Ecstatic Religion

A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession

I.M. Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134406593
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

First Published in 2004. States of spirit possession, in which believer's feel themselves to be 'possessed' by the deity and raised to a new plane of existence, are found in almost all known religions. From Dionysiac cults to Haitia voodoo, Christian and Sufi mysticism to shamanic ritual, the rapture and frenzy of ecstatic experience forms an iconic expression of faith in all its devastating power and unpredictability. Ecstatic Religion has, since its first appearance in 1971, became the classic investigative study of these phenomena. Exploring the social and political significance of spiritual ecstasy and possession, it concerns the distinct types of functions of mystical experience - in particular, the differences between powerful male-dominated possession cults which reinforce established morality and power, and marginal, renegade ecstatics expressing forms of protest on behalf of the oppressed, especially women.
I. M. Lewis's wide-ranging comparative study looks at the psychological, medical, aesthetic, religious and cultural aspects of possession, and covers themes including soul-loss, ecstatic trance, divination, erotic passion and exorcism. Probing the mysteries of spirit possession through the critical lens of anthropological and sociological theory, this fully revised and expanded Third Edition is of crucial importance for students of psychology, sociology, religious mysticism and shamanism.

Chapter One

TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF ECSTASY

I

This book explores that most decisive and profound of all religious dramas, the seizure of man by divinity. Such ecstatic encounters are by no means uniformly encouraged in all religions. Yet it is difficult to find a religion which has not, at some stage in its history, inspired in the breasts of at least certain of its followers those transports of mystical exaltation in which man’s whole being seems to fuse in a glorious communion with the divinity. Transcendental experiences of this kind, typically conceived of as states of ‘possession’, have given the mystic a unique claim to direct experiential knowledge of the divine and, where this is acknowledged by others, the authority to act as a privileged channel of communication between man and the supernatural. The accessory phenomena associated with such experiences, particularly the ‘speaking with tongues’, prophesying, clairvoyance, and transmission of messages from the dead, and other mystical gifts, have naturally attracted the attention not only of the devout but also of sceptics. For many people, in fact, such phenomena seem to provide persuasive evidence for the existence of a world transcending that of ordinary everyday experience.

Despite the problems inevitably posed for established ecclesiastical authority, it is easy to understand the strong attraction which religious ecstacy has always exerted within and on the fringe of Christianity. We can also readily appreciate how modern Spiritualism has won the interest not only of Christians of all shades of opinion, but also of agnostics and atheists. The comforting message that it ‘proves survival’ has much to do with its appeal for the recently bereaved; and this obviously contributes to Spiritualism’s popularity in times of war and national calamity. Yet the phenomena in which it deals continue to command the serious attention of experimental scientists. And if scientists are prepared to give their cautious assent to some psychic phenomena, we can scarcely be surprised that certain churchmen should still search in the séance for conclusive proof of the divine powers of Jesus Christ. Indeed, whether in the séances of suburbia, or in more rarefied surroundings, those mystical experiences which resist plausible rational interpretation are seen, even sometimes by cynics, as pointing to the possibility that occult forces exist.

There is also a vast literature on the occult which has no doubts at all on the matter. The metaphysical meaning of trance states has been expounded by hundreds of writers in many languages and from many different points of view. Something of the character of much of this literature, or at least of that produced by enthusiastic partisans of the occult, can be gauged from the breath-taking predictions made by the editor of a popular book on trance (Wavell, 1967). ‘Once the use of trance becomes as easily available as electricity,’ this writer assures us,

immense new opportunities potent for good or evil will be open to all people. Conquests which spring to mind are those on which we currently expend many of our resources—space travel, physical and psychological warfare, espionage, pop music, and mass organized leisure. Its greatest practical application may be in space exploration…the light barrier …need prove no obstacle to spirits of astronauts bent on visiting the other regions of the universe.

Perhaps not. However, the golden age of trance which this inspired writer foresees is not without its darker side. ‘Its greatest danger’, he solemnly warns us, ‘lies in providing our planet, already divided into hostile nations, with a new dimension for conflict-spirit hosts in mass formations manipulated by demoniac shamans annihilating the human race and all its hopes of reincarnation.’

