Metaphors of being “ridden” by anxiety, “overwhelmed” by sorrow or “carried away” by “enthusiasm” indicate a curious resemblance between metaphors for emotions, and expressions for spirit or deity possession.
In religious traditions as far apart as Himalayan Hinduism and Haitian Voudoun, the beings that “come over” or “enter” the human body are referred to as riders of their human vehicle, or as “Divine Horsemen” (Maya Deren). In ancient Sanskrit texts, the “entering” (āveśa) of a human person can as much refer to an emotion as to a deity or demon (see Frederick Smith 2006, The Self Possessed). Arguably, both emotions and spirits/deities are hard to “grasp” by words and concepts, and even harder to control. To talk and think about such forces and entities which are “beyond our reach”, we need metaphors which construct similarities – for instance, by implying that emotions and deities alike “enter”, “ride” or otherwise “drive” the human body.
This workshop examines phenomena such as possession and enthusiasm not only through bodily symptoms or sociopolitical agency, but also through their conceptual implications: They define the body and the immaterial aspects of the self by defining, shifting, or opening the boundaries that make up the “inner” and “outer” worlds.
This gives rise to questions such as the following:
Is the self “entered” or “seized” by emotions coming from “within”, by spirits or other beings coming from “outside” the limits of control or rule by the self, or by some divinity which is already “within” the individual’s body, heart or soul?
What do the seemingly contradictory images of a Self being “ridden” and being “entered” by these forces tell us about the conceptualization of the Self itself?
Do these metaphors have implications about the integrity, (in-)dividuality or isolatedness of the Self?
Are emotions or spirits conceived of as “immaterial” forces? Is the “immaterial” located “inside” the body? If so, why?
How “embodied” are these forces when they are not yet / not anymore “within” (or around) the possessed body?
Introduction to the CRC 1475 “Metaphors of Religion” and the
Workshop Question
Gerrit Lange (Ruhr University Bochum)
11:00-11:30
Coffee Break
Session 1: Dancind and Being Danced
11:30-12:30
What Metaphors Make Possible: Āṭṭam and Piṇam as Idioms of
Divine Becoming in South Indian Ritual Worlds
Sona Prabhakaran (Heidelberg University)
12:30-13:30
Repossessed: Further Research and Thoughts on Possession as
Experience and Metaphor
Frederick M. Smith (University of Iowa)
13:30-15:00
Lunch Break
Session 2: Riding and Being Ridden
15:00-16:00
“Me monto”: Dual Agency and Literality in Getting onto and Surrendering
to Spirits in Puerto Rican Brujería
Raquel Romberg (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg)
16:00-16:15
Coffee Break
16:15-17:15
Islamic Demonology: Between Riding and Being Ridden
Tobias Nünlist (University of Zurich)
from 18:30
Dinner
Friday, 4 July
09:30
Arrival
Session 3: Inviting and Driving out: Illness, Holyness, and Madness
10:00-11:00
“It Runs in the Blood”: Jinn Possession According to
Raqi Exorcists
William Sax (Heidelberg University)
11:00-11:30
Coffee Break
11:30-12:30
“So that You May Become Uncrazed”: Conflicting Perceptions of
Divine Madness in Vedic Literature
Per-Johan Norelius (Uppsala University)
12:30-13:30
Purity and Possession: Balinese Concepts of Self, Trance-Possession and Emotions
Annette Hornbacher (Heidelberg University)
13:30-15:00
Lunch Break
15:00-16:00
Emotions, Agency and Control in Akkadian Texts from Ancient Mesopotamia
Ulrike Steinert (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz)
16:00-16:15
Coffee Break
16:15-17:15
Final Discussion
from 18:30
Dinner
Abstracts
What Metaphors Make Possible: Āṭṭam and Piṇam as Idioms of Divine Becoming in South Indian Ritual Worlds
Sona Prabhakaran (Heidelberg University)
Metaphor is commonly understood to operate via the invocation of similitude, drawing upon familiar domains to render the unfamiliar, abstract, or ineffable partially comprehensible. Metaphor, then, is not a mode of explication but of orientation, because it does not presume to name what cannot be named, but enables its intimation through sensory and conceptual proximity. While this view departs from representationalist assumptions, it nonetheless remains committed to a referential frame—one in which metaphor invariably points beyond itself. This paper challenges such a reading by turning to ritual contexts in which metaphor is not simply a gesture towards the divine but the very condition of its emergence.
