Appendix B: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today 788

Appendix B: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today 788

Appendix B Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today I n chapter 1 we noted that most scholars associate Jesus with healings and exorcisms; there is little doubt that people experienced Jesus as an exorcist, although details are debated and few have explored what exorcism looks like in eyewitness reports. My approach in these first two appendixes on spirits and exorcism differs from the main body of the work. Because anthropologists have provided a large body of material on spirit possession, even though usually not from a perspective that affirms the existence of spirits, the comparative documentary sources are so rich that I have cast the net more widely here, drawing especially from their literature rather than popular Christian sources.1 What I hope to show is that the accounts of possession and exorcism in the Gospels and Acts are plausible from a cross-cultural standpoint.2

Anthropological studies permit us to place possession behavior in ancient texts in a wider context, since such behavior appears in a wide range of societies.

Although some expressions of possession vary from one culture to another, some features appear more widely, apparently often even on the neurophysiological level.

I treat these matters more fully below.

1. Although we explored briefly accounts of healing in traditional religions (ch. 7), the anthropological approach to spirits appears more distinctive. I treat some of the material here in Keener, "Possession," albeit less fully and with a more direct application to nt historiography; more briefly, idem, "Comparisons," 3–4.

A likely helpful work still forthcoming and unavailable to me at the time of this manuscript's completion is Kay and Parry, Exorcism.

2. Even some early modern research recognized the continuity among the phenomena reported in the Gospels, those reported in later history, and those characteristic of current reports (see Oesterreich,

Possession, 3–11).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Cross-Cultural Evidence for Possession Experiences However one explains them, experiences analogous to ancient depictions of possession by an alien spirit are impossible to deny. Although many modern

Western students of early Judaism and early Christianity doubt the reality of spirit possession, they admit that ancients believed in such phenomena.3 Explanations (explored later in this appendix) diverge: for example, most academicians discount the involvement of actual spirits in such experiences;4 some, however, question modern Western presuppositions about such phenomena.5 Globally, views diverge even further, with many cultures affirming the moral neutrality or diversity of spirits.

Whether one accepts the historically and culturally widespread explanation of invasive spirits or prefers the modern Western materialist rejection of such explanations' tenability, the transcultural character of the experience of possession behavior is impossible to evade. At least a few nt scholars cognizant of anthropological research have recognized this fact and applied some conclusions from social-science studies to the Gospels.6 Studies have shown "an altered neurophysiology" during many possession states.7 While neurophysiological studies cannot determine whether possession phenomena derive from an "an invading alien being" or from other psychological factors,8 clearly neurophysiological changes, including hyperarousal, do frequently occur.9 Incidents of possession on a notable

3. See Wrede, Secret, 26–27.

4. E.g., Best, "Exorcism," 4–8 (on 5 considering Jesus's misunderstanding on the matter as a limitation imposed by the nature of the incarnation; on 6 linking the belief with superstition).

5. E.g., Robinson, "Challenge," 323–25; Yamauchi, "Magic," 142–47; Wenham, Bible, 64; Montgomery,

"Exorcism"; cf. Borg, Vision, 62, 72n16. See a much more complete survey of Western theological skepticism and the suggested problems with it in Twelftree, Triumphant, 135–70.

6. E.g., Borg, Vision, 62 (citing Lewis, Ecstatic Religion); Borg, Jesus, 149–50; Crossan, Historical Jesus,

315–17; Loubser, "Possession"; more extensively Davies, Healer (introducing spirit possession, 22–42); see further Keener, "Possession."

7. Prince, "EEG," 127–29. For example, persons in altered states of consciousness (ASC) fall in the theta range during an EEG, found in children but not normally in awake adults (Davies, Healer, 141–42, following

Goodman, Ecstasy, 39). Tibetan heat yoga provides an extreme and paranormal example (see Benson,

"Temperature Changes"; idem, Healing, 163–64). For various studies on the brain and consciousness relevant to "anomalous experiences" (visions, etc.), see McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 48, with fuller details in appendix E.

8. Goodman, Demons, 126; cf. Ladd, Theology, 51. For comparison with multiple personality disorder, cf., e.g., Firth, "Foreword," ix–x (also noting suggestibility on xiii); Bourguignon, "Multiple Personality";

Field, "Possession," 3; for earlier "possession" diagnosis and the sometimes consequent development of "secondary personality," see Oesterreich, "Possession," 111, 140; idem, Possession, 127. Psychiatric expectations may often contribute to this disorder (Spanos, "Hypnosis," 109–18, emphasizes the role-playing function). For earlier discussions of neurosis versus demonology, see, e.g., Freud, "Neurosis" (though

Freud's diagnosis is problematic; see Midelfort, "Reactions," 139, 143–44); Anne Chevreau in 1598 viewed Marthe's "possession" in terms resembling neurosis (Walker and Dickerman, "Woman," 554). For possession as a religiously meaningful shared cultural idiom for sorts of mental illness, sometimes helpful to the possessed person, see Obeyesekere, "Idiom."

9. Goodman, Demons, 1–24, 126.

Appendix B

scale have also been documented, although Westerners may tend to attribute these to mass hysteria,10 including in earlier Western history.11

Anthropological Reports of Possession Experiences We thus do not need to assume that ancients invented all experiences of possession and deliverance, although writers probably schematized many and invented some of them. Whatever one makes of such experiences, they are inescapably widely attested;12 seeking to deny phenomena like possession, trances, and so forth has been regarded as the anthropological equivalent of "being a 'flat-earther.'"13

Although anthropologists do not all share a common cross-cultural conceptual metanarrative with which to frame them, possession states "are among the most commonly discussed behavior disorders in the anthropological literature."14 Indeed, although I here address primarily those cases defined by their cultures as possession

(control by alien spirits), the "behavior patterns" of many possession cases occur widely even in societies that do not construe them as possession.15 Cross-cultural comparison is admittedly complicated by whether we are comparing merely altered states of consciousness, however defined, or experiences indigenously defined as possession, regardless of neurological state.16

10. E.g., when 120 people in a factory in Malaysia were "possessed" in 1978 and the factory had to be shut down while a local "spirit healer" sought to placate the spirits, to the U.S. director's embarrassment (Keller, Hammer, 107, citing Ong, Spirits, 204, 209, though interpreting the incident differently from Ong); about four hundred students during a possession epidemic in Transkei (1981–83; Edwards,

"Possession," 220; cf. similar mass possession hysteria in factories in 1787 and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Rosen, "Psychopathology," 245); possession of Kenyan schoolgirls in the 1990s

(Smith, "Possession," 442 [earlier, cf. 442–45]); possession epidemics in public and private Madagascar schools in the late 1970s (Sharp, "Power of Possession," 3; cf. the "laughing" epidemic in Tanzania in 1962 (Capps, Village Psychiatrist, 10).

11. Mass possessions in Europe appear commonly only after 1500 (Midelfort, "Reactions," 136), though a major outbreak (the dance frenzy) occurred in 1374 (Rosen, "Psychopathology," 221–22; these dance epidemics continued in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 226–27). From 1491 to 1881, see

Oesterreich, Possession, 187–90. On the convent at Loudun in 1633, see Baskin, "Devils"; Oesterreich,

"Possession," 112–13; Keller, "Glimpses," 277–80 (for one psychoanalytic approach, Lietaer and Corveleyn,

"Interpretation," 266–73, noting the case of 259, 262–63; for this as pseudo-possession as opposed to genuine possession, see Gildea, "Possession," 298); at Carpi in the late 1630s, Watt, "Demons" (noting that the cardinals faulted the exorcists for the problem). Sociologists also compare mass hysteria in frontier revivals; cf. the multiplication of visions at Lourdes in 1858 (Taylor, "Letters from Lourdes," 472).

12. See, e.g., the bibliography in Boddy, "Spirit Possession," 428–34; earlier, Zaretsky, Bibliography.

13. Burridge, New Earth, 4n2 (as cited in Lewis, Healing, 321–22n15). As early as 1921, Oesterreich,

Possession, 389, complained that the simple rationalist denial of ancient accounts of spirit possession, as in the case of the Pythoness, "is frankly no longer possible to-day" (though his appeal to the possibility of parapsychological powers need not be granted to uphold this conclusion). Some anthropologists emphasizing participant observation have also entered into shamanic trances (Turner, "Advances," 48, cites, e.g., Friedson, Prophets, 20–22).

14. Guthrie, Disorder, 8, as cited in Bourguignon, Possession, 9. Not all anthropologists today would view all "possession" as a disorder (see, e.g., Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 84–85; similarly,

Bourguignon, "Self," 56, argues that it is not "deviant" in a Haitian context).

15. Bourguignon, Possession, 9–10.

16. Cf. problems of various approaches surveyed in Ward, "Cross-Cultural Study," 27–31.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

The anthropological literature demonstrates conclusively that many peoples do experience possession trance, even while the perception, interpretation, and sometimes expression of such experiences vary culturally.17 Anthropologists today generally try to study the phenomenon from the perspective of societies that claim it, rather than imposing a Western interpretive grid on it.18 In contrast to theologians and parapsychologists, most anthropologists seek to study not spiritual phenomena but indigenous beliefs about spirits.19 Thus one study offers as a working definition of spirit possession "any altered state of consciousness indigenously interpreted in terms of the influence of an alien spirit."20 More recent studies work harder than most of their predecessors to take into account the indigenous frame of reference;21 while traditional Western categories, often from a medical perspective, make cross-cultural comparison easier, more contextualized and phenomenological approaches prove more epistemologically open.22

As Erika Bourguignon points out, belief in spirit possession is widespread in varied cultures around the world, "as any reader of ethnographies knows."23 She sampled

488 diverse, ethnographically representative societies and discovered spirit possession beliefs in 360 societies, that is, in 74 percent (nearly three-quarters) of those

17. Illnesses are often "oriented to and shaped by" cultural conceptions (Kaplan and Johnson, "Navajo

Psychopathology," 203); cf., e.g., a form of possession associated with initial encounters with overhead airplanes (Colson, "Possession," 79, 85). Groups can experience revelatory trance states that they distinguish from possession (cf. Surgy, L'Église, 216–17).

18. Tippett, "Possession," 143–44. For a brief historical overview of anthropological approaches to spirit possession, see Prince, "Foreword," xi; Crapanzaro, "Introduction," 5–7; more thoroughly for recent studies, Boddy, "Spirit Possession," 410–14.

19. Bourguignon, Possession, 14. Some scholars warn of the impropriety of applying some Western diagnostic categories cross-culturally, since some behaviors considered disordered by therapists in one society may be norms in others (Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 84–85).

20. Crapanzaro, "Introduction," 7 (emphasis his; cited also by others, e.g., Davies, Healer, 23); for those including any state indigenously interpreted as possession, cf. Bourguignon, Possession,

7; Lewis, "Spirits and Sex War," 627. With respect to shamans, Harner, Way of Shaman, xiii, 46–50, speaks of this altered state as a "shamanic state of consciousness" (noting on xiii that shamans can move back and forth between ordinary and shamanic consciousness). Typical shamans depend on guardian spirits (43 and passim).

21. Thus, Keller, Hammer, 39–40, notes that earlier anthropologists tended to explain possession in psychosocial terms, not commenting on possessing agents, but more recent research "does take seriously the agency of possessing ancestors, deities, and spirits."

22. See Boddy, "Spirit Possession," 408, 410–14, 427.

23. Bourguignon, "Spirit Possession Belief," 18; cf. also Bourguignon, "Introduction," 17–19; idem,

"Self"; Boddy, "Spirit Possession," 409; Firth, "Foreword," ix; Morsy, "Possession," 189; Chandra shekar,

"Possession Syndrome," 80; an earlier intuition in Robbins, "Exorcism," 201; Oesterreich, Possession,

376; on belief in spirits being found in most cultures, Turner, "Reality," 30 (distinguishing this from mere "energy," ki or chi). For the geographic distribution of cultures practicing trance, possession trance, and spirit possession, with maps, see Bourguignon, "Distribution," 18–32. Most occur in every geographic region, though some more in some regions than others. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion,

100–126, shows that negatively perceived spirit possession occurs in a wide range of societies, as do efforts to contain or exorcise it. In addition to anthropologists, missionaries widely report the phenomena, although construing them differently (Mooneyham, "Demonism," 210–14). I have heard many examples orally from African scholar friends, who sometimes have firsthand or secondhand experiences with these phenomena.

Appendix B

studied. The beliefs are most attested in the Pacific islands (88 percent); 77 percent around the Mediterranean; and less in the Americas (64 percent in the aboriginal population of North America and 64 percent in South America).24 Sixteen percent of the 360 societies have possession trance only; 22 percent have other forms of possession; and 35 percent have both.25 One could thus provide examples from a wide variety of societies in most regions of the world,26 among them Africa27 (including the northeast,28 central east,29 south,30 northwest,31 and west32), the Middle East,33 Asia,34

24. Bourguignon, "Spirit Possession Belief," 19–21; idem, "Appendix"; followed also in Kaplan and Sadock, Psychiatry, 259, 1237; Ward, "Possession," 126 (noting that possession or trance states occur in 90 percent; Pilch, Dictionary, 81–82, also cites 90 percent for trances or altered states of consciousness); see, e.g., Wetering, "Effectiveness" (in Suriname). It occurs in the West, though often interpreted less benignly (Macklin, "Yankee," esp. 42).

25. Bourguignon, "Spirit Possession Belief," 21, noting that possession trance is rarer in the Americas

(5 percent in North America, 12 percent in South America); more have possession without trance (27 percent of North American societies; 34 percent of South American societies). Possession trance is common in African tradition (Ferdinando, "Demonology," 120; Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 183).

26. For samples of those studied, see, e.g., Crapanzaro and Garrison, Case Studies; Goodman, Demons,

1–24, 126; Lewis, Ecstatic Religion; Oesterreich, Possession; Alexander, Possession, 105–6. In addition to those I have surveyed directly, some of the following samples come from the bibliography in Boddy,

"Spirit Possession," 428–34 (with 221 sources, it provides a useful starting point for further research); for zar, tumbura, and bori cults, see Makris and Natvig, "Bibliography"; Lewis, Al-Safi, and Hurreiz,

Medicine, 283–91.

27. E.g., Mbiti, Religions, 106, 111 (noting an "epidemic" of possession among the Akamba in the early twentieth century), 113, 249–50; Beattie and Middleton, Mediumship, passim. In Africa's early Western diaspora through slavery, see Raboteau, Slave Religion, 10–11, 17, 19, 27–28, 35–37, 63–73.

28. In Egypt, Saunders, "Zar Experience"; Natvig, "Zar Cult" (including early history, 178–80); idem,

"Rites"; in Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan (including the zar cult there), see Leiris, Possession; Lewis,

"Possession"; Morton, "Dawit"; Messing, "Zar Cult"; Natvig, "Zar Spirits"; Tubiana, "Zar"; Makris and Al-Safi, "Spirit Possession Cult"; Boddy, "Spirits and Selves"; idem, Wombs; Kahana, "Zar Spirits"; Kennedy,

"Zar Ceremonies"; Constantinides, "Zar" (for history); Kenyon, "Zar"; Luling, "Possession Cults." For earlier Western reports on zar cults, see Oesterreich, Possession, 230–35.

29. E.g., Smith, "Possession"; Harris, "Possession Hysteria"; Noble, "Possession"; Giles, "Possession

Cults"; idem, "Spirits"; idem, "Possession"; Gomm, "Spirit Possession"; Beattie, "Mediumship."

30. Among Shona peoples, see, e.g., Gelfand, "Disorders"; Fry, Spirits; Garbett, "Mediums"; in Transkei,

O'Connell, "Possession"; among the !Kung of the Kalahari, Katz, "Healing"; among the Valley Tonga of Zambia, Colson, "Possession"; Luig, "Worlds"; in Zambia generally, including in urban areas, Haar and Ellis,

"Possession" (e.g., 204); Binsbergen, Change, 75–99; in Madagascar, Sharp, "Possessed"; idem, Possessed; idem, "Power of Possession"; Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, Lambek, Knowledge; idem, "Disease," 40–45.

31. E.g., in Morocco, Crapanzaro, "Mohammed"; in Mali, Colleyn, "Horse"; in Tunisia, Ferchiou,

"Possession Cults."

32. E.g., among the Wolof of Senegal, Zempleni, "Symptom"; in Ghana, Field, "Possession"; Platvoet,

"Communication" (analyzing aspects of Akan rites recorded in 1922); in Niger, Echard, "Possession Cult";

Stoller, "Change"; Masquelier, "Invention"; in Hausaland, Abdalla, "Friend"; among traditional Yorubas,

Prince, "Possession Cults."

33. E.g., the zar cult in Iran, Modarressi, "Zar Cult"; in Kuwait, Ashkanani, "Zar"; see also northeast

Africa.

34. E.g., in Nepal, Gray, "Exorcism"; Peters, Healing in Nepal; Hitchcock and Jones, Spirit Possession; in India, Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome"; Basso, "Music" (in Orissa); McDaniel, "States" (on goddess possession in West Bengal); Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, in Wayman, "Meaning"; in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Buddhism, Kapferer, Exorcism; Obeyesekere, "Possession"; Yalman, "Healing Rituals," 128;

Halverson, "Dynamics" (esp. 334–42); Oesterreich, Possession, 216–17; Pieris, "Humour"; in Hong Kong,

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

the Pacific,35 and the Americas.36 I will draw further on anthropological research below.

Cultural Elements of Possession Behavior The actual experiences involved in possession behavior vary, sometimes even within cultures that have multiple forms of possession. One scholar suggests several categories. These include an intense, temporary state usually induced externally (e.g., by drums), which can either involve "psycho-physiological changes"

(e.g., ecstasy or trance states) or not. The scholar also elaborates three suggested categories of permanent possession and allows for other types as well. Thus "the empirical facts underlying possession can be anything between a permanent backache and the most expert, breathtaking performance of less than one hour's duration."37

Possession behavior does not result from all purported interaction with spirits, though I also survey some claims of the latter experience in this appendix.

Shamans in many parts of the world, for example, claim to communicate with spirits but are not taken over by them; some other shamans, however, become completely possessed, whether temporarily or long-term.38 Thus in many traditional African societies mediums are normally in their own minds except when possessed by a spirit; only during the trance state do they function as mediums.39

Spirit possession can be induced or solicited for such purposes by drumming Yap, "Syndrome"; in the Philippines, Guthrie and Szanton, "Diagnosis"; in Malaysia, Kessler, "Conflict";

Ackerman and Lee, "Communication"; Lee, "Self-Presentation" (esp. 253–57); Keller, Hammer, 106–7; in Myanmar (then Burma), see Oesterreich, Possession, 218; Spiro, Supernaturalism; in Indonesia, Stange,

"Configurations"; in Japan, Lebra, Patterns; McVeigh, "Possession." In early Buddhist tradition, see, e.g.,

Oesterreich, Possession, 174.

35. E.g., in the pre-Christian Solomon Islands, see Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity, 14, 250–51; in Fiji, Hoare, "Approach," 124–26; among traditional aboriginal Australians, see Berndt, "Role," 269; in New Guinea, Salisbury, "Possession."

36. In New England, Macklin, "Yankee"; in Puerto Rico, Koss, "Spirits"; Garrison, "Syndrome";

Harwood, Spiritist; in Montserrat, Dobbin, Dance; some groups in St. Vincent, Henney, "Belief"; in a group in Yucatan, Goodman, "Disturbances"; in Haiti, Douyon, "L'Examen"; Kiev, "Value"; in the Brazilian cult of Umbanda, Pressel, "Umbanda"; idem, "Trance"; idem, "Possession"; in this and other Brazilian cults, cf.

Krippner, "Call"; Hayes, "Limits"; in a Canadian Native American group, cf. Jilek, "Brainwashing"; idem,

"Therapeutic Use"; in a U.S. Native American group, cf. Kaplan and Johnson, "Navajo Psychopathology,"

211; cf. Fogelson, "Theories," 78, 84.

37. Binsbergen, Change, 90–91, also noting mediumship with some but not other kinds.

38. Eliade, Shamanism, 6 (cf. possession in 346); Tippett, "Possession," 165 (following Eliade); Peters,

Healing in Nepal, 10–11. Guardian spirits are essential for shamanism (Harner, Way of Shaman, 43).

Shamanism is not itself associated with mental illness (Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 85).

Shorter, Witch Doctor, 177, notes that those most susceptible to dissociation after initiation may become shamans themselves. Krippner, "Perspectives," surveys a variety of proposed models and data, including the traditional Christian model of shamans' "demon possession" (963–64; noting on 964 that shamans sometimes make these claims about rival shamans), which he rejects, and the various attentional states of different kinds of shamans (967).

39. Mbiti, Religions, 225–26 (in most other situations, spirit possession can be harmful, 106); cf.

Firth, Ritual, 298. In some societies, only the medium will enter a trance (e.g., Colson, "Possession," 76).

Appendix B

and dancing.40 (Dancing or drumming can also be associated with healing and exorcism.41) Some societies believe in possession but lack trance states; others link the two or have only the latter,42 though those lacking only the latter could employ possession in connection with spirits.43

Some practices are common in particular regions. For example, in Brazilian spiritism,44 in more than half the cults some see spirits of the dead; in all but one some see supernatural beings; most cults include possession of mediums, and most include possession of initiates; most include ecstatic trance; more often the possessed are unconscious than conscious; and in most cults possession can be either spontaneous or induced.45 In rural Ghana, possession often includes

40. For drumming, see Mbiti, Religions, 106; Harner, Way of Shaman, 50–53, 142–43 (its repetition useful for the shamanic state); Peters, Healing in Nepal, 46, 49; Pressel, "Possession," 344; Shorter, "Spirit

Possession," 114; Bourguignon, Possession, 19–20 (with dancing); Firth, "Foreword," xiii; Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xxvi; Horton, "Possession," 19; Binsbergen, Change, 90; Verger, "Trance,"

55–59; Southall, "Possession," 233, 236, 240–42, 248, 269; Constantinides, "Zar," 89, 91 (for bori, but not tumbura possession); Luling, "Possession Cults," 173 (Somalia); Field, "Possession," 4, 7 (Ghana);

Gelfand, "Disorders," 156, 162; idem, Religion, 166–67 (traditional Shona culture); Musi, "Shaman,"

55 (Asian vs. European); Jilek, "Therapeutic Use," 182 (acoustic rhythm, "kinetic stimulation," "sleep deprivation," etc.); Hultkrantz, Healing, 36, 66, 163 (drumming to induce the proper state in northern

North America and among Native Americans on the Plains); Fleurant, "Music," 49–50 (Haitian Vodun); in the Dionysus cult in antiquity, Plutarch T.-T. 1.5.2, Mor. 623B. Music aids possession in Basso,

"Music"; for music and trance, see Alcorta, "Music," 243–47; for drumming and dancing to induce altered states of consciousness in a Zionist church, see Edwards, "Healing," 340–42; for sacred dance and healing in a contextualized South African church, see Mthethwa, "Music," 253–55; dancing and spiritual power in South African African Independent Churches (AICs), Oosthuizen, Healer-Prophet,

55–56; shamanic dancing in Hultkrantz, Healing, 63–65; possession dance in Stoller and Olkes, Shadow,

85. Others have appropriated the shamanic use of drumming to induce altered states of consciousness for therapeutic purposes (Winkelman, "Spirituality," 459–60; suggesting the psychobiological bases, see 461–62; but Walsh, Shamanism, 148, complains that Winkelman fails to cite empirical data for his neurophysiological claims). For fasting altering conscious perceptions, see, e.g., Kluger, "Biology," 64; for the use of psychoactive plants to achieve altered states of consciousness (ASC), see, e.g., Dobkin de Rios, "Power."

41. For healing in Siberia, Turner, Hands, 59, 71; in one African context, Turner, Hands, 71; drumming in an exorcism ceremony in Gray, "Cult," 177–79; Lewis, "Possession," 206; Edwards, "Possession," 215;

Schuetze, "Role," 41–43 (rhythm, with clapping, in addressing spirits); Mthethwa, "Music," 254 (driving away demons at church); music to set the tone for exorcism in a São Paulo (Brazil) Pentecostal service in Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 154; in African Pentecostalism, cf. Cox, "Miracles," 91. Cf. sacred dance and healing in a contextualized South African church, see Mthethwa, "Music," 253–55. Music aids in exorcism in L.A.B. 60:2–3.

42. See Bourguignon, Possession, 42–49.

43. Ibid., 48, notes that 48 percent of Native American societies (among the highest percentages anywhere) lacked belief in possession, yet "all but one had a pattern of ritual trance, mostly of a hallucinatory or visionary type, in which communication with spirits could be established." Native Americans had the highest percentages of trance states or altered states of consciousness (Pilch, Dictionary, 81).

44. See Johnson, "Authority," 15–65, including a careful chart of the belief structures of the different groups (64, table 2) and beliefs about possession in these groups (65, table 3); I use especially 65 here.

Claims to "see" spirits also appear elsewhere (McNaughton, Blacksmiths, 11). Spiritists are highly influential in Brazil and undergo formal training; see Lotufo-Neto, "Influences," 201.

45. Using sacrifices, drums, singing, dancing, tobacco, prayer, and often drinking. (Such means are not universal; see, e.g., Field, "Possession," 7; but cf. use of tobacco and rum in Scherberger, "Shaman," 62,

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

an initial stupor followed by excited, ecstatic activity;46 an established diviner may become possessed to divine what deity is possessing another person.47 In traditional Mozambique, a healer drew spirits from the patient's body and then became a mouthpiece for the spirits, which would speak through him.48 Among traditional Valley Korekore, spirit possession is common and "danced out" in cult groups, but mediums, who speak by spirit possession, are rarer.49

Possession behavior varies in some respects among different cultures.50 Possession often follows conventions particular to the culture where it occurs,51 and some possessed persons seem to exhibit stereotyped responses.52 Thus, for example, Somali possession cults lack the emphasis on different spirits with distinct behaviors, in contrast to related Sudanese cults; the possessed dance but do not speak much, in contrast to, say, Comoro Islands possession.53 By contrast, forms of possession trance vary considerably among individual mediums in Palau.54

64–65.) For trance-inducing practices in the Afro-Brazilian cults, see Lotufo-Neto, "Influences," 198–200.

In Candomblé, an African-oriented cult in Brazil, the Orixás that are invoked "are assumed to dwell in Africa and are summoned from there" (Johnson, "Authority," 32). Shamans also "see" physically invisible

"spirit" in Scherberger, "Shaman," 59. Greenfield, Spirits, 75, notes possession of mediums and (88–90) hypothesizes a hypnotic state for the patients as well.

46. Field, "Possession," 3–4.

47. Ibid., 8. On possession facilitating ability to diagnose (among the Karanga), see Shoko, Religion,

71–72; on comparable dependence on the Holy Spirit in an AIC, see Shoko, Religion, 122–23. In the Philippines, some divine by means of the saints as spirits (Licauco, "Realities," 266–67); Vodun also identifies some traditional spirits with the saints (Fleurant, "Music," 47). Roman Catholic missiologist and anthropologist Louis Luzbetak articulated problems with such syncretic forms that he has called

Christopaganism (Church and Cultures, 239–48, esp. here 239–40, with sources cited).

48. Roque, "Mafumo," 181.

49. Garbett, "Mediums," 105, noting that mediums, unlike members of possession cults, had to remain in the vicinity belonging to their possessing spirit.

50. See, e.g., Platvoet, "Rule"; Keener, "Possession," 221–24; note also common cultural characteristics in some features of traditional African spirit possession and patterned responses to religious activity in the African diaspora, including many African-American churches (e.g., Jules-Rosette, "Spirituality"). For traditional Japanese spirit possession and other patterns in their cultural context, see, e.g., Lebra, Patterns.

Some societies lack even dissociation in some cases, so that the common element in possession in these societies tends to be the belief that a spirit is overpowering one's personality (Shorter, Witch Doctor, 180).

Possession accounts focus on children in Europe primarily after 1600, and group possession appears mostly after 1500 (Midelfort, "Reactions," 136). Trance and possession seem more common where members play more responsible roles in collective experience (Swanson, "Trance," 272–73).

51. See, e.g., Verger, "Trance," 64; Southall, "Possession," 243; Firth, Ritual, 313–14 (noting the possessing spirits' use of "conventional Tikopia concepts and . . . ordinary Tikopia norms of etiquette and morality"); Binsbergen, Change, 92, on temporary possession, as opposed to long-term afflictions classified as possession.

52. E.g., among the southeastern Bantu in Gussler, "Change," 123–24, to at least some degree apparently reflecting traditional beliefs; loss of eye control in Navajo mental illness (Kaplan and Johnson,

"Navajo Psychopathology," 206).

53. Luling, "Possession Cults," 175.

54. Leonard, "Spirit Mediums," 176, also noting that most remaining possession trance is found among the elderly.

Appendix B

Even within a single culture (as just noted for Palau), possession behavior sometimes varies widely.55 For example, in Mayotte, there is wide variation in susceptibility to and expression of trance or possession.56 As Bourguignon summarizes, "Because of its psychobiological substrate, it reveals constants wherever we find it. Yet it is subject to learning and by this means, it is amenable to cultural patterning. As such, it takes on a striking variety of forms."57 Moreover, travelers can take particular forms of spirit possession and mediumship with them to societies previously unfamiliar with them.58 The nature of cults can change over time;59 in some societies a traditionally serious, therapeutic possession cult has been harnessed increasingly in the direction of entertainment.60

Some Special Forms of Possession Behaviors I focus here on some forms of possession behavior, found in some locations, that may be of special interest to students of the Gospels and Acts. In a wide range of societies, possession results in a major change of personality and sudden and dramatic shifts in "behavior, timbre and pitch of voice."61 Those

55. Nevius, Possession, 46, noting wild activity, apparently normal activity except in a different voice, or speaking for a deceased relative or a fox (although all these reactions may have been accepted as stereotyped responses within the culture. On fox spirits, see, e.g., Matsuoka, "Fox Possession"; cf., e.g., one economic interpretation in Miyamoto, "Possessed." On possession supposedly by an animal, see also, e.g., Oesterreich,

Possession, 28, 144–45, 191, 364, 220, 224–28 (noting the prevalence of fox spirits in Japan and claiming, on 226, oxen in southeast Asia; cf. the snake spirit in Emmons, Ghosts, 185, and snakelike action in Koch,

Zulus, 294; lion spirits in 33; monkey spirits of some sort in Tari, Breeze, 63). In Tari, Breeze, 131–32, when children cast spirits from a local traditional priest, the spirits appeared like a long black snake coming from his mouth; other animal figures emerge from the mouth in Ising, Blumhardt, 170.

56. Lambek, "Disease," 41–43.

57. Bourguignon, "Assessment," 337; cf. similarly McClenon, Healing, 60.

58. See, e.g., Shorter, "Possession and Healing," 47 (on coastal beliefs reaching the interior of Tanzania through one Kipakulo in the mid-twentieth century); idem, "Spirit Possession," 122; Binsbergen, Change,

96–98. The same system collapsed in 1970 (49). Scholars have tried to reconstruct the spread of the zar cult

(e.g., Morsy, "Possession," 192–93). Amafufunyana possession came to Zululand in the late 1920s or 1930s and spread elsewhere in South Africa (Edwards, "Possession," 209; cf. Oosthuizen, Healer-Prophet, 88).

