The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism an

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticis

Postby admin » Sun May 26, 2019 11:52 pm

18. Experiences in Jamaica and Barbados

Jamaica


The first of my two visits to Jamaica in 1964 proved the more profitable. What I saw was not as exciting as in Trinidad or Brazil, but it was interesting and informative. Jamaica has its own peculiar mixture of African and Christian religious practices, called Pocomania. Intensive drumming is not used, though a large drum is sometimes employed to mark the beat for singing. The service consists almost entirely of the repeated singing of hymns of a Moody and Sankey type, interspersed with short periods of preaching, prayers and readings from the gospels. There is also a great deal of ‘tramping’, which means rhythmic over-breathing and the making of peculiar breathing sounds for the purpose of ‘bringing down the Holy Ghost’, which also makes the worshippers highly suggestible to what is told them by the preacher.

The slums of Kingston, Jamaica, where these services are held, are as bad as any I have seen anywhere, and can be dangerous, especially after dark. The service we attended was run by a black preacher named Karpo. He is also a talented painter and I believe that since our visit his fame as a painter has outstripped his celebrity as a Pocomania ‘shepherd’ or leader. He told me that he himself had been converted at the age of fifteen; he was now in his thirties. He had been preaching and healing people ever since he was sixteen. During the service he went round laying his hands on those who needed help. He said that he was able to help the mentally ill and to treat some organic diseases as well and he believed that this was due to the faith created by his preaching and by the services. His congregation looked upon him as the instrument of God, who healed the sick through him.

There cannot be the slightest doubt that among these poverty-stricken people religious services of this sort are of real help, in giving them a sense of dignity and faith in living, despite the appalling circumstances of their lives. We saw the same effects in Africa, where the same techniques are used to smoothe away resentments and tensions. I am sure that as the Black Power movement becomes stronger, this type of service will be bitterly attacked, so great is its power to keep people contented with their lot when they possess little or nothing: and indeed they cheerfully praise God for what little they have.

As usual in such services, the preacher dominated the scene. Half-way through he stopped, took us behind the scenes to his room and had a long talk with us, paying little attention to the congregation, which waited patiently for him to resume the service. When he did continue, I was able to sound-record the ‘tromping’. It was very similar to what we had heard among the nomadic Sainburu tribe in Kenya, who used this same method of inducing trance before battle. The tromping went on practically the whole time that the preacher was talking; this would have the effect of producing a state of greatly increased suggestibility and readiness to accept what he said. There was also rhythmic hand-clapping to the beat of the big drum, while they were singing.

We arranged for a second visit in the same week, to film part of the service, but when we arrived we found the BBC and Alan Whicker there too, for the same purpose. He seemed rather bewildered at what was going on around him at this service. The BBC camera team became very angry with us because, they said, our efforts would impede their own. We tried our best to explain to them that we had arranged to film there before they came along, and that they had been told to come in on the same night to ‘kill two birds with one stone’. However, their lighting was very useful to us. This was before Alan Whicker left the BBC for ITV and later, at home, we saw an interesting BBC television programme on Pocomania, which contained some of the information I had been able to give him.

When the hymns were being sung, because so many of the congregation were illiterate, the preacher had to give the next line of the hymn as the previous line was being sung. This gave a peculiar chanting effect, with the congregation repeating everything the parson said. Some shouted ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Amen’ after every sentence uttered by the parson in his sermon; there is an agreed body of opinion and no intellectual opposition to any point of view expressed by the preacher. In group worship of this sort, anyone who disagrees with the preacher must leave the church and start his own services elsewhere, or attend some other chapel. There is no room for critical religious discussion or expression of doubt, which would spoil the powerful atmosphere of uncritical faith and mar the happiness and peace of mind of the other worshippers.

At this service there was a notable absence of younger people. While men and women were going into trance and being possessed by the Holy Ghost, the preacher himself started to go into trance, to a lesser extent, no doubt brought on by the repetitive singing and preaching. He identified himself with the congregation in trance and possession, which indicated his personal contact with God. The Holy Ghost would then descend on preacher and congregation alike. At the end of the service, because we had been attacked in the same district earlier in the day, as will be described later, he sent us home in his car as the safest way of getting out of the very tough slum district at night.

There is Indian influence in Pocomania, as well as African, and deities of both continents are mixed up with Christian saints. There is an ‘Indian’ spirit, another called ‘Queen Dove’, another ‘Bell-Ringer’ spirit, and there is the ‘River Maid’. According to the spirit present, so the form of ‘tromping’ changes. A certain East Indian spirit came into Pocomania around 1840, and when one has been possessed by this spirit one grows long hair. In Pocomania they also talk about ‘labouring and travelling through the spirit world’.

Sometimes one person in the congregation is delegated to talk with possessing spirits or the Holy Ghost, and then tell the rest of the congregation the content of the conversation. The pastor is known as the Shepherd and the female flock are called ‘sisters’ or ‘mothers’. There is much less identification with African gods, but Indian spirits are identified with Christian saints and the Holy Ghost. Fasting is also frequently used to make people more sensitive to the messages given them by the spirits and the preacher. The fasting usually lasts for about three days, and services go on continually during that time.

On the day of our first visit to a Pocomania service in 1964, we had seen another religious procession going down the street near by, earlier in the day. Foolishly, and it was the only time I did this, I started to film the procession without getting formal permission from the leader. It turned out that they had been out all night, fasting and praying in the country, and were now coming back to their small chapel to complete the service. Some were already entranced, and most of them were in an hysterical and highly excitable condition. Suddenly we were attacked; attempts were made to snatch my camera, and my wife was hit and spat upon. They deeply resented, quite rightly perhaps, that I was endeavouring to film them without their permission. We were rescued by one of the faithful who turned out to be a policeman. He told the rest of the group to leave us alone and that we had as much right to be there as they had. We then asked if we could come to the church with them, and again the policeman suggested to the others that we be allowed to do so since there was ‘freedom of worship’. We went along with them, but the atmosphere was still very tense and difficult. When we were in the church, I got up and made a speech explaining that I was a doctor interested in these services, and felt that perhaps they had more to teach us than we had to teach them. I also explained that I had a brother who was a Bishop of the Church of South India. This pacified them as part of the congregation were of Indian origin. Because of the degree of suggestibility and excitement present, quite an ordinary speech on my part was able to switch them completely round to full cooperation, and we were given permission to film and photograph as much as we liked.

