Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
POSSESSION
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: POL-PRE
del.icio.us it!
|
POSSESSION , the See also:term given to the supposed See also:control of a human See also:body and mind by an See also:alien spirit, human or non-human; or the occupation by an alien spirit of some portion of a human body, causing sickness, See also:pain, &c. The term obsession (See also:Lat. for See also:siege) is sometimes used as See also:equivalent to possession; some-times it denotes spirit control exercised from without, or it may mean no more than a maniacal monoideism. From an anthropological point of view possession may be conveniently classed as (a) inspirational, (b) demoniacal, (c) pathological, according to the view taken of the See also:reason for or effect of the spiritual invasion of the possessed See also:person. a. In inspirational possession the See also:oracle spirit is held to have entered the person in See also:order to foretell the future or to proclaim the will of a See also:god; the god himself may be regarded as speaking through the mouth of his devotee; among peoples in the See also:lower stages of culture possession by See also:spirits of the dead is inspirational, especially where there is any See also:kind of ancestor See also:worship in See also:vogue. This kind of possession, so far as is known, does not appear among some of the lowest peoples, e.g. the Australians; but it is See also:common in See also:Africa, See also:Polynesia and See also:Asia, where See also:European See also:influence has not led to its decay. Many of the classical oracles were regarded as due to divine See also:inspiration. The manifestations are often voluntarily induced and are provoked in many different ways; in classical times the eating of See also:laurel leaves, the inhaling of fumes which ascended from a cleft in the rocks of See also:Delphi, the drinking of intoxicating liquors, or of a more widely found means of inducing the phenomena —See also:blood—were all in use. In the See also:Malay See also:Peninsula the See also:medicine-See also:man inhales See also:incense which rises in clouds from a censer and hangs like a mist See also:round his See also:head; similar hypnotic effects are produced in See also:Egypt in the See also:case of See also:divining boys by means of drugs. In See also:Fiji the See also:priest sat before a dish of scented oil and anointed himself with it, till in a few minutes he began to tremble and was finally strongly convulsed. In parts of See also:India, See also:draughts of blood from the See also:neck of the newly decapitated victim were the means of rousing the priest to frenzy; while in See also:Siberia, See also:America and many parts of Africa drumming, contortions and orgiastic dancing are more commonly found. According to another See also:account, the Fijian priest provoked the onset of the See also:trance by a method in use in See also:ordinary hypnotic practice; he sat amid dead silence before a See also:whale's tooth, at which he gazed steadfastly. The symptons of supposed possession by a god differ as widely as do those of the hypnotic trance. In See also:Hawaii the god Oro gave his oracles by inspiring the priest, who ceased to speak or See also:act as a voluntary See also:agent, his frenzied utterances being interpreted by the attendant priests. In the Malay Peninsula the pawang, after censing himself, lies down on his back, with his head shrouded, and awaits the moment of inspiration. The See also:tiger spirit which is the See also:familiar of all Malay pawangs manifests its presence by a See also:low lifelike growl and the pawang scratches at the See also:mat, gives a See also:series of catlike leaps and licks up from the See also:floor the handfuls of See also:rice scattered there. But his See also:state seems to be far removed from the See also:ecstasy of the Hawaiian priest, though it must be remembered that no test of See also:bona fides is possible in either case. We meet with another See also:stage in See also:Tahiti in the lofty declamation of the possessed priests, who thus afford a parallel to the utterances of many See also:modern mediums. Finally in Africa, where the frenzied See also:form of possession is also common, we find at See also:Sofala the manifestations of possession
were confined to the See also:simple dramatic See also:imitation of the See also:voice of the dead See also: Demoniacs in the New Testament are stated to live among the tombs, to be See also:deaf and dumb, or See also:blind, to be possessed by a multitude of evil spirits or to suffer from high See also:fever as a result of possession; the demons are said to pass into the bodies of animals or to reside in waterless places. No facts are recorded which are not explicable either as the ordinary symptoms of See also:mental disease or as the result of suggestion (q.v.). c. In the lower stages of culture all diseases are explained as due to the invasion of the body by disease spirits (see See also:ANIMISM), but the effects are supposed to be physiological, not psychical as in demoniacal possession. The infringement of a totemic tabu, the wrath of an ancestor or other dead person or the malice of a disease spirit, such as the Malay hantus, or of any non-human spirit, may set up pathological conditions, according to animistic See also:philosophy. Such cases, as well as those of demoniacal possession, which may be distinguished from the inspirational form by their invariably involuntary See also:character, are dealt with by a variety of means such as spells, purifications, sacrifices to the possessing spirit, or See also:coercion of various sorts (see ExoRcrsM). We have few data as to the See also:distribution of the phenomena here classified. Cases of inspirational or demoniacal possession were known in classical times; but the demon of See also:Socrates must rather be classed as a case of sensory See also:automatism. In our own See also:day they are reported from the greater See also:part of Asia, Africa and Polynesia, and they seem to occur in America, though our See also:information is scanty. On the other See also:hand in New See also:Guinea and See also:Australia they are practically unknown, though automatisms are put down to the agency of the dead. From the psychological point of view the See also:classification is again threefold: (a) as noted above, the See also:majority of cases of so-called possession are simply psychopathological; (b) another class, the existence of which has only been recognized within See also:recent times are the cases of secondary or multiple See also:personality; the apparent See also:independence and occasional conflict of See also:primary and secondary selves has been explained by the theory of possession; but it has been possible in one of the most severe cases on See also:record to unify the two personalities and memories after what the patient described as a struggle between them for supremacy, which would inevitably have suggested possession as the explanation, had not the issue of the case been the amalgamation of the two streams of consciousness. (c) The problem of the third class of cases, which may be termed mediumistic, is still unsolved. The See also:medium (q.v.) or sensitive appears to have at command in the trance state a See also:store of memories connected with the lives of deceased See also:friends of a sitter (i.e. a person See also:present at the seance), such memories being dealt with from the stand-point of the deceased person (who is termed the communicator); sometimes the memories are connected with the friends of a person not actually present or with articles placed in the hands of the medium, the owners being absent or dead. Mediumistic cases have undergone elaborate investigation at the hands of the Society for Psychical See also:Research, and no serious See also:attempt has been made to invalidate the facts set forward by the investigators; but so far no satisfactory explanation has been suggested. On the one hand thought transference or See also:telepathy (q.v.) appears to be insufficient, unless we assume that the See also:powers of a medium far transcend anything demonstrable in ordinary telepathic experiments; for the facts stated by or through the medium about the communicator seem in many cases to be known in their entirety to no single living person. If thought transference is the explanation, we must admit that the medium can (r) ransack all living brains for facts, (2) select those which arepertinent (i.e. known to the communicator) and (3) combine them in such a way as to suggest that the source of the information is the dead person. On the other hand, although, as wa have seen, the communications show knowledge homologous to that of the deceased, they demonstrably do not include the whole of his knowledge; mote than one attempt has been made to obtain from communicators the contents of sealed letters, written during their lifetime and kept from the knowledge of all other human beings till the See also:seal was broken; but such attempts have so far failed, and the failure seems to form conclusive evidence both against possession and against other explanations based on the supposition that the dead are communicating. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] POSSE COMITATUS (Lat. " power of a county ") |
[next] POSSESSION (Lat. possessio, possidere, to possess) |