Chapter Eight—
The Varieties of Spirit Possession

Communal ritual and mythic tradition are thus great stabilizers of social order. Yet if this order, like every organic structure, is a dynamic equilibrium forever adapting to change, and if man is a questing animal open to transcendence of his given condition, the very tendency of priestly ritual and heroic myth to perpetuate an immutable past guarantees their insufficiency. Variation cannot be so nearly excluded nor communication confined to one-way transmission of formulaic chants and sacrificial offerings, nor can collective ceremonies wholly satisfy the need for personal contact with the indeterminate and the wild. This uncontrollable power, safely assimilated in the liminal phase of rites of passage but never banished far from the clearing or subdued for long, can suddenly intrude with the shattering transformative force of disease or madness against which cultural prophylaxis and priestly exorcism may be, in the end, unavailing.

Spirit Possession as Dialogue: Oceania and Asia

Just as the wild irresistibly encroaches on man's laboriously tilled crops, its untamed spirits perpetually menace the cultivators themselves, who view their onslaught with panic, fear, and trembling. For not only in ritually hedged liminality do these forces bring power or destruction; the individual who survives their seizure and submits to their sway may be endowed with a capacity for communication with the divine rivaling that of the institutional priest. Among the Lugbara of Uganda, God "in his evil or immanent aspect," who lives in waste places outside the compound and is an inversion of both sky God and man, "possesses adolescent girls and drives them into the bush," Middleton writes (1960, 256;

cf. 1969, 224), whence they emerge with powers of divination. Similar experiences are common in many tribal cultures, where unforeseen possession (of both men and women) and ensuing illness often initiate a diviner's or medium's vocation.

"A Tikopia priest talked to his gods and ancestors, but they did not talk back," Firth observes (1970, 261–62); "an ordinary Tikopia, through a spirit medium, could hold two-way converse with such a spirit." Here is a relationship with the superhuman inherently more variable and dynamic than communal ritual can provide, for by inaugurating a dialogue the medium opens a space, which ritual had carefully fenced off, in which the unexpected and undetermined have entry. Here too there will be pattern and structure, of course, but no fiction of invariance and little coercive control: the spirit who speaks through a medium can be questioned but not commanded, anticipated but never foreknown.

Communication with the divine through spirit possession is widespread in tribal (as in other) societies from almost every part of the globe. Sometimes, as among the highly centralized Ashanti of Ghana, the spirit speaks through his priest (Busia, 194). More commonly, in Africa and elsewhere, the office of medium or diviner is distinct from the priest's, although the same person may hold both. In some tribes the diviner is identical with the medium, whom some anthropologists call "shaman." Where the two are distinguished, it is through the medium that the spirit speaks directly, whereas the diviner, though he may at first be empowered by unpredictable possession, thereafter interprets signs such as the patterns of scattered stalks or winnowed grain in accord with strict rules and conventions.

The office of medium, though not restricted by family or class (as the priest's frequently is), may be inherited by those of a given lineage who show aptitude for trance; sometimes different mediums communicate with different classes of spirits, such as ancestors or tribal gods. After first being possessed, the medium may contract a lifelong association, even a formal marriage, with a particular spirit, or may become a receptacle open to various spirits as summoned. He or she may experience trance alone, delivering oracular words which another interprets, or may share the experience with others caught up, through rhythmic dance or rhapsodic speaking in tongues, in the contagious rapture of possession. Some prophesy only on formal occasions such as festivals, others whenever requested and paid; some convey advice or information about the dead, others diagnose and prescribe for disease, or combat it by assaulting the spirits that cause it. In nearly every case, however, possession of the disciplined medium, in contrast to the demonic fury of random seizure, is a communication with the beyond voluntarily solic-

ited, in the interest of others, through the heightened condition of trance—ranging from ecstatic frenzy to cataleptic torpor—in which the medium's ordinary self is either entirely displaced by the spirit who speaks through her mouth or strictly subjected to the dominant will of the spirit who "rides" her.