Later in the service the policeman gave his own testimony of how he himself once came in to a service, in an official capacity, but suddenly felt the hand of God upon him and from then on had become a believer and a worshipper with them. The preacher and the congregation were all wearing Indian-style clothing, with turbans on their heads. After a while the preacher went off into complete trance and possession; his body was shaking so much and his head moving so quickly that his turban unwound itself and finally fell off. As he went into possession, numerous members of the congregation went in with him and we saw extreme examples of possession-states of the same type as described elsewhere. This was no doubt aided by the long fasting beforehand. Before the end of the service a marriage took place between two of the worshippers, and individual testimonies of conversion were given by several people. Certainly in this service the Indian influence was most marked and there seemed to be little of the African influence which was so prominent in the Trinidad ceremonies we saw.

While in Jamaica we also attended a less excited service at which there were many young people. Two children aged about ten or twelve went into trance, and I saw this again in Nigeria among a Christian sect called the ‘Cherubim and Seraphim’ (Chapter 15). There was the usual singing and hand-clapping in this service and an intense personal commitment of the congregation, as one by one they rose and gave testimony of their conversion and what it meant to them in their subsequent religious lives. I remarked again how much more religion meant to these people, both personally and emotionally, than it does to most Christians elsewhere.

Barbados

In 1967, following a second hurried visit to Jamaica, we spent a week at Barbados attending a Caribbean Psychiatric Congress. I was assured there would be nothing of special interest to me there in the way of the subject I was most interested in. But my informant proved far from right.

Going through the graveyard of one of the older churches I found a funeral procession just starting. A Spiritual-Baptist preacher was burying his mother. It was a sight to be seen. The ‘mourners’ were dancing and jumping with joy around the grave as the coffin was lowered into it, because they were all so certain that the deceased was now very happy in Heaven. Such absolute faith and joy in the face of death was a revelation to me and contrasted severely with the sombre attitudes of most Christians at a funeral service.

I established contact with the preacher concerned at his church the following Sunday. It turned out that he had been trained in the Belmont region of Trinidad and knew Leader John and his group. This church also practised ‘mourning’ and ‘travelling’, as Leader John’s group did. Of all our experiences in the West Indies, this was one of the most instructive and impressive. There was no drumming, but the loud ringing of a bell ‘brought down’ the Holy Ghost into the hearts and bodies of the people. The preacher and most of the congregation were in trance, the preacher dancing with individual members of the congregation. Then a succession of people gave evidence of what a change had been wrought in their lives since being saved, after the Holy Ghost had possessed them.

A man with a symbolic sword stood in the doorway, possibly as a defence against the entry of Elegba, the troublesome spirit, and many of the other rituals here showed that the service had partly African origins.

After I had spent some time filming and taking photographs, I joined in the service, as a mark of respect to those present. And here I was nearly ‘caught’ myself by the surrounding atmosphere. I was struck by their deep fervour and certitude of a heaven hereafter which would free them from their poverty, their tiny slum houses and hovels, their lack of the material blessings enjoyed by their white brothers. Nevertheless, they were beautifully turned out and spotlessly clean, dignified, kindly and humble people, who deserved to enter the Kingdom of Heaven if anybody did. Their religion taught them to help each other and to get rid of all unkindness in their personal relations. This to me was a true religion. The strength of their faith was so obvious that I felt that had they been told to go into the arena and be eaten by lions, they would have done so, trusting in God’s help as the Christians did of old.

I soon realized that I was ‘co-operating’ in the service too much! I had not come to be saved, but to examine the techniques of possession and the creation of faith. So when I returned to a second service I carefully stuck to my camera and recording apparatus, for if you actively take part in, and lend yourself to, these faith-creating techniques, you can easily be influenced and you may come to believe with a firm faith in what may be great truths or utter falsehood.
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Re: The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticis

Postby admin » Mon May 27, 2019 12:04 am

19. Voodoo in Haiti

Voodoo in Haiti has gained itself a very sinister reputation, though it is doubtful whether the ordinary practices of Voodoo are much different from other Afro-Christian religious practices and beliefs in many of the West Indian islands. However, Voodoo does dominate the life of the poorer classes in Haiti to a much greater extent than elsewhere. There are several reasons for this, one of the most important being that the poverty in this island is so great, the suffering and despair so profound, that some form of religion had to develop which would give ordinary people hope of a better life hereafter and courage to go on living under such miserable conditions. It looks as if Voodoo fulfils this aim better than most other religions. It may be that there are sinister aspects of Voodoo about which little is known and which some books tend to dramatize. But on the surface, at least, and while watching its public ceremonies and talking to some of the people concerned, I never gained the impression that this religion was predominantly sinister and evil, but, on the contrary, that it gave to many of its participants increased dignity, relief from fear and something to live for which was otherwise unattainable in the ordinary circumstances of their lives. So great is its power over the minds of its worshippers, because of the techniques used, that it can of course be put to evil use by some of its leaders. But this is true of other religions too.

I paid two visits to Haiti with my wife in 1964 and 1965 and we were able to see a number of Voodoo ceremonies. As usual, my main interest lay in the phenomena of possession and trance, which are common in Voodoo and form an important part of it. Our first introduction to Voodoo was not the most propitious. We went to see Katherine Dunham’s spectacular Voodoo show, especially put on for tourists, which gives a vastly glamorized picture and takes Voodoo right out of its proper village setting. At the end, however, after the usual dancing and drumming, the participants went into a ‘sacred’ pool which had stones in the water. Here some very definite states of trance and possession occurred and their intensity made me feel that it was impossible that they were not genuine. As with hypnosis, once a person is accustomed to trance, attaining it becomes increasingly easy and a state of possession and trance can be reached with a less and less intense stimulus, and sometimes at will. In a show like this, it would have been most unwise to let the participants go into trance and possession at the end. This is what seemed actually to happen. Further examination, the filming and photographing of these phenomena, and a very close inspection of the people concerned — which I was able to make in later visits — showed that they sometimes took half an hour to come fully out of their states of possession after the final pool ceremony was over.

