Du Dedans au Dehors: Transformation de la Possession-Maladie en Possession Rituelle

Abstract

The conjunction of possession and sacrifice in the same therapeutic ritual evidences a paradox in that the spirit or divinity to whom the sacrifice is made is being embodied by the sacrificer whose aim it is to expel this spirit from the patient's body. The ritual process by which the Wolof of Senegal solve this paradox is described and analyzed. In the ritual, the internal and inclusive relationship with an anonymous rub (a body-within-a-body) is transformed into an external and exclusive relationship with a named rub (a body-tea-body). The conversion of the possession-as-illness into a ritual possession entails both a spatial and temporal inversion of the bodily symptom-symbol. The diffusely and continuously acting agency from the inside is and must become an external agency of circumscribed and recurrent action. The patient's temporary decoration with internal parts of the immolated animal (such as a cap made of the paunch or peritoneum, a necklace or tulband of intestines. or anointing with blood)-typical of the initiatory sacrifices in many ‘possession-cults’-acts as the symbolic operator of this inversion, i.e., of the amoeboid eversion of the body of the possessed. The analysis of some comparative data suggests that the metonymic assimilation between the possessed and the sacrificed is only a ritual artifact linked to the above-mentioned paradox. The cultic possession, which necessarily entails the reproduction of the ritual trance, is a specific form of the sacrificial mode of thinking and practice. The time and periodicity of the trance and of the sacrifice are comparable. Possession can be analyzed as a metonymic figuration of the sacrifice in that it re-inserts the bodily experience within the sacrificial communication. Possession gives bodily form to the symbolic efficacy and is, therefore, frequently associated with therapy.