A few accounts of spirit mediumship in tribal societies, and in the popular strata of "civilized" cultures, will suggest both the phenomenological diversity and the underlying unity of its forms. (The ethnographic material has been greatly enriched since Oesterreich's classic study, Possession .) In Polynesia, spirit possession was no less typical of the ancient religion than ancestor worship, agricultural rites, and human sacrifice, which it complemented by permitting direct contact with the gods outside the elaborate pyramid that reached its apex in the sacrosanct chief through whom all ritual was ultimately channeled. By his mastery of magic incantations and esoteric traditions, the aristocratic priest (and a fortiori the chief) of the New Zealand Maori was believed to resurrect the dead or slay the living; yet despite his lack of such miraculous capacities, not to mention social prestige, the humble medium, when possessed, spoke with no less authority, since the god himself spoke through his mouth.

Early travelers in Polynesia, like William Ellis in Tahiti, left vivid descriptions of seances.^[1] Possessed by the god, the oracular taura medium "became violently agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy," muscles convulsed, features distorted, eyes wild and strained. "In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and, in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the gods." Transcendence of the everyday human condition could scarcely be more emphatic.

Throughout Micronesia, too, spirit possession is widespread. In Ulithi the medium, who trembles and may fall into an epileptic fit during possession, is the channel through whom the ancestors provide information sought by the living (Lessa 1966b, 51). In Palau "the god may possess the medium at any time, without warning. He or she will shout loudly and then start speaking in the voice of the god" (Leonard, 157). In Melanesia and New Guinea manifestations of possession trance are as varied as attitudes toward the ghosts and ancestors who are its agents. In the Solomon island of Florida, sudden trance was a vehicle for prophetic utterance; a villager, "known to have his own tindalo ghost of prophecy, would

[1] Ellis, Polynesian Researches (London, 1829), 2:235–36, in Oliver, 80. Cf. Oliver, 94: "The distinction between shaman [taura ] and priest [tahu'a pure ] is quite clear-cut; the former served as a medium through which a spirit addressed humans, while the latter addressed spirits as a representative of humans."

sneeze and begin to shake, a sign that the tindalo had entered into him; his eyes would glare, his limbs twist, his whole body be convulsed, foam would burst from his lips; then a voice, not his own, would be heard in his throat, allowing or disapproving of what was proposed" (Codrington, 209). Among the Manus of the Admiralty Islands, as among the eastern Kyaka of the New Guinea highlands, the medium communicates between ghosts and the living through whistles, which she then interprets (Fortune, 32; Bulmer, 145). Elsewhere in highland New Guinea, the Tsembaga "smoke woman" invoked by tobacco and ritual songs enters the medium's body through the nostrils, after which the medium "dances about the embers in a low crouch, sobbing, chanting, and screaming in tongues" (Rappaport 1968, 119–20).

From the sneezing and whistling, thumping and gibbering, of Melanesia to the stately dances of Bali two thousand miles west, the cultural distance could hardly be greater; yet spirit possession is here far more central than among the warlike pig-breeders of New Guinea or the rugged mariners of the western Pacific. The everyday behavior of the Balinese, Belo notes (1), "is measured, controlled, graceful, tranquil. Emotion is not easily expressed. Dignity and an adherence to the rules of decorum are customary." Yet these people, defying Benedict's bifurcation of cultures, show a striking susceptibility to states of trance, ranging from riotous to quiescent, in which the ordinary personality is transformed by a transcendent spirit; in some places "they claimed that all the members of this village group, down to the smallest children, could and had entered into trance" (53). Group trance might take violent forms, as when maskers impersonating Rangda the Witch or Barong the Dragon "would go wild, rush out of the accustomed performance place into the crowd,. . . then fall unconscious and have to be revived" (3). In Gianjar district, the temple court would at times be filled with wild figures brandishing krisses, leaping, and shouting, as they enacted the giant Pig, Lion, or Witch that possessed them (66–67), and the rapt followers of Barong, men and women alike, would stab themselves with their krisses and frenziedly "hurl themselves forward to suck the gushing blood" from a fellow trancer's wounds (164). But individual mediums also communicated with the gods in more controlled ways. Those known as sadegs dance, shout, ask questions of the gods or answer in their name, jump up, swivel their heads, or hurl themselves backwards into the arms of others.