Spirits are now globalized, with spirits from Brazil or Ghana or Nigeria possessing persons elsewhere, and spirits that helped an antigovernment cult once based in northern Uganda now called Hitler or Mussolini

(Behrend and Luig, "Introduction," xiii, citing for the latter Behrend, Geister). Some bori spirits in West

Africa are "European" (Krings, "History," 53).

59. E.g., Natvig, "Zar Cult," 181; and often in the literature. Syncretism is common (e.g., Constantinides,

"Zar," 91) and other factors, such as Islam, have forced a measure of change (e.g., Last, "Bori," 57; Giles,

"Spirits," 76), though elements of continuity also appear to exist (Echard, "Possession Cult," 67). Cf. haziri possession at Islamic shrines (Bellamy, "Person"); Islamic possession and spiritual power in Ally and Laher,

"Perceptions." Like Christianity, Islam faces syncretism on many local levels; see, e.g., between African tradition and Sufism, Ferchiou, "Possession Cults," 213; Islamic and pre-Islamic beliefs in Mindanao,

Williams, "Bwaya," 122–25; in East Africa, Giles, "Spirits," 61–62, 71; Nicolini, "Notes," 121; West Africa, in Butler, "Materialization"; Islam elsewhere, e.g., Accoroni, "Healing Practices," 7–11. Coastal Swahili culture distinguishes between Muslim spirits and the "uncivilized" pagan spirits (Giles, "Possession," 148).

60. Cf., e.g., Last, "Bori," 49–50; Hurreiz, "Zar" (esp. 154); Sellers, "Zar" (esp. 156–57, 163). Some exorcistic language and ritual can become "domesticated" (cf. Versteeg and Droogers, "Typology").

61. Tippett, "Possession," 162 (following Herskovits; elaborated further on 162–64, with thorough documentation from anthropological literature). See, e.g., Oesterreich, Possession, 19–22 (offering many

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

leaving the possession state often have no recollection of how they acted while possessed.62 Thus Raymond Firth notes that social anthropologists, approaching spirit possession from a very different standpoint from missionaries, spiritualists, or psychics, have been faced in the field by dramatic changes of personality in men or women they were studying—startling yet evidently accustomed alterations of behaviour, with trembling, sweating, groaning, speaking with strange voices, assumption of a different identity, purporting to be a spirit not a human being, giving commands or foretelling the future in a new authoritative way. Sometimes it has been hard for the anthropologist to persuade himself that it is really the same person as before whom he is watching or confronting, so marked is the personality change.63

Some of these descriptions appear relevant to examples of violent or self-destructive expressions of possession in the Gospels and Acts (Mark 5:4–5; 9:18, 22; Acts

19:16).64 In a number of diverse cultures where it has been observed in the modern world, spirit possession sometimes yields superhuman strength that makes restraint examples), 97, 208; Ising, Blumhardt, 104–5, 168, 169, 171–72, 174–75, 178, 183; Mbiti, Religions,

225–26, including (on 225) a case he witnessed; Dayhoff, "Guiva" (a girl speaking in a deep, unnatural voice before exorcism); Gelfand, Religion, 169 (regarding Shona examples); Shorter, Witch Doctor,

177; Greenfield, Spirits, 40 (new persona), 83 (voice); Emmons, Ghosts, 193 (a medium imitating the voice and gestures of the deceased); Stacey, "Practice," 294 (change in voice and the elongation of facial features); Grof, "Potential," 144 (change in voice and superhuman knowledge); Wilson, "Miracle

Events," 275 (two male voices from a woman); Instone-Brewer, "Psychiatrists," 140 (a case he witnessed while studying psychiatry); Ma, Mission, 67 (a woman's voice becoming male); Emmanuel Itapson, interview, April 1, 2011; Pastor Ricky Sayco of Metro Manila, interview, Jan. 27, 2009; Scherberger,

"Shaman," 62 (change of voice and personality through spirit helpers); Turner, "Advances," 50 (citing also Earle, "Borders," 3); McClenon, Events, 134–35 (a right-handed Chinese non-artist painting with his left hand when entranced), 226 (trance and altered personality in a spiritualist context); cf. the trance behavior of a shaman in Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 165; Veronica Steiner's possession in 1574 (Midelfort, "Possession," 127).

62. E.g., Field, "Possession," 3, 6; Horton, "Possession," 23; Gelfand, Religion, 166, 169; Bourguignon,

"Self," 53, 56; Grof, "Potential," 145; Rosny, Healers, 185–86; Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome,"

87; Bellamy, "Person," 40; Betty, "Evidence," 14; cf. Singleton, "Spirits," 477; Oesterreich, Possession, 13

("posterior amnesia"); but contrast Shorter, "Spirit Possession," 113. Some claim to know little about the spirits that possess them, claiming to be "powerless in their hands" (Shorter, "Possession and Healing,"

48). In some studies, hypnotic amnesia involves role playing rather than genuine neurological amnesia

(see Spanos, "Hypnosis," 101–2, persuasively; cf. 116–17).

63. Firth, "Foreword," x (adding his own shock when first encountering spirit mediumship among the Tikopia four decades earlier). Possession typically displaces the normal personality (Mbiti, Religions,

106; Montilus, "Vodun," 3–4); for the possessed acting like the spirits believed to possess them, see, e.g.,

Verger, "Trance," 50–51, 53.

64. See also Keener, "Possession," 231–33. Exorcising a "legion" of demons in Mark 5:9–13 appears an unusual case on a dramatic scale (though cf. Luke 8:2; Mark 16:9), though Blumhardt believed that many demons left his parishioner, with a spiritual effect on the region (Ising, Blumhardt, 170–71), and Tari, Wind, 38–40, reports a sort of mass exorcism in a village in Indonesia.

Appendix B

difficult or impossible65 and often yields "violent thrashing"66 or destructiveness67

(sometimes requiring isolation68), including at times self-laceration.69

For example, among traditional !Kung bushmen, younger and less experienced trancers have to be restrained from injuring themselves or others; they are known for grabbing live coals and smearing them on their bodies, contact with fire from one to five seconds producing burns.70 One African scholar describes a case of possession trance he witnessed near Kampala, where the medium banged his head on the floor without injury, and after possession returned to normalcy.71 In many African societies, spirit possession drives the person to live in the forest, to jump into fire, or to use sharp objects to hurt oneself.72 According to one report, a possessed child being exorcised of an ancestor spirit hurled "a huge burning log from the fire place" at the prophets, who dodged it and expelled the spirit.73

65. E.g., Kaplan and Johnson, "Navajo Psychopathology," 208; Murphy, "Aspects of Shamanism,"

58; Field, "Possession," 5; Oesterreich, Possession, 22–23; Filson, "Study," 154; Betty, "Evidence," 16, 20;

Koch, Zulus, 45, 191 (seven men could not restrain her); cf. Edwards, "Possession," 210; Borg, Vision,

62; Ising, Blumhardt, 174; Mark 5:4 (but more positively, 1 Sam 11:6–7; 14:6, 19; 15:14; T. Jud. 2:1–7); perhaps breaking chains after alleged madness in Quintilian Decl. 295 intro; on other occasions, though, a possessed person could be tied up (Gray, "Cult," 182; Osborn, Healing, 315). Pastor Ricky Sayco of Manila recounted an incident where four strong men were unable to hold down an eighteen-year-old woman in Davoa City, Mindanao. She had become possessed in response to a curse from her father but was permanently delivered after they had spent five hours in prayer (interview, Jan. 27, 2009). Betty,

"Evidence," 16, 20, following a report from a Western Taoist observer in 1920s China, recounts that the person visibly swelled in front of the eyewitnesses like a balloon and then deflated during the exorcism

(something not known to happen naturally). Curiously, an account of an exorcism in India from May 2009, obviously independent from the report just mentioned, notes one bloating and becoming heavy during possession; the person's exorcism converted the village (a report involving a Filadelphia Bible College graduate, sent by Finny Philip, June 19, 2009).

66. Beauvoir, "Herbs," 129, also noting "'wild' behavior," but further a quieter form of possession;

Wilson, "Miracle Events," 275.

67. Eliade, Rites, 71; Gelfand, "Disorders," 165, 170; Schmidt, "Psychiatry," 145; Kaplan and Johnson,

"Navajo Psychopathology," 227; Matt 8:28; for possession yielding threats and aggression, see Obeyesekere,

"Possession," 251. For spirits cursing and berating the possessed, see, e.g., Morton, "Dawit," 221.

68. When possessed persons become unmanageable, they might be confined to a cave, where they would die of dehydration, or (more often) be driven into the woods (Gelfand, "Disorders," 170).

69. Fox, "Witchcraft," 185; Ising, Blumhardt, 174, 326–27; cf. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 162; Mark

5:5; 1 Kgs 18:28. For various maladaptive responses, see Ludwig, "Altered States," 86 (including voodoo death, on which see also Benson, Healing, 40).

70. Lee, "Sociology," 41–42, 47 (though they believed that fire would not burn them, 43); Katz,

Energy, 121–22. One may also run headlong into a tree; on occasion one has been known to violently attack a dog or to engage in despised sexual behavior (Lee, "Sociology," 42). In some cultures, shamans can walk on "red hot coals" (Filson, "Analysis," 76).

71. Mbiti, Religions, 225–26.

72. Ibid., 106, noting that sometimes the victim also hurts others; cf. "wandering through the bush" with danger of injury in Gray, "Cult," 178. In antiquity, cf. Mark 5:5; 9:18; Acts 19:16; cf. also the Galli, who were said to emasculate themselves in frenzy (on them see my Acts, at Acts 8:27). For throwing themselves into the fire, see also, e.g., Kaplan and Johnson, "Navajo Psychopathology," 211 (noting multiple cases); cf. Mark 9:22; Southall, "Possession," 234.

73. Shoko, Religion, 125, recounting the report from within a Karanga AIC in Zimbabwe. Some

Kenyan members of AICs experiencing ASCs are able "to run along the road for hours beating drums" or perform exorcisms and the like (Harries, "Nature," 403).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Such feats appear more widely than in Africa. At a traditional Taiwanese festival, "spirit mediums" become possessed and flail themselves with instruments of "self-mutilation," allowing them to show immunity to the pain of their wounds.74

Some Indian mediums display apparently superhuman character in fire walking or enduring beatings with swords, and some "carry heavy rocks that cannot be lifted by three or four people."75 Some fire walkers in Indonesia have displayed immunity to pain in rapid contact with burning substances and slashing of their tongues.76

Haitian possession is said to sometimes involve "glassor fire-eating" or other feats.77 One study suggests that those in trance states can become less susceptible to burns and the like.78 It is reported, however, that some persons "have died of post-possession exhaustion" or in the height of ecstasy.79

The Christian collectors and their informants in one wide-ranging study on possession phenomena in traditional China, from the final decade of the nineteenth

74. Jochim, Religions, 154. Although Ghanaian possession examples lack cases of self-injury noted in many cultures, they appear to lack hunger and many other normal sensations (Field, "Possession," 6). For cases of immunity to pain or heat, see McClenon, Events, 97–100 (esp. photographs of Sufi dervishes vs. pain [98], heat [99], and snake venom [100]); heat immunity in McClenon, Healing, 71–74. The Sioux doing Ghost Dancing in the snow (Brown, Wounded Knee, 409–10) may have experienced immunity to cold. Less commonly, some have prescribed substances supposed to provide invulnerability even against bullets (Brown, Wounded Knee, 408; Stoller and Olkes, Shadow, 176; Owusu, "Strings," 146; Oritsejafor,

"Dealing," 89; protective charms during battle in Burgess, Revolution, 84; cf. a mark for protection from sorcery in West, Sorcery, 33–34); my wife tells me that it is reported that some young men from one of her nation's southern regions smeared with such an ointment cried desperately as they found themselves gunned down during a war in her country. When bullets succeed, it is believed that their users employ a more expensive magic that outweighs the protective charms (Owusu, "Strings," 133).

75. Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 89, though noting that these mediums appeared to remain conscious; cf. Betty, "Evidence," 15–16. For techniques for feigning some kinds of immunity, see

Charpak and Broch, Debunked, 29–36.

76. Bourguignon, Possession, 12, citing Pfeiffer, Psychiatrie, 121–22, noting that the cases discussed were not indigenously interpreted as possession, though all participants from one culture entered an altered state of consciousness. Cf. the claim of lack of burns in Koch, Revival, 31 (who speaks of various forms of possession trance, also in Bali, in 34–36); study of genuine fire walking in McClenon, Events,

115–26 (with fewer blisters for those relying on an outside force, 121; for scientific considerations possibly mitigating the heat distribution with respect to ordinary coals, 121–26; McClenon, Healing,

72–73, 75); for scientific reasons why fire walking, properly done, would not produce severe burns, see Charpak and Broch, Debunked, 37–41; for denial of mass hypnosis in some Asian fire walking, see

Licauco, "Realities," 266. Bourguignon, Possession, 12, notes that Greek fire walking assumes possession

(by St. Constantine; following Michael-Dede, "Anastenari"), whereas Bulgarian fire walking "appears to be linked to a hallucinatory state" (following Schipkowensky, Feuertanz). For fire walking in antiquity, see

Trombley, "Paganism," 192 (citing Strabo 12.2.7).

77. Beauvoir, "Herbs," 130.

78. After noting scientific explanations for lesser cases of heat immunity (McClenon, Healing, 72–73,

75), and that many fire walkers blister afterward, regardless of religious commitment (74), McClenon

(72–73) notes anomalous cases during trance. Whereas McClenon after his first experiment found that his own blisters took three weeks to heal (74), after hypnosis he was able to walk the coals safely multiple times and to take others so hypnotized across the coals (76). McClenon (94) contends that shamans control bleeding, show heat immunity, and the like through processes similar to hypnosis.

79. Field, "Possession," 5. In other cases as well, exhaustion commonly follows ecstasy (e.g., Lewis,

"Possession," 202). A Tikopia medium might not feel tired after his spirit control entered, yet feel exhausted through the coming of other spirits (Firth, Ritual, 311).

Appendix B

century,80 naturally read their data through the grid of their own traditional Christian worldview. Nevertheless, much of the study's data remains informative to a range of scholars81 because major shifts in Chinese culture since that time have made comparable data less accessible.82 Some spirits reportedly spoke with the voice of a fox or a bird; others with the voice of a deceased spouse; some persons normally weak in singing or poetry could sing or compose rhyme under possession.83 The Chinese Christian observers, the study's informants, also claimed

"northerners speaking the languages of the South, which they did not know";84 often they knew information that they could not have known normally, including other languages unknown to the speaker in his or her normal state; they also knew of Jesus as divine and feared him.85 Inexplicable knowledge also appears in some current eyewitness descriptions of reported spirit activity,86 including one

80. Nevius, Possession. Other scholars have also compared Nevius and biblical portraits to various accounts of possession behavior today (e.g., Heth, "Demonization"; for Nevius, Oesterreich, Possession,

219–20; for biblical portraits, also Oesterreich, Possession, 3–11; cf. summary of Nevius in Collins,

Exorcism). Oesterreich, Possession, 13–16, cites sources from the 1500s forward, especially favoring some observations by two nineteenth-century doctors (in his book, passim, he provides countless case studies, though the reporters behind his sources held a range of interpretations). More than a century ago Alexander,

Possession, argued for the reality of possession, using medical as well as historical sources (cited also with appreciation in Wilson, "Miracles," 29; I believe that Alexander's rabbinic evidence comes largely from A. Edersheim or other secondary sources).

81. As Oesterreich, Possession, 13, observes, the data collected are useful whether the sources attribute the possession behaviors to psychological or demonic sources (thus he includes, among others, missionary reports, e.g., 143–46, 213–15, 219–23, 229, 362–64). Others also find missionary reports useful, though limited, windows into earlier cultures (Kasten, "Shamanism," 65).

82. Even mostly nonreligious university students who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, however, "reported levels of anomalous experience equivalent to U.S. national samples" (McClenon,

Events, xiii–xiv).

83. Nevius, Possession, 46–47, 58; some also noted in Tippett, "Possession," 153. Nevius, Possession,

140–43, defends the reliability of his Chinese informants, especially noting on 143 that the reports cohere with reports received from other cultures and eras. Nevius reports that he himself was persuaded of the reality of spirit possession only gradually, through his field experience (ix, 9–13), as others have also pointed out (e.g., Ramsay, Teaching, 105–6).

84. Nevius, Possession, 58, noted in Tippett, "Possession," 153, also noting that some spirits bargained over the price of their departure. (The entire section in Nevius, "circular letter and responses," is 41–59.)

85. Tippett, "Possession," 154. Cf. also MacPhail, "Path," 190, claiming Indian experience that Hindus,

Muslims, and Christians, when possessed, speak of Jesus Christ as the true God. Isaacs, "Disorder," 269, addressing possession disorder in the West, notes frequent revulsion against "religion or religious objects."

Allison, "Doubt," 117–18, notes that demons (whether imaginary or real) he encountered in his practice with patients "cowed in fear when I spoke the words 'Jesus Christ,'" and the demons left. Wilson, "Miracle

Events," 275, notes that an attempt to say, "Jesus is Lord," was cut short by a demonic manifestation, but after deliverance the woman accepted and confessed Jesus freely.

86. Earle, "Borders," 3 (as cited in Turner, "Advances," 50); McClenon, Events, 137 (in a trance, without knowledge of the man, painting a requested picture of a long-deceased man that relatives regarded as "an exact representation"), 138 (accurately answering McClenon's thoughts; but McClenon himself was not persuaded, ibid.); Krippner and Achterberg, "Experiences," 353–54; unusually accurate (but not infallible) knowledge of spirit mediums in Emmons, Ghosts, 193–96, 198–207; Koch, Zulus, 143, 146 (cf. the shaman in 294); a possession state described in Grof, "Potential," 144–45; an occult practitioner's continual knowledge of his wife's whereabouts (Alamino, Footsteps, 36); cf. Keener, "Possession," 226; alleged occasional parapsychologic phenomena in Oesterreich, Possession, 381–82; supernatural knowledge in

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

by then-psychiatric student (now rabbinics scholar) David Instone-Brewer,87 and others have reported the possessed speaking languages unknown to them, or the beliefs that something like this occurs.88

In the early twentieth century, some reports elsewhere in China continued to envision some sort of spirit phenomena; thus one Lutheran observer reports an evil spirit that kept trying to strangle a woman, leaving physical signs of the attacks.

After shamans failed to cure the woman of the spirit, Christians tried to help her, but with limited success; everyone noticed that objects started being removed from the house, and she claimed to witness the spirit carrying them away.89 (Local

Chinese culture believed in haunted houses and in ghosts,90 although these appear

Numbere, Vision, 344. But this does not appear to be always the case (cf., e.g., Firth, Ritual, 310; Emmons,

Ghosts, 208; test cases in McClenon, Events, 138).

87. Instone-Brewer, "Psychiatrists," 140–41, where the apparently possessed person knew the psychiatric student's (Instone-Brewer's) thoughts.

88. Cf. the "alien tongue" frequent in Kalabari possession (in Horton, "Possession," 29); alleged strange tongues in some nuns' possession ca. 1611 (Rosen, "Psychopathology," 231); the illiterate George

Lukyns speaking Latin during possession (exorcised by Methodists in 1788; Rack, "Healing," 148); the possessed speaking what hearers took to be Italian or French in Ising, Blumhardt, 181; the girl speaking

Zulu—not her language—before exorcism (in Dayhoff, "Guiva"); a non-English speaker speaking English

(in Hickson, Heal, 65, Calcutta, March 1921; idem, Bridegroom, 163; though knowledge of English would have been accessible there); again English (in Koch, Zulus, 55, though again access is not impossible); an alleged non-Latin speaker using some Latin (Kreiser, "Devils," 63–64—though she undoubtedly had heard

Latin); a woman speaking her parents' home language (Malagasy) rather than her usual language (Wilson,

"Miracle Events," 275); some elements of High German (possibly mixed with gibberish, Oesterreich,

Possession, 208); various languages (Koch, Zulus, 143, 146); "unrecognizable words" in Stacey, "Practice,"

294; nonsense syllables mixed with African fragments in one Haitian case of a "possessed" person's mind

(Bourguignon, "Self," 50); occasional supposed African languages in Freston, "Transnationalisation," 211;

Hausa-speaking spirits that include (known) elements of Pidgin English and French in Krings, "History,"

55–58; other supposed languages in prophetic frenzy in Naipaul, Masque, 121. Shorter, Witch Doctor, 183, recounts a case from Tanzania of an elderly, illiterate vagrant woman, who could have had no exposure to Flemish, accusing a startled Belgian in fluent Flemish (following Robert, Croyances, 152–53). Stewart,

Only Believe, 96, notes a young woman who knew no English speaking perfect English when possessed

(though we might note that in her country English was widely known). An eyewitness account notes a demon speaking with a foreign accent (from the Levant in 1936, in McCasland, Finger, 57), and speaking with a strange voice may occur in possession accounts (Eliade, Shamanism, 365); the possessed may also address exorcists with unexpected theological sophistication (though Midelfort, "Possession," 118–19, attributes this to the reporters). Cf. perhaps the secret spirit languages of some Asian shamans (Eliade,

Shamanism, 347, 440).

89. Lee, "Rulers," esp. 5–6. Given the account's brevity, I cannot venture an explanation, but analogous, independent accounts of spirits trying to strangle their hosts appear (e.g., Alamino, Footsteps, 40, in Cuba;

Koch, Zulus, 278; cf. also the invisible burning hand leaving burn marks in Ising, Blumhardt, 170; biting in Sumrall, Story, 7–36, passim, in the Philippines).

90. On local beliefs in houses haunted by evil spirits, see Ronning, "Mission"; in Hong Kong, Emmons,

Ghosts, 117–43; on Chinese haunting incidents in medieval sources, see McClenon, Events, 154–55.

Claimed experiences of haunted locations and associated paranormal phenomena, whatever their causes, are documented in various cultures; see Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 139; Koch, Zulus, 161–63 (with a narrative of deliverance); Ising, Blumhardt, 164–67, 175; more broadly, McClenon, Events, xiii, 57–74, esp. specific claims on 62–63, 64–66, 68–69, 70–72, 210–19, with apparitions on, e.g., 70, 72; the story in Davies,

"Exorcism," 47. On a more popular level, early twentieth-century Chinese Christians also report some encounters with demons in Baker, Visions (2006), 101–4 (also noting their relationship with indigenous

Appendix B

in a more nuanced form among traditional intellectuals.91) An earlier theologicaljournal-article writer noted that every Western missionary in China whom he knew affirmed the reality of possession and that the phenomenon was well authenticated by doctors working there. He noted that these claims reflected the indigenous understanding of diseases caused by evil spirits, which were distinguished from mental illnesses.92 One of his sources, who consulted many missionaries, noted that the local Chinese Christians would command these spirits to depart in Jesus's name and were regularly successful.93 I am not satisfied that observers have always interpreted these phenomena or reports reliably (some reports appear particularly dissatisfying), but we should listen to them carefully before trying to fit them all into our predetermined interpretive grids.

Spirits, Sickness, and Seers Some other associations with spirits, not all of them associated with possession, will be of interest to students of the Gospels and Acts (cf. Luke 13:11;

Acts 10:38; 16:16).94 Shamans are sometimes viewed as healers, addressing the spiritual problem by spiritual means.95 Sickness is sometimes associated with posfolk beliefs, 106). Buddhist monks in Hong Kong exorcised a building "under government auspices on May 19, 1963" (Emmons, Ghosts, 177). Beliefs do not automatically generate reports; whereas belief in ghosts has been much higher in Hong Kong (ca. 50 percent) than in the United States, reported incidents are lower (ca. 4 percent; Emmons, Ghosts, 39–40).

91. The Neo-Confucian Chu Hsi (1130–1200) sought to explain ghosts and spirits as part of a larger worldview that did not divide nature from spirit (Gardner, "Ghosts"); spirits could express cosmic ch'i and appear as dangerous ghosts or as honorable ancestor spirits (Gardner, "Ghosts," 599; on ancestral spirits,

606–10). While he dismisses many popular rumors about spirits (602), he affirms their existence, along with nature demons, spirit possession, exorcism, and the like (601). Some later claimed to see ghosts

(Chan, "Narrative," 37–38); others debated or defended these people (38–39). Many scholars doubt that Ji Yun (1724–1805) believed in ghosts (Chan, "Narrative," 60), but more likely he demonstrated sincerity by acknowledging naturalistic explanations where possible, while arguing especially for the necessity of the reality of spirits based on many bizarre events (e.g., 60–62).

92. Wilson, "Miracles," 30. Among his missionary sources was Dr. Howard Taylor (30), and he cites at greater length Ms. Gordon Cumming, who collected and published information from missionaries working in close relationships with the Chinese people (30–31). He follows her also in the observation that Taoist and Buddhist priests perform exorcisms, though not always successfully (31).

93. Ibid., 31 (still following Cumming). He notes one poor Chinese "Bible woman" asked to pray for a woman who was violently thrashing, foaming at the mouth, and struggling against "the holy one"; after the Bible woman (who refused payment, for the gospel's sake) prayed, the other woman was delivered and asked for baptism. Keyser, "Rationale," 363, cites accounts from China and elsewhere by Presbyterian missionary "Dr. Hugh W. White." More recent popular sources also recount successful exorcisms (Danyun,

Lilies, 132).

94. Luke associates sickness generally with the devil's activity (Acts 10:38; cf. Thomas, Deliverance,

227; Twelftree, Name, 154; Pilch, Healing, 105; Boyd, War, 182–83), but he normally distinguishes sickness from possession (Thomas, Deliverance, 191–228, esp. 227–28), perhaps especially in Acts (cf.

Weissenrieder, Images, 338–39). Although evil spirits can bring some disease in the nt accounts, they are not usually mentioned (Borgen, "Miracles," 101); they constitute only one of the possible causes of illness in the nt (Thomas, "Health," 92–98, for demons or the devil, 95–97).

95. E.g., Lyon, "Prophecies," 71. The presence of their own spirit can make them resistant to diseases

(Harner, Way of Shaman, 69).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

session or demonic attacks, and this has long been the case.96 Medical anthropology distinguishes cultures where sickness is caused only naturally from cultures where it can be caused by personal agents such as deities, spirits, or the use of witchcraft.97 Although some cultures do not associate spirits with sickness,98 a vast number of cultures do.99 (Still, in some cultures where many still attribute sickness to spirits, people nevertheless depend more on medicine than on spiritual remedies.100) In Hmong culture, a kind of evil spirit constricts breathing at night during nightmares. A number of Hmong refugees in the United States have died in their sleep from heart failure with "no structural heart abnormalities,"

96. See the sources in Ward, "Possession," 126; Shoko, Religion, 57–63; earlier, Rivers, Medicine, 7–8 (as cited in Loos, Miracles, 94, and other sources on 94–99); cf. Keener, "Possession," 225–26. Pre-Christian

Gikuyu attributed sickness to ancestor spirits and witches; the biblically influenced indigenous Arathi movement redefined the cause as Satan (Githieya, "Church," 241). Whereas in some societies in West and East Africa exorcism may resolve possession-induced sickness (Bourguignon, "Self," 43, 56), in some others (such as Haiti) spirits may cause sickness without possession (56). For sickness and "spirit substance," which must be removed, see Turner, Hands, 227–28 (based on Iñupiat and some other cultures); for the removal of intrusive substances in much shamanic healing, see Harner, Way of Shaman, 115–30

(emphasizing sucking); some Indian charismatics in Bergunder, "Miracle Healing," 293 (though regarded by other Indian charismatics as fraud); objects emerging by vomiting (Ising, Blumhardt, 172) or from other orifices or the skin (173, 185, 327).

97. Borgen, "Miracles," 94; Foster, "Etiologies" (noting exceptions on 775–76). From 186 cultures,

Murdock, Theories, surveys theories of natural (8–16) and supernatural (17–27) causation. Favret-Saada,

Witchcraft, 195, describes magic from an indigenous perspective (understanding its function within a culture), rather than denigrating it as illogical; in 250–66, she argues against the older psychiatric view that treats it as mere delirium. Some now attribute the virus attacks to witchcraft (in Brooke, Science, 36).

98. Keller, Miracles, 243, argues that whereas ancients believed that forces like demons caused sickness, today we understand that bacteria and viruses do. This is somewhat forced-choice logic, since many today who posit demons and witchcraft as causes of sickness would not rule out bacteria and viruses as agents through which those forces at least sometimes work.

99. Bourguignon, "Spirit Possession Belief," 20–21; idem, "Distribution," 17; Murdock, Theories,

72–76 (on 72 noting 135 of 139, more than 97 percent of the societies he surveyed); Neyrey, "Miracles,"

30–31; for examples, see Bourguignon, Possession, 7, 24; Hien, "Yin Illness"; Cho, "Healing," 123–24;

Eliade, Shamanism, 215, 363; Ejizu, "Exorcism," 13, 15, 21; Gray, "Cult," 171, 178; Lewis, "Possession,"

193; Southall, "Possession," 259, 262; Welbourn, "Spirit Initiation," 292; Haar and Ellis, "Possession,"

197–98; Firth, Ritual, 319; Ikeobi, "Healing," 57; Saunders, "Zar Experience," 179; Morton, "Dawit,"

193, 220; Pressel, "Possession," 339; Umeh, Dibia, 200; Hammond-Tooke, "Aetiology," 54–58; Berends,

"African Healing Practices," 278–79; Mashau, "Occultism"; Evans-Pritchard, Religion, 98; Turner, Drums,

34, 119, 296; Colson, "Possession," 71–72; Beattie, "Mediumship," 164; Peters, Healing in Nepal, 65–68;

Shorter, Witch Doctor, 174–76 (regarding what are considered morally neutral water spirits); idem, "Spirit

Possession," 124; Rosny, Healers, 116–19; Luling, "Possession Cults," 175; Ferchiou, "Possession Cults,"

214–15; Bate, "Mission," 77 (some traditional Zulu association with ancestors); Forsberg, "Medicine"

(on supernatural powers, 35–64; on medicine effective against them, 76–147, 158–63); Kham, "Story,"

207 (traditional Chin beliefs); Koch, Zulus, 56 (some Zulu shamans), 146–47; Espinosa, "Healing in Borderlands," 133–34 (late nineteenth-century Mexican folk Catholicism); Bergunder, "Miracle Healing,"

288; Wright, Miracle, 143; McGavran, "Healing," 76; Lake, Healer, 118–19 (some but not all sickness).

100. See, e.g., Wyllie, "Effutu." Many Zulu people appreciate Western treatment but depend on traditional or faith healers to discern illness's causes (such as sorcery or problems with the ancestors; Crawford and Lipsedge, "Help"). Many members of the Apostolic Church of John Maranke apparently employ herbalists and Western medicine, though both are prohibited (Jules-Rosette, "Healers," 135). Many Indian

Pentecostals recognize natural causes for many illnesses as well as spiritual ones (Bergunder, "Miracle

Healing," 290). In Shoko, "Healing," 52–53, African Pentecostals demonize ancestor spirits.

