized as a type of folk religion because they involve animal sacrifice, corporeal possession, and the participation of low-status divinities and social groups. In ... More

Jagar rituals have long been stigmatized as a type of folk religion because they involve animal sacrifice, corporeal possession, and the participation of low-status divinities and social groups. In recent decades, however, jagar has become a quintessential marker of regional belonging and religious expression in Uttarakhand. The public acceptance of jagar is part of a broader mobilization of vernacular devotional forms across South Asia facilitated by the growing economic clout of urban migrants and vernacular music industries. The hereditary drummer and healer Pritam Bhartwan has been a major catalyst for the resignification of jagar. This chapter highlights the transformations within Pritam Bhartwan’s own public persona as a means of illuminating the shifts in the public perception of jagar and in the concept of folk more broadly. Less

Sociopolitical, Gender, and Cultural Factors in the Conceptualization and Treatment of Depression among Haitian Women

Guerda Nicolas, Bridget Hirsch, and Clelia Beltrame

in Silencing the Self Across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World

This chapter describes various social factors in the lives of Haitian women that intersect with the experience of depression. It presents an overview of socio-political influences on the health and ... More

This chapter describes various social factors in the lives of Haitian women that intersect with the experience of depression. It presents an overview of socio-political influences on the health and well-being of Haitian women, as well as an examination of various health-related beliefs and practices that shape the ways in which their physical and emotional problems are understood. The chapter traces the history of Haitian culture with a particular emphasis on the roles of women in social and political movements. Gender emerges as a complex and evolving variable in the lives of Haitians, especially within the context of women's participation in grassroots organizations and the movement toward democratization. Besides tracing the history and impact of social movements in Haiti, the chapter also uses the Multicultural Competency Model to demonstrate the association between culture and depression for Haitian women.Less

Somatic Poetry: Toward an Embodied Ethnopoetics

Michael A. Uzendoski and Edith Felicia Calapucha-Tapuy

in The Ecology of the Spoken Word: Amazonian Storytelling and Shamanism among the Napo Runa

This chapter explores the poetic qualities and nuances of the art of ritual healing, a genre termed as “somatic poetry.” Flowing out from the emphasis of the body as a site of social and cosmological ... More

This chapter explores the poetic qualities and nuances of the art of ritual healing, a genre termed as “somatic poetry.” Flowing out from the emphasis of the body as a site of social and cosmological action in the Amazonian world, somatic poetry is multimodal art created by listening, feeling, smelling, seeing, and tasting of natural subjectivities, not just those emanating from human speech or from the human mind. Somatic poetry involves the creative use of words and music and also plants, animals, and the landscape—entities recognized as having subjectivity and creative powers, powers that are internal rather than external to the art. The chapter provides one example of Amazonian somatic poetry, a healing practice called kushnirina, a medicinal vapor bath designed to cleanse and provide energy for the body. It then comments on Federico Calapucha's manioc story and a shamanic song performed by Lucas Tapuy in 2007. These examples show that somatic poetry is about creating loops of intersecting relationships with different species and unseen subjectivities of the landscape and the spirit world.Less

Perpetrators and Victims Return Home

David A. Hoekema

in We Are The Voice of the Grass: Interfaith Peace Activism in Northern Uganda

With the LRA’s withdrawal from Uganda and its release of those who had been abducted, ARLPI redirected its efforts to rehabilitation and reconciliation, as described in this chapter. Priorities ... More

With the LRA’s withdrawal from Uganda and its release of those who had been abducted, ARLPI redirected its efforts to rehabilitation and reconciliation, as described in this chapter. Priorities included forming local communities to direct these efforts, creating mechanisms to resolve land disputes, and overcoming the mentality of dependence instilled in IDP camps. Traditional Acholi rituals helped facilitate the return to their former communities of both LRA combatants and those they had abducted. This chapter also recounts the remarkable story of a man who, after serving as a high-ranking officer and then escaping from the LRA, overcame others’ skepticism and mistrust, earned a university degree, and today works in youth empowerment.Less

The saints of the entrails and the bowels of the earth

Jacques Gélis

in Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century

This article explores the texts and visual representations of the ‘saints of the bowels’ in order to establish an anthropological classification of aching bellies in early-modern France. A web of ... More

This article explores the texts and visual representations of the ‘saints of the bowels’ in order to establish an anthropological classification of aching bellies in early-modern France. A web of symbols is found in the materiality of the viscera. Thus, this article argues that representations of the belly as cave-like mirrors some images of the bowels of the earth. The “Saints of the Entrails”, St Erasmus and St Mammes, and Saint Elmo, all of whom were eviscerated during their martyrdom, represented many popular beliefs of rural communities who conflated images of the soil and images of the belly.Less

Conclusions

in Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism

After 1650, the number of group possessions in convents decreased before disappearing altogether. When religious orders that had developed such interiorized techniques and exercises purged themselves ... More

After 1650, the number of group possessions in convents decreased before disappearing altogether. When religious orders that had developed such interiorized techniques and exercises purged themselves of the more extreme and therefore more suspicious practices, the designation of demonic possession lost much of its utility. The silencing of passive and Quietist forms of interiorized spirituality and the growing suspicion of spiritual possession were part and parcel of much larger dramas that were reshaping post-Tridentine Catholicism, including the redrawing of boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate forms of personal pursuit of the divine, and the growth of an entire new apparatus of knowledge about the soul and how to read its signs. An equally important process was the reshaping of exorcismal techniques. Exorcism lost much of its broader religious meaning as a probative mechanism for discerning interiority. Instead, it became the mundane healing ritual that it had been in the Middle Ages, and that centered on curing an afflicted individual and helping her reintegrate into her society.Less