In parts of Sumatra, as in the very different cultures across the Strait of Malacca, communication with spirits through a medium is frequently practiced despite the influence of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and secular European civilizations. In Chinese Singapore a spirit of vast powers possesses the body of the dang-ki medium "and enables him to

inflict injury upon himself without feeling pain, and to speak with divine wisdom, giving advice to worshippers and curing their illnesses" (Elliott, 15). During a seance (63–64) the possessing shen spirit is summoned by deafening drums, gongs, and monotonous chants amid burning incense while the medium sits with icy body and bowed head, until trance begins. Limbs quivering, body swaying, hair flying, he staggers up as if intoxicated, then slobbers and rolls his head as he prances and mutters. As frenzy mounts, he cuts his tongue with his sword, sticks spikes through his cheeks, or climbs a sword ladder. Consultations follow as an interpreter translates mutterings supposed to come from the shen into an intelligible dialect (67). Finally the medium leaps into the air and is caught by an assistant. "He will never admit that he has more than a few vague memories of what has happened since he went into trance" (65).

In the north Malaysian provinces of Perak and Kelantan, a dancer enters a state of lupa , forgetfulness, during which he becomes a spirit's medium (Endicott 1970, 20) and rises up, possessed by a tiger-spirit; he draws blood from his arm, fights an invisible foe, sits, claps, and lies down exhausted. In Buddhist Thailand and Burma, as in Hindu Bali and Muslim Malaya, this ancient form of contact with the divine by no means vanished with the advent of "higher" religions; its need is felt most intensely in times of crisis. In northeast Thailand, the tiam medium diagnoses disease by answering questions in the name of the possessing guardian spirit (Tambiah 1970, 278–79). Extreme maladies, such as malignant spirit possession, require the more potent services of a "medium cum exorcizer" (313) who learns an incomprehensible foreign language during trance and speaks in the voice of the Buddhist angels within him as he kicks and whips the patient, or stabs him with a tiger's tooth, so that the afflicting spirit will cry out and reveal its identity (322–29).

The "nat wife" of village Burma becomes a medium because a nat falls in love and wishes to marry her (Spiro, 208), even against her will. As curer, she either identifies the nat responsible for an illness or learns in trance from her spirit husband the remedy of the disease. Severe mental illness may require the services of an exorcist, the "Master of the Upper Path," not a medium but a master of esoteric lore who induces possession of the patient by the offending nat whom he attempts to command (230–36). This quasi-Buddhist Master seems (241) to have taken over the original function of the female medium, leaving her role far more marginal than in many societies.

Among the Kachins of highland Burma, where mediumship may coexist with Catholic or Baptist Christianity, "the medium in a trance state is able to transport himself to the world of the nats and consult the nats in person" (Leach, 193)—a form of spirit journey reminiscent of northern shamanism. On the Indian side of the mountainous Burmese bor-

der, too, the medicine man of the Ao Nagas, on recovering from trance, speaks of having seen the patient's soul in the heavens and visited friends among the spirit-doubles dwelling there (Mills, 245). And among the Konyak Nagas, shamans were believed to visit the land of the dead in trance, and to be able to bring back a soul kidnaped from a sleeping body (Fürer-Haimendorf, 93).

Soul flight is exceptional on the Indian subcontinent, even among many Naga tribes; but spirit possession pervades the countless "Little Traditions" of village India. In many regions, from the Himalayas south, communication through mediums in trance complements the less flexible institutions of the dominant priestly religions. The frenzied Kachári medium of Assam "seems for the time to be lifted above the world of time and sense" as she decapitates a sacrificial goat in search of knowledge concerning the cause and cure of disease (Endle, 40–41). Among the Buddhist Lepchas of Sikkim in the Himalayas, everything in the lamaistic religion is theoretically fixed, like the horoscopes of the hereditary priesthood. By contrast, in the indigenous Mun religion, possession of mediums by a "private god" is not astrally predestined but inaugurated by unpredictable sickness (Gorer, 215–19). In the mountainous borderland between India and Nepal, the Brahmin priest of the Indo-Aryan Paharis performs or directs the "carefully prescribed, stereotyped, highly ritualized religious activity" of the learned or great tradition, above all through annual ceremonies and life-cycle rites (Berreman, 55–56). His actions are determined by well-known precedents and his prestige derives from inherited class status and from elaborate religious education (60–61). Complementing these priestly functions, a variety of non-Brahmanical religious practitioners concern themselves with the worldly welfare of their clients, which they promote through personal contact with the supernatural world (56).