Appendix B

and those "who have been revived" from these heart attacks have described the above-mentioned nightmare.101 More generally, a variety of cultures attribute occasions of "sleep paralysis" to evil presences, sometimes accompanied with apparitions.102

In a different but sometimes related conception (given the frequent use of spirits in witchcraft), many cultures associate sickness with witchcraft or sorcery,103 which are pervasive beliefs in Africa.104 (Although some writers distinguish witchcraft from sorcery, many use them interchangeably, and I do not make any technical distinction here.105 They can be used as explanations for misfortune more generally.106) Witchcraft accusations are thus common

101. Benson, Healing, 85–86, citing Adler, "Pathogenesis," and attributing the real cause to a sense of powerlessness. One seeking a broader context might consider night terrors and especially the crosscultural approach of Hufford, Terror.

102. McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 53 (noting that some respond by reciting incantations, some by calling on Jesus), also citing esp. Hufford, Terror. See also McClenon, Healing, 129–30.

103. See, e.g., Murdock, Theories, 64–71; Ajibade, "Hearthstones," 198; Eliade, Shamanism, 363;

Foster, "Etiologies," 773, 775, 777; Daneel, "Zionism," 30, 40–41; Jules-Rosette, "Healers," 128, 131–33,

141, 145; Sofowora, Traditional Medicine, 26–27; Uzukwu, "Address," 8; Ejizu, "Exorcism," 13–15, 21;

Ikeobi, "Healing," 57; Lee, "Possession," 144; Beattie, "Mediumship," 164; Middleton, "Possession," 225;

Rosny, Healers, 74, 80, 83, 85; Turner, Drums, 14–15, 34, 119, 128–29, 296, 298; McClenon, Events,

133; Shorter, Witch Doctor, 94 (a lion attack); Ayegboyin, "Heal," 236; Dube, "Search," 114–15; Ritchie,

Spirit, 26, 230; Crawford and Lipsedge, "Help," 133–35 (mental illness); Gaiser, Healing, 136n9 (mental illness); Hultkrantz, Healing, 29–31, 53–54, 82, 89, 111, 151, 162 (among Native Americans); Maclean,

"Misconceptions" (as a source of death in Papua New Guinea); Turnbull, Forest People, 48–49 (as an explanation for some untimely deaths); Shoko, Religion, 63–67, 97–98; Espinosa, "Healing in Borderlands,"

133–34; Bergunder, "Miracle Healing," 288–89; cf. Fogelson, "Theories," 82–85 (affliction with a sort of psychosis, among some Native American peoples). On the harm caused by African witchcraft belief and practice, see, e.g., Manala, "Witchcraft." Sorcery is often blamed for spirit possession in traditional Sri

Lankan Catholicism at Kudagama (Stirrat, "Possession," 137–38). Debates exist; Foster, "Etiologies," 775, rightly notes naturalistic ancient Mediterranean systems (as well as those in India and China), whereas

Murdock, Theories, 57–63, emphasizes witchcraft in the circum-Mediterranean area (too narrowly and with some irrelevant "correlates"); spiritual and herbalist practices coexist in most of Africa (as Foster,

"Etiologies," 776, notes, "the two etiologies are rarely if ever mutually exclusive," emphasis his).

104. Binsbergen, "Witchcraft," 254. He concedes that this affirmation is not politically correct in some circles (230); surveys also suggest that a number of Christians or Muslims reject its reality ("Islam and Christianity," 178–79; though we should also note that out of courtesy African informants sometimes answer the way they think Western inquirers would expect, Debrunner, Witchcraft, 3). But while witchcraft is neither exclusive to Africa nor the majority practice, my West and Central African informants offer vivid examples of its occurrence and belief in it.

105. Murdock, Theories, 64–71, like Evans-Pritchard, distinguishes witchcraft from sorcery, the latter associated with the New World; but against this being a widely usable distinction, see sources in Welton,

"Themes," 13–15, esp. V. Turner; Bond and Ciekawy, "Introduction," 26n1; for other distinctions, Krippner,

"Medicine," 191–92; on the lack of a standard definition, see, e.g., Eze, "Issues," 265–66.

106. E.g., Bond, "Ancestors," 132; thus deaths are rarely assigned solely to natural causes (138), AIDS is often blamed on witchcraft (154–55), and an epidemic could lead to many witchcraft accusations (152, though on 153 Christian beliefs led to a consensus of divine or satanic activity in addition to witches).

Binsbergen, "Witchcraft," 232–33, argues against witchcraft being an "explanation" (as opposed to a cause).

Some traditional Western settings less influenced by modernity have also used witchcraft to explain misfortunes (e.g., Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 137), some of them admittedly quite unusual (see the progression of unusual events in Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 137–39).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

in many societies today,107 as in some earlier periods in Western history.108 In some places, accused witches are forced to undo their curses.109 In South Africa, such accusations, often targeting single elderly women, have led to tragic public burnings.110 They have also occurred elsewhere111 and were frequent in 107. E.g., West, Sorcery, 15–17, 55, 60, 88; Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 31–32, 122–26; Shorter, Witch

Doctor, 94; Singleton, "Spirits," 471; Gray, "Cult," 183–84; Bongmba, "Witchcraft," 53; Koch, Zulus,

152–53, 157 (emphasizing their falsity); cf. Welbourn, "Healing," 353–55; earlier, Berger, "Women," 25; for some witch beliefs, see also Hammond-Tooke, "Aetiology," 51–54. Brand, "Beliefs," 43–44, reports an indigenous perspective that witchcraft accusations can serve a useful social function of controlling envy and reducing genuine witchcraft practice. In most societies, however, they breed distrust (Harries, "Worldview,"

493; Kgatla, "Moloi"). In antiquity, too, people could attribute untimely death to witchcraft and invoke divine vengeance (Graf, "Death"). Cf. campaigns to eradicate witchcraft in Kenya, by both colonial and independent governments (noted in, e.g., Benjamin, "Squatters," 260); postcolonial hostility toward and sometimes killing of witches in Zimbabwe (Ranger, "Religion," 369–71). The modern introduction of newer witchcraft models like Wicca (on its historic discontinuity with older traditions, see, e.g., Hutton,

"Status"; Magliocco, "Spells"; Hayes, "Responses," 340–42) make societal approaches to traditional witchcraft more complex (cf. Wallace, "Debating").

108. Cotton Mather claimed to have personally known cases of witchcraft (e.g., Scherzer, Healing,

98; more fully, Mather, Providences), but his later involvement in the hanging of Rev. George Burroughs

(Scherzer, Healing, 99) seriously risks discrediting his testimony on this subject. In 1598, a woman claiming to be possessed blamed another woman for bewitching her, but her possession was ultimately deemed inauthentic (see discussion in Walker and Dickerman, "Woman," 551–52; reprinted in idem, "Influence").

"Possessed" Ursuline novices succeeded in getting their confessor condemned and executed and reestablished their virtuous status (Marshman, "Exorcism"). For discussion of eighteenth-century French perspectives regarding witchcraft and possession, see Wilkins, "Attitudes." Some have explained some physiological afflictions of the possessed at Salem in 1692 on the basis of grain contaminated with toxic ergot (Caporael, "Ergotism"); others demur (Spanos and Gottlieb, "Ergotism"). One deranged preacher accused Francis Asbury and his early Methodist colleagues of witchcraft against him (Wigger, Saint, 136).

109. Shoko, Religion, 123 (on one AIC), noting that patients often recover after this action; but sometimes putative witches reluctant to reverse their spells are beaten to secure their compliance.

110. E.g., Msaba Zungu and Thabitha Thusi, in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa (http://news

.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6980439.stm; published and accessed Sept. 5, 2007). Kgatla, "Moloi,"

84, estimates more than six hundred lynchings (often with kangaroo courts, 89) in one province in South

Africa (where others also emphasize witch burning, e.g., Hayes, "Responses," 347; witch attacks in South

Africa in Wyk, "Witchcraft," 1202–3). For how witchcraft and sorcery are practiced in South Africa, see Wyk,

"Witchcraft," 1210–17, though it appears to me that the popular version with which we are acquainted in Congo-Brazzaville differs in some significant respects from South African witchcraft customs. In contrast to some positive portrayals in earlier South African media (e.g., Rüther, "Representations," 390–93), some inaccurately lumped together all traditional healers as murderous witches (401, 405–6). Elderly women are sometimes marginalized as witches in Congo-Brazzaville (where some virtuous people we know have suffered this treatment) and elsewhere (for Mozambique, cf. Lubkemann, "Ancestor," 344); among the Karanga of Zimbabwe, light-skinned ("red") and night-dark women are most suspected of witchcraft (Shoko, Religion, 43).

111. A young woman burned alive in Papua New Guinea (despite opposition to such burnings from government and churches; http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7825511.stm; published and accessed Jan. 1, 2009). Cf. the abuse of "witch-children" in southeast Nigeria (http://news.bbc

.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7764575.stm; published and accessed Dec. 4, 2008) and Congo-Kinshasa

(Phiri, "Witches"; Thomson, "Sorcery"); executions of accused witches among Dagomba Muslims in northern Ghana (Hill, "Witchcraft," 332); legal issues in Saudi Arabia (Abdullah Al-Shihri, "Saudi Court

Rejects Death Sentence for TV Psychic," http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101113/ap_on_re_mi_ea

/ml_saudi_witchcraft; accessed Nov. 13, 2010); earlier execution of witches among Native Americans

(Hultkrantz, Healing, 53); in Zanzibar (Arnold, "Conflicts," 223, 225). The rise of accusations against

Appendix B

an earlier period of Western history;112 locally, some form of witch persecution and sometimes execution appeared as a traditional part of local South African cultures in their fear of witches.113 Some cultures employ divination to identify sorcery or witchcraft,114 and many traditional African healing practices are directed against them.115

Nevertheless, despite frequent abuses and exaggerations, some people in many African societies do seek to practice malevolent sorcery, as is inevitable in cultures that believe in sorcery.116 On occasion, Western academicians have even come to entertain the potential efficacy of such practices. Certainly it is difficult to deny children seems a largely new phenomenon associated especially with urbanization and war (http://www

.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10671790).

112. Priests accused of bewitching nuns were burned alive in 1611, 1634, and 1647 (Rosen,

"Psychopathology," 231; cf. Baskin, "Devils," 18–19; idem, "Nuns," 199), whereas a politically connected priest in 1730 evaded the charge (Kreiser, "Devils"); for some other tragic burnings, see the older account in Reville, "History," 245–47. Hart, Delusions, 76, notes that the dominant period of witch burning was not medieval but early modern, and that the Catholic Church more often than not worked to suppress witch hunts. Some Reformers like Knox assumed but did not emphasize inherited views about witchcraft and demonology (Goodare, "Knox"), but the 1563 Scottish Witchcraft Act, to which he contributed with perhaps different issues in mind, eventually led to as many as two thousand executions (Goodare, "Act").

Warning against executing witches in South Africa, Hayes, "Responses," 343, contends that Christian involvement in the execution of witches was limited to a six-century (and mostly two-century) period in one part of the world and that it was more commonly a pre-Christian practice suppressed with the rise of Christianity (on its geographic limitations to particular regions of Europe, see Wyk, "Witchcraft,"

1206). In 1437, a Dominican linked witchcraft to myths about people forming pacts with the devil, and in 1487, two members of the Inquisition wrote on it, propagating this notion and consequent action (Wyk,

"Witchcraft," 1207). On false Western witchcraft accusations more recently, see, e.g., in Favret-Saada,

Witchcraft, 192, 263.

113. See Kirkaldy, "Vhuloi," on late nineteenth-century Vendaland, and the abundant evidence cited there. Missionaries, though not always understanding the local culture sympathetically, sometimes intervened to save the lives of the accused (see in Kirkaldy, "Vhuloi," 106–7). In many societies, African traditional religion opposes witchcraft as harming rather than helping (Ranger, "Religion," 353–58).

114. E.g., Eliade, Shamanism, 363–64; Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xxiii; Field, "Possession,"

11; Beattie, "Mediumship," 164; Gray, "Cult," 183; Middleton, "Possession," 225; Craig, "Divination";

Jules-Rosette, "Healers," 142; Wyk, "Witchcraft," 1217–19; cf. Garbett, "Mediums," 123; Adeyemi,

"Healing Systems," 140, 142; Numbere, Vision, 39. In indigenous churches, prophecy can be used to identify witchcraft (Ayegboyin, "Heal," 238), not always accurately (e.g., Jules-Rosette, "Healers," 137,

139). Alice Auma felt possessed by the "Italian" spirit Lakwena to discern witches and heal (and eventually lead bloody guerilla warfare; Kassimir, "Politics," 250). Behrend, "Power," 21–29, shows that she combined

Christian discourse (communication with the Virgin Mary and deceased good people, 23–26, perhaps analogous to saints or martyrs) with indigenous spirit possession; meanwhile, Arabic spirits were drafted to help with killing (26). Her rival and enemy Joseph Kony adapted her discourse to suit his genocidal activities (29–31).

115. Wyk, "Witchcraft," 1201.

116. Shorter, Witchcraft, 99; Wyk, "Witchcraft," 1202; note confessions in Shoko, Religion, 46;

Mayrargue, "Expansion," 286. Our family also has unpleasant, direct acquaintance with this reality, albeit not as practitioners. Witchcraft is flourishing in Africa (Harries, "Worldview," 492; Hill, "Witchcraft,"

323–25; in South Africa, Bähre, "Witchcraft," 300, 329; Wyk, "Witchcraft," 1203–4). African Christians can adapt their approach to practitioners somewhat flexibly (cf. Wild, "Witchcraft," 462, observing Congolese

Christians for a time allowed some good through the Mai-Mai, "despite their occult practices"). Witchcraft in the West may often be a very different phenomenon, but some who work with youth have argued that it is more common and harmful than is widely known (Campolo, Pentecostal, 141).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

that there are practitioners who believe in their practices and endanger others by natural means, some of which have been widely reported.117 Thus one Western lecturer, after having denied the reality of witches, was corrected by an African student who noted that he was a witch and believed that he had an effective record of killing people through witchcraft.118 An anthropologist studying witchcraft observed uncomfortably that soon after some spiritually powerful people uttered curses ("death wishes") against particular individuals, those individuals died in car accidents.119 Western missionaries from desupernaturalized Europe, which had declared belief in witchcraft heretical because of its own earlier excesses, often taught ideas unworkable for an African context.120 Some missiologists even argue that many missionaries' claims that believers are immune from the effects of witchcraft simply reinforce the sort of immunity-to-suffering thinking found in prosperity theology.121 Missiologists are also concerned for syncretism: witchcraft

117. Note, e.g., obvious physical dangers such as the killing of albinos resulting from a premium on their body parts for charms (see the claim, from the International Federation for the Red Cross and Crescent societies, in Tom Odula, "10,000 E. African Albinos in Hiding after Killings," http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap

/af_africa_albino_killings; accessed Nov. 28, 2009; the account in "Burundi Albino Boy 'Dismembered,'" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11614957; accessed Oct. 24, 2010). Some claim that they or others have killed victims (in one example one's granddaughter) to consume them or to obtain parts of their flesh, especially genitals, for rituals (Reynolds, Magic, 44–47). In late 2010, a friend of ours from southern Africa reported to us that her cousin was recently murdered to procure some of his body parts

(quickly removed) for witchcraft.

118. Hair, "Witches," 140 (an interaction that repays reading). For poisoning as well as occult means

(sometimes reported by self-acknowledged sorcerers) with intent to kill, see Reynolds, Magic, 41–44;

Kapolyo, Condition, 77. Most Africans are familiar with the use of charms and the like to seek to kill (in southern Nigeria, see, e.g., Numbere, Vision, 81, 96, 132–33), in some cases believed efficaciously (Numbere,

Vision, 136; Oritsejafor, "Dealing," 97–98); some deaths are believed homicides through witchcraft (e.g.,

Grindal, "Heart," 66; among a northern Alaskan people, see Turner, "Actuality," 5; via lion attacks, West,

Sorcery, 3–5, 9–10; a fatality within hours after confronting the sorcerer, West, Sorcery, 88; cf. Osborn,

Healing, 313, citing a converted witch doctor but attributing the fatal effects to fear). For the belief that negative shamanism is used to harm or kill among an indigenous people in Guyana, see Scherberger,

"Shaman," 57–59; in Africa, Azenabor, "Witchcraft," 30–31; McNaughton, Blacksmiths, 69; Koch, Zulus,

151–52, 292–93 (witchcraft practitioners' confessions); in India, Bergunder, "Miracle Healing," 293–94;

Yohannan, Revolution, 21–22, 204; in Indonesia, Tari, Breeze, 23 (even through lightning), 135 (Tari saw their instruments), 137 (one claimed to have killed more than one hundred people); for the sacrifice by witchcraft of relatives to achieve success, see Binsbergen, "Witchcraft," 243; for some traditional European witches seeking to harm enemies magically, see, e.g., Alison Mutler, "Curses! Romania's witches forced to pay income tax," http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110105/ap_on_re_eu/eu_romania_witchcraft; accessed Jan. 5, 2011. Mensah, "Basis," 171, warns that while people in Africa blame deaths on witchcraft too often, sometimes genuinely spiritual as well as medical factors are involved.

119. Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 124–27. She finally concludes that actually bewitching rituals were probably normally rare in that culture, noting that the only ones she was able to uncover related to the more open "unwitchers" (135n18). Favret-Saada's temporary concern that unwitchers might practice witchcraft (123, 126) should perhaps not be too readily dismissed, if witchcraft can be a defensive act

(123) and is socially unacceptable enough to remain secretive.

120. Lagerwerf, Witchcraft, 14–15. He notes the failure of conventional Western medicine to be able to treat witchcraft affliction because it isolates it from its traditional social framework (16–17), and how local people often mistrusted the missions for ignoring sorcery (18).

121. Harries, "Worldview," 497–98. He argues that (499) "to relegate magic to backward people and bygone years is to misunderstand its nature and to underestimate its power." Most missionaries

Appendix B

beliefs fulfill roles within societies that if unaddressed by newer religious cultures can persist and grow.122

While traditional cultures often seek a beneficial use of power, they frequently retain also malevolent spiritual expressions of conflict.123 In Sri Lanka, for example, people seek sorcerers at shrines of various religions to bring harm to their enemies.124

After a chief in Fiji was accused of killing four villagers through witchcraft, he remarkably admitted to this claim, despite cultural stigmas now in place.125 Voodoo deaths, associated with spirits, are a real phenomenon,126 though Western observers, usually seeking psychological rather than spiritual explanations, typically associate them with terror.127 tend to underestimate witchcraft's prevalence (Hill, "Witchcraft," 323–25); early missionaries brought an Enlightenment denial of witchcraft implausible in an African context (Hayes, "Responses," 344–45;

Lagerwerf, Witchcraft, 1). Koch, Zulus, 154–56, contends that believers whose ancestors practiced witchcraft are more susceptible, and (151–52, 158, citing two incidents) that thwarted witchcraft attacks may bring the intended suffering against the witch.

122. Cf. the return to traditional practices among some former Christians in Nigeria (Danfulani,

"Conflict"). Some argue that understanding witchcraft customs is important for contextualizing; how to contextualize without religious syncretism (and where the boundaries lie; some, like Brand, "Beliefs," and Hill, "Witchcraft," 337, may go too far; cf. syncretism in Shoko, "Healing," 52) remains a significant problem in missiology. Some African Pentecostal churches have appeared culturally relevant by addressing witchcraft (Maxwell, "Witches," 334); Hayes, "Responses," 346–47, 352, views positively the approach of Zionists like Bishop Nyasha, who simply baptizes, exorcises, and reintegrates those who confess to witchcraft. Most African Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterian pastors condemn witchcraft, though their parishioners do not always hear them this way (Ross, "Preaching," 12–13).

123. The conflict sometimes entails competition for life ("kill or be killed"); see, e.g., Favret-Saada,

Witchcraft, 123.

124. Obeyesekere, "Sorcery" (sampling Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist shrines on 9). Though the intention is deliberately homicidal (3), harm to the desired objects was reported in only one in every thirty-seven cases (and these included retrospective cases and those who suffered only much later; 21).

Obeyesekere thinks that in societies practicing sorcery, premeditated (as opposed to spontaneous) lethal aggression may get channeled into sorcery rather than more conspicuous means (22); it is normally (80 percent) practiced anonymously, aggressors seeking distant rather than nearby shrines (5). By its usual definition, sorcery is employed especially to harm others (see, e.g., Krippner, "Medicine," 193).

125. Hoare, "Approach," 127–28. Some do confess to witchcraft to honor their power, however

(Azenabor, "Witchcraft," 27).

126. For suffering and death caused by curses, see, e.g., Prince, "Yoruba Psychiatry," 91; Dawson,

"Urbanization," 328–29; Mbiti, Religions, 258; cf. Remus, Healer, 110; Welbourn, "Healing," 364; voodoo and taboo deaths in Benson, Healing, 40–41; esp. Knapstad, "Power," 84, 89; for a healing through breaking a voodoo curse, see Blue, Authority, 146. Most people in the ancient Mediterranean world also accepted the efficacy of curses (e.g., Aeschylus Cho. 912; Sept. 70, 656, 695–97, 709 [it was irresistible— see 692–711, 725–26, 833–34]). Widespread beliefs in curses' efficacy appear in rural Africa (e.g.,

Azevedo, Prater, and Lantum, "Biomedicine"; Lienhardt, "Death"; Chinwokwu, "Localizing," 12–13) but also in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Netherlands (see Waardt, "Witchcraft") and in some parts of the West more recently (e.g., Sebald, "Witchcraft").

127. Note voodoo and taboo deaths in Cannon, "Voodoo Death" (cited in Benson, Healing, 40–41;

Remus, Healer, 109); taboo and especially curse deaths in Frank, Persuasion, 39–42. Cf. the "nocebo effect," the negative opposite of the placebo effect (in Beauregard and O'Leary, Brain, 145–47; Benson, Healing,

39, 53, 59, 63, 267–69; Epperly, Touch, 36); sudden deaths from emotive trauma in Engel, "Death" (as cited in Benson, Healing, 42; cf. Weisman and Hackett, "Predilection," in Benson, Healing, 53; Phillips,

Van Vorhees, and Ruth, "Birthday," in Benson, Healing, 62; Adler, "Pathogenesis," in Benson, Healing,

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

In some traditional societies today, spirits are also believed to be involved in prophetic activity.128 Even where spirits are considered generally destructive, they may be reckoned as necessary intermediaries with deities.129 In traditional African societies, those possessed virtually always claim to speak for lower spirits, never

(in contrast to Christian and Islamic circles) for the supreme Creator God.130 In contrast to early Christians but analogous to many Greeks, the traditional African worldview typically views some spirits as good, some others bad, but most neutral, like most people.131 Defending this worldview, some scholars complain that most

Christians "insensitively" classify all possessing spirits, except for God's Spirit, as evil and demonic.132 But this complaint is a case of one religious worldview critiquing another's critique; competing frameworks determine their respective classifications.133 African culture often applies this approach of allowing moral ambiguity also to magical power more generally.134

85). Negative astrological predictions appear to hasten the death of believers in Chinese astrology, but not nonbelievers (Walsh, Shamanism, 213 [elsewhere showing the impossibility of astrology, 233]).

Ancient sorcerers also sought to terrify victims by leaving physical evidence of their intent (Trombley,

"Paganism," 198).

128. E.g., Mbiti, Religions, 233; Evans-Pritchard, Religion, 96, 303; Field, "Possession," 6; Middleton,

"Possession," 224; Southall, "Possession," 242–43; Fitzgerald, "Speech"; cf. shamans and predictions, Lyon,

"Prophecies," 73. In old Shona tradition, various kinds of spirits can possess mediums (Gelfand, Religion,

166), and possession gives the medium powers (177–78).

129. Ohnuki-Tierney, "Shamanism," 194–96; cf. Mbiti, Religions, 233.

130. Mbiti, Religions, 249–50; Field, "Possession," 9.

131. Mbiti, Religions, 111; Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xxi–xxii, xxvii; Brand, "Beliefs," 47;

Lema, "Chaga Religion," 47; cf. Shorter, Witch Doctor, 188–89; idem, "Possession and Healing," 48–49,

52; on the amorality of fetishes in Nuer religion, see Evans-Pritchard, Religion, 100; on the neutrality of Ga possession, see Field, "Possession," 13; on the diverse morality of spirits in traditional Yanomamō shamanism (in South America), see Ritchie, Spirit, 59; on neutral Mayan mountain spirits, see GarrardBurnett, "Demons," 218. On spirits in African tradition, see Ferdinando, "Demonology," 110–20 (on their ambiguity between good and bad, esp. 114). For a supreme God above these spirits in traditional

African and other cosmologies, see Boyd, War, 124–27. For one chart comparing Western worldviews

(both secular and Christian) with nt and traditional African ones, see Loewen, "Possession," 128–33).

132. E.g., Shorter, Witch Doctor, 188–89; cf. Achebe, "Ogbanje Phenomenon," 35–36. Grundman,

"Inviting," 66, also rejects the biblical opposition to other spirits; Stabell, "Modernity," 462–63, 470, opposes the usual Christian connection between witchcraft and demons. Cf. the nominally Islamic Segeju identification of shetani with Qur'anic demons in Gray, "Cult," 173–75. Most of the newer churches do view all spirits as harmful (Ranger, "Religion," 352, complaining about "Apostolic and Pentecostal churches in Southern Africa"); Korean Christians also treated all the older spirits as demons (Kim, "Healing," 268–69).

133. For example, my Baptist student Paul Mokake, from Cameroon, has experienced power encounters regarding what local people regard as water spirits and ancestral spirits that some others considered neutral

(interview, May 13, 2009). In one exorcism of such spirits that he recounted, the person acted like a serpent and different animals as the spirits departed (ibid.). For other exorcisms of water spirits ("mermaids," or "mammy" spirits), see Numbere, Vision, 163–64, 186, 231; cf. discussion in Oritsejafor, "Dealing," 80–85,

94–95; for (often excessive) beliefs about water spirits (Mami Wata) in eastern Nigerian Pentecostalism, see Burgess, Revolution, 80, 226 (some Pentecostals warning against the excesses, 228); Csordas, "Global

Perspective," 339; for Pentecostals addressing concerns about these spirits that traditional churches had ignored, see Marshall-Fratani, "Mediating," 99; for indigenous beliefs about mermaid spirits in Zimbabwe, see Shoko, Religion, 41.

134. Bond and Ciekawy, "Introduction," 13; cf. Devisch, "Forces," 108 (for defensive use of power,

115–18; for retaliation, 113–15). In some places spirits and spiritual power are considered neutral (e.g.,

Appendix B

Exorcism in Recent Times Continuing my approach in much of the book, I initially suspend academic judgment on the meaning of these phenomena in order to recount some common views of them today. Just as belief in malevolent spirit possession is common, so are various attempts to cure, control, or exorcise it.135 Those who view all possession behavior as the result of the belief that one is possessed see exorcism as succeeding through the belief that one is possessed no longer;136 most who practice exorcism, however, believe that real spirits are being expelled (see many examples below). Some recognize the possibility of either explanation for a given case (see discussion below).

Non-Christian Exorcism Practices Noted anthropologist Edith Turner argues for the success of an exorcism that she witnessed; I shall address her account more fully below.137 Her account is, however, by no means unique, though the forms used to try to rid persons of harmful spirits vary from one culture to another. Thus, for example, the pre-Christian Solomon

Islands used various elaborate rituals to try to exorcise spirits.138 In traditional African society, cultic personnel might exorcise harmful spirits, and ceremonies could be employed to drive off spirits endangering a village.139 For example, traditional

Segeju in Tanzania cajole or force a spirit to leave its victim, most frequently by a ritual dance.140 Conceptualizing the problem differently, vomiting may help expel the moth that causes mental illness among traditional Navajo.141 In nineteenthcentury China, the following means of exorcism are reported: "enticing them to leave by burning charms, and paper money; or by begging and exhorting them; or by frightening them with magic spells and incantations; or driving them away by pricking with needles, or pinching with the fingers, in which case they cry out and promise to go."142 A Muslim Somali holy man exorcises demons using Qur'anic

Ciekawy, "Utsai," 176; McNaughton, Blacksmiths, 12), but they are potentially dangerous and can be harnessed for harm (McNaughton, Blacksmiths, 12, 15; cf. 3; Ciekawy, "Utsai," 180). Anthropologists typically reserve the label "witchcraft" for the negative use of the power (Bond and Ciekawy, "Introduction,"

26n1).

135. E.g., Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 100–126; Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 183–87 (including various kinds of spirit healers in 185–87); in popular level Christian sources, cf., e.g., Schlink, World, 28–53;

Williams, Signs, 140; for a study of some popular approaches, see, e.g., Wright, "Interpretations." See, e.g., shamanistic exorcism among the Aymara in Bolivia (Bourguignon, "Spirit Possession Belief," 20); other cultures in Kaplan and Johnson, "Navajo Psychopathology," 211; Fuchs, "Techniques," 135–37; Mbiti,

Religions, 106; a successful Buddhist Sinhalese exorcism in Obeyesekere, "Possession," 259–89.

136. Oesterreich, Possession, 100.

137. Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 149.

138. Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity, 14.

139. Mbiti, Religions, 106; for an example, see Turner, Drums, 204.

140. Gray, "Cult," 171. For dances used in expelling spirits, see also, e.g., Garbett, "Mediums," 105;

Lewis, "Possession," 201.

141. Kaplan and Johnson, "Navajo Psychopathology," 211.

142. A Chinese report in Nevius, Possession, 54. Sometimes demons would leave if given what they demanded; also through "written charms, or chanted verses," or puncturing "the body with needles" (53).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

passages.143 On May 23, 1936, a missionary in the Levant reported that locals had tried unsuccessfully to remove long-standing demons by beating the possessed woman and applying hot irons to her.144

In many societies, spirit possession is employed to drive out a lower, afflicting spirit or to appease an offended spirit.145 Shamans or mediums in a number of societies enter trance and/or possession states themselves to expel or control spirits.146 Thus a Balahi Hindu traditional healer, empowered by a spirit's magic power, questions and rhetorically duels with a hostile possessing spirit until successfully expelling it.147 Filipino psychic healers enter trances that they associate with spirits.148 Shamans or mediums often have to negotiate with possessing spirits, who speak through the victim's mouth.149 Thus a Muslim traditional healer, having struck a bargain with local spirits but unable to expel some visiting Fulani ones, had to leave the room and let his wife convince these spirits that it was culturally

In China, Taoist priests until recent times battled spirits to expel them (Betty, "Evidence," 14; for reports of observations of a Taoist exorcism near Shanghai in the 1920s, see 16). Resembling the pain compliance techniques here, some extreme Christian sects have also been reputed to forcibly detain or beat those suspected of possession (for one sect, see Dunphy, "Marriage," C1; Dettling, "Witness"; Watson, "Leader";

Buffington, "Leader"; idem, "Routine"), although the vast majority of Christians and others condemn such behavior. Among the Karanga of Zimbabwe, disease spirits are weakened or expelled by techniques

"such as blood-letting, emetics or purgatives, and sniffing" (Shoko, Religion, 97).