On both our visits to Haiti we stayed at the Hotel Olfson, which was known as the ‘Ginger-bread Palace’. It had originally been an old Presidential Residence, and was the setting for Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians. At the time we went there it was extremely difficult to obtain the visas to enter Haiti. Difficulties had arisen between President Duvalier and the British Government and I only managed to get a visa at the special request of the Minister of Health for Haiti and through the good offices of Dr Douyon, Chief Psychiatrist in Haiti, who was also the nephew of the Chief Justice of that island.

Most people at that time were afraid to visit Haiti for fear of unpleasant consequences. But I could not have been more kindly treated and was given all the facilities and information I needed. At the hotel I fortunately met a Mr Isa. He had important contacts with Voodoo and, after the preliminary visit to Katherine Dunham’s show, he was able to introduce us to several genuine Voodoo groups, both in the slums and from two to ten miles outside the capital, Port au Prince. I had no doubt that, as there were so few visitors to Haiti at that time, most of the Voodoo phenomena we saw were genuine and not arranged for tourists. We also had the help of Miss Lavinia Williams, a coloured American of great intelligence who teaches dancing in Haiti, and who was herself very interested in the practices and beliefs of Voodoo. On at least one occasion she went, inadvertently, into full possession when dancing at one of the ceremonies we attended — a most unwise thing to do unless one desires to get caught up in the religion, with all it entails.

It is not my intention to discuss the full details of the Voodoo religion and its ceremonies. These have been well described in several books, particularly in Maya Deren’s The Divine Horsemen.1 Maya Deren was an American who went to Haiti to study and film Voodoo practices; she became possessed herself on several occasions and was able to give a detailed account of the religion from a sympathetic and unsensational angle.

The first proper Voodoo ceremony Mr Isa introduced us to was a very impressive one. We first saw the gods and goddesses being called down with all the complicated ritual involved, and then we saw various participants becoming possessed by the gods and goddesses, or loa, and behaving as they would behave. In Voodoo you are described as being ‘mounted’ by the loa because your foot may suddenly stick to the ground; you then jerk forward on the other foot and this, too, sticks to the ground, while the loa mounts. Gradually you take on the characteristic behaviour of the loa who has taken possession of you. You may talk, eat and drink as a loa, for the loa is a departed spirit who once lived on earth and has been deified. The loa approximate to our Christian saints in Heaven and have human attributes as well as divine ones.

Those possessed have no memory of the possession period, and it is believed in Voodoo that the loa cannot temporarily possess you while your own soul remains in your body. When the loa enters or ‘mounts’, the worshipper’s own soul is temporarily expelled.
It was also interesting to find that, as in Macumba in Brazil, the people who watch a person becoming possessed must not reveal to that person how he behaved, although they may tell him which particular loa entered him. Sometimes possessions last for several hours: the possessed person behaves quite rationally but in the way the loa would behave. The loa may ask for food and drink: he or she may talk to other worshippers or to the kungan, or priest. The function of the kungan is to intervene between the loa and the possessed person, if necessary. If the loa is apparently behaving too badly or roughly, and making too many demands, the priest may request him to leave the body or to modify his behaviour. In some of the ceremonies we saw a priestess, or mambo, also becoming possessed temporarily by one of the loa.

Many of the Haitian loa come from Africa, and the African gods are mostly benevolent deities who will help people if suitably placated. You may also seek their guidance and aid through dreams and through mediumship of adepts. It was when the African slaves in Haiti went up into the mountains to escape from their French masters, and there met and lived with the Indian natives while keeping out of the way of the French, that Voodoo gathered to itself loa who are much more evil, aggressive and angry than the African gods. In Voodoo there are therefore occasional violent possessions by such loa as Ghede (a devil), Dumballah (the snake god), and the various Petro loa, such as Baron Samedi, Legba-Petro, Erszuli Ge-Rogue.

Not all those possessed at the service went on to collapse, though many did, but at the end of their possession, as they came out of it, most of them seemed completely but temporarily exhausted, mentally and physically, as a result of emotional and abreactive release. With such a variety of possessing loa, all sorts of behaviour may be exhibited, which are accepted as coming from the loa and not from the people possessed. The leader does his best to restrain their behaviour, but sometimes the loa get out of control. The spectators do not feel that the possessed are responsible for their actions during possession; they try to help them from falling or hurting themselves, or doing anything dangerous to other members of the group when anger or aggression is being exhibited by the loa.

When the priest himself went into a state of possession, he was looked after by his assistants and standard-bearers, in which case he would be led off into his own small room to rest, and would return a few minutes later to continue the ceremony. When the service was over most of the participants came round fairly quickly, and were soon their normal selves again. It was surprising to see how speedily normal behaviour could return, except for signs of obvious fatigue and a relaxation of tension. These were very normal men and women taking part, not mad or neurotic people. Many of them were most intrigued when I played back to them on the tape-recorder the drumming, and the recordings of the voices of the loa talking through the mouths of the possessed.

The second genuine ceremony we saw was the most exciting of them all. It had been possible to film and photograph the first service because of the presence of a crude electricity supply, which gave just sufficient current to provide lighting. But at the second service, being farther out from Port au Prince, no light was available. We had asked for the ceremony to start early in the day, with the hope of filming it, but the mambo took so long with the preliminary preparations, such as drawing on the floor the symbol of the particular loa she wished to call down, that by the time the dancing and possession began, there was no light left for filming.

The dancing and drumming went on hour after hour and every sort of loa appeared at one time or another. We saw the Dumballah, the snake god, and the person possessed by him behaved like a snake. At a later service at the same place we saw somebody possessed by Dumballah climbing into the rafters of the roof as a snake might do. Some of the possessed women displayed an abounding sexuality. We saw, among others, Erszuli, goddess of love, Baron Samedi, keeper of the graveyard, and Agwe, goddess of the sea. Ogoun also appeared and Ghede, also god of the phallus. When Ghede descends and takes possession, he often exhibits very erotic behaviour as a challenge to the respectability of some of the visitors.