During ceremonies of the wild Baiga tribe of tropical central India, who have been little affected by Hinduism, mediums fall into frenzy, Elwin writes (1939, 381), and "throw themselves on the ground, their limbs twitch spasmodically, they wag their heads desperately to and fro" as the god rides upon them. Among the neighboring Kol, many of whom consider themselves Hindus, acts of the Brahmin priest have more a social than a religious validity (Griffiths, 147), and worship of the local goddesses is conducted by a village medium, the panda , who in trance "begins to tremble, then shout, beat himself upon the ground, and become in appearance a totally different person" (159). The Hindu priest of the savage Bondo of the Orissa highlands is likewise consulted for routine matters, the medium for anything out of the ordinary. He diagnoses the trouble, Elwin writes (1950, 161), "by means familiar throughout aboriginal India; he falls into trance and prophesies; he

commands the winnowing fan and the gourd; he gets drunk and his ravings are interpreted as the voice of the god."

Another Orissa tribe studied by Elwin, the Hill Saora, are noted for the complexity of their indigenous religious practices. The male medium's knowledge derives from spiritual marriage to a wife from the Under World (1955, 130–31), and the female medium is similarly wedded, despite initial refusal, to "a suitor from the Under World who proposes marriage with all its ecstatic and numinous consequences," including birth of a spirit child (147). Both male and female mediums "torment themselves with clonic convulsions; they roll on the ground, tear at their hair, sway to and fro in complete abandon, dance on their knees" (215) when possessed by the supernatural consorts who endow them with knowledge of a condition transcending their own. In all these instances from tribal cultures (as in many others, to be sure, from Hindu devotional cults of Shiva or the Goddess), the contrast with the ascetic self-denial of the learned brahmanical tradition of India could hardly be more pronounced.

Tribal and Intertribal Cults: Africa and America

So widespread is spirit possession in tropical Africa, and so fully documented in anthropological literature (see Beattie and Middleton, and Zaretsky and Shambaugh), that a few examples will stand for many. Among the Dinka of the Nilotic Sudan, the "Powers" (jok ) may possess an unsuspecting tribesman, who has little or no control over trance; a medium, on the other hand, translates the twittering sounds spoken by the divinity through him and thus channels for the public good an experience intermittently shared by others (Lienhardt 1961, 57–72). Among the neighboring Nuer, not the leopard-skin chief or priest but the prophetic medium, who alone is the "owner or possessor of Spirit" (Evans-Pritchard 1956, 44), wields greatest influence through charismatic inspiration. The priest's virtue resides in his office, the prophet's in himself, and "whereas in the priest man speaks to God, in the prophet God, in one or other of his hypostases, speaks to man" (304). Thus the medium of these nomadic and nearly anarchic cattle-breeders, far from being secondary to the priest, takes on the authoritative dignity of prophet.

Among the Mandari of the southern Sudan, possession ranges from mental disorders caused when "Spirit-of-the-Above" falls upon them to several clearly differentiated kinds of mediumship employed in healing others. The medium's call "is typified by mental crisis involving withdrawal to the bush, wandering there aimlessly, and refusal to eat, speak, or take part in social life" (Buxton 1973, 45); it is thus an individual

counterpart to the tribal initiant's liminal separation during ritual exposure to the wild. At a seance for a patient the afflicting Power (jok ) might either speak directly through the possessed doctor or engage in a dialogue after possession—during which the doctor's body might be uncontrollably convulsed and hurled against a wall, or the hut might begin to tremble—had run its course.