This remarkable passage must seem on a different astral plane, to put it mildly, from the secluded world of Origen, or any other of the great Christian mystics. As recently as a decade ago it would also have struck most people as ridiculous in the extreme. Today, however, such seemingly far-fetched views are not so discordant with much of the climate of opinion in which we live. Far from being relegated to obscure publications on dusty shelves in seedy bookshops, as used to be the case, the occult is now very much part of the contemporary scene. By the young, at any rate, the message of the Maharishi is widely listened to—at least until it has been displaced in popularity by some other brand of mysticism. In the same vein, the Sunday colour supplements in Serious’ newspapers sententiously bid us contemplate the therapeutic potentialities of healing magic and ‘white’ witchcraft; some psychiatrists even rally to the cry: ‘Spiritualism proves survival’, and a trendy bishop or two throws in his weight for extra measure.

Other indications point in the same direction. Scientology may be more successfully organized as a business venture than most of the Spiritualist churches which it succeeds and to some extent supplants. But it has much in common with them in seeking to blend pseudoscience and occult experience in that special package-deal which sells so well today. These and a host of other new competing cults strive to fill the gap left by the decline of established religion and to reassert the primacy of mystical experience in the face of the dreary progress of secularism. In thus appealing to the ever-present need for mystical excitement and drama, these new sects naturally often find themselves in conflict, not only with each other, but also with that longer established rival, psychiatry, which has already taken over so many functions formerly fulfilled by religion in our culture. Here the fanatical rantings of Scientologists against psychiatry are a revealing, if unreassuring, testimony to their rival common interests.

All this suggests that we live in an age of marginal mystical recrudescence, a world where Humanists seem positively archaic. Our vocabulary has been enriched, or at any rate added to, by a host of popular mystical expressions which, if enshrined in the special argot of the Underground, also spill over into general usage. We know what ‘freak-outs’ are, what ‘trips’ are, and any one who wants to can readily participate in psychedelic happenings in dance halls with evocative names like ‘Middle Earth’. Although much of this language relates to drug-taking, in its original and more extended usage it also carries strong mystical overtones. Certainly the Eskimo and Tungus shamans, whom we consider later, would find a ready welcome in that most successfully publicized sector of our contemporary society, the pop scene. With its pronounced magical aura, and shamanic superstars like Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles (cf. Taylor, 1985), in this clamorously assertive sub-culture, far from being dismissed as excessive crudities of questionable religious value, the trance and possession experiences of exotic peoples are seriously considered, and often deliberately appropriated as exciting novel routes to ecstasy. It is thus perhaps not surprising that readings from an earlier edition of this book were included in the American public service religious radio series, ‘Rock and Religion’, broadcast from Sacramento, California, in 1979.

II

In this eclectic climate little special pleading is needed to introduce an anthropological study of trance and possession which, as the reader would expect, draws many of its examples from exotic tribal religions. Contrary to what might be anticipated, the fact that so much has already been written on these topics, largely by historians of religion, provides an added incentive for the development of a fresh approach. Most of these writers have had other ends in view, and have consequently not been concerned to pose the sort of question which the social anthropologist automatically asks. Few of the more substantial works in this area of comparative religion pause to consider how the production of religious ecstasy might relate to the social circumstances of those who produce it; how enthusiasm might wax and wane in different social conditions; or what functions might flow from it in contrasting types of society. In a word, most of these writers have been less interested in ecstasy as a social fact than in ecstasy as an expression, if a sometimes questionable one, of personal piety. And where they have ventured outside their own native tradition to consider evidence from other cultures their approach has generally been vitiated from the start by ethnocentric assumptions about the superiority of their own religion. This is not to say that no interesting sociological conclusions emerge from any of this work; but rather where they do, it is more by accident than by design.