What was perfectly clear from these exciting few hours was that the various possession states provide an outlet for every type of normal and abnormal behaviour among people whose lives are one long struggle against poverty and despair. We saw them becoming gods, behaving like gods, and for a while forgetting all their troubles. After the ceremony was over they were quite convinced that for a time, despite their humility and poverty on earth, they had been one with the gods themselves. Life had regained purpose and dignity for them.


The next ceremony we witnessed was specially arranged for us by the Katherine Dunham group. When we had seen the first public show, I had noted that genuine possessions seemed to take place when the participants went into the sacred pool at the end. We asked for a special repetition of this as I wished to film and tape-record the performers’ reactions. It seemed that the drummers and priests could really induce possession at will. As we hoped, some obviously genuine possessions took place among both men and women. The priest also went into a short trance. Then there was a pause and they threatened to stop the ceremony unless more money was forthcoming. They only reluctantly restored the drumming when we complained that we had hardly started the filming and photography.

After this, the leader suddenly became possessed, apparently by a Ghede loa. It was a very fierce possession and he came towards us in a very menacing manner. That he was actually in possession is fairly obvious from the photograph my wife took of him as he came towards her, and while she was falling off a wall as she backed away. My own camera unfortunately went wrong in all the excitement. We were not, however, physically attacked. Apart from the few dramatic photographs we took, the ceremony was not very exciting and ended, as in Trinidad on one occasion, with an argument over money.


I had little doubt that when possession did occur, at both the Dunham shows, they were genuine. They can be facilitated by constant repetition, and it becomes increasingly easy for worshippers to let themselves go into states of possession. Possession may, however, be very agonizing mentally for the first few times when it occurs in a hitherto intact nervous system.

The following year another opportunity arose for us to return to Haiti in 1965 and we stayed at the same hotel. This time I was somewhat more frightened than on my last visit, and we were glad to see Mr Isa waiting for us when we arrived. It turned out that he had been in one of Duvalier’s prisons for several weeks, suspected of spying. He had finally been released but was obviously very shaken indeed by his experiences at the hands of the secret police. The Minister of Health was extremely helpful and I was even able to arrange an interview with President Duvalier’s secretary at his mansion while the President himself, who was next door, was deciding whether or not he could see me. I had asked him to see me as a fellow doctor and not as a politician. However, he refused.

As soon as I got back to Haiti I set about trying to arrange a further photographic session with Katherine Dunham’s dancers, without being stopped in the middle by further bargaining for money. The matter was finally suitably arranged through Mr Isa. The drumming was tremendous, which facilitated the inducement of possessions in the sacred pool. We expressed the hope that the priest would again become possessed by the Ghede god and, perhaps to oblige us and frighten us again, he did. The photographs and film taken of this possession were most exciting. He did not come round in his hut afterwards for nearly half an hour, and we were able to watch his gradual recovery.

What helped me to know when possessions were genuine or false was my experience during the war in treating fatique states and hysterical losses of memory in patients, and studying all the hysterical dissociative phenomena occurring in hitherto normal people after being bombed or after long periods of active fighting. During the war, as we have seen, the human nervous system might be bombarded by stimuli of sufficient intensity to produce exactly the same conditions of mental dissociation and trance as are deliberately produced in other parts of the world by drumming, dancing and other excitatory techniques.

Conversely, in Voodoo and other states of possession, one again sees very good examples of Pavlovian paradoxical and ultraparadoxical behaviour. Any strong pressure on the possessed person to do something produces immediate resistance and a tendency to do just the opposite. But he can sometimes be persuaded by whispering very quietly in his ear, by blowing gently on his face or by using any small stimulus. In other words, a small stimulus may be effective, where a larger stimulus produces a lesser response, or even the opposite response to that desired. This is because the greater stimulus increases states of inhibition in an already overacting nervous system.

We paid a second visit to the group run by the mambo, where there had been no light available for filming. This time the ceremony took place earlier in the day, and again Ghede was particularly active sexually. Two girls both became possessed by Ghede loa and proceeded to have a lesbian encounter with each other. They half stripped each other and one girl symbolically raped the other with a masculine type of pelvic approximation. It ended in the total emotional collapse of both participants. Those of the group looking on were obviously amused by the whole episode. The two girls involved, who were normally quiet and restrained, had no memory of what they had been doing and probably would never be told. The only people who were angry were the boyfriends of the two girls concerned. But they could do nothing about it as these were the gods at work, and the souls of the girls were not in them at the time, being replaced by Ghede himself. As Lewis has stressed about Voodoo, ‘Abreaction is the order of the day. Repressed urges and desires, the idiosyncratic as well as the socially conditioned, are given full public rein. No holds are barred. No interests or demands are too unseemly in this setting not to receive sympathetic attention. Each dancer ideally achieves a state of ecstasy, and in stereotyped fashion collapses in a trance from which he emerges purged and refreshed.’2

The last ceremony we visited was in the slum area of Port au Prince. On the way to it we saw a typical ‘wake’ for a dead person. Most of the people in the house and those outside were drunk. They were shouting, cheering, laughing, singing and, so to speak, getting the dead man and his soul out of their systems. It reminded me very much of what I had seen in the bush in Zambia when we arrived at a village during a burial service. After a suitable period of mourning and crying around the hut, a vigorous dance was staged in the evening to expel dangerous spirits and break up the prevailing gloom. Death had happened, mourning must take place, but life must then go on. Here again I saw one of the best ways of dealing with some overwhelming and inhibiting mental disaster: a period of deliberately induced excitement, using dancing and alcohol in this case, to break up the previous inhibitory pattern of depression produced by death and mourning.