In parts of Africa where ancestor worship is more prominent, spirit possession is often closely associated with it. Among the Tallensi of Ghana, to be sure, domination of tribal thought by the ancestors leaves little room for other supernatural forces (Fortes and Mayer, 11), and divination, through which ancestral demands are revealed, is "a matter-of-fact business," making possession by a departed ancestor or any other supernatural agency inconceivable. Elsewhere in West Africa, ancestors are often among the spirits thought to possess their devotees, especially at festivals in their honor. Thus among the Fon of Dahomey (Benin), the spirits of impersonated ancestors descend into the heads of dancers possessed by them (Herskovits 1938, 1:212–18). The wild behavior characteristic of possession among other peoples is largely absent, however, in their ceremonies both for the ancestors and for the vodun , or gods: "Even during the strongest frenzy it is evident that a dancer is most rarely, if ever, completely in a trance" (2:199). In this well-ordered former kingdom, where divine dispensation was traditionally revealed not through ecstatic trance but through meticulous divination in the cult of Fá, or destiny, spirit possession has been thoroughly assimilated to ritual, in which only the most marginal variation can be granted entry. Among the Nago-Yoruba and other Yoruba tribes of Nigeria, too (Verger, 50), possession trances are the culmination of elaborate festivals for the orisha , gods widely held to be of human origin, hence not fundamentally different from ancestors. The future is revealed through divinatory practices such as the famous Ifá, in which the multiplicity of poems and stories associated with each figure makes it possible for the diviner's client to choose among them (Finnegan, 154), but spirit possession permits a more personal communication with the divine than even the inspired interpretation of palm nuts or cowrie shells can provide.

In Ashanti, and elsewhere in southern Ghana, less relentlessly regulated forms of spirit possession find place, although the normal identification of medium with priest restrains their never-unbridled excess. An Ashanti seized by an obosom spirit in the excitement of a festival may suddenly run forth into the wilderness, whence he or she may emerge, if at all, as an obosomfo priest, and even after becoming a trained mouthpiece of the spirits may unexpectedly vanish into the bush for hours or days at a time, as if to renew inspiriting contact with the wild. Here ancestor worship is largely a prerogative of the consecrated chief; among

the neighboring Gã, where a more typically West African form of ancestor worship prevails, the agent possessing a medium at either an annual festival or a private seance may be not only a spirit or god but one of the dead. When possessed, rarely more than once a year at her god's big dance, the medium "speaks with a voice not her own and greater than that of any human being" (Field 1937, 100). Several weeks of emotional disturbance verging on madness normally follow, and several years' training may be required before she can recognize the spirit possessing her and speak in its name. At a dance she trembles and struggles while attendants dress her; then a whole string of gods come rapidly upon her: "She may be a lame man or a hunchback, she may assume the gait and posture of a pregnant woman or a most amusingly coquettish young damsel," or may bark or go on all fours when seized by an animal god, or speak a language she does not know, until she collapses in her attendants' arms (105–07).

African spirit possession remains for the most part tribal, yet a medium will often have a following nearby (the most authoritative spirits frequently speak a foreign tongue), and the cult of one influential tribe will sometimes be adopted, and adapted, by another, as the jok possession of the Dinka was by the Mandari. Even when such a complex crosses tribal borders, however, and is acknowledged as foreign in origin, it is usually (as diverse Nilotic usages of jok suggest) transformed, far more quickly than an international religion "of the Book" such as Christianity or Islam can normally be, in accord with existing tribal beliefs and practices, which it transforms in turn.