Let me illustrate and at the same time move towards the position from which the arguments of this book stem. Here Ronald Knox’s splendidly erudite study of Christian enthusiasm provides an excellent starting point (Knox, 1950) Beginning with the Montanists, Knox traces the erratic history of Christian enthusiasm, which he defines as a definite type of spirituality. He makes no attempt to explain by reference to other social factors the ebb and flow of ecstatic phenomena—possession, speaking with tongues, and the rest—whose wavering course he charts through so many centuries. These he views as the inevitable product of an inherent human tendency, almost of a failing—the disposition to religious emotionalism which John Wesley summed up in the word ‘heart-work’. ‘The emotions must be stirred to their depths, at frequent intervals, by unaccountable feelings of compunction, joy, peace, and so on, or how could you be certain that the Divine touch was working within you?’ Knox is concerned to point the moral that ecstasy is less a ‘wrong tendency’ than a ‘false emphasis’. But if he stresses the dangers of an excessive and unbridled enthusiasm, he also recognizes that organized religion must allow ecstasy some scope if it is to retain its vitality and vigour. These are the lessons which Knox seeks to impress upon the reader and which he finds little difficulty in illustrating in the mass of evidence which he so skilfully marshals.

Knox writes, as he says, primarily from a theological point of view. Yet certain interesting sociological insights almost force themselves upon him. Thus, with greater sociological perspicacity than Christian charity, he sees enthusiasm as the means by which men continually reassure themselves, and others, that God is with them. This view of ecstasy, as a prestigious commodity which could readily be manipulated for mundane ends, opens the door to the sort of sociological treatment which this book advocates, and which I shall enlarge upon shortly.

By confining his attention to the Christian tradition, and arguing in effect that spirituality is to be judged by its fruits, Knox was not faced with the problem of relating mystical experiences in other religions to those in his own. This tendentious issue has been left to plague other Christian authorities. Thus R.C.Zaehner (1957), the orientalist, has boldly sought to establish criteria with which to assess objectively the relative validity of a host of mystical encounters. The examples range from the recorded experiences of celebrated Christian and oriental mystics at one extreme, to the author’s own and Huxley’s experiments with drugs at the other. The critical sophistication of his argument is impressive, but the result is too predictable to be entirely convincing. Indeed, only those who share his assurance will accept Zaehner’s conclusion, that Christian mysticism represents a more lofty form of transcendental experience than any other.

Not all Christian writers in this field are so adamant of course. Where Zaehner re-erects and fortifies the barriers of Christian complacency, Professor Elmer O’Brien’s concise and useful survey, mainly of Christian mysticism, knocks them down again (O’Brien, 1965). Perhaps because he is a professional theologian he can afford to be more tolerant and practical. He is again concerned with the problem of establishing the authenticity of different mystical experiences. But the homely recipes, which he recommends should be applied in the assessment of the mystic, do not contain such glaring, inbuilt assumptions about the superiority of Christian or any other experience. O’Brien suggests that the following tests are crucial. First, the reputed mystical experience should be contrary to the subject’s basic philosophical or theological position. Thus ‘when the experience (as that of St Augustine) does not fit in at all with the person’s speculative supposition, the chances are that it was a genuine experience’. Secondly, the experience, which the would-be mystic claims, is all the more convincing if it can be shown to be contrary to his own wishes, and cannot then be dismissed simply as a direct wishfulfilment. Finally, the experience alone gives meaning and consistency to the mystic’s doctrines.

Here, clearly, O’Brien is less concerned than Zaehner to pronounce upon the quality of ecstatic experience in any final or ultimate sense. His object is not to extol some brands of mysticism as superior, because more fully endowed with divine authenticity than others, but simply to provide criteria for distinguishing between the genuine and simulated mystical vocation. Here involuntariness and spontaneity become the touch-stones in assessment. It can, I think, be argued that O’Brien’s first criterion depends too directly upon the special circumstances of the Christian tradition to make it universally applicable in all cultural contexts. But there is no doubt at all that in emphasizing the mystic’s reluctance to assume the burdens of his vocation Professor O’Brien is pointing to a characteristic which, as we shall see later, applies widely in many different religions. Indeed it is a condition that most cultures which encourage mysticism and trance take as axiomatic.