This last Voodoo ceremony in the slums of Port au Prince was another exciting experience. There was nothing fake or phoney about it and the possessions were numerous and intense. Agwe, goddess of the sea, appeared, and the man possessed by her was miming the rowing of a boat. Erszuli, goddess of love, appeared, behaving most erotically, pulling up her dress and making other sexual gestures. Ghede also came down to show his usual sexual activity. Possession states went on for a long time and here, perhaps more than anywhere else, all participants seemed to end up in a temporary state of profound stupor and inhibition. At all these ceremonies, the beating of the drums controlled the behaviour of all those possessed. The drummers would watch the dancers keenly and when the latter showed signs of becoming possessed they beat their drums in such a way as to increase the depth of possession, so that the dancers fell more and more under the domination of the loa.

It was to this last ceremony that Lavinia Williams came with us and, at my suggestion, started to dance. She had done so at a previous ceremony with no severe sequelae. But this time, very quickly, she went into full possession by one of the loa, ending with an entranced collapse on the floor, which I filmed. She came out of possession fairly soon after her collapse and did not seem unduly upset by the experience. However, I did not feel it was the first time this had happened to her.

Male loa can possess females and female loa males, and most people ‘inherit’ a particular loa from previous generations of the family. Just as we talk about inheriting certain behaviour patterns from our parents, so in Voodoo it is thought that certain loa possess certain families and influence their behaviour; and these family loa may dominate people’s lives. In Voodoo it is also possible to be possessed by different loa at the same time. Like their equivalents in other parts of the West Indies, these loa are identified with Christian saints and may be used for help in people’s daily lives. Voodoo worshippers see nothing wrong in going to a Voodoo ceremony and then on to a Catholic Mass. Like the Christian saints, the loa lived on earth before going into the spirit world, and so they are mindful of the needs of human beings: even as loa, they still retain some human characteristics, needs and desires.

Maya Deren’s description of her own Voodoo possession must be quoted here, because few people have described so well what happens when a person goes into a state of hysterical dissociation and acts the part of somebody else while in trance. Her account shows the effects that drumming, dancing and the working up of a state of frenzied excitement, added to a lively interest in a religious system, can combine to produce, if you allow yourself to be caught up in the physiological and psychological processes which lead to possession by spirits. I myself was constantly on guard against this, keeping my mind occupied with filming, photographing and recording what was happening around me. To leave your mind blank, or to become emotionally worked up, or angry or frightened, is to make yourself highly vulnerable to the experience which Maya Deren had:

For now I know that, today, the drums, the singing, the movements — these may catch me also . . . To run away would be cowardice, I could resist; but I must not escape . . . With a great blow the drum unites us once more upon the point of the left leg. The white darkness starts to shoot up; I wrench my foot free but the effect catapults me across what seems a vast, vast distance . . . So it goes, the leg fixed, then wrenched loose, one long fall across space, the rooting of the leg again . . . My skull is a drum; each great beat drives that leg . . . The white darkness moves up the veins of my leg ... is a great force which I cannot sustain or contain, which surely will burst my skin. It is too much, too bright, too white for me; this is its darkness. ‘Mercy!’ I scream within me. I hear it echoed by the voices, shrill and unearthly: ‘Erszulie’ ... I am sucked down and exploded upward at once. That is all.


Finally, I want to quote part of a tape-recording which I made while watching a Voodoo ceremony at night, when I could not film, and perhaps became somewhat suggestible without, to the best of my knowledge, going into trance:

[quote]It really has been an amazing performance. And this is everything one came to Haiti to see — to see this religion where you really do get in contact and live as your god -- not just vainly hoping that you will. Your god comes to you, possesses you, mounts you, and you become a god yourself. And these very humble people, with very humble lives, are enabled thereby to live lives of comparative happiness because they have found a religion which does bring down their gods to them. And their gods live in them and they live in their gods. For that reason they are very much happier people than many of us who search for God and never find him, and whose conception of God is some intellectual process conceived in some vague manner in which his God is above, miles and miles away. To them their gods are real.

_______________

Notes:

1 M. Deren, The Divine Horsemen, Thames & Hudson, London 1953

2 I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion, Pelican Books, Harmondsworth 1971, p. 195
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Re: The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticis

Postby admin » Mon May 27, 2019 12:14 am

20. Revivals in the United States of America

In 1948 I had the honour of being invited to spend a year as Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina. There we were in what had been called the ‘Bible Belt’ of America, where it is possible to see revival meetings and chapel services which engender tremendous religious enthusiasm and sudden dramatic conversions, such as were seen in England in the time of the Wesleys and the great Victorian evangelists.

Before going to America I had published several accounts of the drug abreactive techniques we had used during the Second World War to help soldiers who had suffered nervous breakdowns in battle and afterwards, and who had become totally preoccupied or ‘possessed’ by their terrifying war experiences, just as people in earlier days felt themselves possessed by evil spirits. In publications with Dr H. J. Shorvon1,2 we had stressed similarities between some of our findings and the results reported by religious revivalists. In both instances people’s emotions were aroused to extreme states of excitement, in one case by preaching and threats of hell fire, in the other by the use of drugs. These emotional states often led to brain inhibition and temporary nervous collapse. In both situations people reported, after collapse, that fear had left their hearts; that they had a sudden feeling of mental peace and a certainty that their sins were forgiven and that by their salvation they would receive their reward in heaven. In the soldiers the result of treatment was that they could remember horrible events of war but without exaggerated emotion, and their fears had left them.

Soon after I arrived at Duke University, I was not altogether surprised to read lurid accounts in a local newspaper of snake-handling services being held at a small chapel in Durham reserved for white people. I was soon inquiring how to get into these snake-handling services, and also how I could attend some of the small active Negro revivalist churches in the neighbourhood. The newspaper reported that live poisonous snakes were being handled by a small group of white worshippers at these chapel meetings — relying on Biblical promises (Mark 16:18, Luke 10:19) that anyone with sufficient faith could safely handle snakes or drink poison without harm. This was being used to test the faith of the congregation in the power of the Holy Ghost and his ability to protect them from harm.

I called on Mr Bunn, the pastor, and had a long talk with him. He invited my wife and me to one of these meetings and we were allowed to bring a cameraman from the Duke Hospital Photographic Department. I was also able to talk to some of the congregation who had been ‘saved’ and whose whole lives thereafter had been changed. It would be very foolish to blind oneself to the amount of personal moral and social reform -- however shaky the religious premises may be -- that revival meetings can produce.