143. Lewis, "Possession," 199 (noting the special utility of sûra 66), 213; cf. the use of verses of the Qur'an drunk in water (Abdalla, "Friend," 38). In the Kuwaiti version of the zar cult, the healer also recites sûras (Ashkanani, "Zar," 224–25).

144. The narrative is reproduced in McCasland, Finger, 57–58 (here 57). Afterward the missionaries gradually cast the demons out and she recovered her health. For flogging to remove a demon, see also the example of the Indian Muslim exorcist in Williams, "Bwaya," 127.

145. Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xxv. Cf. appendix A for ancient Mediterranean cases of invoking higher spirits to drive away lower ones (e.g., PGM 101.38–39).

146. Klutz, Exorcism Stories, 196–97, citing especially (197) examples from eastern Siberia; Peters,

Healing in Nepal, 14–15; possession for healing in Southall, "Possession," 237–38; Hien, "Yin Illness," 307

(in "the Mother Goddess religion of the Viêt"); Licauco, "Psychic Healing," 95; cf. Obeyesekere, "Idiom,"

108. By young adulthood, more than half of !Kung males become spirit healers, and roughly 10 percent of the women do (Katz, "Healing," 213). On shamans sending spirits to work harm, see, e.g., Peters, Healing in Nepal, 61 (noting on 63 that some reject limiting one's powers to only benevolent acts); on mediums able to work harm (sending dangerous spirits) as well as good, see also Beattie, "Mediumship," 169; Somali holy men in Lewis, "Possession," 189; shamans among a people in Guyana, Scherberger, "Shaman," 57–59.

For claims of traditional healers offering relief from spirit forces, see, e.g., Achebe, "Ogbanje Phenomenon,"

34–35; cf. Shorter, "Possession and Healing," 48. In some cases healers "are mentally disordered" or display psychotic traits (McClenon, "Healing," 40, 45–46), but other psychological approaches exist (e.g., KossChioino, "Transformation," 56–63).

147. Fuchs, "Techniques," 135–37. The ritual typically concludes with the patient swooning, after which she is cured (137). Hindu shamans could also be possessed for acts of power or involuntarily possessed via impurity from an "Untouchable" (Harper, "Pollution," 189). For possessed persons in Hindu sources, see, e.g., Oesterreich, Possession, 175; McDaniel, "States."

148. Licauco, "Psychic Healing," 95; idem, "Realities," 263 (on 265 noting local attribution to the Holy Spirit).

149. E.g., Singleton, "Spirits," 473; Schuetze, "Role," 47 (for an agreement with the spirits, 39–49); for spirits departing if they get what they wanted, Gray, "Cult," 181. Likewise, traditional Tanzanian migawo specialists have to "persuade" spirits to depart (Shorter, "Spirit Possession," 119). By contrast, Pentecostals and charismatics usually just cast out spirits without negotiation (Schuetze, "Role," 50–53).

Appendix B

rude for them to possess a guest visiting in their home.150 Various forms of exorcism have continued among some traditional Jewish groups into the modern period.151 Some cultures fear that possessing spirits can be transferred to exorcists or bystanders during exorcism.152

Christian Movements and Exorcisms Some argue that a major reason for the proliferation of Pentecostal, charismatic, and evangelical Christianity in tropical Africa today involves "their perceived ability to provide the believer ultimate protection against the ever-present evils of magic, witchcraft and sorcery."153 Christians in the Majority World often practice exorcism,154 able to draw on the church's heritage of exorcism often neglected today in the West.155 I noted the frequency of exorcisms in patristic sources in chapter 10; one may also compare accounts in Augustine's City of God 22.8. Early

Pentecostals were also quick to reclaim this emphasis throughout the world,156 an emphasis that often persists today. When those from Afro-Spiritist groups enter their typical trances while visiting Brazilian Pentecostal churches, for example, the leaders command the spirits out.157

150. Abdalla, "Friend," 38–39. The Sudanese culture of hospitality applies to treatment of zar spirits, as to people (Kenyon, "Zar," 108). Similarly, in sixteenth-century Europe many believed that some types of spirits (nymphs, sprites, fairies, and so forth) were limited to particular locales (Midelfort, "Possession," 115).

151. Cf., e.g., Hes, "Role," 376, 380; Oesterreich, Possession, 207–10. Burning the skin with a heated nail, or extracting blood, provides an aperture for the spirits' departure (Hes, "Role," 380).

152. Cf., e.g., Obeyesekere, "Possession," 253.

153. Owusu, "Strings," 129; earlier, healing churches in Debrunner, Witchcraft, 2, 149, 160–61. Even where Western missionaries have denied the existence of witchcraft, local peoples often refuse to believe them (e.g., Smythe, "Creation," 139).

154. As often noted, e.g., Alexander, Signs, 103; in Nigeria, see Folarin, "State," 85–87 (including examples of excesses); among Costa Rican Pentecostals, e.g., in Bastian, "Pentecostalism," 171; a case in Mongolia noted to me by Korean Presbyterian pastor Mun Kil Kim (July 24, 2010); cases in Cuba noted by Dr. Mirtha Venero Boza (Aug. 6, 2010); India, Devadason, "Band," 64; the West, e.g., Robertson,

Miracles, 93–94, 98, 101–2. Pentecostals usually prefer terms like "deliverance" or "liberation" to "exorcism," emphasizing freeing individuals rather than emphasizing the hostile spirits (Brown, "Introduction,"

5), but I retain the older term typical in anthropological literature for various cultures.

155. For contemporary Anglican approaches to exorcism, see, e.g., Malia, "Look"; Milner, "Exorcism";

Hexham, "Exorcism" (esp. 115–16); for a contemporary Catholic perspective, Li, "Theology of Exorcism"; concisely, Davies, "Exorcism"; discussion of the Catholic Rituale Romanum in Landmann, "Agape."

Addressing the Anglican report, Welbourn, "Exorcism," 596, contends that the magical worldview involved in exorcism is impossible for technological people but makes sense for other peoples. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Calvinists, in contrast to Lutherans, deleted the traditional baptismal exorcism rite

(Nischan, "Baptism"; reprinted as idem, "Controversy"; cf. Martin, "Resisting," 57); for a Lutheran case in 1546, see Wengert and Krey, "Exorcism." Christians might need to adapt some of the traditional ritual

(some of which might even reflect the influence of Valentinus; see Leeper, "Connection") in view of nt exegesis (see Schloz-Durr, "Exorzismus").

156. Early twentieth-century Pentecostals practiced exorcism in various places, e.g., a case in Syria in Malick, "Sowing" (though the "symptoms" explicitly reported are not particularly compelling); Kucera,

"South India"; Ruesga, "Healings" (noting prayer and fasting); Otero, "Convention"; indirectly in Reiff,

"Los Angeles Campmeeting," 14; among non-Pentecostals, see, e.g., Anderson, Pelendo, 97–98, 133.

157. Greenfield, Spirits, 141–42; cf. Shaw, Awakening, 145.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Such practices are frequent in Africa; in many African countries a third of Christians claim to have witnessed exorcisms, and in some that figure rises to roughly half (Uganda, Mozambique), 65 percent (Ghana), or 74 percent (Ethiopia).158

Exorcism is common, for example, in Ethiopia159 and in Ambanja in Madagascar160 and appears in various settings, including contemporary healing evangelism modeled after Acts.161 A range of Christian movements in Africa employ exorcism, including among Catholics162 and African Independent Churches.163 One African scholar writing for an African theological journal associated with a mainline denomination recommends the use of exorcism for some situations, citing the case of a woman tormented for years by spirits. The article claims that at her exorcism in 1982 other voices were heard calling through her mouth, and then she was permanently free.164 A German scholar reported many exorcisms among the Zulu people of southern Africa, often resulting in permanent deliverance and healing.165

Paul Mokake, a Baptist from Cameroon who obtained both master's and doctor's degrees at my institution, shared with me various firsthand exorcism accounts; in one example, when in the village of Nguti they cast the spirits from a woman who had worshiped spirits of the sea, she acted like a serpent and different animals in succession as the spirits were departing.166

Jorum Mugari from Zimbabwe, now studying at Gordon-Conwell's Charlotte campus, was a traditional exorcist before his conversion to Christianity. He noted that whereas particular rituals (typically including singing, instruments, lotions,

158. "Islam and Christianity," 214. My colleague in Hebrew Bible, Emmanuel Itapson, attests witnessing such events firsthand in Nigeria (interview, April 1, 2011).

159. For exorcism in Ethiopia, see Geleta, "Demonization."

160. Klutz, Exorcism Stories, 142, citing Sharp, Possessed. For a much older account of possession in Madagascar, see Oesterreich, Possession, 138; for Christian approaches to healing in Madagascar, see

Rasolondraibe, "Ministry" (mentioning exorcism on 349).

161. E.g., Sung, Diaries, 23, 30, 34 (though Sung reports very few exorcisms compared with other forms of healing; for the principle, Sung, Diaries, 90); also see Hickson, Heal, 65, 70–71 (on events in India and China in 1921; cf. idem, Bridegroom, 212–13, in Japan); Lindsay, Lake, 22, 28, 39–40 (early twentieth century); Menberu, "Regassa Feysa" (on events in 1965); cf. Pullinger, Dragon, 210; Storms,

Convergence, 69–71; Best, Supernatural, 158–59 (Wimber). Long histories of different forms of exorcistic practice appear in Catholicism (e.g., Toner, "Exorcism") and Eastern Orthodoxy (e.g., Papademetriou,

"Exorcism"); for some patristic prayers of exorcism, see Stephanou, "Exorcisms," 57–66; for Eastern

Orthodox accounts of possession over the past nearly three centuries, see Stephanou, "Exorcisms," 66–72.

162. On exorcism in an African Catholic context, see Ikeobi, "Healing," 73–75, 78–82; Eneja, "Message,"

164–66; cf. Manus, "Healing," 101.

163. See, e.g., in AICs, in Oosthuizen, "Healing," 79–80, 89; idem, Healer-Prophet, 117–48. On the linkage of most sorts of events with spirits in AICs, see, e.g., Molobi, "Knowledge," 85.

164. Mchami, "Possession" (esp. 31), who notes the case of "Esther" in the Evangelical Lutheran

Church in Tanzania (her entire account is 31–34; the article is also cited in Jenkins, New Faces, 105–7).

Elsewhere, an alleged ghost followed a woman wherever she fled, tormenting her, and others witnessed the phenomena until she was delivered (Koch, Zulus, 160–61; cf. an analogous nineteenth-century experience reported in Ising, Blumhardt, 166–67).

165. Koch, Zulus, 55 (permanent deliverance of a witchcraft practitioner), 56–58 (healings during conversion/deliverance), 132–35, 163–65 (uniquely effective).

166. Paul Mokake, interview, May 13, 2009. Others have independently described similar behavior elsewhere (e.g., Koch, Zulus, 54–55).

Appendix B

and the like) led to possession manifestations in traditional settings, even a simple prayer could trigger such manifestations in Christian settings. Christians exorcised all spirits; traditional practitioners sought to get harmful spirits to leave but solicited information from those they considered beneficial. Traditional exorcists sought to torment the spirits, sometimes handling the patients roughly; Christians normally would command the spirit to leave until it complied.

Possession behavior, which was the same in both settings, sometimes included having immunity to pain and fire, rolling on the ground, acting like snakes or animals, or even moving up through a roof. In one case he noted in a Christian setting, a person who had descended several steps into a baptismal pool suddenly became violent and then slithered like a snake out of the pool (not using the steps).

The church members then exorcised the spirit.167

Whatever explanations one prefers (see discussion below), some exorcisms have a therapeutic effect.168 Some systems that attribute everything to spirits appear to generate their own supply of possession and demand for deliverance;169 nevertheless, serious cases of disturbance not manufactured by exorcists also appear. A boy in Indonesia, possessed after he was given an amulet by a witch doctor, terrorized the area, killing chickens. Even five men together could not restrain him, but evangelists cast the spirit from him, leading to his freedom.170 Likewise, Marino

Shed wandered around terrorizing people in Madolenihmw, Pohnpei Island, in the Pacific for two decades. Finally, Steve Malakai, a pastor on this island, and another believer cast the spirits from him. Now Marino, transformed, is loved by his community,171 and he is involved in a respectable profession.172 An Anglican minister in Southeast Asia, from a Buddhist background, notes that his sister was delivered from demon possession.173

Ajith Fernando, a well-known Methodist Bible expositor, recounted to me that a woman who had found no deliverance from some local non-Christian exorcists in Sri Lanka was delivered in their church and has remained well since that time fifteen years ago.174 In Nepal, non-Christian religious teachers sometimes refer cases of spirit

167. Jorum Mugari, discussion, March 27, 2010; personal correspondence, April 1, 2, 5, 2010. For a possessed person acting like a snake in a different African culture, see Koch, Zulus, 294 (in the context of snakes associated with sorcery, 294–95).

168. See, e.g., Ma, Mission, 67–68, offering two examples in the Philippines; earlier, cf. Ising, Blumhardt,

185.

169. See, e.g., the decline in possession when exorcism services became insufficient to meet the demand, in Csordas, Language, 38 (citing Ackerman, "Language").

170. Filson, "Study," 154; Indonesian exorcisms also appear in Crawford, Miracles, 62–65, 70–72. My friend John Lathrop shared with me a local account of exorcism, producing the person's dramatic healing and conversion, that he heard while in Indonesia (personal correspondence, Dec. 11, 2008).

171. Bozarth, "Demons." Steve Malakai had a similar impact on a young man named Andy Titirik

(Cagle, "Happened"; Wayne Cagle, personal correspondence, Feb. 10, 2009).

172. Wayne Cagle, Jan. 25, 2009 (based on conversation with Marino several years earlier).

173. Green, Asian Tigers, 99. Anglicans in Southeast Asia value deliverance from the demonic as an important ministry (110–11).

174. Phone interview, Oct. 1, 2008; personal correspondence, March 13, 2009.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

possession to Pentecostal churches for deliverance.175 In another case, Nepali pastor

Mina KC heard of three girls (Pramila, Rita, and Sunita) who, bound by a hostile spirit, were mute for three years.176 They were released when she prayed for them, and the cure was so dramatic that "their whole village came to know Christ"; the three girls also began bringing others to Christ through their testimony.177 A South

African psychology professor, head of the Department of Industrial Psychology at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, explains his own former case of possession, with another personality controlling him and institutionalization proving ineffective, until his spontaneous exorcism by a Christian.178

As noted in chapter 8, I had an opportunity, while briefly visiting a country in Asia before lecturing in another location in 2007, to talk with some Chinese pastors. Although these pastors were not charismatics or Pentecostals, when I spontaneously asked if any of them had firsthand accounts of healings, several offered exorcism accounts. For example, one eyewitness recounted that in 1994 a woman could not remember her identity and began having hallucinations. When the believers prayed, two spirits began speaking to them through the woman; the spirits threw her down before them, crying, "Please leave us! We can't bear more about Jesus!" The spirits tried to negotiate conditions, finally settling on eating a meal through the woman. The possessed woman ate an inordinate amount of food, and then the spirits left, never returning.179

Similarly, an elderly woman pastor mentioned a thirty-year-old woman with a psychological problem, to whom everything seemed unreal. Sometimes she felt pressed down on the floor; now she was pale, not having eaten for several days.

Half an hour after the pastor's prayer, casting out a demon in Jesus's name, the woman felt ready to eat and was completely cured of her sickness. This was no merely temporary cure without the possibility of long-term verification; she is now the worship leader in the pastor's church.180

A sociologist reports the account of one Christian minister in Japan. A spirit had given a woman strikingly accurate precognition, but both her own spirit and a 175. Sharma, "History," 304.

176. Mina KC, interview by John Lathrop, provided to me March 3, 2010.

177. Ibid.

178. Venter, Healing, 249–52, providing the written testimony of Robin Snelgar, his brother-in-law.

179. I was curious about the Christians allowing the negotiation and about the eating, but I simply recount the story that the man gave me. Jesus made one concession (Mark 5:12–13), but it seems not to have been to the spirits' benefit (Mark 5:13). Claims of spirits requesting meals to eat through their hosts appear elsewhere (e.g., Turner, Healers, 115, following J. Boddy).

180. The pastor also offered another exorcism account involving a person whose parents practiced necromancy. This account included a sudden and extreme drop in temperature in the room to below freezing during the exorcism. Neither I nor my informant could understand the reason for this phenomenon. (Contrast the generation of heat in a form of Tibetan yoga, in Benson, Healing, 164, citing idem, "Temperature Changes.") Some accounts do include a stench, as of a corpse, accompanying spirits

(Eshleman, Jesus, 120). For another exorcism account from contemporary China, see Lambert, Millions,

116, and the mention of Christian nurses there who could readily distinguish demonization from mental illness, 117. For other accounts, see Yamamori and Chan, Witnesses, 47; Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, 85.

Appendix B

shaman warned her that she would soon die unless she became a shaman herself.

Wishing to avoid this destiny, she allowed the minister to pray for her. According to the minister's account, she collapsed with a shriek and unconsciously defied the minister in a man's voice, refusing to leave. He appealed to Jesus's name and for hours kept commanding the spirit to depart; during this time she even "levitated above her bed." Finally, however, she returned to normalcy, the spirit and her psychic abilities gone. She accepted the Christian faith and attended the church regularly after that.181

Some report even physical recoveries in connection with exorcism (see comments on spirits and sickness above).182 For example, witnesses attest the recovery after exorcism over the course of several days of a boy who had been near death.183

In another account, a Zulu boy cursed by a witch doctor at the age of seven had not grown in the seven years since that time and acted like an animal. Shortly after exorcism, however, he recovered fully.184 In Cuba, Eusbarina Acosta Estévez told me that years ago she was invoking other spirits and was too sick to walk. When two pastors prayed for her in 1988, she recounts, she fell to the ground and all the chairs around her were also thrown back by the force of the spirits coming out.185 She was converted, and her severe heart and kidney malfunctions ended instantly. Likewise,

Leonel Camejo Tazé experienced paranormal phenomena just before falling very sick for months; his deliverance from these spiritual forces shortly preceded his healing.186

When visiting a Cameroonian student from our seminary, Paul Mokake, in summer 2006, Yolanda McCain, one of our American students, was shocked to witness a blind man's sight restored during exorcism of what purported to be a spirit partly controlling his nervous system.187 Paul Mokake, who performed that exorcism, offered other sample accounts. Among them was the exorcism of a woman who was said to have spiritual power in her nails; when they were cut (as a way of renouncing the connections with the spirits), she became largely blind for two months, able to see only with special lenses. At the end of those two months, her sight returned, and she never again needed the lenses.188

181. McClenon, Events, 144–45; idem, Healing, 59.

182. Daniel Mekonnen notes this in his ministry (phone interview, Dec. 10, 2009).

183. Bush and Pegues, Move, 47–49; they also note (59) the exorcism of a girl in north India.

184. Jackson, Quest, 256–57 (with further details; following Wimber, Power Evangelism, 175–76). For another exorcism involving Wimber, see Venter, Healing, 126–27.

185. Eusbarina Acosta Estévez (interview, Aug. 7, 2010).

186. Interview (Aug. 11, 2010). He was nonreligious himself before his conversion; but his grandfather practiced Santeria; phenomena that he reported included something invisible sitting by him, visibly indenting the mattress, and (later) a force grabbing his feet and chest.

187. It is difficult for me to conceive of a witness more trustworthy than Yolanda, who also conveyed the report with genuine astonishment. She reported this account orally in 2006 and confirmed it for me in writing Oct. 3, 2008; Paul confirmed this for me again on May 13, 2009. Both Yolanda and the person who performed the exorcism, Paul Mokake, are Baptist (I mention this to counter the possible prejudice that those who report such phenomena are only, say, Pentecostals, Catholics, or AICs).

188. Paul Mokake, interview, May 13, 2009. Ancient Israelites might have understood such conceptions better than modern Western readers; for an implied symbolic connection between a physical state (there apparently reflecting a Nazirite vow) and spiritual power, cf. possibly Judg 16:19–20.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Perspectives on Exorcisms Current perspectives on exorcisms vary, including among those who doubt the reality of spirits.189 Some argue that minority religious movements in regions, such as contextually relevant, indigenous Pentecostal Christianity in parts of India, may adapt elements of non-Christian indigenous exorcism forms in their competition with local traditional beliefs.190 Whatever the particulars, Indian

Pentecostalism,191 like African Pentecostalism,192 clearly appeals to people in a context of belief in the pervasive experience of oppression by spirits. Some affirm any neutral, "client-centered" therapy that "works within the belief structure of the patient";193 others question the ethics of an approach that encourages a belief such as exorcism that the therapist rejects.194 In one case, when a psychiatrist referred what he believed a possessed person to a minister, the minister refused to help, denying the reality of demons; the client "then became profoundly depressed and attempted suicide."195 While false diagnosis of possession would surely exacerbate problems, failure to treat possession beliefs seriously also carries potential problems.

Some have argued that exorcism might constitute the most culturally sensitive therapy for those for whom possession is the most culturally intelligible explanation for their condition.196 One psychiatrist has found exorcisms effec189. For its usefulness, Bull, "Model"; Bull et al., "Exorcism," 194 (on 191 noting eight with exclusively positive, and seven with partly positive, and none with fully negative experiences). Page, "Role," 129; idem,

"Exorcism," 143, affirms exorcism but insists qualified medical help should identify whether the person is possessed; for arguments that the warnings contain overreactions, see, e.g., Wilson, "Possession"; cf.

Beck and Lewis, "Counseling." Wilson, "Exorcism," addresses the use of shared language (whether "possession" or "psychological disorders"), noting that society shapes how it is viewed but that wide use of possession language would increase cases of "possession" (295; Wilson himself views it in sociological, not demonic, terms, 292–93).

190. The view of Bergunder, "Healing," 103–5; idem, Movement, 125–26, 155–58; cf. idem, "Miracle

Healing," 292–94 (on demonology, but noting fundamental theological differences on 294–95); Csordas,

"Global Perspective," 335, on Catholic exorcism in India; MacPhail, "Path," 187–99 (suggesting syncretism in Catholic Jebakulam, from an explicitly outsider perspective). In Brazil, cf. Lehmann, Struggle, 145, though highlighting important differences (esp. Pentecostals' demonization of possession cults' spirits, and the former having followers in contrast to the latter having clients). Cf. also comparisons of the function of prophets in AIC churches with traditional diviners (Oosthuizen, Healer-Prophet, 165–93, while recognizing differences, 166–70). In antiquity, too, exorcism could symbolize triumph over competing religious claims

(see, e.g., Frankfurter, "Christianity and Paganism," 184; Trombley, "Paganism," 192).

191. See Frykenberg, "Globalization," 127. Bergunder, "Miracle Healing," 288, contends that Tamil

Pentecostalism's demons are largely derived from popular Hinduism.

192. Maxwell, "Witches," 325. Pentecostal exorcism has displaced some traditional religions in some regions (326), just as many adherents of spirit-possession cults have now turned instead to Pentecostalism

(Berger, "Women," 44, on women).

193. Bull et al., "Exorcism," 195, noting the large proportion of Christian clients who affirm the reality of spirits.

194. Shorter, Witch Doctor, 184–85; cf. Ikeobi, "Healing," 66; zar therapy in Rahim, "Zar," 145–46.

195. McAll, "Deliverance," 298.

196. E.g., Martínez-Taboas, "Seizures" (after inability to change the patient's beliefs about possession,

Martínez-Taboas, "World," 18; responding to Castro-Blanco, "Sensitivity," who prefers challenging "the utility of the belief in spiritual possession" [15]); Singleton, "Spirits," 478; Hexham, "Exorcism"; Heinze,

Appendix B

tive for multiple personality disorder (MPD; what he considers "internalized imaginary companions" conceptualized by patients as demons) but ineffective for altered personalities created by dissociation.197 Others, by contrast, note differences from multiple personality disorder (now usually called dissociative identity disorder [DID]), contending that the spirit-possessed generally do not have alternate personalities,198 and warn that misdiagnosing it as possession is harmful.199 Not every therapist would necessarily explain or treat every case so labeled by others in the same way; I lack clinical expertise, but it appears that even most clinicians who allow for genuine cases of possession would recognize the disorder as existing apart from possession. Most would recognize that culture may shape the expression and labeling of conditions; some psychiatrists in India note that possession syndrome is common there (largely among women) whereas MPD/DID is rarely diagnosed there. They suggest that these are "parallel dissociative disorders with similar etiologies despite some major differences in clinical profiles."200

Some sociologists studying routine "deliverance" services have suggested that some cases involve more metaphoric issues201 but note that even full exorcism sometimes helps those "suffering from psychologically induced traumas."202 Indeed, one anthropologist specializing in the study of spirit possession points out

"Introduction," 14 (as a helpful fiction allowing the experience of multiple personality disorder to be objectified); cf. Ashkanani, "Zar," 225 (some Kuwaitis more receptive to zar therapy than modern therapies).

Krippner, "Perspectives," 972, emphasizes that understandings will vary from one culture to another and Western therapists need to be culturally sensitive. For one case of treatment blending psychiatric help with traditional practices, see Hammerschlag, "Offering."

197. Allison, "Doubt," 116, 119. Initially he denied genuine spirits (110) but gradually discovered that exorcism worked, though he did not fully believe in it (110–13); he offers examples of successful exorcisms on 116–19. Many psychiatrists believe that the other personality is purely human (cf. discussion in Betty, "Evidence," 23); others (below) suggest that cases might differ, since causes might differ. Cf. the discussion in Lesher, "Response," 168–72.

198. Eve, Healer, 64 (following Davies, Healer, 86–89); Bourguignon, Possession, 38–39.

199. Friesen, Mystery (who does believe that genuine possession also occurs), as summarized in Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 78. Cf. Young, "Miracles in History," 118, affirming that cases of genuine possession exist but warning that often exorcists are misdiagnosing psychological disorders.

200. Adityanjee, Raju, and Khandelwal, "Status," 1609–10 (quote from 1610), as quoted in Davies,

Healer, 87. Whereas DID is more often linked with child sexual abuse, in anthropological literature possession more often appears in contexts of current family problems (Davies, Healer, 88, noting that these circumstances naturally often overlap). Davies (89) associates Mary Magdalene's condition more with DID than with anthropological possession reports, since the latter usually lack the appearance of multiple personalities (Luke 8:2; later, Mark 16:9).

201. Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 155, for cases in Thailand and especially Brazil (contrasting

"curses" with actual "spirit possession" and giving an example of an experience of child abuse dominating one's life). For older exorcism accounts from local physicians in Siam (Thailand), see Oesterreich, Possession,

217–18.

202. Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 156, suggesting that it is "at least as effective as some forms of Western psychotherapy, which, when spontaneous remission is excluded, have relatively low cure rates." Whatever one's view about this, they suggest that deliverance either is a "form of psychotherapy" significantly effective beyond Western models or that it is at least sometimes genuinely effects a spiritual deliverance (156–57). They believe that it also has positive long-range economic effects (170).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

that only exorcism works as a strategy for removing possession.203 Some Western observers, writing for African Affairs, lament the failure of more traditional churches to provide the exorcisms needed to confront the epidemics of spirit possession in some African societies.204 Some others appreciate healthy, cathartic aspects of exorcism in some African indigenous churches205 while warning that their exorcistic practice can at times reinforce unhealthy aspects of traditional worldviews.206 Some observers attribute this effectiveness to the placebo effect.207

This verdict presumably would be accurate for psychological disorders socially defined as possession but would equally presumably prove insufficient in cases of genuine spirits.

Several examples help make these generalizations more concrete. One girl in Nigeria, tormented day and night by spirits and unable to improve through a psychiatrist, was freed through the help of an indigenous healing movement.208

Immediate cures of severe psychiatric disorders attributed to spirits are reported in India.209 (Of course, exorcisms do not always resolve all problems, either.210)

One may also recall many of the accounts offered above.

203. Goodman, Demons, 125; for the effectiveness of exorcism in particular kinds of cases, see also

Shorter, "Possession and Healing," 51; Allison, "Doubt"; Lagerwerf, Witchcraft, 55–56. For one story of an effective deliverance of an early twentieth-century man detained in an asylum, see John Lake's diary, cited in Wacker, Heaven Below, 64–65; for a mid-twentieth-century doctor's claims of exorcisms successfully resolving what appeared to be neurological problems, see Woodard, Faith, 24–29. Some witch doctors have complained that other witch doctors cheat by merely bargaining with witches to remove curses

(Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, 195, skeptically).

204. Haar and Ellis, "Possession," 205–6 (favoring Emmanuel Milingo's approach, while archbishop, over that of other elements of the Zambian church hierarchy).

205. Daneel, "Exorcism," 239–41 (positive features more generally on 237–45).

206. See Daneel, "Exorcism," 243–44 (the fowl's blood and other symbols evoking older traditions).

Newell, "Witchcraft," contends that much of the structure of African witchcraft ideology has been imported in local Pentecostal witchcraft polemic.

207. Ward, "Exorcism," 134–37. For the influence of a culture's beliefs on traditional exorcism's effectiveness, see also Wetering, "Effectiveness."

208. Ejizu, "Exorcism," 14 (on the girl's experience with the Christ Healing Sabbath Church), noting that "her case is one out of so many hundreds" (this article also appears in Ejizu, "Perspective"). Among African immigrants in Germany, see Währisch-Oblau, "Healthy," 92.

209. See Bergunder, Movement, 162, 164, though he warns on 151 that diagnoses probably attribute too much to demons; see one early Pentecostal example in Kucera, "South India"; exorcism in Marszalek,

Miracles, 34–35. Some have portrayed the spirits as those of repressed deceased humans (Selvanayagam,

"Demons"; Bergunder, "Miracle Healing," 288; on possession as a form of Dalit protest, cf. Tajkumar,

"Reading"; spirits of the deceased in Korean Pentecostalism, Kim, "Healing," 281; earlier, a case in Ising,

Blumhardt, 109, 178), but I am relatively sure that the majority Pentecostal perspective globally would involve demons who were not deceased humans.

210. Some late medieval exorcists blamed their failures on the victim's pact with the devil (Goddu,

"Failure," 2; for earlier accounts of difficulties, though rarely explicit failures, in exorcism, see 7). For a survey of some medieval German accounts of exorcism and Satan, see Nauman, "Exorcism," 73–85; other medieval accounts, Caesar of Heisterbach, "Encounters"; Keller, "Glimpses," 266–75; Catholic accounts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Robbins, "Exorcism," 204–15; for Jewish accounts from the 1500s forward, see, e.g., Lieberman, "Dybbuk," 101–4; on the golem, Lieberman, "Golem." Contrary to some earlier portrayals, however, modern scholars usually doubt that medieval Europe viewed all mental disorders as demonization (Kemp, "Ravished," 67, 76–77).