But if O’Brien’s tolerant catholicity can help to speed us on our path towards the comparative study of divine possession in a wide range of different cultures, his view of the incidence of mysticism seems to spell disappointment to all our hopes. Where Knox assumed a constant if partly regrettable human proclivity to indulge in enthusiasm, to some extent varying in its expression in different social conditions, O’Brien holds that apparent variations in the mystical ‘outputs’ of different ages are an illusion. The explanation for the seeming lack or abundance of mystics at any given period is ‘not that a time and place favourable to mysticism brings mystics into existence’. On the contrary, it is merely a question of whether more or less attention is paid to mystics in different ages. Where mysticism is fashionable and accepted it is fully reported; where it is not nobody bothers to keep any record of it.

This steady state theory of mystical productivity would, if it were correct, divorce transcendental experience from the social environment in which it occurs and make totally irrelevant the sorts of sociological questions which I have urged should be applied to the data. Indeed it would almost close the door to sociological analysis; for all that would be left to discuss would be the significance of changing fashions concerning the desirability or otherwise of mystical experiences.

Powerful arguments against this stultifying conclusion come from a direction from which social anthropologists do not always like to accept help—psychology. T.K.Oesterreich, whose magisterial study of possession within as well as outside the Christian tradition is the most substantial work by a psychologist in this field, takes a very different view (Oesterreich, 1930). Acknowledging the universal character of possession phenomena, which he explains in terms of suggestion and the development of multiple personalities in the self, Oesterreich emphasizes how belief in the existence of spirits encourages psychic experiences which are interpreted as possession by these spirits. These transcendental encounters tend in turn to confirm the validity of the pre-existing beliefs in the existence of spirits. As he says (p. 377):

By the artificial provocation of possession, primitive man has to a certain degree had it in his power to procure voluntarily the conscious presence of the metaphysical, and the desire to enjoy that consciousness of the divine presence offers a strong incentive to cultivate states of possession. In many cases it is probable that, exactly as in modern Spiritualism, the impervious desires for direct communication with departed ancestors and other relatives also play a part. Possession begins to disappear among civilized races as soon as belief in spirits loses its power. From the moment that they cease to entertain seriously the possibility of being possessed, the necessary auto-suggestion is lacking.

True enough. Yet as we now see in our own contemporary world, when, through drugs and other stimuli, people find a ready means to achieve trance states, these experiences quickly become invested with metaphysical meaning (see e.g. Young, 1972). There are also striking similarities in the patterns of imagery in which such experiences are expressed (see Grof, 1977).

Writing over fifty years ago, Oesterreich thus pushes further along the road towards a genuinely objective cross-cultural study of possession and trance than any of the more recent authorities I have mentioned. He also confirms that we are right to pursue our aim of relating these phenomena to the wider social circumstances in which they are produced. But if Oesterreich makes the connection for us between ecstasy in the great religions of the world and in the tribal religions studied by anthropologists, it is naturally to the latter that we should look for guidance in their own field. So far, however, the results of their labours have been singularly disappointing. Only one major comparative work has been produced—Mircea Eliade’s study, Shamanism and Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Eliade, 1951). Here Eliade, who regards himself as a historian of religions, traces easily and convincingly the many common symbolic themes which occur in ecstatic cults in different cultures. However, his concern with the internal structures of these symbolic motifs and their historical relation leaves him little space for sociological analysis. In fact, he candidly acknowledges that the sociology of ecstasy has still to be written. The thirty years which have elapsed since this harsh judgement was delivered have, I am afraid, produced little that would require it to be revised.