The Zion Tabernacle at Durham was a small hall. The preacher occupied a square space in front of the platform where excited participants could surge towards him as the meeting got under way. Behind him on the platform stood a choir, singing and rhythmically clapping hands. The box containing live poisonous snakes, mostly rattlesnakes and copperheads, stood on the platform. Pastor Bunn and his converts feared to handle these poisonous snakes until certain recognizable signs proved that the Holy Ghost had descended on the meeting and possessed the congregation, so as to protect them from harm. The signs came when some of the people present exhibited what were called ‘exercises of the Spirit’. These were in fact hysterical jerkings and twitchings of the body and limbs, which usually occurred fairly soon after the harmonium and accordion began playing, and it was only after this that it was considered safe to open the box, take out the snakes and hand them round. As soon as the snakes were produced, the group excitement mounted tremendously, and it was obvious that the pastor could control the excitement by slowing down or accelerating the rate of rhythmic hand-clapping. If he wanted to preach he would temporarily reduce the congregation to awed silence.

At one point in the meeting some students present were able to take over control of the excitement by leading the hand-clapping and altering its rate according to the degree of excitement shown. Usually this was done by Pastor Bunn and his choir. As the congregation became excited or possessed by the Holy Ghost, they would flock into the pastor’s small square and there dance in states of semi-trance or complete trance. The official snake-handler would give the snakes to the pastor, who would then distribute them among the faithful who had handled them before. At this point many of the spectators took fright and left the hall as quickly as they could. But others, especially the women, stayed on, fascinated and becoming more and more affected by the group excitement, and the fear that snakes seem particularly to arouse in women. When Mr Bunn perceived that a person was becoming especially ‘vulnerable’ — a term used by revivalist sects and, incidentally, in relation to Voodoo by Maya Deren, to describe a change in facial expression which denotes mounting excitement, fear, and the onset of hypnotic states and near-trance — he would approach the person and offer him a poisonous snake to handle. Many of those affected were already showing signs of paradoxical brain activity, so that the snake would often be readily accepted and handled by someone who in his normal state of mind would never have gone near it. Sometimes the handler would then develop acute hysterical symptoms, rapidly followed by stupor and collapse — an effect deliberately induced and intended by the preacher and called ‘wiping the slate clean for God’; in Africa this phenomenon is sometimes called ‘little death’, meaning the death of the old personality and the subsequent birth of a new person. I was seeing here much the same basic technique as we had employed with our Dunkirk and Normandy patients, except that we used drugs to abreact their terrible experiences and restore a more, normal nervous system, rather than poisonous snakes, hand-clapping and rhythmic dancing.

Anyone at this meeting who was feeling frightened, bewildered, confused, or who collapsed on the floor, was then reassured: it was quietly whispered in his ear (another example of using the paradoxical phases of brain activity) that it was the Holy Ghost who had brought this about and that he must believe in his power. I found that most revivalist preachers agreed on the folly of expecting sudden dramatic conversions to occur before a suitably excited atmosphere had been built up by personal or group emotional reactions. They know that one must wait for these carefully designed occasions — when the Holy Ghost has descended on the meeting -- before making any serious attempt to redeem sinners.

Some of the people who handled snakes for the first time in such a highly charged emotional atmosphere would later join the congregation and indulge in regular snake-handling at later services. None of the people at this meeting died of snake bites, but people have been bitten elsewhere at such meetings, and some die. When this happens it is thought that the person concerned had led a sinful life, or was for some reason being punished by God; the worshippers do not blame the use of poisonous snakes but rather the individual and his past life.

I was also able to obtain a series of close-up photographs of a snake-handling group in Tennessee, and one photograph shows a man sixty seconds before he was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. There was a further photograph of the victim in his coffin several days later at his funeral service, with the worshippers again handling the snake that had bitten and killed him. In this particular group snake-handling services were also used as a means of ‘faith healing’, so that one patient with severe cancer of the jaw is seen in another photograph, hoping to be healed after handling a snake.

Some years later, on a return trip to America, I witnessed another small snake-handling meeting in Tennessee, but by that time legal measures were being more strongly enforced against the use of poisonous snakes in religious meetings. I was only able to get into this meeting by talking, not to the pastor, but to the person who kept the poisonous snakes in his care; and this was my mistake. This man told he how he had been bitten and was on the point of dying some months previously, and how his wife had procured some snake venom, which had saved his life; but what she had done was quite contrary to his religious principles. It should be left to God to decide whether a worshipper will die, and not to man and the intervention of medical science. He also told me how he had made his peace with God about some of his past attitudes; he felt matters were now all right between himself and his Maker. Later on in the service I saw him handling poisonous snakes, one or two of which had bitten other members of the congregation at previous meetings. Not everybody dies as a result of snake-bite, and some eventually develop an immunity, and endure repeated bites without harm. This is another means of reinforcing faith in God’s protective power. But great faith is truly needed to go on handling the same snakes that may have killed fellow worshippers.

Unfortunately, because I had not talked to the pastor first and assured him of my identity and the fact that I had nothing to do with the Press, I was not allowed to take photographs at this exciting meeting. Again I saw a total absence of fear in the participants, once the Holy Ghost had descended upon them with the usual hysterical jerkings and trance-like states. I found myself standing next to somebody who was handling snakes with complete abandon, and they were whipped across my body in a frightening manner. At the meetings of snake-handling I attended I felt that for some reason or other the snakes were not in a biting mood.