Appendix B

Interpreting Spirit Possession The matter of interpreting possession experiences is a question distinct from reporting them,211 but even here we should note that a traditional modern Western reading, which is naturally materialistic, is not the only possible interpretation, nor do even modern Western interpreters all share precisely the same interpretive framework.212 As one anthropologist notes, worldviews, including those of anthropologists, offer grids to "introduce order" to our data; "as our frameworks shift, our creation and use of data shifts."213 The approaches of anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and indigenous interpreters often vary considerably from one another.214

Natural Elements and Western Academic Explanations In 1871, E. B. Tylor recognized that most cultures still held possession to be the main cause of inspiration and sickness. Nevertheless, he held that this interpretation was simply a necessary stage in the development of religion, eventually supplanted by medical knowledge.215 In 1971, M. J. Herskovits took possession seriously but regarded it as unexplained; mere psychopathological explanations, however, he viewed as inadequate.216 Some interpreters who lack a commitment to purely materialistic worldviews are more apt to allow that, once spurious and psychopathological cases are removed, some cases of genuine possession by invasive entities do occur, as suggested by cross-cultural, consistent motor behavior.217

211. Thus, e.g., Smith, Magician, 9, reports his own eyewitness encounter with possession behavior but does not genuinely regard it as involving a spirit. Cf. similarly Peters, Healing in Nepal, 47, of his own

"possession" state. For the range of interpretations, see also Keener, "Possession," 227–31.

212. "Modern Western" might need to be defined. Joseph Glanvill, for example, a leader in early moderate empiricism, warned that open-minded science ought to recognize rather than disparage evidence for witchcraft and spirits (Burns, Debate, 49–50), and Robert Boyle (father of chemistry) agreed with him

(51). Deists like Toland expressly demurred (75).

213. Silverman, "Ambiguation," 228 (see also 204). On presuppositions in social sciences, see also

Murphy, "Social Science," 33–37.

214. E.g., Wendl, "Slavery," 120, criticizes psychoanalytic (Crapanzaro), sociological (Lewis), and feminist approaches for imposing grids instead of analyzing indigenous functions for possession experience.

215. Tippett, "Possession," 144. His interpretation seems to fit the evolution of religion paradigm dominant in that era. Even half a century later, Henson, Notes, 140, viewed exorcism as sometimes useful, but only as "a suggestive fiction adapted to" the "ignorant superstition" of "primitive societies" (on 140–42 noting that Hickson's successful use of it occurred esp. among peoples whom Henson deemed primitive).

216. Herskovits, Life, 147–48 (as summarized in Tippett, "Possession," 146). Social context often determines whether possession is perceived as pathological (Peters, Healing in Nepal, 14–16). Johnson,

"Model," 19–30, contends that the dissociation involved in shamanism is useful rather than pathological, the pathological model imposing a Western cultural construal of shamanistic cultures as pathological; researchers in shamanism today normally reject the pathological model (Walsh, Shamanism, 8, 93–99;

Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 85). Note Hood and Byrom, "Mysticism," 174 on the diverse psychological and religious evaluations of mysticism.

217. Tippett, "Possession," 147–48. I use "materialistic" for "matter" in the ordinary sense (e.g., distinct from energy); one could allow for superhuman beings that were "material" as part of the natural order.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Aspects of some concretely documented forms of possession experience are not limited to states indigenously interpreted as possession. Various "secular" stimuli not normally connected with possession can induce trance states in normal people.218

Dissociation and altered states of consciousness (ASC) are universal phenomena, but interpretations vary:219 the primary mystical interpretations (though not all are mystical) are soul loss and spirit possession.220 Further, a range of altered states of consciousness exists, from rapid eye movement to a trance state to "possession trance linked to impersonation behavior."221 Others have pointed to neurological parallels in psychomotor epilepsy,222 sleepwalking,223 and hysterical fugue states.224 Studies have shown that people (as well as dogs) experiencing an overload of stresses (among humans, e.g., battle fatigue) may experience a collapse of their nervous systems; an induced collapse may in fact relieve stresses and aid mental health.225 Some have

218. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 39. This may be described as "mental dissociation" (44); but not all

"possession" involves trance, so the two should not be identified (45). Possession is not inherently "mentally dissociated" but is a particular cultural construction of the person's state in terms of an invasive spirit (46; cf.

Bourguignon, Possession, 7). Thirty-five percent of people in the United States claim to have felt a force lift them outside themselves, 12 percent reporting "several times" and 5 percent often (Swanson, "Trance," 273).

219. Worldview affects dissociation's description in various societies, though the degree of acculturation is often a common factor (Maquet, "Shaman," 3; Peters, Healing in Nepal, 11–16, 46–47, 50; Frey and Roysircar, "Acculturation and Worldview," citing other studies, most relevantly Castillo, "Possession"; Hollan,

"Culture"; Krippner, "Disorders"; Leavitt, "Trance"; Prince, "Variations"; Schumaker, "Suggestibility";

Sodowsky and Lai, "Variables"; for variations in posttraumatic stress responses, Marsella et al., "Aspects";

Oquendo, Horwath, and Martinez, "Ataques"). Lack of suggestibility may render "possession" difficult

(cases in Last, "Bori," 52–53). For common features through history and in diverse societies, see McClenon,

Events, 36–56; idem, Healing, 60; McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 47–48 (citing further McClenon,

"Shamanic Healing"; allegedly in Paleolithic art in Lewis-Williams and Dawson, "Signs"); even animals can be susceptible to hypnotic experiences (McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 48, citing McClenon,

Healing; on common characteristics of "mammalian consciousness," Hobson, Chemistry).

220. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 64.

221. Bourguignon, "Introduction," 14; cf. also examples in Finkler, "Religion," 52; Johnson, "Neuro theology," 223.

222. Prince, "EEG," 122–24. For studies linking temporal lobe epilepsy with religious experiences (due to the temporal lobe's association with such experiences), see McClenon, Healing, 90. Some traditional

African culture attributes epilepsy to spirits of ancestors (Gaiser, Healing, 139). It should be noted that some medieval Christian writers distinguished possession from epilepsy (Kemp, "Ravished," 74). Some could attribute epilepsy, as illness more generally, to demonic sources (e.g., Aramaic Incantation Text 53:12; cf. Yamauchi, "Magic," 100–113); by contrast, however, Matthew distinguishes the two in Matt 4:24 (cf.

Alexander, Possession, 32, 63; Gaiser, Healing, 138), though demonization apparently causes this condition in the specific case of 17:15, 18. The term he uses did have a broader usage than epilepsy alone (cf. Ross,

"Epileptic"; Yamauchi, "Magic," 129). Dr. John Wilkinson, noting that physiological factors are sometimes, but not always, identifiable, allows that a spirit could be a cause in some cases but not in others (Healing, 73).

223. Prince, "EEG," 124–25; cf. Field, "Possession," 4–5. Cf. the Haitian association of sleep talking with possession (Bourguignon, "Self," 50, 56). Obeyesekere, "Idiom," 108, compares "hypnotic sleep" to aspects of possession; but while lucid dreams appear especially during REM sleep (LaBerge and Gackenbach,

"Dreaming," 158–60; brain patterns in REM sleep resemble waking—Greenfield, Spirits, 186), McClenon distinguishes brain activity during hypnosis from REM sleep (McClenon, Healing, 88).

224. Prince, "EEG," 125–27. Herbert Benson likewise offers a range of experiences comparable to meditation/relaxation, including athletic euphoria (Healing, 137–38, 167).

225. Prince, "EEG," 129–30. (Against Sargent, he thinks [130, 132] the convulsions during Wesley's preaching on June 15, 1739, represent suggestion rather than emotional collapse. White, Spirit, 181, notes

Appendix B

pointed to experiential parallels with hypnosis (at the least, both shamanism and hypnosis involve trance states, or altered states of consciousness).226 Hallucinogenic drugs can also induce altered states of consciousness.227

Neurophysiological studies do not ultimately address the possibility of invasive spirits but do help explain the human neurological side of possession behavior.

Societies that believe in spirit possession could naturally expect the activity of such spirits on the human nervous system to often produce results no less traumatic than other stimuli; likewise, they could believe that neurophysiological stimuli that produce susceptibility to suggestion or harsher stresses might well also render a person more susceptible to the activity of invasive spirits.228 Such studies need not rule out the possibility of other factors in various cases but may help us understand how many forms of possession experience function neurologically.229

Some have linked possession experience to social frameworks (an explanatory paradigm that need not be incongruent with some others);230 this approach has also been applied to Jesus's setting.231 Increase in occurrences of possession often that Wesley expected such emotional expressions as works of the Spirit, and some occurred, in a more restrained fashion, in Whitefield's meetings.) Drumbeats at the right intervals, like photic driving, can produce emotional and neurological shifts (Prince, "EEG," 133–34).

226. Cardeña, "Hypnosis," 290 (observing "similarities between shamanism and deep hypnotic phenomena" in 292–99; on possible genetic factors in the predisposition to hypnotizability, see 293).

In general, the most hypnotizable 10 percent of people (those most prone to dissociative states) are six times more prone to anomalous experiences than the least hypnotizable 10 percent (Pekala and Cardeña,

"Issues," 71). Some studies also associate past life memories with hypnotizability (Spanos, "Enactments"; idem, "Identities," as cited in Mills and Lynn, "Experiences," 287); such memories also appear culturally shaped (e.g., the likelihood of gender change from a past life varies widely based on cultural attitudes; Mills and Lynn, "Experiences," 292; Mills, "Investigation," 244 [though Mills herself believes that reincarnation best explains some data, 263]; cf. the cultural variations in reincarnation as males or females [243] or the gap between death and reincarnation [245]).

227. Cf. Pinkson, "Pilgrimage," 165, for an ASC through LSD; for hallucinogens and shamans, see

Metzner, "Hallucinogens," 170–75; for experiences of "evil entities" through drugs, see Grof, "Potential,"

141–42; for religious experiences and drugs, see Roberts, "Contributions," 244–46, 258; idem, "Study";

Hood, "Mysticism," 33; in some Amazonian indigenous practices, Tupper, "Healing." Some have argued for drug use at ancient Eleusis (Ruck, "Solving," 48–50), but this approach has faced serious challenges

(Burkert, Mystery Cults, 108–9; Klauck, Context, 96).

228. While familiarity with local traditions of possession offer the primary factor for it in one study in Trinidad, stress or emotional conflict provide the immediate trigger (Ward and Beaubrun,

"Psychodynamics," 206); stress being a precipitating factor appears in numerous studies (cited by Ward and Beaubrun, "Psychodynamics," 206), e.g., Douyon, "L'examen"; Freed and Freed, "Possession"; Leiris,

Possession; Pressel, "Trance"; Warner, "Witchcraft." Case #2 in Ward and Beaubrun, "Psychodynamics," 203, lends itself especially readily to psychological explanations (at the least in terms of susceptibility). Some exorcisms probably prove effective by correcting hysterical disorders (Instone-Brewer, "Psychiatrists,"

134–35), although this explanation proves inadequate for some of the phenomena recorded in the nt and other sources (see the analysis by Instone-Brewer, "Psychiatrists," 135–40).

229. The presence of physiological elements in anomalous experience, as well as its frequency in a range of unrelated cultures, clearly shows that purely cultural explanations are often inadequate (McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 47).

230. E.g., Prince, "Possession Cults."

231. Cf., e.g., Hollenbach, "Demoniacs"; Crossan, Historical Jesus, 318. While affirming anthropological observations regarding intrafamily conflicts and possession (Davies, Healer, 81–84), Davies

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

accompany dramatic changes in society.232 Even in the nineteenth century, observers noted that "cases of possession are less frequent in peaceful times, and more frequent in times of civil commotion; also less frequent in prosperous families" and "among educated people."233 Possession without a trance is more common in hunter-gatherer societies; increasing societal stratification and complexity increases the likelihood of added trance states.234 Some others have also concurred that it appears more commonly in stratified slave societies.235 Some societies use trances under controlled, ritualized situations; when society becomes uncontrolled, the instability creates crisis for the individual and his or her surroundings.236 (Shamanic rituals involve the group, in contrast to usual Western medical practice focused on the individual in isolation.237) In at least some cases, people are socialized into the role of possession; certainly their behavior was often structured according to expectations.238 (Thus, for example, some Haitian parents have encouraged views Hollenbach's approach (emphasizing a sociological response to pervasive Roman oppression) as "preposterous" in view of the Galilean context (79–80). In any case, sociological factors seem to influence susceptibility but do not by themselves appear adequate to explain the phenomena surrounding the more anomalous cases (i.e., it appears reductionist to appeal solely to such factors).

232. See Wetering, "Effectiveness." Cf. also the increase in witchcraft and anti-witchcraft movements, e.g., in Li, "Abirewa."

233. Nevius, Possession, 58. For their greater frequency among the uneducated, see Field, "Possession,"

4; Oesterreich, Possession, 99, 121, 165, 203, 205.

234. Bourguignon, "Spirit Possession Belief," 22. In "Introduction," 22, she notes that it is more common in stratified slave societies but on 23 thinks that rigidity also affects its occurrence (on 31, 33, relating possession behavior to release from societal strictures without changing the strictures). The data do not seem to fit readily a single consistent model, and correlation might reflect common factors rather than causation; but they might also reveal some conditions most conducive to possession states. In some settings, some trance states might perform a cathartic function (though Prince, "Foreword," xiii, warns that this approach fails to account for societies where the healer rather than the patient "becomes dissociated"). When working among highly marginalized people living on the street years ago, I also observed a much higher than usual incidence of dissociative states (sometimes with explicit possession claims), though whether social marginalization helped produce the state or whether the state led to marginalization (as it inevitably would; more generally, federal cuts in assistance for the mentally ill did increase homelessness, hence our contacts) I am not qualified to guess.

235. Greenbaum, "Societal Correlates," 54; idem, "Possession Trance," 84; for emphasis on demonology in periods of "social oppression and loss of social integration" (Pattison, "Interpretations," 217).

236. Bourguignon, "Assessment," 339; for the stress of social change and possession in one African society, see, e.g., Stoller, "Change"; in another, Smith, "Possession," 452–53 (the informants claimed that unemployment led to the spirits not being fed, hence protesting through schoolgirls). Cf. the relation to ferment in sixteenth-century cases suggested in Sluhovsky, "Apparition," 1053. But mediums initially uncontrollably possessed may learn to control the impulses (Horton, "Possession," 36, 41; Verger, "Trance,"

51), though this varies (cf. Berenbaum, Kerns, and Raghavan, "Experiences," 30).

237. Kasten, "Shamanism," 68.

238. See, e.g., some of the examples in Spanos, "Hypnosis," 103–8 (e.g., on 108, demonized Catholics denouncing the pope and praising Calvin, whereas demonized Puritans avoided Calvin but read Catholic and other non-Puritan texts; on anti-Huguenot exploitation of Catholic possession, see also Walker,

"Propaganda," 285–94; Walker and Dickerman, "Woman," 550–51). That public, ritual expressions of possession differ from private cases also suggests frequent performance according to expectations in such cases (Lee, "Self-Presentation," 251–52); similarly, conformity to anticipated behavioral patterns can enhance a medium's credibility (Lee, "Self-Presentation," 257). For the possibility of adopting "roles" informed by beliefs about the devil, see discussion in Wikstrom, "Possession," 32–33 (noting that possession includes a religious interpretation system).

Appendix B

children adopting new roles and playing at spirit possession as a sort of game.239)

Social contexts also provide the shared vocabulary for articulating the experiences.240

Including ecstatic Christian experiences in her analysis, Bourguignon suggests that possession trance is most common among the more marginalized members of a society; groups that once experienced it, such as early Methodists,241 that have now become respectable are far less likely to display it.242 It often appears among those marginalized from other means of power in their society,243 especially women,244 although this pattern varies from one society to another.245

239. Bourguignon, "Self," 48.

240. Lee, "Self-Presentation," 251.

241. On revelatory claims among early Methodists, see, e.g., Noll, Shape, 46; for popular "enthusiasm" among them, see, e.g., Wigger, Saint, 58–59, 78, 81–83, 166–67, 170, 307, 311–12, 320, 322. Marginalized

Christian groups experiencing such phenomena (cf., e.g., Ghanaian "Holy Spirit" movements in Field,

"Possession," 9–10) could view it as God's favor toward the marginalized (cf. healings in Chevreau, Turnings,

16–17; Jesus's healings in Percy, "Miracles," 13–14). Lewis, Healing, 293, notes that most of the charismatic participants in his study on healings were middle-class professionals and that many did experience some ecstatic phenomena like "shaking or falling over." But he also observes (268) that healings seem to have occurred more often among those of "lower social classes" present, suggesting perhaps divine bias for the weak. In Zambia those self-reporting possession included many educated, urban professionals (Haar and Ellis, "Possession," 189, 191, 195, though mentioning the influence of national poverty on 202); cultural factors may be involved in the varied acceptability of such diagnoses.

242. Bourguignon, "Epilogue," 342–43. Bourguignon, Possession, 55–58, compares other ecstatic phenomena in the history of U.S. revivals and contemporary Christian movements in North America and (56–57) attributes the more subdued ecstasy of middle-class charismatics vis-à-vis many other groups to their respective social status. Csordas, Self, 32, compares "resting in the Spirit" among charismatic Catholics;

Haar and Platvoet, "Bezetenheid," compare Milingo's exorcism ministry. Barnett, "Answer," 280, compares a traditional spirit trance with "similar seizures at evangelistic revival meetings."

243. Lewis, "Possession," 189–90; Sharp, "Power of Possession," 4; cf. Rahim, "Zar," 138–45; Morsy,

"Possession," 204–5. Some explain some Pentecostal activity in these terms (cf. discussion in Alexander,

"Ritual").

244. Kessler, "Conflict," 301–2; Berger, "Women," 41, 55; Shorter, "Spirit Possession," 115 (cf. 119);

Obeyesekere, "Idiom," 103; Horton, "Possession," 41–42; Colson, "Possession," 90–92, 99–100; Lee,

"Possession," 143–44, 150–51, 154; Southall, "Possession," 244; Abdalla, "Friend," 41, 44; Last, "Bori,"

58–59; Hammond-Tooke, "Aetiology," 57; Oosthuizen, Healer-Prophet, 88; Midelfort, "Possession," 124

(in the period 1490–1579, though not the following period); Sluhovsky, "Apparition" (1054–55, on Nicole

Obry as well as others, 1565–66); Walker and Dickerman, "Woman," 539, 554; Stirrat, "Possession," 138,

151 (80 percent; of these, 70 percent are adolescents or in "early maturity"), 154; Oesterreich, Possession,

121; Giles, "Spirits," 77; Sousa, "Women"; Kenyon, "Case"; cf. Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 85

(surveying several approaches); Gray, "Cult," 171; Lewis, "Possession," 216–17; idem, "Introduction," 5; idem, "Deprivation Cults," 313–25; Constantinides, "Zar," 89; Ashkanani, "Zar," 228–29; probably even among Greeks, in Kraemer, "Ecstasy"; varied evidence in Haar and Ellis, "Possession," 193–95. Wilson,

"Ambiguity," 366, suggests that the tension in these cases more often involves other women rather than other men (e.g., 370, when the husband is acquiring an additional wife); but Lewis, "Spirits and Sex

War," 627, thinks this less clear. On spirit possession and gender, note the survey in Behrend and Luig,

"Introduction," xvii–xviii. Among Christians, women outnumber men among participants in Catholic charismatic prayer groups, although their experiences were comparable (Csordas, Self, 31–32); also among Zulu faith healers (Crawford and Lipsedge, "Help," 138). Likewise, they account for the majority of cures at Lourdes (three to one), but this is in proportion to their participation in pilgrimage there (Cranston,

Miracle, 154; for examples, see 247–58; for notable men, see, e.g., names on 137).

245. E.g., in one study of the Azande, women rarely became witch doctors (Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft,

155–56); a masculine cult in Mali conceptualized as defending against feminine witchcraft in Colleyn,

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Perhaps often because of this marginalization, possession behavior sometimes can gain desires otherwise inappropriate to express.246 Possession trance may provide a socially sanctioned outlet for aggression where other such outlets are lacking247 and has historically been exploited to target enemies.248 Claims of possession can reduce guilt by projecting it on the invasive spirit;249 in some societies, possession can generate more sympathy than acknowledgment of mental illness would, inviting some mentally ill persons to "seek shelter" under this diagnosis.250

Because spirit possession and exorcisms fulfill a sociological function, some factors supposed to abolish such practices (such as urbanization or Western education) do not always do so.251 Others, however, warn about the ideological underpinnings of the deprivation hypothesis about possession.252 Moreover, many studies have overplayed the social benefits of possession to the possessed at the expense of noting the problems it causes them.253

"Horse," 72; mixed data on witches' gender in Crawford and Lipsedge, "Help," 134; more traditional

Sukuma spirit mediums are male (Tanner, "Theory," 274) but the possessed patients female (Tanner,

"Theory," 281). Pre-Islamic Hausa women played a stronger role in healing rituals than they do today

(Abdalla, "Friend," 40–41). Morsy, "Possession," 208, argues that societies that allow women to express resistance through possession continue to subordinate them.

246. Successful, e.g., in Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 88, 91; Bourguignon, "Self," 50,

53; cf. Ward, "Possession," 130–32; Sharp, "Power of Possession," 4; Eve, Healer, 67. In the zar cult, the genie usually asks for something the adolescent has been wanting anyway, so it provides a safe outlet for expressing feelings (Modarressi, "Zar Cult," 154–55; cf. Lewis, "Possession," 201–4, 210–12, 216–17;

Southall, "Possession," 243); elsewhere, possession may yield less pleasant eruptions "of forbidden impulses"

(Ludwig, "Altered States," 86) or can express "frustrated love and passion" (Lewis, "Deprivation Cult,"

315–16) or supposed neglect (Lewis, "Deprivation Cult," 317–18; cf. perfumes, etc., to compensate for a husband taking another wife, Wilson, "Ambiguity," 370); a culturally accepted outlet for relieving frustration (Beauvoir, "Herbs," 129). The spirits in Abdalla, "Friend," 39, demand special treatment for their mount. A "trance attack" or possession in India is described as "essentially a culturally sanctioned mechanism" (Raguraman et al., "Presentation").

247. This has been proposed, e.g., for women in Samoan society (Lazar, "Aggression") and in Sri Lanka

(Obeyesekere, "Idiom," 104–5).

248. Kreiser, "Devils," 71–73 (though the civil courts disregarded the charges as unproved, 83–84); cf. also anti-Jewish (Walker, "Propaganda," 284–85) and anti-Huguenot and other anti-Protestant use of exorcisms (Walker, "Propaganda," 285–94; Walker and Dickerman, "Woman," 550–51).

249. Ward and Beaubrun, "Possession," 201. From the descriptions in the article (esp. case #2 on p.

203), the psychological explanations appear more persuasive than others in these cases.

250. Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 92.

251. Jacobs, "Possession," 186–87 (focusing on two East African cultures); Shorter, Witch Doctor, 179;

Makris and Al-Safi, "Spirit Possession Cult," 118; Emmons, Ghosts, 191; Behrend and Luig, "Introduction," xiii–xiv; healing practices, Jules-Rosette, "Healers," 127–29; for shamanism in Korean cities, see Hard,

"Animism"; for the pervasiveness of spirits in pre-Christian Korean life, see Kim, "Healing," 269–70.

Likewise, witchcraft remains a significant problem in South Africa, not resolved by political freedom

(Bähre, "Witchcraft," 300, 329). Still, a comparison of the few (three) epidemiological studies cited in Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 80–81, could suggest that it is more prevalent in rural than semi-urban areas. Cf. the unanticipated failure of modernity to eradicate religion in Cladis, "Modernity";

Butler, "Theory"; Haught, Atheism, 58–59.

252. Binsbergen, Change, 86–87 (cf. 24–25, 77–86). Wilson, "Ambiguity," 377, suggests that the jeopardization or ambiguity of status is more precise than general "deprivation" or marginality.

253. See Hayes, "Limits."

Appendix B

Diverse Approaches Diverse cultures offer an array of different interpretive matrixes for these experiences,254 although their experiences do produce some similar beliefs even in a number of very different societies.255 Some societies employ naturalistic explanations for possession trance; others, supernaturalist ones.256 Naturalist expectations are more common in the West257 but occasionally appear elsewhere;258 supernaturalist explanations include soul absence259 or the presence of a spirit.260

Some observers warn that "natural" interpretations are unlikely to be credible in much of Africa, where "nature" is never autonomous.261

Likewise, both voluntary and involuntary possession states could exist;262 sometimes they coexist in the same culture (e.g., voluntary for the shaman and "hysterical" for the patient),263 and various anomalous experiences may shift from voluntary to involuntary or the reverse.264 Cultures that believe in possession by a spirit are more likely to generate more cases of the phenomenon so interpreted.265

Evaluations of trance behavior can be positive or negative,266 and the explanatory

254. See, e.g., Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 44; cf. also Maquet, "Shaman," 3; Peters, Healing in Nepal, 11–16,

46–47, 50. Deprivation theories often are reductionist (cf. Hunt, "Sociology," 183–84).

255. McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 47.

256. Bourguignon, "Distribution," 4–11; Pattison, "Interpretations," 205–6. Technically, one might better speak of material and nonhuman-but-personal explanations (in the biblical worldview, for example, such spirits are not supernatural, though they are not material in any traditional sense).

257. E.g., many offer psychological explanations, such as the emergence of repressed subconscious thoughts (e.g., Singleton, "Spirits," 475); certainly this appears to be the case in some instances (see, e.g., Lewis, "Possession," 201–3, regarding suppressed erotic desire; cf. guilt in Ferchiou, "Possession

Cults," 215–17). Cf. the naturalistic discussion of one semi-naturalistic practitioner of altered states of consciousness in Zusne, "States."

258. Bourguignon, "Distribution," 6. Ivey, "Discourses," finds evil and possession to be useful metaphors; he explains the basis as an internal "splitting," a defense mechanism (56), which causes the destructive

"spirit" to function "as an autonomous suborganisation of the psyche," projected onto the mythical demon (57; some view religion more generally as a defense mechanism; see Spiro, "Systems"). But Ivey,

"Discourses," follows Freud in regarding psychoanalytic language as itself no less "mythical" than the older demonic terminology; it is simply a different construction of reality (58–59); Pattison, "Interpretations,"

217, treats "psychoanalytic psychotherapy" as a secular form of "exorcism" (for an analogous understanding of eighteenthand nineteenth-century Mesmerism, see Spanos and Gottlieb, "Possession"); Kauffman,

"Representations," 157, questions the idea that psychotherapy is a simple "successor" of exorcism. For one attempt to borrow Jungian language for the demonic, see Cook, "Manticores," 165–74.

259. Bourguignon, "Distribution," 7–9.

260. Ibid., 9–12.

261. Harries, "Nature," 404, noting that the experience in Africa is typically associated with the divine

(or, one might add, the realm of spirits). For one African view, see Kapolyo, Condition, 56, 103–4.

262. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, 64.

263. Peters, Healing in Nepal, 147–48; see also Basso, "Music."

264. Berenbaum, Kerns, and Raghavan, "Experiences," 30.

265. Kemp, "Ravished," 75; cf. also the prognosis for Western churches accepting the diagnosis in Wilson, "Exorcism," 295.

266. Bourguignon, "Distribution," 6–7, 13–15. Thus some societies seek possession whereas others seek deliverance from it (Bourguignon, "Self," 42–43). Some societies have trance without possession; others possession without trance; and still others, possession trance (Bourguignon, "Distribution," 18; idem, "Spirit Possession Belief," 21–22).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

systems attached to trance behavior inevitably affect the behavior.267 Some peoples, for example, regard spirit affliction as a danger caused by an ancestor spirit;268 possession by deceased relatives is one of the most common conceptualizations of spirit possession.269 Not all peoples, however, view ancestor spirits as malevolent or dangerous.270

267. Bourguignon, "Distribution," 12. Popular literature also suggests culturally defined conduits for possession behavior, such as the "werewolf" in Argentina (see Bottari, Free, 30–31; such zooanthropy reflects an older belief documented in the Middle Ages, Oesterreich, Possession, 191; it appears in various settings today, Berenbaum, Kerns, and Raghavan, "Experiences," 31). Ancients also believed that witches could turn themselves or sometimes others (as in Homer's Circe) into animals (Ovid Am. 1.8.13–14; Apuleius

Metam. 1.9; 2.1, 5, 30; 3.21–25; 6.22; Ps.-Callisth. Alex. 1.10; Libanius Encomium 2.18; cf. Blackburn,

"ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 190, 193); for the belief today, especially for turning themselves into animals, see also West,

Sorcery, 20; Oesterreich, Possession, 144; Lowie, Religion, 33; Mbiti, Religions, 256–58; Nicolini, "Notes,"

119; Nanan, "Sorcerer"; Umeh, Dibia, 132; Zempleni, "Symptom," 99; Dobkin de Rios, "Power," 293–94;

Wyk, "Witchcraft," 1210–11. For familiars used for witchcraft, see Turner, Drums, 206; Bond, "Ancestors,"

138, 141; Shoko, Religion, 44–45 (animals in Zimbabwe); Debrunner, Witchcraft, 50; witch familiars or assistants as particular kinds of animals or half-animals in South African witchcraft in Bähre, "Witchcraft,"

301; Crawford and Lipsedge, "Help," 134–35; beating by something with a tail in Koch, Zulus, 275; animal familiars in northern Zimbabwe (and elsewhere, 36), see Reynolds, Magic, 34–39; for shamanic spirits in many societies envisioned as power animals, Harner, Way of Shaman, 81, 87–88, 98; cf. the belief that ghosts can possess animals (Emmons, Ghosts, 176; cf. Mark 5:12–13); the demonic animals in southern

Nigeria in Numbere, Vision, 118–19, 171–72, 233.

268. Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 182; Obeyesekere, "Possession," 239; Garbett, "Mediums," 123;

Reynolds, Magic, 62; cf. Bate, "Mission," 77; ancestor possession in Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xxvii; Field, "Possession," 9; Lee, "Possession," 131–32; Keller, Hammer, 131–32, 155; Zempleni,

"Symptom," 92; Barrington-Ward, "Spirit Possession," 456; Jules-Rosette, "Healers," 133, 142; Loewen,

"Possession," 121 (causing sickness); on non-trance, Haitian possession by spirits of the dead (causing sickness by sorcery), see Bourguignon, Possession, 24–27; possession by dead relatives in Melanesia in Eliade,

Shamanism, 365–66; possession by souls (in the West, esp. after decline in belief in the devil) in Oesterreich,

Possession, 26–27, 186, 209; ghost possession in Hien, "Yin Illness," 312, 316; Emmons, Ghosts, 171–72,

175–76; on spirits of the dead more generally, see, e.g., Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xix–xxii;

Beattie, "Mediumship," 162 (dangerous ghosts, including ancestors); Ma, "Types," 207 (on the need to appease ancestral spirits); Tenibemas, "Folk Islam," 23 (they disturb people); Horton, "Possession," 15;

Southall, "Possession," 233 (spirits of deceased soldiers), 246–49, 255 (spirits of earlier chiefs); Welbourn,

"Spirit Initiation," 291–92 (on dangerous ghosts); Byaruhanga-Akiiki and Kealotswe, Healing, 111–12 (for consulting spirits of the dead for healing, see 113); Barnett, "Answer," 277 (white people appearing like pale spirits of the dead to some traditional peoples in New Guinea); Shoko, Religion, 45 (witches exploit spirits of the dead to steal for them). Among the Valley Tonga, possession by ghosts can be fatal (Colson,

"Possession," 71). In Prussian folklore, a ghost might attack the living until the ghost's offensive corpse was burned (Straight, Miracles, 142).