A notable instance is the Cwezi complex of the Bantu-speaking peoples bounded by lakes Tanganyika, Victoria, and Albert. Among the Banyoro of western Uganda, traditional religion centers on Cwezi spirits "associated with a wonderful race of people supposed to have come to Bunyoro many centuries ago, to have ruled the country for a couple of generations and performed many wonderful things, and then to have vanished as mysteriously as they came" (Beattie 1964, 143), leaving behind them the mbandwa mediumship "through which the Nyoro people still retain access to the magical power and wisdom which they represented" (1969, 160). Among the Zinza of northeastern Tanzania, on the other hand, the Cwezi spirits (bacwezi ) are considered recent, foreign, and malevolent, in contrast to the old and beneficent mbandwa (Bjerke, 42–43): "They are the spirits appropriate to a changing and anomic world" (53). Unlike the traditional (usually female) mbandwa medium, the "shaman" who protects the social order against the "bacwezi of the outside" can control the spirits who possess him (140), combining the powers of medium and medicine man, diviner and exorcist. At a seance he shakes his rattle, sings, and calls upon the bacwezi to fall upon him,

but in his "lucid" possession he conveys their words in indirect discourse rather than passively surrendering himself to them.

So fundamentally do spirits bearing the same name differ that Cwezi possession is no more a truly intertribal cult among Bantu peoples of this region than is jok possession among Nilotic peoples further north. Only the zar cult—diffused through much of Ethiopia and the African horn, North Africa, and the Arabian peninsula, where Christianity and Islam had long since breached the barriers of tribal religion—deserves, for all its local variations, to be called international. (The somewhat similar bori cult of Nigeria and northwest Africa also crosses national borders, but is mainly concentrated among the Muslim Hausa.)

Thus in Ethiopia, patients (usually married women) afflicted by such symptoms as sterility, convulsive seizures, or extreme apathy, and thought to be possessed by amoral zar (or wuqabi ) spirits, are treated by a healer who has mastered their power. Through his offices, "the zar's identity is revealed by the patient's 'individual' zar dance ('gurri'), which the spirit obliges his human 'horse' to perform publicly while the doctor watches and directs," without himself entering trance (Messing, 286; cf. Leiris, 15–18). The procedure is essentially identical in Egypt, where the practitioner attempts to convert the zar from evil to protective spirits (Fakhouri, 52). Zar possession thus resembles exorcism in that the specialist induces trance in the victim of malignant possession, with the crucial difference that here the spirit is not expelled but conciliated, so that the patient, by induction into the cult, becomes in effect a medium capable of communicating in trance with a spirit both within and beyond her, and thus of bringing under her own control dimensions of her existence previously alien to her.

Only with the near disintegration of tribal ties in the cataclysm of overseas slavery, however, did black African spirit mediumship find new forms of expression, above all in the Caribbean and Brazil, that necessarily transcended old tribal barriers. In Haiti, the complex amalgamation known in English as voodoo (from vodun ) incorporated components of African religions, especially the Dahomean, along with others from Native Americans and French Catholic colonizers, into a new religion in which possession trance is central. Here the spirit possession frugally meted out at the annual festivals of Dahomey is dispersed, in very different degrees, among the "servitors" at large; as they dance and sing to the beating of drums in the peristyle of an hounfor temple after sacrifice has been made, each may become the "horse" of a loa —a divinity usually thought of as human in origin—who temporarily displaces the servitor's soul (gros-bon-ange) and animates his or her body during possession. Various degrees of initiation separate the lowest grade of hounsi —"spirit wife," though few are ritually wedded to a loa (Courlan-

der, 71; cf. Métraux 1959, 212–19)—from the female mambo or male houngan medium at the top of the hierarchy. But each is repeatedly ridden, pre-eminently by the loa lodged in the servitor's head (whether by birth or ceremonial initiation) and known as maît' tête , who normally takes possession of the body when solemnly invoked in the ancestral langage of the prière Guinée . Any devotee can be possessed, but for important matters a trained houngan or mambo should be consulted.

Possession varies widely, not only with the individual's capacity and stage of initiation but with the nature of the loa, for these comprise a colorful pantheon of divinities from different "nations," who manifest their characteristics in those they ride. Thus a mambo possessed, as Métraux describes her (1959, 125), by the battle god Ogoun, jams a saber into her stomach, duels wildly with the temple's master of ceremonies (laplace ), hacks at the center post of the peristyle and chases the terrified hounsi: possessed by another loa on another occasion she will act in a wholly different way. The American artist Maya Deren, who found herself drawn into the voodoo dances she attended in 1947, gives an extraordinary personal account (260) of the first occasion when the goddess of love, Erzulie , mounted her head:

There is no way out. The white darkness moves up the veins of my leg like a swift tide rising, rising; it is a great force which I cannot sustain or contain, which, surely, will burst my skin. It is too much, too white, too bright; this is its darkness. "Mercy!" I scream within me. I hear it echoed by the voices, shrill and unearthly: "Erzulie!" The bright darkness floods up through my body, reaches my head, engulfs me. I am sucked down and exploded upward at once. That is all.