At my fieldsite in Valangaiman, a village in Tamil Nadu, ritual specialists and devotees describe two distinct modalities of divine becoming: possession by (āṭṭam) and merging with a deity (teyvam). In these instances, I shall argue that metaphor is not a linguistic proxy for the sacred; it is a ritual medium through which divinity is encountered, sensed, and enacted. This becomes especially evident in ritual settings where divine becoming is understood to be embodied, transformative and intensely real, regardless of how fleeting the instance may be. What is at stake, then, is not whether the divine becomes present, but how such presence is articulated—and, crucially, how it is mediated through distinct metaphorical idioms.
In the case of possession, articulated through the metaphor of āṭṭam—the dance, play, or vibration of the goddess—divine presence is not simply described but made perceptible through the intensification of rhythm, movement, and affective intensity. As the ritual builds, so too does the goddess’s āṭṭam, gathering force and velocity. This is not an aesthetic flourish, but the very mode through which her presence becomes recognisable: in bodies that shake, convulse, and yield to a force already in motion. Here, metaphor is not merely indicative; it is generative. It does not gesture towards the divine—it materialises it through rhythm, breath, and embodied charge.
In the case of merging, the devotee does not become the goddess herself, but, in a ritually elevated state, attunes to divine presence whilst remaining distinct from it. The term teyvam refers not to the goddess herself, but to a ritually transformed human. This transformation proceeds through ritual acts that first designate the devotee as piṇam—a corpse—and subsequently as teyvam.
If both possession and merging are understood as modes of divine becoming, what, then, do these metaphors make possible? What kinds of divine-human relation do they enact? What forms of presence, absence, and transformation do they temporarily call into being—and on what terms?
Repossessed: Further Research and Thoughts on Possession as Experience and Metaphor
Frederick M. Smith (University of Iowa)
I will present material from research I have performed on deity and spirit possession in India in two distinct areas since my book, The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in Indian Literature and Civilization (Columbia Univ Press, 2006) appeared. First, I'll examine a rite of transfer of a possessed personality or entity, namely Arjuna, from father to son, set in a Pāṇḍav līlā or Pāṇḍav nāc (“divine performance” or “dance” of the Pāṇḍavas) that I observed in the Garhwal Himalayas. The second is from a Buddhist text of the late first millennium CE, the Mañjuśrīmūlakalpa (ch. 31), in which local languages are keyed to different possessing entities, with speech and speakers in north central India regarded as normative. Others, which the text summarily describes, represent the speech of different possessing entities. Whatever might be said of ethnic bias as the predominant factor in this unusual text, in the final analysis it is a sociolinguistic text couched in terms of possessing entities. In both cases we will examine the dynamics of emotion and metaphor, of secondary embodiment as an experienced phenomenon and as an underlying existential fact of life.
“Me monto”: Dual Agency and Literality in Getting onto and Surrendering to Spirits in Puerto Rican Brujería
Raquel Romberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Grasping the meaning of “metaphor” is as puzzling as understanding “possession.” Grappling with the intricacies of what anthropologists, linguists, and philosophers of language have made of metaphor is an inevitable recourse I take along with unpacking the emic terms used by Puerto Rican brujos (witch healers) in reference to their various embodiments during possession, trance, dreams, and visions. On the most immediate level, possession as a metaphor can be perspectival. For brujos, to get onto the spirit can be literal, as a double form of agency of “montarse”—in Spanish, a reflexive verb indicating that the subject both performs and receives the action of the verb. In this case, it means to get onto or mount and surrender to the spirits, while for anthropologists it can also be metaphorical or poetic (an “as if” trope à la Ricouer) to describe this type of agency and manifestation. Ethnographic vignettes will explore the relationship between the corporeality, affect, and discourse of possession in Puerto Rican brujería (witch- healing). They will illustrate how spirits manifest comparatively during possession, trance, dreams, and visions, and how they are spoken about, in order to tease out when emic experiences, emotions, and accounts of possession are literal, metaphorical, synechdocal, or metonymic.
Islamic demonology: Between riding and being ridden
Tobias Nünlist (University of Zurich)
As the Quran repeatedly mentions the jinn (demons), their existence is generally accepted in the Islamic world.
This contribution highlights the idea that demons often appear as mounted beings. While the Quran does not allude to this idea, the sunna (sayings going back to the Prophet) is aware that a group of jinn attended a preaching by Mohammed and asked him for food for them-selves and their mounts. Arabic and Persian sources from the 9th c. onwards precise this idea.
