Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism

I. M. Lewis's Ecstatic Religion is probably the most important place to begin study of the fields of spirit possession and shamanism. This book has deeply influenced the study of these fields of research since it was first published in 1971. Like most anthropologists, Lewis seeks to determine the social etiology and meaning of possession as well as its culturally determined psychological dimensions. He seriously examines trance, ecstasy, hypnosis, and shamanism, ultimately concluding that the latter shares an important process with possession-a reciprocity between gods and humans. He develops two contrasting psychosocial loci of possession which he labels "central" and "peripheral." Central possession, highly valued by some, supports prevailing political, moral, and religious beliefs, and views spirits as sympathetic to these. Peripheral possession indicates an invasion of evil spirits, undesirable, immoral, and dangerous. Lewis's work, while much cited and admired, has also been the target of extensive criticism. Perhaps primary among these criticisms is that his distinction between centrality and peripherality becomes highly ambiguous upon close contextual analysis. A second criticism is that many possession states do not share with shamanism the essential feature of reciprocity. A third criticism is that although Lewis is largely free from Western cultural biases, his characteristic terms "ecstasy" and "ecstatic" are drawn from Western theological discourse and cannot be applied unhesitatingly to many possession accounts. Lewis describes ecstasy as "those transports of mystical exaltation in which man's whole being seems to fuse in a glorious communion with the divinity" (15). This is similar to only a fraction of possession states observed in throughout the world. A fourth critique, and perhaps the sharpest one, is his association of possession with marginalized people, his assumption that possession provides the powerless with a means to symbolically express social, economic, or political oppression. While many of the contexts of possession worldwide seem to confirm this, the preponderance of the evidence in many countries bears this out in only the most superficial manner, possesssion, trance channeling, etc., have become increasingly middle-class phenomena. Nevertheless, this a very important and valuable book.