We know how Indian snake-handlers, using music, can handle the most poisonous of reptiles, but I became aware that my own personal judgement was at time becoming impaired. At the first meeting in Durham, while in the middle of the milling crowd of hysterical and entranced worshippers, many of them handling snakes, I suddenly had the feeling that I now knew what it felt like to go into battle fearlessly because one was being protected from harm. (This was not long after the end of the war.) This feeling also banished the thought of the possible danger if the snakes fell on the floor and there was a consequent mass panic. Such risks seemed to some extent inhibited by the noise, the excitement and all the possession phenomena that I was studying around me. At both meetings I had a definite feeling that I would have been perfectly safe, even as an unbeliever, in handling the snakes, although I developed no belief that I would be protected by the Holy Ghost. At the Durham meeting I saw two sailors walk straight down the aisle, take the snakes into their hands, give them back, and then walk away. I felt very much like doing the same, but then began to wonder whether my judgement was not being impaired by the whole process. I remember feeling this quite strongly as Pastor Bunn came up to me and tried to make me take a snake myself, which I refused to do. I also remember thinking at the second group I attended that I would handle them if there was any snake venom at hand. However, discretion proved the better part of valour and I was feeling slightly more nervous at this meeting. But this gave me a very good idea of how one’s judgement could become totally confused, and how amid all the noise, enthusiasm and group excitement, normal judgement is impaired.

One of the laboratory assistants from Duke Hospital used to attend the snake-handling in Durham. He told his employer, who was one of the Professors at Durham, that when girls reached the climactic stage of suggestibility, trance and collapse, they appeared to be no less amenable to his sexual suggestions after the meeting was over than they were to Pastor Bunn’s message of redemption while the meeting was on. He would follow one of them out from the meeting and found it easy to draw her into immediate sexual abandon. But he said he could not understand why, when he telephoned her a few days later to arrange another meeting, she would say indignantly, ‘I am not that kind of girl.’ Why had the girls given way so easily immediately after the meeting at which they thought they were ‘saved’? The answer must be that the same conversion technique can be employed equally for good or evil ends. This is yet another example of the fact that once the nervous system has had its normal pattern of behaviour disrupted by emotional arousal, all sorts of new beliefs and habits may become acceptable. Nervous illness can be induced or cured. Faith can be created or destroyed, so powerful are these group methods.

According to my wife, I looked just as hypnotized and entranced as the snake-handlers whose photographs I was helping to take. It was certainly a disturbing experience. Most religious groups who use revivalistic methods are accused, by those who prefer a more rational approach in religion, of afterwards indulging in sexual malpractice, and although many of these accusations may be unjustified, I did gain the impression from my conversations with people that those who had been suddenly converted at such meetings often showed greatly heightened sexuality immediately afterwards, especially when it was suggested to them by people who were involved in their breakdown and redemption. I was consulted medically by a woman who kept a brothel in Durham; she assured me that some of her best customers were the pastors and members of the congregation at the revivalist churches.

My wife and I saw further examples of the powerful effects of these meetings at the ‘Church of God in Christ Jesus, New Deal, Incorporated’. This was a small building in an appalling Negro slum area of Durham; there were a few rows of pews, a pastor and again a small dancing space in front of the preaching platform. The Sunday revivalist meetings might last from two to three hours. The congregation were rapidly worked up into states of great excitement and they would then come forward, or be pushed, to the small square in front of the preacher. There they danced singly round and round, most of them in trance, until they reached the point of collapse. When this happened they were helped back to their pews.

At the stage of hysterical suggestibility, when they were supposed to be possessed by the Holy Ghost, the parson would continually remind them of how much they had to thank God for, how merciful he was, and how they must accept their suffering in his name and thank him for his great mercies. The preacher was called ‘Bishop Fason’. Towards the end of the meeting he would be rhythmically chanting and shouting with the rest, talking incoherently and what he said no longer seemed to matter. I got the very strong impression that I was again in Africa with the tribal witch-doctor controlling the meeting. At this meeting, however, if the excitement did not mount quickly or strongly enough, six tambourines would be produced and beaten simultaneously, instead of tribal drums. On some occasions the Bishop invited us to sit next to him, and having nothing to do but watch I feared I might suddenly be caught up by the rhythm and the enthusiasm, and end up in a state of ecstatic trance myself. Fortunately, both my wife and myself managed to stay in our seats throughout the performances. However, at some of these meetings I gave much larger sums than would be usual for me when the collection box came round!

These meetings meant a great deal to the poor coloured population of Durham living, as they did, in squalid conditions, down-trodden and exploited by the white population. For one day in the week they would work themselves up into states of excitement and collapse and rid themselves of at least some of the previous week’s tensions and frustrations, while the preacher constantly reminded them of God’s goodness to them; and this enabled them to face another dreary week. Perhaps they did sometimes become over-suggestible to the Bishop’s exhortations, feeling how important a person he must be, driving around to these churches in his large Cadillac.

During this period I also visited ‘God’s Bible School’ in Cincinnati, where basically the same type of conversion and faith-healing technique was used. Here again all the trance and hysterical phenomena were seen and the people concerned were certain that the Holy Ghost was among them and was possessing them. Several thousands of people would arrive, from time to time, to take part in a week of revival services in a very large hall. Neither rhythmic drumming nor the handling of snakes were needed to bring down the Holy Ghost. Their method consisted of alternate singing and hand-clapping, and sermons about the wrath to come if they persisted in their sinning. This also served to force a mass discharge of guilt among the congregation. Those desiring to be saved and what is called ‘sanctified’ would come up to a long altar-rail, sometimes weeping and praying. Also on their knees, on the other side of this rail, was a group of people who had already been saved and were able to help the others to achieve the same deliverance. In the background, supervising the scene, stood the group of evangelists, and while the ‘saved’ talked to the would-be converts, earnestly working upon their emotions, the evangelists would carefully watch for signs of any approaching ‘vulnerability’. When this appeared they would converge on their victim and emotionally excite him further until he eventually reached the critical point of total surrender and collapse, and then attained the feelings of sudden conversion.

The individual reactions of people varied greatly. One boy, clearly of schizoid temperament, knelt at the altar-rail amidst the storm of noise, excitement and exhortation, but remained quite detached from it all and simply continued to read a Bible. Near him was a woman who I thought was deeply depressed; she was trying quite ineffectively to break through and reach feelings of possession and salvation. After about half an hour, during which many people on the other side of the rail were constantly exhorting her to no effect, she stumbled away and walked back down the aisle, seemingly in a state of utter despair, probably thinking that God had found her many sins unpardonable. We have already seen that deeply depressed patients cannot be made to discharge emotion by psychological stimulation alone, but that electric shock treatment, which also works by stimulating the brain to excitement and collapse, is often successful in these cases.