269. See Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 81 (following Salisbury, "Highlands," in noting that it usually follows a relative's death within two weeks). Ancestor possession appears even in Zimbabwean novels (see Vambe, "Possession") and something apparently analogous to it in some sixteenth-century

Jewish mysticism (Schwartz, "Possession"). Many charismatic Christians who would not speak of ancestor possession nevertheless speak of "generational [ancestral] curses"; in India, see Bergunder, "Miracle

Healing," 290.

270. They provide good things in Turner, Drums, 14; they provide helpful information in Garbett,

"Mediums," 105; also (but normally only for the recently dead) Last, "Bori," 51; protection even in some

AICs (Oosthuizen, "Baptism," 185); they must be propitiated to be kept neutral rather than harmful in Tanner, "Theory," 274; Ma, "Veneration," 168; in contrast to many kinds of spirits, in most but not all cultures they do not possess in Hammond-Tooke, "Aetiology," 55–56. On ancestor spirits, see also, e.g., Koss, "Spirits," 372; and numerous other sources. Traditional Shonas' "ancestor" spirits effectively

Appendix B

Religious interpretations may flourish where possession behavior occurs in cultic contexts, as it often does.271 Many cases of spirit possession are reported in connection with Vodun in Haiti272 and various forms of spiritism in Brazil.273 Possession trance is also said to occur in the zar cult (which occurs in Iran, Sudan,

Egypt, and some parts of Arabia);274 among traditional Yorubas;275 in some fundamentalist cults in St. Vincent;276 and in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism,277 for example.

In nineteenth-century Fuchow, a Taoist priest would take the pose of a worshiped image, then tremble, and then begin to speak for the spirit, receiving incense and veneration.278 Not all trances, however, have particular religious connection.279

Even in the West, there is no unanimity on the meaning of possession experiences. Thus, for example, anthropologists have criticized psychologists and psychiatrists for ethnocentric understanding of altered states of consciousness, whereas others have criticized anthropologists' limited competence in psychological and psychiatric matters.280 Confronted with some anthropologists' macrosocial interpretations of possession as resistance against dominant social power structures, one Japanese hypnotherapist objected, "Don't anthropologists understand what include only grandparents and parents (Gelfand, Religion, 173). Even many South African independent churches venerate ancestors (Molobi, "Veneration"), and some theologians support elements of this practice (Kahakwa, "Theology"). Many other Christians argue that attempted contact with (as opposed to respect for) ancestors is syncretistic (see Gehman, "Communion").

271. Tippett, "Possession," 148–51; often in the literature, e.g., Gray, "Cult," 171; the religious context of the 1374 European outbreak of the "dance frenzy" in Rosen, "Psychopathology," 224; cf. Keener,

"Possession," 224–25. In antiquity cf. perhaps Persius Sat. 5.185–89 on demons related to the Cybele cult.

272. See Bourguignon, Possession, 15–27 (esp. the ritual described in 18–21); Tippett, "Possession,"

155–56; Douyon, "L'Examen"; Kiev, "Value"; Perkinson, "Iron," 574–75.

273. Tippett, "Possession," 157–58; Pressel, "Umbanda"; idem, "Possession," 333–35. Cf. also the Spiritist Church, in Puerto Rico (Garrison, "Syndrome," 393–94; for mediums, see 398–403); New

England (Macklin, "Yankee"); and elsewhere.

274. Modarressi, "Zar Cult."

275. Prince, "Possession Cults."

276. Henney, "Belief"; Raboteau, Slave Religion, 63–64.

277. Wayman, "Meaning." Cf. a Buddhist monk's exorcism and the pervasiveness of spirit propitiation in traditional Sinhalese Buddhism in Ames, "Magical-animism," 40–41; exorcism in Sinhalese Buddhism in Ames, "Magical-animism," 33; exorcism of troubling spirits from the home in Korean shamanism that overlaps with local Buddhism in Ma, "Worldviews," 9.

278. A Chinese report in Nevius, Possession, 47 (the reporter seems skeptical about the supernatural element). Cultic contexts often produce social pressure on particular persons to enter possession trance

(Firth, "Foreword," xiii; Horton, "Possession," 24, 25, 35; Verger, "Trance," 52).

279. Shorter, "Possession and Healing," 48 (Maji-ya-Soda viewing the water spirits as neutral and adapting the ritual to fit his various clientele's religious sensibilities). Water spirits are frequent in discussions of African spirits (e.g., Horton, "Possession," 15, 17, 45); they are hostile and require exorcism in Numbere,

Vision, 163–64; Paul Mokake (interview, May 13, 2009).

280. Ward, "Introduction," 9. Ward, "Cross-Cultural Study," 17, notes that psychologists' focus on "objective, quantifiable data" must be complemented by anthropologists' "incorporation of subjective experiential data." While she favors most often social approaches emphasizing adaptive responses, she recognizes that a variety of psychiatric conditions also appear under the cultural umbrella of possession

(Ward, "Possession," 132–33). For a wide range of modern scientific (esp. psychiatric) classifications, see

Chandra shekar, "Possession Syndrome," 82–83. Many psychologists view "demons" as just repressed parts of the psyche (Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 84).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

people actually feel?" and noted that this explanation omits a significant proportion of cases.281 Interdisciplinary exploration is important.

Possession experiences are widely attested in anthropological literature. But whereas the leading collectors of data on the subject have been anthropologists, whether actual spirits could be involved in some extreme cases is a matter of the interpretation of the data and can vary according to the philosophic assumptions of the interpreter. That is, anthropologists are not the only community qualified to interpret their data; social, psychiatric, and spiritual factors may each be accorded a role in many cases without necessarily excluding the others. Genuine (sometimes organic) psychiatric problems in some cases can be channeled behaviorally in culturally conditioned patterns that can be used for other purposes by other members of society; there is no inherent reason why cases involving the activity of genuine spirits could not be expected to fit into a larger social matrix as well.

While Western scholars lack unanimity on particular approaches, however, in most disciplines there remains a prejudice against considering and especially articulating the possibility of nonmaterial personal agents, that is, a common indigenous understanding of the experience. Contexts make a difference in the interpretations that can be articulated: some interpretations in some circles would be academic suicide, whereas criticism of such interpretations is politically advantageous. Nevertheless, some anthropologists like Edith Turner (treated below) have attempted a critique of the materialist interpretation of such experiences common in Western thought, which she regards as ethnocentric and reductionist on this point.

Possession and Spirits Various anthropologists sometimes offer contrasting readings of possession experiences based on the same data and sometimes concede that the data can be read in different ways.282 While anthropological literature normally seeks to adopt a neutral stance,283 simply describing phenomena and the views of the subjects, some anthropologists today press beyond traditional paradigms.284

281. Noted in McClenon, Healing, 59–60. Postcolonial approaches tend to emphasize such factors, but while they might help explain the dominance of possession trance in some societies, they do not explain its much more widespread incidence. Although West, Sorcery, 66–67, notes some local relationships between social settings and sorcery accusations, he recognizes (1–5, 14, 24–25, 35–38, 83) how such

Western social and economic models often distort data and neglect genuinely indigenous perceptions.

282. See, e.g., Wilson, "Spirits" (against I. M. Lewis), conceding at the end (on 629) that both interpretations discuss "'good ideas' in a subjective manner in which speculation plays as large a part as investigation." While most postmodernists remain inclined toward skepticism, they are more open to spirits being actual than modernists were (Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 84).

283. Despite efforts at value neutrality, however, social sciences as typically practiced presuppose some values that tend to dictate their conclusions (Murphy, "Social Science," 33–37; using esp. Murphy and Ellis, Nature; Milbank, Social Theory).

284. Probably most would concur at least with Werbner, "Truth," 190–91: anthropologists as outsiders may be skeptical of witchcraft, but they must suspend their skepticism to enter sympathetically into the culture. Out of innate courtesy, most African informants would not challenge their Western interrogators' skepticism; the vocal Western critic would thus not learn indigenous beliefs (Debrunner, Witchcraft, 3).

Appendix B

Thus, for example, one anthropologist with psychological training notes that the category "hallucination" fails to cover some clear experiences, such as his own experience of two apparitions in the context of Native American religion.285

Even further from traditional approaches, a minority286 of anthropologists specializing in such observations have dared contravene the usual assumptions of academia, publicly contending that the spirits are real.287 (They do not, however, all view these spirits in the same manner.) Some anthropologists have noted the transformation of a number of other anthropologists' beliefs through their anomalous experiences.288

One obvious example of this pattern is the noted anthropologist Edith Turner,289 who describes her gradual transformation from skeptical observer to convinced observer and finally participant, now rejecting her former stance as cultural imperialism.290 In 1980, she and her husband, Victor Turner, were leading some students at New York University in some rituals addressed to Yoruba deities, with drumming and songs; right there a street theater director went into a trance and made accurate predictions afterward. The Turners had not expected the ritual to function this way outside its original context.291 Her "experience of seeing a spirit" began her experiential research,292 following what her husband called "coexperience"

285. Young, "Visitors," 174.

286. Most anthropologists deny the existence of spirits (Goulet and Young, "Issues," 323); some advocate simply accepting local beliefs about them (324); Goulet and Young "reject both of these extremes"

(324), noting that both approaches require taking a particular worldview literally to the exclusion of others (325). Fictional elements in Carlos Castaneda's work (Marton, "Legacy," 281–82, though cf. some possibly truthful elements on 284) also stirred a reaction in some circles against better-documented claims by some other anthropologists (275; cf. 273–74); researchers of shamanism today question his material

(see Walsh, Shamanism, 6).

287. See examples cited below; of course a larger number will contend that they are psychologically real from the standpoint of the patient (e.g., Singleton, "Spirits," 477).

288. McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences." In their view, these findings support evolution of religion

(e.g., 46).

289. A lecturer in anthropology at the University of Virginia and editor of Anthropology and Humanism:

Journal of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, known for her earlier fieldwork in Africa beside Victor

Turner, her late husband.

290. See Turner, "Reality of Spirits" (from a pro-shamanist perspective); cf. idem, "Reality." Cf. also the earlier gradual shift of German philosophy professor Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich from positivism to neo-Platonism under the influence of studying paranormal phenomena (Gregory, "Introduction," vi).

Valuing participation, see, e.g., Scherberger, "Shaman," 66; Turner, "Advances," 43; Earle, "Borders," 2 (as cited in Turner, "Advances," 50). Even several decades ago, many anthropologists recognized that while much objectivity is necessary for writing, for better or for worse it is difficult to avoid becoming involved emotionally in relationships in the host culture (see, e.g., Nunez, "Objectivity," 167–71, a negative example; cf. also Firth, "Anthropologist," 31; Barnett, "Answer," 280; Forge, "Anthropologist," 297), and some early examples of participation were being reclaimed (e.g., Gronewold, "Cushing"; cf. Tedlock, "Observation,"

70–71). For most of the twentieth century, the Anglophone anthropological ideal of "participant observer"

(with some Jesuit antecedents; Poewe, "Nature," 8) created considerable dissonance between the ideals of empathy and detachment (Tedlock, "Observation," 69).

291. Turner, "Field," 9.

292. Turner, Hands, xxii.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

with the people whose culture an anthropologist is researching.293 Turner notes that anthropologists normally regard their subjects' beliefs as significant culturally and do not care whether they are true, but in the past have at times assumed that needs for psychological compensation simply drove "underprivileged people" to "hallucinations."294 She complains that some academics "believe that trained anthropologists . . . understand aspects of a culture better than field subjects."295

She further complains that anthropologists repeatedly "witness spirit rituals" and hear explanations from indigenous experts concerning the activity of spirits and the centrality of such rituals to their culture, yet the anthropologist continues to interpret the data according to a Western framework.296 Often Western observers genuinely disrespect indigenous views, for all their pretense of sympathetic understanding.297

Moreover, she charges, anthropologists have often responded to paranormal events by simply remaining silent about them.298 By contrast, she insists that she is unwilling to be silent. She notes that when she sought to be more sympathetic to local interpretations than in the past,299 during a Zambian spirit ritual in 1985 to eject an ihamba, she was stunned by an unexpected experience: "I saw with my own eyes a giant thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a large gray blob about six inches across, a deep gray opaque thing emerging as a sphere."300

293. Ibid., xxiii. She warns that "the usual policy of using 'the scientific method'" (i.e., distancing from the subject) is inadequate for this kind of research (xxiii).

294. Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 3 (for such "compensation," cf., e.g., Firth, "Foreword," xii).

295. Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 4, noting that today many recognize this approach as ethnocentric, ignoring other logics. Yet (15) she denies using postmodern or neocolonial postures, which often provide a Western grid through which fieldwork subjects' "traditional religion" is viewed as oppressive to them.

Cf. Swarz, "Changed," 209: while claiming neutrality, Western interpreters select and rearrange data to fit their grids rather than hearing the fuller story of local informants.

296. Turner, "Reality," 30. She compares Western psychoanalytic approaches concerning dream figures from the imagination but thinks traditional cultures' explanations of external spirits even more plausible and certainly no less deserving of respect. Anthropological approaches have become much more open to indigenous categories, however (see Keller, Hammer, 39–40; Wilson, "Seeing," 198–206).

297. After her experience, she concluded (Turner, "Reality," 28) that many members of her guild had

"perpetuated an endless series of put-downs about the many spirit events in which they participated—

'participated' in a kindly pretense. They might have obtained valuable material, but they have been operating with the wrong paradigm, that of the positivist's denial." Anthropologists have sometimes devalued Native American medicine (Hultkrantz, Healing, 163–64; cf. 3 for frequent Native American distrust of anthropologists).

298. Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 3.

299. Turner, "Reality," 28.

300. Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 149; similarly, idem, "Field," 9; idem, "Advances," 43; idem, "Actuality,"

2; idem, Healers, 1–23; idem, "Spirit Form." Although she allows some sleight-of-hand regarding other parts of the ritual (Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 165; on such tricks, see Frank, Persuasion, 44–45), she insists that she knows what she saw and that she was "not in trance" (Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 159).

Wanting to keep the tradition intact, the person leading the ritual did not want any Christians (advocates of a hostile belief system) around (Turner, Experiencing Ritual, 155). Cf. Turner, "Religious Healing," 403:

"There are spirit figures and forms: some of us have seen them." For one Christian claim of unexpectedly seeing a demonic form, see, e.g., Storms, Convergence, 67; for a claim of a cure through expelling (in spittle) a visible "witchcraft" substance, see Bergunder, Movement, 157. On the ihamba more generally, cf. Turner,

Appendix B

She says that she realized that there is genuine "spirit affliction: it isn't a matter of metaphor and symbol, or even psychology."301 She afterward entered sympathetically into the spirit experiences of her traditional Eskimo hosts in 1987.302 She questions the ethics, in a multicultural world, of imposing a traditional positivist paradigm on local cultures (even to the extent of reforming indigenous elite perspectives) "at all costs," despite the evidence favoring indigenous interpretations.303

After surveying some of her research findings, she concludes one book regarding the Iñupiat people and their spirit experiences: "We may have to come to terms with the fact that we are not the only souls occupying this earth, that there are indeed other entities."304 Elsewhere she offers claims of healings involving spirits,305 affirming that she experienced one herself.306

Some other anthropologists and nt scholars have also noted with appreciation Turner's challenge to traditional Western reductionist approaches to such claims.307 (Some anthropologists teaching about spirit possession today even introduce students directly to such experiences.308) Two sociologists observed what appeared to be socially patterned, apparently culturally learned expressions of possession behavior. Their interviews with many educated observers who had

Drums, 156–97 (on the ihamba tooth, cf., e.g., 175–83, 298–99); on extractions of harmful objects and spirits from persons, see Shoko, Religion, 48, 97, 127–28 (regarding the Karanga of Zimbabwe).

301. Turner, "Reality," 28.

302. Ibid., 29. Wilkie, "Imagination," 163–64, invokes spirits because it is effective but leaves open for further exploration their nature and categories.

303. Turner, "Reality," 30, comparing this anthropological approach with that of missionaries, whose role she also dislikes; questioning the ethics, cf. also idem, "Field," 10–11. She concedes ("Reality," 30) that some anthropologists are more respectful than others, trying to "bend over backward to accord their people a much fuller sympathy" but announces that "in this paper I really go over the edge" of traditional boundaries for the discipline (also "Field," 11). One should note that many of our disciplines were formed in an era in which positivist (and more to the point in this case, in my opinion, antisupernaturalist) influence was inevitable. Some missiologists also warn against reductionist dismissal of cultural idiom

(Hoare, "Approach") or reality (Hill, "Witchcraft," 325); others affirm the transcultural truth claims of possession (see discussion below).

304. Turner, Hands, 232.

305. Turner, Healers, 103–40.

306. Ibid., 103.

307. See Strelan, Strange Acts, 51, citing Hume, Ancestral Power; cf. Walsh, Shamanism, 144 (a psychiatrist); respectful discussion of this pedagogic strategy in Barnes, "Introduction," 19–20. Among scholars in theological disciplines, see, e.g., Eddy, "Reality of Spirits," not yet published. His paper, which pointed me to many sources on this subject, provides additional sources that I have not followed up for this appendix; see a sampling of this research in Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 67–69.

308. Turner ("Anthropology," 203) and others (Winkelman and Carr, "Approach," 177–78; Goodman,

"Workshop"; Wilkie, "Imagination," 137–40, corporately invoking Greek deities; cf. Millay, "Time Travel";

Harner, Way of Shaman, 65–68, 76–85) actually introduce students to shamanic experiences in classes, an approach that many (including myself) find deeply problematic (note voices summarized in Barnes,

"Introduction," 20). Less problematic would be observing rituals of their choice outside class (as in PayneJackson, "Magic," 232–35) or participating in class field trips (Mosher and Jacobs, "Seminar," 270–71).

Some anthropologists now advocate sympathetically entering "witchcraft" experiences as learners, while keeping in mind scholarly obligations (Salomonsen, "Methods"). Although not accepting the indigenous epistemological framework in many respects, Peters, Healing in Nepal, 37–54, also supports an experiential anthropological approach (Peters underwent shaman training).

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

a wider range of experience, however, brought to their attention "manifestations that simply did not fit secular categories of explanation."309 Some other Westerners initially skeptical of the reality of spirit powers in traditional religions, viewing them as mere superstition, have gradually become convinced otherwise through experience.310 Turner notes that the discipline has moved so far that even some more "old-school" anthropologists "concede place to the new ethos with a kind of shrug—'We're not supposed to call spirits "metaphors" anymore.'"311

A growing minority of scholars are challenging the recent Western academic consensus against spirits.312 The modern Western assumption of pure materialism has counted against exploring other interpretations, but it has not disproved them.313 Paul Stoller, an anthropologist working among Songhay Muslims, was warned that he would face an attack of sorcery; that night he felt a suffocating weight on him and heard threatening creatures on his roof. The affliction stopped only when he recalled the prescribed cure in that culture (some Qur'anic verses).

This changed his perspective; indigenous understandings rather than his anthro309. Miller and Yamamori, Pentecostalism, 156, citing one example of an especially "difficult deliverance of a woman who was well known as a medium," "who skidded across the floor of the church in a prone position, apparently being propelled by some supernatural force." Cf. the apparently difficult position of the body in Ising, Blumhardt, 175. Moreland and Issler, Faith, 157–59, also note occult phenomena in which, for example, objects were moved across the room.

310. E.g., Steyne, Gods of Power, 14–19; Nevius, Possession, ix, 9–13. Cf. Peters, Healing in Nepal, above; on 50, when he lost motor control and in a vision or dream saw a green figure, the shaman interpreted this as a spirit possessing him, though (47) Peters himself does not believe in spirit possession. McClenon,

Events, 236–37, notes that he experienced the paranormal but allows that this experience could be purely subjective.

311. Turner, "Advances," 45. She notes (ibid.) that shamanism is now "the fastest growing field" in anthropology. I should note, however, that many recent works do continue to treat spirits and witchcraft discourse as political metaphors. Some areas of anthropology seem susceptible to "political reductionism"

(a phrase borrowed by Burgess, Revolution, 261, from Jean Copans and Ruth Marshall); Wuthnow,

"Contradictions," 157, suggests this tendency in sociology of religion.

312. See, e.g., Betty, "Evidence," and sources cited there; Isaacs, "Disorder"; Johnson, "Possession";

Sall, "Possession"; and sources cited below. Baker, "Believes," 211–13, notes that in U.S. society generally, belief in demons or personalized, spiritual evil, which a majority of people in the United States hold, on average tends to decrease with rise in income and education, possibly because of greater comfort. But he also notes (216–17) that religious attendance is a stronger prediction of such beliefs (with a positive correlation). He further notes (212, 218) that it tends to run higher among women, probably because they are more often religious, and African-Americans, both because of religious tradition and the experience of social marginalization. His statistics appear to suggest those with graduate education are only 75 percent as likely to believe this as those with only a high school education, but this figure may also suggest that most who believe in these entities do not lose that belief despite the materialistic training characteristic of most education. My focus here, however, is not on these sources of belief more generally but the narrower category of those who claim to have encountered embodied examples of such belief.

313. With Tonquédec, Miracles, 64–65; cf. similarly Wilson, "Miracles," 32–33, noting on 33 that there is no specifically logical reason to discount the possibility; Goulet and Young, "Issues," 325, questioning whether "any scientific experiment" can settle the question of spirits. As to whether such entities could be subsumed under materialism, this might depend on how we define materialism (e.g., the material universe includes energy and can be defined as including human intellect).

Appendix B

pological training enabled him to cope with the local reality.314 Publication of his experience initially stirred controversy and disdain from some peers, though it eventually led to accolades.315

Likewise, Solon Kimball, a noted anthropologist,316 notes his own completely unexpected experience of encountering an apparition during his fieldwork in Ireland.317 He was just outside his hotel when an apparition began moving toward him; when he tried to strike it, thinking it a human aggressor, his foot passed through empty air, and the apparition quickly vanished.318 Shaken, he reported his experience to the hotel porter, and in the morning others in the hotel, especially long-term residents, began to share their own "ghost" experiences.319 One land commissioner had found "a figure standing at the foot of his bed"; another resident had been rid of a "persistent visitor" only through the intervention of "the Franciscan fathers." When a man from the town heard the story, he recounted seeing the same "apparition on a number of occasions" in the same vicinity.320

Recounting his experience later, Kimball notes that in subsequent years he had "puzzled" over the experience. Transcendentalists might suggest a ghost, whereas materialists would suggest a hallucination, but there was no way to resolve which was correct.321 From a neutral anthropological perspective, he concludes, it does not matter whether the encounter involved a ghost or a hallucination; the important point is that the experience reveals the influence of local culture on the observer.322

Some other anthropologists have reported unusual apparitions of deceased persons while awake.323 But we should remember that Kimball had no knowledge of the 314. Stoller, "Eye," 110 (as cited in Turner, "Advances," 41). That the experience occurs at night is consistent with the belief that witches are thought to go out at night (Bond, "Ancestors," 141; in classical antiquity, see, e.g., Ovid Am. 1.8.3–8).

315. Turner, "Advances," 42.

316. Coeditor of the volume in which the essay was offered, he was at the time of its publication graduate research professor in anthropology at the University of Florida, and had been visiting professor in such institutions as the University of Chicago and University of California at Berkeley; he had also been president of the American Ethnological Society and of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Dr. Paul

Eddy, personal correspondence, Oct. 26, 2009, directed me to this source.

317. He notes that Irish culture when he was there embraced the supernatural, so that no one doubted the experience (Kimball, "Learning," 188, 190–92). Turner, "Advances," 37, confesses that "anthropology marveled briefly at Solon Kimball's ghost story" but then neglected its implications until other such stories began to be published. She also notes (Turner, "Advances," 40) "a strange public apparition" in Trinidad during the time that Joseph Long, a medical anthropologist, was there; for other claims of apparitions, see McClenon, Events, xiii, 70, 72 (noting also some apparitions to groups of people, 75).

318. Kimball, "Learning," 189.

319. Ibid., 189–90.

320. Ibid., 190.

321. Ibid.

322. Ibid., 191, noting that "the capacity for supernatural experience as well as its form and content is culturally learned." While the shape of interpretations may be culturally learned, however, anomalous experiences appear in a wide range of cultures (McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 46–47).

323. McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 51, cite Goulet, "Ways of Knowing," 129–30 (also cited in Turner, "Advances," 47). McClenon and Nooney, "Experiences," 51, also cite Young, "Visitors," 168–69, for one twice awakened by visiting apparitions (note in Young, "Visitors," 172, that a local Cree healer

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

familiar "ghost" sightings nearby. If one does not need to explain his experience in materialistic terms, is that the most plausible explanation for it?324

Certainly many intelligent observers from many other cultures do not share the dominant Western interpretations. This is no less true among Christians than among other indigenous interpreters. Thus, one Chinese church leader of a previous generation reproved Western critics with the observation that their theological hairsplitting would benefit them little in his country "if when the need arose you could not cast out a demon."325 As one Lutheran writer in Tanzania notes, "The phenomenon of demon possession is a hard reality with which a good number of East African Christians struggle daily." Whereas Westerners tend to denigrate such views as "primitive," he notes, East Africans take them for granted, and "the biblical accounts are read not as myths, but as objective accounts of actual experiences."326

A generation ago noted missiologist Stephen Neill warned that it was next to impossible to convince most Majority World Christians "that evil spirits do not exist"; he noted that they cited examples of local possession cults. He further observed that most missionaries who lived in traditional areas similarly refused to reduce all cases of possession to hysteria.327 Many early Presbyterian missionaries to Korea had learned in seminary that spirits were not real, but most came to believe otherwise in the context of ministry alongside indigenous believers.328 Thus for example Charles Clark was astonished in the face of a violent demonstration of spirit possession; quickly changing his doctrine, he invoked Jesus's name and the man quickly became rational, completely unaware of his prior state.329 Other missionaries also reported exorcisms (usually led by Korean believers), and noted that in the early, groundbreaking years exorcisms similar to those in the nt accompanied the start of many or most churches.330

More recently, Peruvian missiologist Samuel Escobar reports a conversation with an indigenous teacher from the Peruvian jungle. When local people noticed recognized his description of the first apparition as a spirit regularly encountered there). McClenon,

Events, 39–45, shows that "apparitions" are attested in a wide variety of cultures.

324. Paul Eddy, who supplied the source, suggested that a materialistic or even cultural explanation seems to fall "very flat in light of his own report of the event" (personal correspondence, Oct. 26, 2009), and I am inclined to agree, especially if such experiences could be multiplied (and they can be, though that is not the subject of this book). I do not personally believe in ghosts but also doubt that the conventional denial of extrahuman forces can explain all our evidence.

325. Watchman Nee in Kinnear, Tide, 152; on 318n10, he notes "an account of an exorcism." One

Chinese minister, Pastor Hsi, became known as "Shengmo," the "demon overcomer" (McGee, "Regions

Beyond," 70).

326. Mchami, "Possession," 17 (while conceding that East African interpretation could use more exegesis).

327. Neill, "Demons," 161.

328. Kim, "Healing," 270.

329. Ibid., 270–71. In 1908 the same missionary reported an exorcism, after extended prayer, of a spirit so powerful that three nonbelievers outside were hurled to the ground when it came out (271, citing Clark's report).

330. Ibid., 272–73. The best known Korean exorcist was also the most popular Korean Protestant preacher of the day, Presbyterian Kim Ik-tu (Kim, "Healing," 273–74).

Appendix B

demons in the Western linguist's translation of Mark, the Western linguist explained that such spirits were only for the first century. While the local teacher respected the linguist, however, he insisted that their local environment matched better what they found in Mark: "We know that there really are demons and spirits; they're around here."331

Other indigenous interpreters have rejected conventional Western explanations, contending that some spiritual power is at work. As John S. Mbiti points out, "Every African who has grown up in the traditional environment will, no doubt, know something about this mystical power which often is experienced, or manifests itself, in [the] form of magic, divination, witchcraft, and mysterious phenomena that seem to defy even immediate scientific explanations."332 He notes even documented cases of Westerners who experienced these powers at close hand and were therefore forced to acknowledge and deal with them.333 Ohene Kweku

Opare-Sem, a U.S.-trained hematologist and oncologist working in Ghana, notes that when he went to touch one patient who had been to "fetish priests," something

"like a bolt of electricity" jolted his arm, paralyzing it "for several hours." When he tried to visit her again in the morning, as soon as their eyes met, it happened again, and subsided only as he retired "to the doctor's room to pray."334

One of my Nigerian students in the United States, Benjamin Ahanonu, told me of confronting spiritual powers in his home village. Others who had been cursed by those known to harness such powers often died suddenly soon afterward; after his own confrontation, he found himself in the hospital in the capital the next day. A village elder finally traveled to the capital because, he informed Benjamin, they had been surprised not to get word that he had died; the elder was now even more shocked to find him alive. Benjamin recovered and has since returned to the village many years to preach.335

Various personal experiences and reports from some close and trusted African friends also predispose me to be among those who accept the reality of nonhuman spirits behind some (but by no means all) contemporary possession claims.336 Generally when I have asked educated persons from Africa and many other parts of the 331. Escobar, Tides, 86.

332. Mbiti, Religions, 253–54. I am more skeptical of some of Mbiti's individual anecdotes (e.g.,

256–57), but not all of them.

333. Ibid., 254–56. I am tempted to recount also my own few, involuntary experiences with these practices in Africa, experiences that I think would surprise most Western readers, but will offer only a bare minimum, preferring to reserve my credibility for points where it matters more.

334. Mensah, "Basis," 176.

335. Interview, Dec. 1, 2009. We and our immediate relatives in Africa have some similar stories, some of which I myself experienced in that context.

336. Without knowing where to draw the line, I am aware of circles that attribute all mental illness or personal problems to the direct effects of indwelling demons, a perspective that is neither biblical nor sensible. One cannot by any means identify with demonization all kinds or cases of mental illness, which in the Gospels overlaps with demonization in at most some cases (see Songer, "Possession," esp. 121; on 119 counting "naïve" the simple equation of ancient demons and modern neuroses; cf. Gaiser, Healing,

136n10). Against excess deliverance ideology, see, e.g., Onyinah, "Deliverance," 133.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Majority World whether they believed in the reality of spirits, occult activity, and the like, their response has been, "Of course," sometimes with a caveat that they are careful with whom they discuss such matters, especially among skeptical Westerners.337

I recognize that some who follow the secondary argument of the main book (that God sometimes does miracles) will not share my openness to some other cultures' affirmation existence of other spirits in addition to one God. Still, one clearly monotheistic nt scholar has suggested that accepting the possibility of malevolent spirits is no more a priori implausible than accepting the possibility of "a good spirit—God."338 Another, who has researched the issues extensively, remains "convinced by the testimony of credible witnesses and reasonable arguments, as well as personal experience, that it is judicious to entertain the idea of the existence of some form of destructive spiritual entities not unreasonably designated 'evil spirits.'"339 While not all cultures treat these subordinate spirits as hostile, some post-Holocaust Western theology has affirmed a dimension of personal superhuman evil that allows for such hostility.340

Regardless of interpretation, however, possession behavior is well documented cross-culturally, and there is no reason to automatically doubt reports of it in our ancient sources. There is no inherent reason to suppose such reports are necessarily fictitious or legendary rather than potentially based on eyewitness claims.

