Cults of Affliction
The shamanistic career, as Siikalahas shown, has, characteristically, a tripartite structure, comprising three main phases or episodes. In the first phase, the subject suffers illness or misfortune which is diagnosed as possession by a spiritual power.
In the course of treatment by a shaman, the patient is typically induced to behave in a trance-like fashion such that the possessing agency speaks ‘in tongues’, announcing its reasons for plaguing its victim. In the ensuing dialogue between the shaman and spirit, a bargain is struck, according to which, in return for stated gifts and regular acts of devotion, the spirit consents to allow the patient to recover. This initiation rite removes the immediate affliction at the price of the patient’s entry into the ecstatic cult group led by the shaman. The ‘cure’ is in effect to become a chronic patient. So what began as an involuntary, uncontrolled and unsolicited affliction achieves its apotheosis in regular religious devotion as a cult member where possession is voluntarily solicited (although it may also come at times unbidden). This is the second, longer phase. Here, it is important to note, that once the devotee has learnt the technique of ecstasy, the simplest and lightest of stimuli will regularly succeed in producing trance. So, for example, whenever a cult member hears her spirit-tune being sung or played she is likely to go into trance with the greatest of ease. As M.J. Field points out, in shamanistic cultures, people are conditioned to go into trance at the appropriate time and place much as those in Western Europe are conditioned to fall asleep in a comfortable bed in a dark, quiet room.With increasing mastery of the spirits, the ex-patient enters the final phase, that of becoming a shaman with the power to cure and control spirit-caused afflictions. This pattern recalls T.S.
Eliot’s image of the ‘Wounded Surgeon’ and is remarkably similar to the initiatory ‘training analysis’ ritual (i.e. simulated illness and cure) by means of which psychoanalysts are recruited and trained. We must not conclude, however, that shamanism is merely an inferior, rustic form of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy. There are significant parallels in both directions. But we must remember, as Shirokogoroff long ago noted, that if the shaman’s therapy only works in the treatment of the psychological aspects of his patients’ complaints, his practice is not limited only to psychogenic or psychological illnesses. The range of disorders which he is asked to treat is far wider than that normally encountered in psychiatric practice in Europe or America.If, consequently, the shaman’s role transcends that of the primitive psychiatrist, what of his own mental state? Here the received tradition that shamans are generally mentally unstable, even acute schizophrenics, or at best ‘half-healed madmen’, requires drastic revision. As Shirokogoroff himself observed amongst the Tungus, ‘The shaman may begin his life career with a psychosis, but he cannot carry on his functions if he cannot master himself.’ The truth thus is, as we should expect from the range of disorders present in those diagnosed as possessed, that like priests and psychiatrists, the personalities of shamans reveal an equal diversity of types. Indeed, as the uniquely qualified anthropologist and psychiatrist, M.J. Field, has observed of African spirit mediums, effective shamans require strong, stable personalities. Hence the shaman’s calling is not ‘the resort of inadequate maladjusted neurotics and hysterics’. To see these facts in their proper perspective, we should again recall that in shamanistic cultures the initial onset of divine election is highly stereotyped.
We can conveniently begin displaying the utility of our tripartite model of affliction, cure and control by reference to Tarantism as it exists today in the remote and poorer parts of southern Italy.
Here, as de Martino shows, entry into the cult is achieved by experiencing an illness or affliction for which the tarantula spider is held responsible. The ‘tarantula’ has in fact become a composite figure intimately associated with the Apostle Paul. The standard treatment in Salento involves the performance of rituals, with a musical accompaniment (in which the Tarantella is played) at the local chapel, dedicated to the Saint. In these, the Saint is greeted with the extraordinary invocation: ‘My St Paul of the Tarantists who pricks the girls in their vaginas; My St Paul of the Serpents who pricks the boys in their testicles.’ A typical case-history of a tarantist involves a lovelorn eighteen-year-old orphan girl. This poor creature was prevented from marrying her lover by her poverty, and was ‘bitten’ at the height of her despair by the deadly tarantula and so forced to join the ranks of the tarantati. Later, when she was forcibly abducted by another man, St Paul suddenly appeared before her, commanding her to leave her betrayer and follow him. In the end, a compromise was achieved. The poor girl reluctantly accepted her mortal union as long as she could continue her spiritual adventures with regular participation in the tarantist rites.Elsewhere, typically, those so recruited into such shamanistic cults are offered the opportunity of eventually becoming shamans themselves. So, in Haitian Voodoo, in the West African bori cult, in the north-east African zar cult (which has spread from Ethiopia throughout Islamic Africa and along the Persian Gulf coast to Iran), and in countless other similar movements, chronic patients graduate to becoming doctors. Where they exist as underground heretical sects, or Dionysian mystery religions, only tolerated by the male establishment because they masquerade as therapy, such ecstatic cults appeal particularly to women, and the most committed enthusiasts and those most likely to become shamanistic cult leaders tend to have persistent difficulties with men and problems in sustaining the ideal female role.
They consequently appeal especially to infertile women, those with gynaeocological disorders, and those who find the burden of male chauvinistic ascendency particularly galling and hard to bear. This gives these marginal shamanistic cults an aura of female militancy and a claim to be regarded as the authentic founders of Women’s Liberation. Married women, with generally successful family lives who are less committed adherents, may, nevertheless, occasionally succumb to possession afflictions, requiring costly treatment in the cult. This is particularly likely to happen at times of domestic crisis. So, for example, a husband’s opening moves to contract a second marriage in a polygynous society constitute a typical provocation. The treatment in such circumstances can be so costly that the husband is no longer in a position to proceed with his marital negotiations. Wives, consequently, are always potentially vulnerable, and the treatment demanded by their familiars—costly clothes, jewellery, perfumes and other luxuries—can represent a considerable drain on the family budget. Other women, following the manner of Marie of the Incarnation, dedicate themselves to ecstasy when they are widowed, or have completed their child-bearing role and seek relief from menopausal depression and a new career outside the family. The fact that such incomplete women are regarded by the opposite sex as half-men serves to underline the aggressive, masculine tone of these cults and their Liberationist flavour. These sex-war aspects are further highlighted by the frequent hatred which the spirits involved are said to display towards men, and by the flauntingly aggressive sexuality which some leading women shamans display. Moreover, while possessed, many of the women concerned behave like men, and seize weapons and other accoutrements which symbolise masculinity in their rituals. Their rituals and songs may indeed be a complete parody of those of the world of male-dominated establishment religion. Of course, there is conflict between women in relation to men as Wilson maintains; but this occurs in a wider setting of more generalised sexual conflict in which women manifestly chafe at their subordinate position.