In Spanish-speaking America, the cult of Santería , centered in the Caribbean but with offshoots as far north as New York, has also assimilated, along with a medley of magical practices, gods worshiped in the African homeland—mainly Yoruba orishas identified with Catholic saints—who are capable of possessing their devotees when summoned, at a fiesta or tambor , by the sacred drums. But it is in Brazil that possession cults of African origin have had the widest influence, outside Haiti, on the religious life of the western hemisphere. As in Santería, the Dahomean vodun and above all the Yoruba orishas generally prevailed over other tribal gods and of course over local ancestral spirits (Bastide 1978, 128), and were syncretized with Catholic saints, becoming known interchangeably as orixas or santos.

In the candomblés of Bahia State and its capital city, Salvador, "the deities have African names and are thought to have permanent residences in Africa, and all of the songs the faithful sing are in what are supposedly African languages" (Leacock and Leacock, 284–85). As in

Dahomey and Nigerian Yorubaland, the trance states of participants in the public candomblé ceremonies "are rarely if ever spontaneous; rather, mediums always go into trance on cue, they dance together as the deities, then they come out of trance together," so that with rare exceptions the ceremonies always follow the expected pattern (286).^[2] They give expression not to a Durkheimian "collective ecstasy" but to "an ordered set of individual trances," each of which, Bastide argues (1978, 237–38), has its own distinctive character.

The influence of African spirit possession on Brazilian religion permeates other cults to which various non-African peoples have more richly contributed. No sharp distinction is possible between groups known in different regions as Macumba, Umbanda, Batuque, and so forth, but in each the African nucleus has been enriched—or corrupted—by elements drawn from Catholic liturgy, Indian folklore, and European spiritism, especially in the mid-nineteenth century form given it by Hippolyte Rivail, who wrote under the name of Allan Kardec (McGregor, 86–119).

Macumba is the amorphous term most widely applied to Afro-Brazilian cults, especially in their more popular forms. (In Rio de Janeiro, where macumba originated, the word is often used in deprecation, like English "mumbo-jumbo," being replaced by Umbanda when a more respectable synonym is needed.) The medium in charge of a terreiro , the cult center where sacrifice is made and initiates are possessed to the beat of drums, is known as the mãe (or more rarely pai ) de santo , the mother (or father) of the "saint" or god, translating the Nago-Yoruba terms employed also in the Candomblé. In the words of one mãe de santo , Maria-José, as reported by an enthusiastic French pupil, "The terreiro represents Africa, the source" (Bramly, 44), the land of life and origins, force and power (199). When possessed, "The medium has no will, no memory, no personality," and once the god has left can remember nothing that happened during trance (37). But possession is not random, for the initiate—usually female in macumba as in the candomblés—makes "a kind of pact with a god" (53) who becomes the master of her head, until, through progressive initiation, she becomes his "bride" and experiences her first controlled trance (55), which she will henceforth enter at will.

In Belém (or Salvador), the largest city of the Amazon Basin in northern Brazil, the central feature of the "Batuque"—a name also used for the cults of Rio Grande do Sul half a continent to the south—is a kind

[2] Yet spirit possession is much more widely experienced even in this most conservative Afro-Brazilian cult than in the tribal festivals of West Africa, where "a small number of privileged persons" fall into trance (Rodrigues, 101).