Western Psychiatrists and Belief in Genuine Spirits Reports of spirit possession have been less frequent in most of mainstream

Western society,341 yet not so infrequent as to occasion no comment. From popular reports to the public claims of a small number of psychiatrists342 willing to defy

337. Cf. the similar observation about educated Africans' affirmation of these realities in Hart, Delusions,

102. I say "generally" not because there have yet been any exceptions but because I recognize that my sample size is anecdotal. Many Africans today apparently do not believe in "evil spirits" ("Islam and Christianity,"

177) or "witchcraft" (ibid., 178; cf. 179; elsewhere, cf. Friedrich, "Fighter," 141), though some may have construed "believe in" differently from how the questioners intended the questions ("demand effects" and the desire in some hospitable African settings to please questioners, who often may not have believed in such spirits, may also have affected the results; cf. the observation in Debrunner, Witchcraft, 3). Thus in Ethiopia, where 31 percent of Christians "believe in evil spirits" ("Islam and Christianity," 177), 74 percent claim to have experienced or witnessed evil spirits being cast out of someone (214); figures for other countries likewise reveal this sort of disparity.

338. Ladd, Theology, 51.

339. Twelftree, Name, 293.

340. See discussion in Boyd, War, 70–71. Cf. also the reasoning in Hultgren, "Stories," 133; calling for countering the neglect of this theme, see earlier Stewart, "Emphasis." Africans are sometimes especially cognizant of the reality of evil (Oduyoye, "Value," 113).

341. Berends, "Criteria," 347–48, suggests that possession could be rare as in the ot era; restricted especially to areas with little influence from the good news of the kingdom; or increasing because of the "last days." On 348–52, he suggests that it would be expected most in pagan environments (and [351] where people are particularly interested in spirits; he compares missionary reports). He concludes (364) that they will predominate in pagan societies.

342. E.g., Wilson (then a psychiatry professor at Duke University), "Hysteria," 225–30, providing three case studies; Isaacs, "Disorder," 265–66 (noting both psychologists and psychiatrists); Johnson,

Appendix B

the conventions of modern Western intellectual thought,343 some even in the Western world report not only cases of possession but also cases of successful expulsion of spirits.

Many cases of apparent possession have more direct psychological explanations.344 I noted earlier in the book my concern with a particular documented exorcism detailed as an example in one generally useful academic work.345 Charismatic psychiatrist John White, noted earlier in the book, treats psychosis as the result of chemical imbalance rather than demons.346 Even when one allows for the possibility of spiritual explanations, they do not supplant psychological ones. Behavior may be the same whether a person has psychiatric problems from material or emotional causes or because these are caused by an invasive spirit, leaving the burden of proof on the latter claim; when preternatural phenomena accompany the apparent possession, however, the presence of another spirit becomes more plausible.347

Scott Peck, a noted psychiatrist, dismisses most claims of possession and exorcism but claims that he has encountered rare cases for which he found this the only explanation.348 (Peck does believe that most cases of malevolence, however, are of purely human character.349) He became certain enough of one case of possession that he risked endorsing the need for exorcism despite the disdain for this practice in his profession;350 it was this encounter that convinced him that personal nonhu- "Possession"; cf. McAll, "Taste"; idem, "Deliverance"; see further Peck, Glimpses, below; cf. Friesen, Mystery

(as summarized in Hoffman and Kurzenberger, "Miraculous," 78); for Christian doctors, Lees and Fiddes,

"Healed," 22; for some popular claims, see Harris, Acts Today, 140–45. White, "Lady," 75, notes that he struggled not to come to this conclusion, but some phenomena in his patients compelled him to arrive at this conviction (for one exorcism account, see White, Spirit, 203–7). Walsh, Shamanism, 147–48, notes that different paradigms explain the evidence differently and allows (148–49) that different cases may have different explanations (cf. similarly Moreau, "Possession Phenomena," 772).

343. I assume that a head count would show more psychiatrists denying than affirming the reality of genuine spirits. Nevertheless, those supporting a currently dominant paradigm are normally the majority until detractors challenge the adequacy of the paradigm to cover all the data.

344. Cf. "pseudo-possession" in Gildea, "Possession," 296–98.

345. Miller, "Story"; more critically evaluated in Smucker and Hostetler, "Case." My concern about the exorcist Sam Fife (or at least about what he became subsequently) is not intended to deny the genuineness of Miller's experience.

346. Loewen, "Possession," 137–38. John Wilkinson, also a medical doctor, warns that psychiatric knowledge cannot exclude "possession as a possible cause" of psychosis, but also that it is not always a cause (Healing, 73).

347. Cf. Gildea, "Possession," 299, though he questions the accuracy of reports of such phenomena

(310) and allows that those who regard psychic powers as inherent in the human personality may regard even these as not identifying a foreign spirit (301). I have received oral reports of preternatural phenomena from a number of eyewitnesses, but more often in connection with claims of witchcraft than with possession.

348. In Glimpses, providing fuller detail (as he notes on xvii) for two accounts of exorcism merely summarized (and with some more potentially controversial details omitted) in his widely read People of the Lie. Others also cite Peck (e.g., Betty, "Evidence," 17; Loewen, "Possession," 138–39; less favorably, Collins,

Exorcism, 166–70). Cf. Grof, "Potential," 144–45, for one rare case that exceeded normal psychiatric (or human) bounds (Roberts, "Study," 51–52, tries to interpret this report in light of mysticism).

349. Peck, Glimpses, 239–41.

350. Ibid., 237–38.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

man malevolent beings do exist.351 He suggests that enough empirical information is already available "to make demonology a respectable field of research and study."

But he doubts that science will undertake such an objective study, "at least not until . . . a 350-year-old separation of the world of supposed natural phenomena from the assumed world of supernatural phenomena is revisited, and recognized by all concerned as having been a gigantic mistake."352 Some other nt scholars cite his approach respectfully.353

William P. Wilson, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, regards as purely psychological many problems popularly attributed to demons today, but insists that there are real cases, including some that he has encountered, of actual spirits.354 He offers as an example a Malagasy woman whose parents practiced the occult. On various occasions, she "would be violently thrown to the floor, whereupon two male voices" would speak through her in what was not her normal language. Confronted with this behavior, Wilson commanded the spirits to leave her, invoking Jesus. She regained normalcy immediately, and remained healthy during the year of follow up.355

Another psychiatrist warns against viewing most sorts of emotional problems as demonic356 but notes that he has seen a few clear cases of possession by a genuine spirit "even in my own psychiatric practice."357 Still another psychiatrist notes that 70 percent of his work deals with psychosomatic cases, but in 4 percent of the cases he has treated, he has needed to undertake exorcism. He notes roughly

280 cases that required exorcism, especially resulting from the occult practices of the person or their family (such as Ouija boards, witchcraft, horoscopes, etc.).358

In one case, the timing of a mother's deliverance correlated with the instant curing of her son (who, unknown to them, was suffering schizophrenia in a hospital four hundred miles away), as well as the son's wife's tuberculosis.359 He describes an instant release from schizophrenia through exorcism removing the curse of an occult group; the complete healing through exorcism of a violent woman in 351. Ibid., 238.

352. Ibid., 249.

353. See esp. Borg, Jesus, 322n9, allowing for this paradigm.

354. Wilson, "Miracle Events," 268.

355. Ibid., 275.

356. Johnson, "Possession," 150–51.

357. Ibid., 152. On 152–53, he offers three examples; all these patients were involved with the occult.

Similarly, a Mennonite pastor in Pennsylvania notes that he runs into "two to three demonized persons a year"; the first occasion was a "high priestess of a satanic coven" (Winslow, "Care," 192). Before deliverance ministries became excessive, early Igbo Pentecostal deliverance especially occurred in evangelistic contexts among those previously involved in spiritual power in traditional religions (Burgess, Revolution, 153).

358. McAll, "Deliverance," 296. A counselor in Ball, "View," 127–28, also reports the deliverance of someone demonized who apparently had a background in the occult; so also a report from Portugal, among reports sent to me by Douglas LeRoy, Nov. 9, 2009. Occult background also figures in two confrontations with spirits noted by Samson Uytanlet in personal correspondence (Dec. 15, 2009); cf. also concerns with the occult mentioned in Davies, "Exorcism," 17–19, 23, 29, 46, 50.

359. McAll, "Deliverance," 296–97.

Appendix B

a padded cell who had not spoken for two years; and the instant deliverance of another woman in a padded cell, when several prayed at a distance from her and without her knowledge.360

Occult connections appear in many of his accounts. Although possession could "mimic epilepsy," he noted, it differed from it. Three adults tried to restrain one six-year-old, but in contrast to epilepsy, the boy remained conscious; the boy was cured when his father renounced Spiritualism. A heroin addict whose mother was a Spiritualist medium was through exorcism completely freed from addiction despite his initial "lack of cooperation." Another boy was healed through exorcism when his mother renounced her role as a fortune-teller. The daughter of a witchcraft practitioner who had cursed her was freed immediately from alcoholism when

(unknown to her) some people prayed for her release.361 Likewise, an emergency room physician notes a case that appeared to be possession by some extraordinary evil, in a person allegedly promoting voodoo.362

One counseling professor, while insisting that most claims of possession are inauthentic,363 observes in a professional journal that he encountered what he believed to be a genuine one. When a sixteen-year-old boy involved with the occult started

"snarling like an animal," a crucifix fell from the wall, its nails hot and melted.364 The father, a physician, decided that the son was possessed; nominal, mainline Protestants, the family asked a team of ministers and psychological professionals to help. A minister on the team asked the boy to repeat "Jesus Christ, son of God," but before the young man could finish, his visage and voice altered.365 "You fools," he uttered,

"he can't say that."366 The exorcism was, however, ultimately successful.367 Several

360. Ibid., 297, noting in the last case that unknown to them at the time, her aunt had been "a patient in a mental hospital" in another country and was delivered simultaneously. Healing during deliverance, whether from physical or mental affliction, appears in many accounts. For an example of the former, see, e.g., a report by D. F. Rodrigo of Sri Lanka, in which the Hindu family became Christians and joined the church (sent to me by Douglas LeRoy, Nov. 9, 2009). In an account from Benin illustrating the latter, people brought to a Pentecostal church for prayer a woman considered insane; once there, she fell into a coma for six hours, but after much prayer she revived, "healed from her insanity" (a report from Pastor

Achille Todego, sent to me by Douglas LeRoy, Nov. 9, 2009; on Pentecostalism's anti-witchcraft posture in Benin, see Mayrargue, "Expansion," 283; for its growth through healings, 287). A clinical psychologist,

Russ Llewellyn, "Events," 252–53, reports a healing of schizophrenia and two resolutions of Dissociative

Identity Disorder through prayer (citing no involvement from other spirits).

361. McAll, "Deliverance," 297.

362. Lesslie, Angels, 155–66 (voodoo is mentioned esp. on 160). The woman had torn out her tongue, with shockingly minimal bleeding, and apparently swallowed it.

363. Van Gelder, "Possession," 160. Van Gelder was at the time associate professor of pastoral counseling at Erskine Theological Seminary.

364. Ibid., 151–52 (depending on both parents for this information). The son had been involved with the occult since age ten (152). For the claim of a dangerously hot cross in a "haunting" context, see

McClenon, Events, 68.

365. Van Gelder, "Possession," 153.

366. Ibid., 154. Similarly, in Crandall, Raising, 164, whenever a demonized person attempted to utter

Jesus's name she appeared to become temporarily catatonic; this changed immediately after exorcism. In Tari, Breeze, 61–62, demons were upset to hear about Jesus.

367. Van Gelder, "Possession," 154.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

of those present were professionals, the professor notes, and he also notes his own ample acquaintance with psychiatric disorders; it was clear that they were not dealing with epilepsy, psychosis, or other conditions that they knew how to recognize.368

Another professional claims that whereas standard treatments can help hallucinations and psychosis, demonization can be cured only by prayer or exorcism.369

One study, noting that typical cases of possession do not fit other diagnoses, identified seven common characteristics in possession cases.370 A number of the individuals saw "dark figures" and would "hear audible and coherent voices" outside themselves but as part of otherwise normal reality.371 They often exhibited revulsion toward religious objects;372 in contrast to psychological disorders, "there is an impact on others in the vicinity of the patient," who may also "experience odd phenomena."373 The study's sample size, however, is small (fourteen individuals),374 and some different characteristics may have been screened out circularly by the "possession" definition employed. If an alien spirit did affect the psyche or the central nervous system, would it not sometimes produce some effects comparable to problems those areas of a person could also experience apart from it?375 The examples identified as possession here, however, offer at least some perspectives on criteria used by some professionals to identify a minimum number of cases of possession by a genuine spirit.

Francis MacNutt, a figure in Catholic and Episcopal renewal circles mentioned earlier in the book, notes that he has witnessed "what purport to be demons speaking through the person (e.g., 'You will never drive us out; we are too many and too

368. Ibid., 158.

369. Sall, "Possession," 289, also noting other clinical contrasts, though conceding that most deviance in the West reflects natural causes. Gebru Woldu named a hospital psychiatrist in Ethiopia, as well as some

Western doctors he has taken to Ethiopia with him, who treat genuine medical and/or psychiatric cases but expect Gebru and his team to pray for the genuinely demonized (interview, May 20, 2010).

370. Isaacs, "Disorder," 266. On it not fitting other diagnoses, see 265–66.

371. Ibid., 268.

372. Ibid., 269. Woodard, Faith, 25, cites blasphemy among the behaviors of one he describes as possessed; cf. earlier Ising, Blumhardt, 171, 183, 326, 337.

373. Isaacs, "Disorder," 270, noting "poltergeist-type phenomena and the feeling of suffocation while praying."

374. The study took subjects referred by four Episcopal exorcists (two of them priests) who distinguished these cases from psychological ones; then the cases were referred to one psychiatrist and four psychologists for diagnosis (ibid., 264).

375. Some proposed criteria for distinguishing possession are thus subjective (see, e.g., Bach,

"Possession," 25, noting that they may overlap and mistrusting the distinctions in Sall, "Possession"; Sall offers an able reply in "Response"), though suprahuman knowledge, strength, and so forth are not (see

Gildea, "Possession"). Monden, Signs, 163, thinks that the line between the natural and demonic exploitation of psychopathology is not easily discerned psychologically. Some warn that some Christians now carry deliverance too far, so that "preoccupation with demons and witches" becomes "an affirmation of the old order" (Onyinah, "Deliverance," 133). In contrast to Third Wave theology, Western Pentecostals normally doubt that Christians can have demons (Wright, "Profiles," 287; Carter, "Demon Possession"; idem, "Possession"; Collins, "Perspective 1"; idem, "Perspective 2"; Macchia, "Deliverance"; historically, see Collins, Exorcism, 22, 46–47n169), as do some other circles (e.g., Berends, "Criteria," 364; cf. varying views among Mennonites in Burkholder, "Foundations," 42).

Appendix B

strong for you')—often much to the speaking person's surprise." Entirely rational people sometimes find themselves hurled to the ground while being exorcised, as astonished as anyone else. Other explanations remain possible, he suggests, but the simplest is the best: in cases like these, a spirit is actually speaking through them.376

A Western medical doctor, shocked to find a new voice from his patient insisting,

"Let her alone, she's ours!" reports that he decided that something spiritual was happening for which even his psychiatric colleagues had little training. After some hesitation, he succeeded in expelling the spirits by invoking Jesus's name.377

Obviously exorcism has a severely tarnished history of extremism, an excessive tendency that continues frequently in many settings today.378 When exorcism captures Western public attention, it is usually in this malignant form.379 Others, however, convinced that some spirits are real, have reported confrontations with what they believe are genuine spirits (among Christians, probably more frequent in missiological power encounters than in ritualistic "exorcistic" settings).380 Although

376. MacNutt, Healing, 214 (though even MacNutt has been accused of seeing demons too widely; cf. Collins, Exorcism, 56–63). For a charismatic Protestant report, see Wimber, Healing, 98; in India, see

Yohannan, Revolution, 30.

377. Mullen, Feel, 151–52.

378. Faddish approaches have developed in some charismatic circles (see criticism in Stackhouse,

"Foreword," xv; Robertson, Miracles, 94–95), with roots in practices by figures like W. Branham (Collins,

Exorcism, 28–30); A. A. Allen (37); Derek Prince (43–53, with idiosyncratic views such as demons being pre-Adamite humans, 48); and further extremes in F. and I. Hammond (authors of Pigs in the Parlor; 64–69) and Bill Subritzky (87–89); in addition to pure fabrications (99–100, 142–47). Extreme demonology also appears in some noncharismatic circles (e.g., 154–66), where it sometimes has been wielded against Pentecostals and charismatics (117–26, 131, 149–50). Collins's critique is generally helpful, despite his reliance on the category of "enthusiasm" (and excessive epistemic reticence toward experience, pace

Hume!). Cf. the harmful practice of psychologically induced vomiting in a church in Bowler, "Bodies,"

90 (perhaps reflecting the pastor's initial experience with exorcism; cf. 87); disputed claims in Bergunder,

"Miracle Healing," 293. Some African charismatics express concerns that others' deliverance ministries have become extreme (Gifford, "Provenance," 70, 73; Burgess, Revolution, 228); charismatics from different cultures and movements often hold strongly divergent views (Brown, "Awakenings," 360). One may demur from beliefs and practices of many deliverance ministries without viewing all practices as equally extreme; some focus on correcting demonic influence on thinking much more than on what most would mean by exorcism or possession (cf., e.g., Lozano, Unbound, 12). Yet in more extreme cases, when prosperity teachings failed, for example, many resorted to challenging "spirits of poverty" (Burgess, Revolution, 229–30).

379. E.g., the extremism reported in Collins, Exorcism, 70; according to some media reports, also in a recent case in Guyana (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100402/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_guyana

_exorcism_death; accessed April 2, 2010). In general, few reports of more positive outcomes would likely survive the journalistic publication process (in contrast to anthropologists' notes), since some Western editor or publisher along the way would probably object to it, whereas negative reports can be viewed as enlightening the public (in favor of a conventional modern Western worldview). The exceptions might be an occasional more thoroughly documented investigative report or (unhelpfully and counterproductively) sensational entertainment media catering to popular fascination with the lurid and the occult. Yet there are certainly enough genuine instances of extremism to fill volumes with negative examples.

380. If some Western critics would accuse me of ideological bias for admitting Christian reports about spiritual confrontations, I would note that most of my critics have an ideological bias against local informants' claims concerning spirits and spiritual power. Sometimes Western observers have simply transmuted these spiritual claims into sociological critiques of political power; while such critiques may be necessary, they are hardly the traditional point of most village witchcraft discourse—at least not insofar

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

many Westerners look askance at the practice, missiologists collecting field data today have sometimes reported a strong success rate for exorcisms conducted in Jesus's name in various cultures.381 Power encounters of various kinds have been influential in church growth in cultures where spiritual power is emphasized.382

(Although from a different perspective and not my focus here, some sorts of spiritual power conflicts undoubtedly occur in competition among adherents of traditional religious worldviews as well, and supernatural claims have generated growth among such groups.383 Some of these also appeal to supernatural means to display hostility toward Christian conversion.384)

Missiologists on Power Encounters Karl Barth appealed to Christ's victory in an exorcism performed by J. C. Blumhardt as encapsulating the gospel message of Christ's triumph.385 Nevertheless, modern

Western Christians often consider only one spirit, God, and dismiss the reality of other spirits; Christians in many parts of the world, however, have experience with what they believe are multiple spirits and look to biblical models for showing why their God should be preferred to other spirits. Missionary anthropologist Paul Hiebert notes that Christians in India addressed a cultural blind spot as I may trust my informants who grew up in such settings rather than Western visitors who read all such accounts through a purely materialist grid.

381. Johnson, "Authority," 105–6 (on Brazil); cf. the observations in Instone-Brewer, "Psychiatrists,"

140–41. I cannot ascertain from Johnson's report the extent to which experiences of spirit possession

(as defined above, as opposed to mere confrontation of spiritual ideologies and practices) are involved

(without which the nt, at least, lacks examples of exorcism). Others have also reported the efficacy of Jesus's name in exorcising spirits (e.g., earlier Chinese reports in Nevius, Possession, 13, 33–35, 55–57); cf. demons' fear of the rosary in traditional Sri Lankan Catholicism at Kudagama (Stirrat, "Possession,"

138, though the goal is simply to make "life so unpleasant for the demon that it eventually leaves," 140).

A former Yanomamō shaman came to view the Creator God of whom Christians spoke as more powerful than all the spirits (Ritchie, Spirit, 113–232, esp. 159, 214–15, 226–28, 237–38) and claims that spirits could desert or kill old shamans who were no longer useful (ibid., 226–27; cf. the fear in Koch, Zulus, 143).

382. E.g., Johnson, "Growing Church," 54–58; cf. De Wet, "Signs," passim; cf. accounts in Alexander,

Signs, 95–114 (esp. 110–14). Anderson, "Exorcism," argues that "deliverance ministry" meets a felt need in Africa, helping fuel Pentecostal growth in Africa (see also Newell, "Witchcraft").

383. Cf. "contest stories," e.g., the Buddha competing with the Brahmin tradition, Hindu stories about Hindu sages overpowering Buddhist ones, and the like (Woodward, Miracles, 25). Fulani and Turawa spirits dislike each other (Krings, "History," 63). For the revival of Taiwanese folk religion since World War II, see

Chin, "Practices," 1 (noting that 85 percent of people in Taiwan follow folk religion). Cf. various religions' practice of exorcism (e.g., Hien, "Yin Illness," 313–18; other sources in this appendix).

384. For possessing spirits complaining about Christian conversions, see, e.g., Field, "Possession," 8; spirits hostile to missionaries, e.g., Sandgren, "Kamba Christianity," 176 (in the late nineteenth century);

Lema, "Chaga Religion," 55–56; conversion as a danger, Maddox, "Cigogo," 156; for Nkai (divinity) punishing a woman with blisters for attending church until she desisted, see Straight, Miracles, 171. Spirits are said to dislike Protestantism conversion, which some in Haiti undertake to escape "indebtedness" to uncooperative spirits, but some disillusioned with Protestantism convert back to Vodou (Michel,

"Worlds," 35).

385. Barth, Dogmatics, 4.3:165ff., noted in Kauffman, "Introduction," 7–8.

Appendix B

that he carried: his scientific training stressed a naturalistic, empirical approach; his theological training emphasized theistic explanations. But he had lacked a functional category for superhuman activity other than that of the supreme God, despite its prevalence in parts of Scripture as well as belief in it in many cultures.

In recent centuries, Western thought had left no intermediate category between God and the natural world, but in his dialogue with Indian Christians he came to believe that such a sphere existed.386

Presumably a significant proportion of this book's readers will have particularly

Christian or biblical studies interests and will be interested in the sorts of conflictual encounters with spirits or those involved with them depicted in the Gospels and Acts (cf., e.g., Mark 1:21–28; 5:1–20; Acts 8:5–13; 13:8–11; 19:13–20). Missiologists frequently approach spirit phenomena very differently than nonmissionary anthropologists, often from the standpoint of what they call "power encounters."387

Historically, Irenaeus attests that many nonbelievers in his day became Christians after experiencing successful exorcisms.388

More specifically missiological encounters are reported of ancient and medieval missionaries such as Patrick in Ireland, Columba in Scotland, and Boniface in Germany.389 Boniface, for example, felled Thor's sacred oak and suffered no harm (a setting resembling "trial by ordeal").390 Although the Enlightenment was increasingly viewing the speaking of other voices through individuals as mere deception,391 John Wesley encountered persons he believed genuinely possessed,392 and was reported to have cast out demons from those involuntarily possessed,

386. Hiebert, "Excluded Middle," 43. This omission of the preternatural that he notes is traced more fully in Daston, "Facts," 100–113.

387. Because missiologists' accounts are normally told from the Christian perspective and with Christian interests, they normally describe the advance of Christian faith rather than the advance of other, often competing movements.

388. Barrett-Lennard, Healing, 229. Barrett-Lennard concludes an examination of exorcism in Irenaeus and Athanasius by noting that in both sources full-scale exorcism seems to have been limited to nonbelievers (228, Athanasius allowing that Christians could be attacked but not possessed). But some ancient sources suggest that a spirit might remain until "the time of the final exorcism on the day before baptism" (266); the bishop functioned as the chief exorcist (274). Cf. also the probably fourth-century

Sacramentary of Sarapion (277–323), in which Christians could "suffer from less serious forms of demonic attack," though probably not possession (323). The grandfather of fifth-century historian Sozomen was converted through the family witnessing a Christian instantly exorcise a spirit in Jesus's name, whereas pagans and others had failed to accomplish this by any means (Frend, "Place of Miracles," 11, citing

Sozomen H.E. 5.15.14–17).

389. De Wet, "Signs," 87.

390. See Neill, History of Missions, 75; Latourette, History of Christianity, 348; Tucker, Jerusalem, 47. In the East, in Central Asia, the missionary Elijah likewise felled a sacred tree in a power encounter during the patriarchate of Timothy I (780–823; Young, "Miracles in History," 112, also noting his effectiveness in exorcisms).

391. Schmidt, "Possession," 279–92.

392. Ibid., 281; see, e.g., Wesley, Journal (1974), 81–83. Earlier, martyrologist John Foxe was known for successful exorcisms (Freeman, "Famous Miracle," 309). Wesley's father, Samuel, like many of his contemporaries, believed in ghosts (Handley, "Ghosts," esp. 345, 355); preachers employed these stories moralistically (Handley, "Ghosts," 348–49). Generally cf. idem, Visions.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

yielding deliverance.393 Early Methodist preachers in Wesley's day expelled demons from some who were possessed.394 Lutheran pastor Johann Christian

Blumhardt undertook a lengthy struggle in prayer until a person believed severely possessed and with an occult background was freed; this deliverance impacted the entire area and, he believed, broke a spiritual barrier.395 Historians document reports of possession and exorcism throughout the history of the church but most commonly "on the border of the church with paganism," that is, when confronting power-related traditional religions.396 Missiologists often cite the relevance of power encounters for reaching cultures today that affirm superhuman powers.397

Modern Examples of Power Encounters Power encounters appear commonly in modern accounts of evangelization,398 and both popular and academic literature offer numerous fairly recent examples of such power encounter claims, usually yielding conversions. For example, a recent convert to Catholicism, John Chukwu (1902–86), was cursed by witch doctors399 and awoke blind; although physicians could not help him, he was healed when

Father John (the priest) prayed and sprinkled on him consecrated water.400 In the first quarter of the twentieth century, some villagers in southern Africa during a drought mocked the allegedly foreign Christian god who could not bring rain;

Letwaba, the evangelist, promised rain the next day, after which the next day's 393. Tomkins, Wesley, 72.

394. Rack, "Healing," 147–49. For Wesley's views about the demonic world in their eighteenth-century context, see Webster, "Terrors." Cf. Baer, "Bodies," 47, for an early Free Methodist exorcism.

395. Ising, Blumhardt, 162–89, with clearly therapeutic results (175–76); cf. the gradual deliverance in 327 (and perhaps 327–28). He did not accept all alleged exorcisms, but eyewitness experience opened him to the reality of some (104). See further Macchia, Spirituality, 65–68.

396. Skarsaune and Engelsviken, "Possession" (quote from 85).

397. E.g., Hiebert, "Power Encounter," 56; Musk, "Popular Islam," 214–15; Parshall, "Lessons," 255–56.

398. E.g., De Wet, "Signs," 91, notes the following for more examples of power encounters: Johnson,

"Authority," 102–11; Klassen, "Fire," 176–82; in Guatemala, Thomas, "Report," 252–55; in India, several studies (Devadason, "Missionary Societies," 179–91; Middleton, "Growth," 109–11; Sargunam, "Churches,"

194–95; Shinde, "Animism," 261–62; Zechariah, "Factors," 122–23, 162–65); in Indonesia, Bruckner,

"History," 137–87; in Mexico, Aulie, "Movement," 128–85; in Sri Lanka, both Chandy, "Discipling,"

117–36, and Daniel, "Labour," 147–72; in the Solomon Islands, Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity, 3–19,

42–44, 57–62, 100–111, 190–200; idem, Verdict Theology, passim; cf. recent claims of more ambiguous value in Bentley, Miraculous, 264, 284, 291, 300. For some recent power encounters in Asia, see Pothen,

"Missions," 305–8; Yung, "Case Studies"; Ma, "Planting," 331–35; Khai, Cross, 143–44; Gulick, June 8,

13, 2011; cf. the summary about the effectiveness of power encounters in Guthrie, "Breakthrough," 26.

399. For the pervasiveness of witchcraft in Africa (so viewed by fellow Africans), sometimes even among Christians (to the dismay of other Christians), see, e.g., Jenkins, New Faces, 110–13 (including stories of conversions from occult backgrounds, some more plausible than others, 112–13). Divination is sometimes used to identify sorcery or witchcraft (e.g., Beattie and Middleton, "Introduction," xxiii; Field,

"Possession," 11; Beattie, "Mediumship," 164; Gray, "Cult," 183; Middleton, "Possession," 225; cf. Garbett,

"Mediums," 123); on witchcraft accusations, see discussion above. Nevertheless, despite exaggerations and many false accusations, some people do seek to practice malevolent sorcery (Shorter, Witchcraft, 99).

400. Protus, "Chukwu."

Appendix B

rainfall generated many converts.401 Likewise, in early twentieth-century West Africa, Prophet Braide went against traditional religions and competed with the older powers; on one occasion when the dibia challenged him to see if his God could bring rain, he knelt and began praying, and within five minutes the rains fell.402

He and the William Wadé Harris both succeeded in winning tens of thousands of their fellow Africans to Christianity especially through power encounters.403

My friend and coworker Dr. Rodney Ragwan recounted a story from his grandfather, Kisten Ragwan, an Indian Baptist tailor in Durban, northern KwaZulu-Natal,

South Africa.404 One morning a man entered Kisten's tailor shop and said, "Uncle, I will give you some 'medicine.'" (The "medicine" in this case was not merely herbal but related to traditional religion.) Kisten refused, noting that he was a Christian and accepted only the power of God. The man responded that his own power was superior to the power of the God of the Bible, and in the ensuing discussion

Kisten agreed to the man's claim that that evening they would see which god was greater. "Around 12:00 tonight I will send a spirit," the man promised, "and you will see which god is more powerful." Being a man of prayer, Kisten fasted that day and then gathered his family around 11:30 to pray. Around 11:45, they heard giant footsteps around the house, which continued for about twenty minutes;

Rodney's father remembers these vividly. The steps gradually subsided, and the family went to bed. The next morning at the tailor shop, the man shook Kisten's hand. "Uncle," he said, "my spirits could not get into your house—when they got there, there was fire around your house. Indeed, your God is powerful." Similar, independent reports appear elsewhere.405

These accounts fit larger patterns in confrontations claiming to represent competing forms of spiritual power.406 Confrontations between different religious groups or individuals with an active view of spiritual power fit into a more general missiological use of the expression "power encounters."407 In many traditional societies, such power encounters in more recent times have, as sometimes earlier, taken the 401. Lindsay, Lake, 48–49.

