The basic principle of possession is the same everywhere: gods, spirits, djinns, or genies (or whatever ethnologists may call them), who often constitute a more or less structured anthropomorphic pantheon, invest the body of a human being while he is in a state of trance, generally (but not always) during a ceremony organized for that purpose. The possessed person, the “medium” (often considered in his own society as the horse of the god that rides him, or as his spouse) assumes the behavior that is supposed to be that of the possessing god. Thus, the gods constitute a kind of repertory of roles and, for a subject, possession is the incorporation, in the strict sense, of a given role around which he improvises in a state of trance, i.e. an altered state of consciousness (Bourguignon 1974), a state which, in spite of its spectacular aspects, is socially, although unconsciously, constructed. For the time of the possession, the subject is no longer himself, for the attendees he is the...
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de Sardan, J.P.O. (2021). Possession Cults. In: Mudimbe, V.Y., Kavwahirehi, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2068-5_96
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