III

At least until quite recently, anthropologists have scarcely displayed any more interest in the sociology of possession and trance than their colleagues who have studied these phenomena under the guise of ecstasy or enthusiasm in other cultural traditions. With a few notable exceptions they have thus simply not asked the important questions which, I glibly asserted above, automatically roll off the tongues of anthropologists. On the contrary, the majority of anthropological writers on possession have been equally fascinated by its richly dramatic elements, enthralled—one might almost say—by the more bizarre and exotic shamanistic exercises, and absorbed in often quite pointless debates as to the genuineness or otherwise of particular trance states. Their main interest has been in the expressive or theatrical aspect of possession; and they have frequently not even troubled to ask themselves very closely what precisely was being ‘expressed’—except of course a sense of identity with a supernatural power.

This fixation with all that is dramatic in possession contrasts sharply with the social anthropologist’s approach to the study of witchcraft and sorcery. In that dark corner of comparative religion where, at least in my opinion, sociological research has made its most successful impact, the anthropologist focuses squarely on the social nexus in which sorcery and witchcraft accusations are made. He passes beyond the beliefs to examine the incidence of accusations in different social contexts. He is thus able to show convincingly how witchcraft charges provide a means of mystical attack in tension-fraught relationships, where other means of pursuing conflict are inappropriate or unavailable. It is possible that this objective and thoroughly sociological approach, which sees the accused witch as the real victim rather than the ‘be-witched’ subject, is encouraged by the simple fact that by and large anthropologists do not themselves believe in the reality of witchcraft or sorcery. Where religious ecstasy and all its many theatrical accessory manifestations are concerned, however, many anthropologists appear to display a much more open, and certainly a far less dispassionate attitude. This is even true of those anthropologists who flaunt their atheism. For atheists, after all, frequently believe in extra-sensory perception, if not in all the more sensational manifestations of the occult.

For whatever reasons, the fact is that social anthropologists have in general shown a quite remarkable reluctance to ask the really significant questions when dealing with possession. This, of course, is not to say that no sociological interpretation whatsoever has been attempted. A number of anthropologists have considered the social role of the possessed priest or ‘shaman’, and the manner in which religious ecstasy may serve as the basis for a charismatic leader’s authority. Others have emphasized the significance of the evasion of mortal responsibility implied where decisions are made not by men, but by gods speaking through them. And if some have stressed the employment of ecstatic revelations to conserve and strengthen the existing social order, others have shown how these can equally well be applied to authorize innovation and change.

This short catalogue, however, practically exhausts the range of most current preoccupations in the sociological study of possession. The crucial bread-and-butter questions still remain to be asked. How does the incidence of ecstasy relate to the social order? Is possession an entirely arbitrary and idiosyncratic affair; or are particular social categories of person more or less likely to be possessed? If so, and possession can be shown to run in particular social grooves, what follows from this? Why do people in certain social positions succumb to possession more readily than others? What does ecstasy offer them? It is these basic issues concerning the social context of possession that this book examines.

I referred earlier to the possible relevance of the anthropologist’s personal equation in influencing his approach to his data. I hasten therfore to say that the adoption of this sociological line of inquiry does not necessarily imply that spirits are assumed to have no existential reality. Above all, it is not suggested that such beliefs should be dismissed as figments of the disordered imaginations of credulous peoples. For those who believe in them, mystical powers are realities both of thought and experience. My starting point, consequently, is precisely that large numbers of people in many different parts of the world do believe in gods and spirits. And I certainly do not presume to contest the validity of their beliefs, or to imply, as some anthropologists do, that such beliefs are so patently absurd that those who hold them do not ‘really’ believe in them. My objective is not to explain away religion. On the contrary, my purpose is simply to try to isolate the particular social and other conditions which encourage the development of an ecstatic emphasis in religion.

Nor, of course, have I any ambition to follow Zaehner or other ethnocentric writers in seeking to distinguish between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’, or ‘more’ or ‘less’ authentic forms of ecstatic experience. The anthropologist’s task is to discover what people believe in, and to relate their beliefs operationally to other aspects of their culture and society. He has neither the skills nor the authority to pronounce upon the absolute ‘truth’ of ecstatic manifestations in different cultures. Nor is it his business to assess whether other people’s perceptions of divine truth are mo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Ecstatic Religion Third Edition
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Bibliography