The Arabian Nights know of the existence of Riemenbeinler. As their legs are boneless, they are in need of a human being who carries them around and whom they torment by strangulation. When demons mount a human being, it often falls ill. Illnesses, particularly mental disorders, are explained as attacks by the jinn. The jinn are often supposed to enter the body of their victim physically.
Muslims are aware of techniques which enable them to expel the malefactor again from the body of its be-jinned (majnūn) victim. Traditionally oriented scholars, however, accept this possibility reluctantly only.
“It runs in the blood”: Jinn possession according to Raqi exorcists
William Sax (Heidelberg University)
My paper has to do with understandings (I am reluctant to call them “metaphors”) of Jinn-possession amongst Urdu- and Arabic-speaking Muslim exorcists (Raqi) in India, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and the UK. Many of them, citing a verse from the Koran, have told me that the Jinn “runs in the blood” and claim to have seen it moving through the veins of the body. It would be more accurate to say that the Jinn “inhabits” the victim's body in a very physical sense, than that it “possesses” it. This idea is further supported by the notion that there are certain parts of the body (in particular, the little toe) that are “exit routes” of Jinn during exorcisms. Further examples of the "embodiment" of Jinn will be discussed in the paper.
“So that you may become uncrazed”: Conflicting perceptions of divine madness in Vedic literature
Per-Johan Norelius (Uppsala University)
Relatively little attention has been paid to the problem of divine madness – i.e., madness, real or feigned, induced by deities – in Vedic India. Well known from ascetic sects in classical India, in Vedic times the phenomenon appears to have been particularly associated with maun(e)ya- or “munihood,” which included asceticism and ecstatic practices. While mentions of divine madness are sparse in the Brahmanical literature, the textual evidence suggests that it was present in Vedic society, though as a controversial fringe phenomenon. The sources present us with divergent perspectives on the phenomenon, which is mostly, though not exclusively, regarded with skepticism. The one notable exception is the locus classicus of mauneya-, the Keśin hymn of the Ṛgveda (10.136). The muni or possessed ascetic is here allowed to speak in his own voice, describing his ecstatic madness as a result of gods having entered (viś-, used for divine or benign forms of possession) him and made him devéṣita-, “driven by gods.” Atharvavedic spells against madness, however, paint a very different picture of munihood, which they associate with mental illness and malign forms of possession, attributed not to gods but to harmful spirits. Finally, attention will be drawn to a late instance of deveṣita- in a narrative of the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa, where different voices on divine madness are represented.
Purity and Possession: Balinese concepts of self, trance-possession and emotions
Annette Hornbacher (University of Heidelberg)
Trance-possession is a core feature of Bali‘s ritual practices, and has attracted the interest of anthropologists since the 1930s when the American “Culture and Personality School” (represented by Mead, Bateson and others) interpreted states of possession as expressions of culturally repressed feelings of anger, frustration and grief and diagnosed Balinese with a “schizoid” character. But unfortunately, this identification of subjective emotions with states of possession implies a Western paradigm of both reality and the human psyche that does not match Balinese explanations and perceptions. In contrast to this, I will explore how self, emotions, trance-possession and other culture specific forms of dissociation like amok are conceptualized, practiced and cultivated in Balinese society, thereby offering an alternative approach to psychological models of explanation.
Emotions, Agency and Control in Akkadian texts from ancient Mesopotamia
Ulrike Steinert (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz)
Cuneiform texts written in Akkadian, one of the oldest known Semitic languages, use different linguistic constructions to describe emotional experiences, in ways that reflect underlying conceptual structures and metaphors. Akkadian emotion expressions attribute to experiencers varying degrees of control or agency over their body and self. Descriptions of emotional episodes can range from active performance to total loss of control. In the latter case, emotions are often constructed as agents that can at times assume the status of a personified or superhuman power.
Related to this conceptualization is the culturally salient idea of divine or demonic agency as a force that can cause a range of changes in a human person’s state of being. Affliction by deities or demons connected to a loss of agency or control in the afflicted person can manifest in various forms of illness, altered states of consciousness and in overwhelming emotional experiences. The boundaries between these conceptual domains are thus fuzzy, which is reflected in comparable expressions: superhuman agents, diseases and emotions are equally said to “seize” or “overwhelm” a person. Moreover, emotional experiences are sometimes likened to altered states of consciousness, for example, when a person overwhelmed by emotion is compared to a raving ecstatic who is under the control of a deity.
The talk presents an overview of the different modes of description and conceptualization of agency and control in emotional experiences and related states of being, through the discussion of selected Akkadian cuneiform sources from the second and first millennium BCE.