402. Koschorke, Ludwig, and Delgado, History, 223–24.

403. Hanciles, "Conversion," 170.

404. Rodney Ragwan, interview, Dec. 15, 2009. Rodney confirmed these details with his father (Kisten

Ragwan's son) on Dec.16, in turn confirming this with me Dec. 17.

405. Koch, Zulus, 272–76, reports that another Indian in South Africa, suffering spiritual attacks from a Zulu sorcerer, was being physically "beaten by invisible powers" each night; temporarily delivered but unwilling to submit fully to Christ, he finally died from the spiritual abuse. Ayo Oritsejafor, a Nigerian preacher, reports that a man sent by spirits to disrupt his meeting found himself surrounded by a ring of fire; he gave up his charms and is now an usher in Oritsejafor's church (Oritsejafor, "Dealing," 97). When evangelizing an area known for pervasive witchcraft, Tari and his colleagues regularly heard "strange noises" outside their door, but nothing could penetrate it (Tari, Breeze, 136).

406. See, e.g., Olaiya, "Praying," 105–8. Asbury PhD student Samson Uytanlet (personal correspondence,

Dec. 15, 2009) recounted two incidents in the Philippines where persons resisted Christians and their ability to free them from the spirits because the people would lose their "power"; in one case the person had angered the spirits by letting the Christians begin to drive the spirits back.

407. Of the three definitions in De Wet, "Signs," 82–83, I include the second (such as burning fetishes) but refer especially to the third, the "challenge-oriented power encounter in public." In traditional thought,

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

form of burning fetishes or felling a sacred tree or totem, without suffering the promised harmful effects.408 Often when those who doubt a religious system defy its taboos and escape unscathed, many insiders are convinced and abandon the taboos.409

In one example from Indonesia, it was said that everyone who touched the bark of a particular sacred tree died within twenty-four hours. One Indonesian evangelist cut down and burned the tree; after he suffered no harm, a church was started there.410 Power encounters are also reported with the spread of the Christian message in other parts of Asia, such as India.411 People have burned fetishes and abandoned witch doctors due to power encounters in African nations412 and elsewhere.413

The number of Protestants grew enormously in Haiti through confronting Vodun414 and through power encounters there.415 In one account, fifteen of the children of a polygynous voodoo priest416 fell sick, and he found his rituals ineffective for curing them. Finally he solicited the prayers of Church of God pastor

Edouard Joseph; the children were healed and became followers of Christ.417 In one relatively recent report from Africa, when shamans gathered around a sacred tales of power "help connect life narratives to the larger narrative, more holistic than the dominant scientific approach" (Kremer, "Tales of Power," esp. 45–46).

408. De Wet, "Signs," 82–83; Hiebert, "Power Encounter," 52–53; for some African examples, see

Numbere, Vision, 96, 119, 124–25, 133–37, 142–43, 169–71, 191, 203, 209–11; cf. Burton, "Evangelism"

(the final paragraph); William Wadé Harris in Shaw, Awakening, 56; Bartels, Roots, 174–78 (burning fetishes). For the spiritual power dimension in current missiology more generally (noting negative but esp. positive features), see Pocock, Van Rheenen, and McConnell, Face, 183–208. For Christian spiritual conflict with Umbanda, particularly involving Christian conversions, see Itioka, "Umbanda"; for conflict when dealing with folk religion, see Burnett, "Conflict."

409. See, e.g., Tippett, People Movements, 80–84, 164–67; De Wet, "Signs," 81; an example in Anderson,

Pelendo, 49–55, 71–76, 139–43, 146–55, 158–59. In some cultures, to burn ancestral witchcraft paraphernalia is to invite an effective familial curse (Favret-Saada, Witchcraft, 130, 133); surviving such an action thus undermines the entire system of witchcraft belief. Traditional societies often attribute illness to ritual violations (e.g., Lake, Healer, 118).

410. Crawford, Miracles, 144–45.

411. Pothen, "Missions," 305–8.

412. In Uganda, see, e.g., Dunkerley, Healing Evangelism, 86; in an East African AIC, see Githieya,

"Church," 241; in West Africa, see, e.g., Burgess, Revolution, 151 (among Igbo revivalists of the 1970s);

Merz, "Witch," 203; Mayrargue, "Expansion," 286; in southern Africa, Koch, Zulus, 148, 152, 153, 199,

279; Braun, Here, 160–61. Burning fetishes has a long history (e.g., among nineteenthand early twentiethcentury Ghanaian Methodist converts, in Southon, Methodism, 99, 150; Joseph Babalola's preaching in 1930 Nigeria, in Davies and Conway, Christianity, 118; more recently, cf. the conversion of juju priests in early 1970s Nigeria in Numbere, Vision, 96, 134).

413. In some Asian contexts, see, e.g., Danyun, Lilies, 331; Park, "Spirituality," 52–53; Jones, Wonders,

104; Samuel, "Gatherings," in India; Koch, Zulus, 111, digressing on Indonesia; Tari, Wind, 27, 43; idem,

Breeze, 21, 137. For a Western equivalent, cf. Crandall, Raising, 78, 86–88.

414. Johnson, "Growing Church," 54–58.

415. E.g., destroying an "indestructible" sacred rock, in Johnson, "Growing Church," 55–56.

416. Although often treated as unique in Western Christian reports, Vodun preserves large measures of traditional African religion from what is now Benin and from the Congo-Angola region (Fleurant,

"Music," 47; Clérismé, "Vodoun," 60; Michel, Bellegarde-Smith, and Racine-Toussaint, "Mouths," 75).

417. A report from Lloyd Frazier, among reports sent to me by Douglas LeRoy, Nov. 9, 2009.

Appendix B

tree were cursing the Christians' God (during a meeting of Christians seven miles away), lightning destroyed the tree, apparently producing a widespread response.418

Such confrontations have occurred in the Philippines. Some mountain families in the Philippines would spend several years' wages to buy sacrificial pigs prescribed by traditional exorcists to seek deliverance for a possessed family member.

A local Christian leader began successfully exorcising the possessed without fees, and often accomplishing what traditional exorcists could not.419 Traditional

Kankana-eys (a tribal group in the northern Philippines) practice animism and ancestor worship, but when people are healed through Christian prayer rather than through contact with ancestors, families and even communities sometimes turn to Christian faith.420

In Manila in 1953, the possession of seventeen-year-old Clarita Villanueva, who had been repeatedly bitten by spirits in the Bilibid prison, attracted national media attention. The observed and well-documented exorcism that followed was likewise publicized, resulting in what some estimate were many thousands of conversions.421

In a church known for healings and exorcisms in Mindanao, Philippines, one informant who saw some other miracles firsthand related an incident he heard about from shortly before his arrival there. A possessed person announced, "We will come at 7:00 p.m." At 7:00 p.m., the power went out, and the person declared,

"See, I told you, there are more of us now." But despite their show of power, the spirits were all cast out.422

418. Chavda, Miracle, 9–10, 128–29, including photographs (between 78 and 79) and the claim of eyewitnesses. In Nigerian evangelism, extraordinary lightning attacks have also been construed as power encounters (Numbere, Vision, 165), as also storms and other phenomena for which wizards claimed credit (Numbere, Vision, 209). Koch, Zulus, 157, portrays some witch doctors as able to cause storms (cf.

Rev 13:13), though here countered by Christ (with lightning). One of my students, Paul Mokake, has shared several eyewitness accounts of power encounters in his homeland of northern Cameroon (noting demonstrations of supernatural power from both sides, including those involving weather conditions).

Claims of weather conditions changing during some traditional religions' rituals also appear (Turner,

"Advances," 43, although the connection between the ritual and the weather is only implicit, and only one case is cited; cf. Kinnear, Tide, 92–96).

419. Cole, "Model," 264, regarding his friend, Rev. Antonio Caput Sr., who also demands the destruction of fetishes (265).

420. Ma, "Encounter," 136; see more fully idem, Spirit. The forms of Christianity most relevant in such traditional religious contexts emphasizing spiritual power are those that also emphasize spiritual power (Ma, "Worldviews," 20).

421. The ministry of Lester Sumrall in May 1953, in Johnson, History, 77–78 (brought to my attention in idem, personal correspondence, Feb. 20, 2009); Stewart, Only Believe, 94–97. The reports claim that a physician, police, and reporters were in attendance at the time of the exorcism and name some of them.

Sumrall, Story, 7–36, extensively quotes Manila newspapers by name and date, including concerning the biting phenomenon, which many took to be genuine spirit activity. Dr. Mariano B. Lara, then chief medical examiner of the Manila Police Department and a university professor of pathology and legal medicine, was convinced of the genuineness of the possession and exorcism and provided his own description, recounted at length in Sumrall, Story, 37–83; more concisely, see Lara, "Report." For spirit-afflicted persons being assaulted by the spirits elsewhere, see also the brief accounts by Dr. H. C. Moolenburgh (Meetings, 154).

More recently in Manila, see "Priest in war."

422. Chester Allan Tesoro, interview, Jan. 30, 2009.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

A missionary doctor reports that someone who wished to stab him was unable to withdraw the knife from its scabbard, and that such incidents convinced many locals that Christ was more powerful than the spirits.423 Cameroonian Christians exorcised a person known to be insane; his immediate and full recovery led to many conversions in the community.424 Many Indian evangelists pray and fast, then minister to those who are held to be possessed; word of deliverances from spirits spreads, opening the community to the gospel.425 After Micronesian pastor Steve Malakai began to rebuke the spiritual powers dominant in the ruins of an ancient sacrificial site, widespread healings, deliverances, and conversions followed.426 A Sri Lankan evangelist notes that he cast out demons, and converts turned over talismans and charms; people expected him to suffer harm, but he did not.427 Jesus Film workers around the world have also frequently reported power encounters.428

Power Encounters That Persuade Religious Competitors Some accounts involve conflict between religious practitioners or narrate the superiority of one over another. I noted above the report of Garrick Braide's success against the dibia.429 In 1971, when a juju priestess was influencing his family, young

Nigerian Christian Geoffrey Numbere confronted her in Jesus's name. She began staggering, lost her powers, and permanently lost her mind; Geoffrey's family was converted.430 In an account not involving direct confrontation, a South African witch doctor told a mute, new Christian that he could not help her, but when her

Christian friends prayed for her, she was healed.431

Displays of spiritual power have sometimes led practitioners of one religion to switch allegiances. Thus, for example, in the late 1940s, a Congolese evangelist named Peter faced opposition from a witch doctor named Kasumba. When Kasumba fell sick and his fellow witch doctors could not help him, someone robed in white instructed him in a dream to have Peter pray for him; although Kasumba was healed, he immediately reverted to his opposition. The pattern was repeated three

423. Lees and Fiddes, "Healed," 25.

424. Paul Mokake (interview, May 13, 2009), as one of the people who prayed and witnessed the healing. Other societies can also associate possession with "madness"; see, e.g., Kasule, "Possession,"

299, 303 (for Uganda); Mbiti, Religions, 227; for ancient Mediterranean associations, see appendix A.

425. Dunkerley, Healing Evangelism, 169–70; in many of these communities, this is the only available inroad for teaching a message differing from the traditional one. Yohannan, Revolution, 21, 30, also notes frequent deliverance from demonization in India.

426. Wayne and Judy Cagle supplied me with their written reports from fall 1992, which they confirmed for me orally (Jan. 25, 2009).

427. Daniel, "Labour," 158–59.

428. E.g., Eshleman, Jesus, 108 (Indonesia), 110–11 (India), 111–12 (Thailand).

429. Koschorke, Ludwig, and Delgado, History, 223–24.

430. Numbere, Vision, 40–41. For other encounters, see 125–26, 170.

431. Johns, "Name." I include the story here and not in the part of the book recounting healing narratives because no organic cause for her six months of muteness was found.

Appendix B

times, but the third time Kasumba became a committed Christian and eventually an elder in the young village church.432

Albert Bissouessoue told us various accounts of spiritual conflict, including one already recounted (where Jesus raised a dead girl in Etoumbi that traditional spirit practitioners could not).433 Here I focus on his account from Etoumbi, March

1987, when an anguished man confessed that he belonged to a traditional cult and had made a pact with the spirits to have a good life provided they could take his life on a particular date and time. Now the date was three days away, at midnight, and he wanted to confess to someone because he lamented leaving behind his family. Papa Bissouessoue explained that Jesus Christ could free him from this evil bondage; the man returned in twenty minutes with all the objects related to the pact, and Papa Bissouessoue burned them. When the appointed time came, Papa

Bissouessoue and his wife experienced a deep spiritual battle, and Papa Bissouessoue says that he witnessed the devil himself. But they were crying out to Jesus, and the time passed with no harm to the man, who quickly entrusted himself to Christ. Today he is an influential lay leader in the Catholic parish of Brazzaville.

Likewise, Korean shaman Bok-hee Lim viewed the prayers of Christians in her neighborhood as a confrontation between their God and her "demigods."

Ultimately persuaded that the one God of the Christians is greater, she finally gathered five carloads of "the clothes and equipment that she used for her practice and burned them all," and then she "destroyed the little temple for her god of shamanism in her backyard."434

Similarly, when a woman in northern Thailand became the first Christian in her village in 1963, the traditional priest mocked her as she fell sick and apparently died. When the Christians who had joined her prayed, however, she recovered and began telling villagers "their previously unknown secrets"; the priest's son became a Christian and eventually an elder in that church.435 In Tibet, a former priest (once attached to a lamasery) was dying after seven years of sickness, unable to eat; when a Christian invited to pray did so, and the family responded to his admonitions to destroy ties with other spirits, the man recovered and all his friends attributed this recovery to Jesus.436 In Myanmar, it is reported that a village priest close to death was healed and converted.437

432. Hodgson, "Sorcerer" (referring to Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo). On the second occasion, the recovery appears natural, but the protection from death appears supernatural.

433. Another account involved his recognition, in late 1986, that something was wrong with the pastor in training; eventually the man began to lose his mind and was delivered only when he confessed and allowed Papa Bissouessoue to burn the fetishes he had kept for protection. He now has a thriving ministry

(Papa Bissouessoue named the man, his location, and many details that I am not using here). All of these accounts are from the interview by Emmanuel Moussounga, Dec. 17, 2009.

434. Park, "Spirituality," 52–53.

435. Remaining an elder at the time of writing in Gardner, Healing Miracles, 138.

436. William Christie (the person who prayed) in Fant, Miracles, 110–12. The restored man joined the missionaries in evangelizing and lived healthily twelve years until his sudden death, which some attributed to poisoning (Fant, Miracles, 112–13).

437. Khai, "Pentecostalism," 269.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

Early in the Timor revival in Indonesia, many destroyed their charms and fe tishes.438 Indonesian Christians tell of a traditional priest who saw the spirits with which he had worked depart after visiting Christians prayed; the priest and village were converted.439 One powerful witch doctor in central Java, who claims that her magic had killed at least a thousand people and describes the normal manner of their death,440 was informed of Jesus through a vision, never having known Christians or about Christianity. When she became a Christian and faced hostility from her relatives, she sold everything that she had.441 When a witch doctor stood against a Maasai believer's witness, the witch doctor fell to the ground and was converted.442

During the healing campaign of black South African evangelist Isak Thlape in Viljoenskroon in 1978, an influential shaman knotted many charms into his hair, then got in the healing line so he could see what was happening. When Thlape prayed, everyone in line fell to ground at the same time—including the shaman.

He was semiconscious for more than five minutes, and when he recovered full consciousness, he found "that all his hair into which the amulets and charms were knotted, had literally fallen out of his head." He quickly became a public follower of Christ.443

Converted to Christianity, a witch in West Africa destroyed his witchcraft paraphernalia444 and eventually experienced greater spiritual power, which he claims to have used to deliver others from witchcraft.445 Ineba Ojuka, a priestess of the sea

438. Wiyono, "Timor Revival," 278–79, 282; York, "Indigenous Missionaries," 250–51. Indonesian shamans converted to Christianity burned their fetishes (Tari, Breeze, 21, 24).

439. Tari, Wind, 37–40.

440. In Knapstad, "Power," 84, she mixed "black magic" with verses from the Qur'an and a mantra "and use[d] the spirit of the dead to cause the persons to die. After I said the mantra, the people would vomit blood and then die." Two other informants also confirmed her description of killing by witchcraft (84).

The daughter of a witch doctor, being trained to be his successor but converted to Christianity, attested that her father had killed many through witchcraft (89).

441. Knapstad, "Power," 83–85 (based on his interview with her).

442. Eshleman, Jesus, 14–15.

443. De Wet, "Signs," 84–85, noting (91n2) that the evangelist narrated the event to him and eyewitnesses later confirmed it. For southern African conversions of those confessing that they had practiced witchcraft, see also stories in Koch, Zulus, 136–37, 143–44, 144–45, 147–48, 150, 153. Venter, Healing,

253, notes the exorcism of some African spiritists, effective only once their fetishes were burned. Pothen,

"Missions," 189, reports that in Gujarat and Maharashtra in the 1980s, many sorcerers turned instead to Christ; in Africa, Baker, Miracles, 53, notes occasions (including six former shamans in one church); also the conversion of shamans mentioned in Alexander, Signs, 89, 110; those converted in Anderson, Pelendo,

119, 155–58; a case in Miracle Investigation; another apparent case in Marszalek, Miracles, 160; hundreds of Alauts (local practitioners of witchcraft) converted in Tari, Breeze, 136. A report sent to me by Asian evangelist Vasanth Edward (March 10, 2007, about events of the preceding weeks) notes that one day he warned against witchcraft; one woman, long paralyzed by witchcraft, was healed as she heard that message, and that night someone known for witchcraft died, leading to many conversions. Eshleman, Jesus,

108, describes the inversion of a witch doctor's curse (harming opponents rather than supporters of the Jesus Film workers). Some market witch conversion testimonies (Ukah and Echtler, "Witches," 77–79).

444. Merz, "Witch," 203.

445. Ibid., 213. In his cultural worldview (but not in Scripture; cf., e.g., Acts 8:19–23), he had a sort of spiritual charisma naturally, which could be used for evil witchcraft or God's service (213–14, Merz warning also on 214 that some Nigerian Pentecostals have acted in ways very much like the witches they condemn).

Appendix B

goddess Akaso, was instantly healed of long-standing ailments (arthritis, a decade of chronic coughing, and near blindness) and converted in an evangelism meeting in southern Nigeria.446 Converted through a dream, a witch doctor in Borneo burned his charms, and, against his culture's traditional expectations, he remains well.447 Finding himself and his colleagues unable to attack a Cuban evangelist, the leader of an occult group publicly converted.448

When Indian village priests who had previously used witchcraft to kill found themselves unable to harm an Indian Christian, they became believers.449 One local priestess in India, though known for power to inflict sickness and death, became completely paralyzed below the neck for three years. Sacrifices and petitions failed to alleviate her condition, but when an Indian Christian prayed for her, she was instantly healed, and soon was running, praising the Christian God. She was the first of many in her village to become a believer in Jesus.450

Readers in contexts of confrontation with traditional power religions thus find valuable relevance in ancient power encounters like those described in Acts 8:9–13;

13:8–12; 19:11–20; or other narratives like Exod 7:10–12.451 Ancient Christians accepted the reality of spirits besides God but believed that in any confrontation, their God would readily overcome all other spirits not submitted to him.452

Some Personal and Family Experiences While I personally believe that God often works with people in terms that they understand, I also find much current discussion about spiritual warfare inconsistent with biblical teaching and am uncomfortable with the explanations of many who practice "deliverance" routinely in popular settings. (I do not deny that some experience these occasions positively for psychological or spiritual reasons.)

Nevertheless, to simply reject the possibility of genuine spirit experiences because of plentiful abuses, as many do, risks an uncritical overreaction.

I long resisted including any of my or my family's accounts here, because for some reason some consider experiences from one or one's immediate circle (like those of Pascal) more of a bias than extrapolation from nonexperience (like that of Hume's circle). Nevertheless, I have ultimately decided to follow the example

446. Numbere, Vision, 189–90. She maintained her new faith despite the hostility of other members of her former religion.

447. Green, Asian Tigers, 108.

448. Alamino, Footsteps, 34–35; another dramatic power encounter and deliverance of an occult priest appears on 40.

449. Yohannan, Revolution, 21. The priests reported fire and angels protecting the believer.

450. Ibid., 204–5.

451. That the Egyptians would have understood Moses's signs so differently from the Israelites (as more like a circus performance) suggests the importance of perspective (or "faith") in power encounters

(cf. LaCocque, "Competition," 95). For ancient Egyptian snake charming, see Currid, Egypt, 94–95.

452. On early biblical miracles in competition with claims of other deities, starting with the paradigmatic plagues in Exodus, see, e.g., Tucker, "Miracles," 378. For the plagues from Egypt's religious perspective

(cf. Exod 12:12), see, e.g., Hoffmeier, Israel, 149–53; cf. Pesiq. Rab. 17:5.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

of the experientially oriented anthropologists and offer some experiences, the interpretations of which may be debated by others. I do not care to report all my or my family's experiences that could be relevant, but I narrate some samples here to illustrate why I take seriously some African and other reports about spirits, although these particular examples do not involve possession behavior.

Nearly four years after my conversion from atheism and several years before I had reimbibed much academic skepticism, I was visiting a recently converted widow when I felt that God's Spirit led me to a door, which I found then led me into a dark basement. As I descended the stairs, I felt that the widow's husband's

"ghost" was behind another door in the basement, but according to the basic theology I had imbibed, this spirit could only really be a demon. Once I commanded it to leave in Jesus's name, it departed; the widow then informed me that her husband's belongings were stored in that room and that he had been involved with the occult. She also informed me that a year earlier she had dated a man who claimed to have psychic powers, who claimed that the ghost of her husband was in that room and tried to exorcise it; it chased him away instead.453

While that experience fit my theological and cultural understanding at the time, the following experiences of myself or my relatives did not.454 In September 2006, one of my Congolese brothers-in-law, Dr. Jacques Emmanuel Moussounga, was the object of hostility from some people openly known to employ witchcraft. During this period, in a dream a snake bit his heels, and he awoke to find two physical holes in his heels. His legs gradually became immobilized as the poison spread up his legs, until he prayed with a person known for her prayerfulness; then he recovered. A PhD in chemistry from a French university, he noted that he never would have believed it had he not experienced it himself.

One of these hostile people insisted that Emmanuel visit him; because he was a relative455 and it was therefore a family obligation, Emmanuel went. No sooner

453. See further Keener, Gift, 64–65.

454. Lagerwerf, Witchcraft, 62, speaks of experience with possession altering a minister's prior theological approach.

455. Although I do not know the full motivation in this case, witchcraft is usually believed to be directed against relatives and neighbors (Bond, "Ancestors," 142; Reynolds, Magic, 44; in nineteenth-century

Germany, cf. perhaps Ising, Blumhardt, 177, though Ising seems skeptical). Binsbergen, "Witchcraft,"

243, notes that one very widespread belief in Africa is the assumption that among those who achieve significant power in any domain, political or otherwise, "a close kinsman needs to be sacrificed or to be nominated as victim of occult, antisocial forces," and he further notes that he has "extensive reasons" for viewing this as reflecting real practices. Africans I know cite numerous examples, and it is difficult to believe otherwise: if such a belief is pervasive, then given human nature it is likely that some would indulge in it, especially concerning relatives they do not like. Even without occult connections and a recognized tradition of kin jealousy, many Westerners are ready to sacrifice family for success. The only grandparent my wife knew growing up was her mother's father, after he was reconciled with his daughter. The man had seemed very nice, but the family usually avoided his brother, who openly boasted about practicing witchcraft. One day the brother demanded all the possessions of Médine's grandfather, who was not a Christian. The grandfather refused, to which the brother replied, "We'll see." Her grandfather fell sick with a fever that night and died the next day. This was widely understood as being due to witchcraft. We know more recent, closer and multiply attested examples of witchcraft attempts on family members. Witchcraft

Appendix B

had he left their domicile than he felt so sick that he thought that he would die, recovering only after much prayer. Later, discounting the matter as coincidence, he visited the man again at the latter's insistence and suffered the same overwhelming, nearly paralyzing sickness. Seeking prayer, he stumbled into the home of another member of his church, known for the gift of prophecy. No sooner had he entered than she demanded, "Where have you been that you should not have gone?" Although she had no natural means of knowing about the person who had sought his harm, she declared that the Lord had shown her the person's name; it was the right name.456

Emmanuel recounted an incident in which a boy in his Sunday school was dying of the same mysterious sickness that had claimed the lives of the boy's two close friends. Fearful about his prognosis, the boy confessed what the three had done. An older man they met on the street had promised that they would become powerful government ministers, provided they kept this pact secret from anyone else. Then he had taken blood from each of them (not entirely voluntarily, especially for the youngest).457 Soon after this event, the oldest of the three boys dreamed that this older man and three others stabbed him; he awoke ill that morning and died in December. The day that the first boy died, the second boy had the same dream, then fell sick; he died in February. That day the third boy had the same dream and fell sick, and he was so afraid that in about May he confessed this information.

The Sunday school teachers who knew him, including Emmanuel, fasted during the day for nine days, then came together to pray for the boy. Emmanuel felt the Spirit strongly as they prayed, and the boy was healed that night.458

In July 2008, my wife and I spent time in Congo, so our marriage and support for the family became a matter of common knowledge even to those who wished to harm the family. A few months later, on December 6, I was experiencing what felt like such an unusual and unnaturally dramatic spiritual assault I was literally not claims are not, of course, limited to families. In 2000, my then-future wife told me the story of a church in Congo where the new pastor killed a "sacred" animal being kept for rituals in the sanctuary, and the next day eight or nine deacons, who had syncretistically bound their lives with its life, died. The story, though secondhand, illustrates local beliefs.

456. Oct. 29, 2008 (I believe the visit may have been on Oct. 28). She also said she saw him being

"electrocuted." That was not literal, but it was relevant. We had previously warned him not to go, in connection with a nightmare in which I had seen him being detained and being electrocuted. On another occasion (reported to us on Oct. 16, 2008; the events very probably happened that day or possibly the day before), both this woman and a child independently heard the same spiritual warning about the child's safety at the same time; unknown to the woman, the child had fallen very sick, but was able to recover once extricated from the situation.

457. As I discovered later, some other African peoples also appear to report this practice for some witchcraft rituals; see Koch, Zulus, 118.

458. Interview (Brazzaville, July 25, 2008), concerning events from that year. On April 16, 2010, we confirmed (phone interview) that the boy remains well. Western Christians who deny the possibility of any non-Christian spiritual power ought not attribute their skepticism to the biblical authors. At the same time, although many texts do link such power with individuals (e.g., Exod 7:12; Mark 13:22; 2 Thess

2:9; Rev 13:13–15), the larger picture considers the powers behind such activity (Eph 6:12). Moreover,

Christians can cite biblical limits in Num 23:8; 2 Sam 16:12; Prov 26:2.

Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Societies Today

sure that I would survive the day. The next day, as I was recovering, I was walking with my wife and son, and we stopped under a particular strong tree, about three stories tall. No sooner had we followed my son's advice to walk a few steps away than the tree fell without warning, precisely where we had been standing, blocking the small road. Had it fallen a few seconds earlier, all three of us would have been crushed to death. I believe that this is the only tree I have ever witnessed falling

(though I have of course seen fallen trees), yet out of hundreds of trees in view that day, and all the different ways that it could have fallen, it fell precisely where we had been standing seconds before. We came back and happily photographed the tree before the property owners called in a crew for it to be sawed and removed.

The roots had not come up, but it looked as if the trunk had been cut through, and the wood appeared completely healthy.459

When Médine's brother went for prayer, the person prophesied that those employing witchcraft had tried to target us, to eliminate our support for the family; when the attack on my psyche proved ineffective, the hostile spirit settled in a tree that was twisting about, an image that made little sense to this woman until

Médine's brother explained what had happened. She said that God had protected us, in part because of what God had called me to do. On December 15, 2008, an Ethiopian Pentecostal prophet prophesied about spirits having tried to kill me but being thwarted by God. He also gave various other relevant details about my life, including about this and another book, which something did not want written, without knowing anything about me, that I am an author, or the recent events.

To my recollection, no one had ever prophesied to me previously about spirits trying to kill me, or even about spirits per se; certainly no one had prophesied to me about a demon-afflicted tree. While I was fairly unfamiliar with African discourse about witchcraft, however, I was quite familiar with particular individuals who sometimes prophesied quite accurately (as opposed to random persons whose prophecies were more hit-and-miss). These were among the more accurate prophets. I felt deeply shaken by these events and their interpretation, which challenged elements of my worldview. For me as a Western Christian academician, these African-related experiences represented an entirely different world.

Of course there are the terribly frequent abuses, exaggerations, and psychological projections involved in many spirit beliefs and practices; after a few frightening experiences, it is easy for one to begin wrongly reading every mishap as a sign of witchcraft, especially within a cultural sphere that would reinforce that belief. Is it possible, however, that at least some actual spirit experiences lay originally and occasionally behind these wider beliefs? Like any of us when we fit evidence within an interpretive grid, those who invariably prefer purely materialistic explanations regularly prove resourceful and creative and would undoubtedly explain some of the above events as the result of suggestion and the others as mere coincidence.

Because it is not impossible to construe them differently if necessary, my examples

459. I recorded the incidents in some notes at the time, in addition to the photographs.

Appendix B

do not offer incontrovertible proof to the contrary. Nevertheless, given our cumulative experiences (including but not limited to those narrated above), I hope that I can be forgiven for personally suspecting that, whatever the excesses, Africa may yet know some things that the West has forgotten.

Conclusion Possession experiences are documented so widely that their appearance in ancient sources such as the Gospels and Acts should not surprise us. Although some ancient descriptions appear in fictitious sources, even these sources likely depend ultimately on information derived from traditions of genuine possession behavior, and we cannot rule out the possibility of eyewitness traditions in other ancient descriptions. We may interpret these claims in various ways, but they do call into question the curiously modern Western idea, held by some, that exorcism reports

(replete with speaking spirits) can represent only legend and never eyewitness claims. Regardless of who stands behind Acts' "we" source, for example, Paul's stay in Philippi was part of it, and the first-person narrator persists at least long enough to know of the pythoness's proclamation (Acts 16:16–17).460

The meaning of possession experiences is debated, and possibly multiple, complementary models are helpful for explaining different aspects of such experiences or different kinds of cases. Exorcism is reported in many societies, often with therapeutic effects (at least sometimes due to local expectations, but in some reports possibly involving paranormal factors). Missiologists show, however, that power encounters often occur when worldviews that depend on spiritual power come into conflict. Along with other information, this perspective makes sense of the widespread tradition of Jesus's and his early followers' frequent use of exorcism.

460. The "we" is not explicit on the day of the event (Acts 16:18) but also does not figure into any of the action reported there, so it would not have reason to be mentioned. Even assuming that the narrator had taken that day off (which is not clear but is possible), it is difficult to suppose that he would not have heard the firsthand report afterward (Acts 16:40).

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