Crisis as deferred closure – clairvoyant counselling in contemporary Danish society

Abstract

Clairvoyance, spiritualism and healing are popular ways of seeking guidance and personal development in contemporary Danish society. Although few Danes are self-declared spiritualists, many believe in the existence of ghosts and the ability of clairvoyants to communicate with the departed, and the market of alternative therapies offers a number of mediumistic activities. In anthropological writings, such activities are often associated with crisis and the re-establishment of order. The concept of crisis refers to a time of great difficulty or danger or when an important decision must be made. Looking at the people who seek guidance from the spiritual world, however, both the implication of a limited time span, the idea of great difficulty, and the indication of decision-making may be challenged. In some cases, spirit consultations initiate processes of new definitions and classifications of problems, but in others they just seem to confirm old problems in an ongoing effort to cope with the difficulties of everyday situations. The aim of this paper is to explore the diversity of outcomes from clairvoyance and spiritualist consultations. Focusing on the particularity of specific cases, the author wants to demonstrate the analytical implications of seeing these activities through the lens of crisis. Instead of pushing the framework of crisis, meaning and order, the author suggests a rethinking of spiritual healing as an integrated rather than extraordinary way of dealing with the challenges of everyday life, and of crisis as a context for the deferred closure of insecurity.

Keywords:

• crisis
• clairvoyance
• spirits
• energies
• spiritual healing

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Danish Research Council for Culture and Communication for a generous grant (09-061961) supporting the project ‘On the limits of reason’, of which this study is a part. Warm thanks also to the clairvoyants and their clients who willingly participated in the research, and to the editors and the reviewers for their very useful comments and suggestions to this paper. According to the Danish Research Council, this research project did not require any formal ethical approvals, since it did not involve any patients. The author subscribes to the ethical guidelines of the ASA (http://www.theasa.org/ethics/guidelines.shtml).

Conflict of interest: none.

Notes

1. Thanks to the many students in courses on ‘the anthropology of magic’ who helped collect data on spiritual activities in Danish society.

2. A Gallup poll conducted in March 2008 for the daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende showed that one out of three adult Danes – more women than men – believe in the existence of ghosts and the capacity of clairvoyants to communicate with the departed.

3. In this paper, the concept of magic is used as an umbrella term for various kinds of practical and ritual interventions that are put to work with reference to spiritual and occult forces.

4. Studies of spiritualism and clairvoyance in modern societies unanimously demonstrate a preponderance of women in these and related activities, such as alternative therapies, holism and New Age (Anderson 2005; Heelas & Woodhead 2005; Meintel 2007; Skultans 1974, 2007). This is also the case in Denmark.

5. http://oaadonline.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/crisis. Accessed 16 December 2011.

6. The Mongolian word süld is translated by Petersen and Højer into ‘life force’: a vital substance that may be lost and if not restored in the victim can result in his or her death (Petersen and Højer 2008, 87).