of contract by whose terms, Seth and Ruth Leacock write (52), "the human receives the spirit and allows it to participate in ceremonies, and in return the spirit looks out for the welfare of the human being." Possession takes place, as in other Afro-American religions, to the beating of drums, the shaking of gourds, and the singing of songs and invocations at a public ceremony (batuque ) in the open pavilion of the terreiro, and its forms again vary widely in accord both with the possessing spirit and the person possessed. Younger and less experienced initiates are especially prone to frenetic seizures. When the demonic spirits called Exus —after the divine intermediary of Yoruba mythology who sometimes, like Dahomean Legbá, displays unpredictable malice—are invoked at midnight (23–24), young people seized by them dance contortedly, roll on the ground, and bark like dogs to rapid clapping, drumming, and singing. But what is most admired in the accomplished medium, the Leacocks affirm (171–72), "is very often the behavior that appears the least frenzied and the most normal to the outside observer."

Finally, the merger of African spirit possession with the megalopolitan world finds expression in Umbanda, a term plastic enough to be expropriated by other sects, but referring more specifically to the syncretistic cult widely practiced in the great urban centers of Rio and São Paulo. The various Umbanda sects, whose devotees in this vast multi-racial country include educated members of the predominantly white middle class, draw their core components from other Afro-Brazilian cults like the despised Macumba, segregating the sacrificial ritual and black magic of the latter from itself as Quimbanda (its dark twin and secret sharer), systematizing the spirits of its polyglot inheritance into an elaborately ordered hierarchy, and overlaying the whole with the spiritism of Kardec and the spirituality of Jesus. Of the five major types of spirits distinguished in one account from São Paulo, the Yoruba orishas —syncretized not only with Christian saints but, in some versions, with the Olympian gods (Pressel, 335–37; McGregor, 185–86)—are considered "so powerful that a medium would explode if possession were to occur"; they therefore send spirits of the dead from the other four categories in their place (Pressel, 338). Possession, despite occasional frenzies, is thus generally less shattering than in other Afro-Brazilian cults, tamed to the point of becoming nearly routine.

In a modern Umbanda consultation, as Bastide sums it up (1978, 332), "each client has a number, handed out to him at the entrance. . . . The medium is in paroxysm, but the initial violence has worn off. . . . The clients, also seated on low benches, recount their sad stories—unemployment, a missing husband, a rebellious child, a persistent illness. . . . The séance ends with a moral homily or a prayer." At a session in São Paulo described by Pressel (341–45), the directors collect dues

and signatures in a guest book. "Somewhere near the entrance there may be a bulletin board on which various items have been posted: a notice of a fund-raising picnic; a reminder that women are not permitted to wear slacks in the center; and perhaps a few photographs of members possessed by their spirits, taken at a religious festa ." After a brief sermon on Christian charity, some mediums spin round while spirits descend into their "horses." When the drumming stops, clients wishing to consult a spirit wait in line, sometimes taking a number at the door; the consultation may cover any subject from aches and pains to family difficulties, love problems, or even poor grades. After receiving advice the client "is rid of his bad fluids"—a Kardecist heritage—in a ritual known as passes . "A spirit may occasionally," despite the general decorum, "possess a member of the audience, causing the individual to shriek and shake violently," but the cult leader or an assistant, who is not himself possessed, restores calm.

Manifold though its variations may be, spirit mediumship is everywhere a potentially transformative experience of communication with a transcendent force that displaces the everyday self. But here in Umbanda a sanitized and prepackaged, almost parodic possession trance tailored for the metropolitan masses no longer threatens to shatter those whom it routinely seizes or to communicate anything of the unknown that could not have been easily conveyed by a competent guidance counselor. Despite its exotic trappings and nostalgic yearning for a mysterious Africa that is in fact all around it, this synthesis of Christ and Kardec with a spirit mediumship smacking of the palmist's salon if not of the dentist's office seems as distant from the ancestral Africa of voduns and orishas, bacwezi and jok, as it does from the age-old tribal and popular religions of India, Thailand, Malaya, Bali, or Tahiti. What is missing from spirit possession in Umbanda, for all its spinning mediums and batteries of gods, for all its elaborate spiritism and ostentatious spirituality, is precisely its spirit: the continual possibility of a never wholly predictable alteration of the given human condition through the overpowering intrusion of the divine.