Suicides have been known to result from some of these meetings. Displays of abandoned sexuality were also reported to occur in the evenings, after the meetings, in the grounds surrounding the hall. It was noticed in the mental observation wards in Cincinatti that the number of patients admitted increased considerably after these meetings, when people had been stimulated and excited into states of mental confusion rather than conversion; they settled down again with a few days’ sedation and rest. It is always the more normal, as I have already pointed out, and not the mentally ill who can more easily obtain these feelings of salvation and sanctification and of being possessed by a variety of gods, spirits and devils, because they are more suggestible.

It is interesting that while I was at the Duke Medical School a patient came to see me who had had two previous attacks of mental depression. In both these attacks she had gone to religious revival meetings and had attained the feelings of salvation and a relief of her depressive symptoms. But after a third attack the revival meetings had not worked, and she came to the Psychiatric Department at Duke. She was found to be deeply depressed and was given four ECT treatments which greatly helped her. She then went back to the meetings and was now able to attain the desired feelings of salvation and relief at the forgiveness of her depressively exaggerated sins. When I later asked her whether the shock treatment had destroyed her faith, she replied, ‘Who sent you three thousand miles to give me this treatment?’

In talking to the people at ‘God’s Bible School’ in Cincinnati who had experienced sudden conversion and sanctification, and had found the strength to maintain their new religious attitudes for long periods, I came to the conclusion that, whatever the explanation for the phenomena seen, it would serve no good purpose to belittle the value of revival meetings in reorientating religiously despairing people. Following Conversion, the basic personality may not show any great alteration, but the mind’s aims are redirected into other channels.

I talked at considerable length to an obvious psychopath who had spent several years in prison and was finally sent to a chain gang in Georgia, where he went from bad to worse. He developed beri-beri due to vitamin B deficiency in the diet, with the probably additional use of smuggled alcohol. At the lowest stage of his physical and mental condition, he went into the prison church, looked at a perfectly ordinary text on the wall which suddenly became ‘alive with meaning' -- a phenomenon understandable in terms of Pavlovian physiology and an increased state of suggestibility. On reading this text, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved’, he suddenly felt that he understood what this meant — that his sins were forgiven him — and from that moment he underwent a moral and religious reform. On leaving the prison he became an evangelist, taking part in the revivals, though it was noticeable that he was still trying to charge an excessive amount for the pamphlets he was selling. He tended to exaggerate what had happened to him, and I felt he was still a psychopathic personality but that his directions and aims in life had been fundamentally re-orientated in a religious direction rather than towards continuation of his criminal activities. This type of change, with the personality remaining much the same but re-directed, is very commonly reported by revivalists in their memoirs and by those who have written personal accounts of the changes brought about in them.

In the subsequent twenty years, and during further visits to America for lecturing purposes, I was able to visit a variety of other revival and religious meetings. One of the most interesting was in Clay County, Kentucky. This is a truly desolate part of America, in which still live the direct descendants of people who came over from England, Scotland and Ireland in earlier centuries. They might have been prosperous farmers once who had been persuaded to sell the trees on their farms to timber agents. At first there seemed little risk of anything happening as there were no means of carting the logs away. But then the railroad suddenly arrived and all the trees were cut down in accordance with the agreements signed several years previously. Many farmers were also persuaded to sell their rights to the minerals and coal underneath their lands. Then the big corporations came and used open-cast methods of removing large amounts of coal. The land was left treeless, devoid of top soil and totally unworkable for farming purposes. Now one only sees log huts in a setting of almost total poverty with the population having to live mainly on various forms of relief and charity. The whole place presented a picture of tragic despair and a poverty which I have never seen equalled in any part of the world. It was especially vivid in contrast to the enormous wealth existing in other parts of the States.

I was introduced to a preacher who, with his brother, ran a chapel where the fundamental belief was in the imminent Second Coming of Christ. The congregation were made to understand that unless they had been saved they might wake up any night to find that the Second Coming had happened. Then, if they had not been saved, they were doomed to eternal hell fire. They were also doomed should they leave the meeting and die suddenly of a heart attack before having another chance of achieving salvation through conversion and sanctification.

A series of men in the congregation gave testimonials and short sermons; the hymns were accompanied by a guitar and, as the evening progressed, one saw the same states of excitement, possession, trance and collapse, as were seen in Voodoo meetings in Haiti or in Africa, where quite different gods and spirits were said to enter the worshippers and be responsible for changes in their subsequent behaviour. Many people attending this service appeared to be regular worshippers who came every week to get relief of their pent-up emotions and understandable despair.

During visits to Los Angeles I attended two meetings at a coloured church in Watts County, where the serious race rioting subsequently took place. In Clay County I had seen what were obviously the church origins of present-day guitar playing and dancing performances. In the coloured churches of Watts County, there was rhythmic jazz singing of hymns, and this has been taken up in recent years with great gusto and swing by groups, both black and white, outside the churches. In my various trips around the States, long before this music had become popular, I had collected a large series of such Negro religious records, which could only then be obtained in the Negro sections of certain towns where rhythm and singing were used to bring about states of mounting excitement, trance and possession by worshippers. Records of Negro sermons are often fascinating to listen to. The sermon is delivered quietly and sedately to begin with. Every time the preacher makes a positive or a negative statement a choir of voices cry out, ‘Amen. Hallelujah!’ In fact, everything the preacher says is continually reinforced by group approval, which is extremely effective in helping to force home to the rest of the audience the truth of what is being said.

At all these meetings, films and close-up photographs were taken, many of which illustrate my point about the probably physiological basis of suggestibility, possession, mental dissociation, trance and other phenomena which occur in old and new religions alike. When studied, these phenomena are seen to be similar in any persons submitting to the same basic techniques, whether they be black or white, sophisticated or primitive.

The reception I received at a Negro Revival church in Harlem was not so friendly, nor were the phenomena seen as intense as in Watts or Clay County. But other similar churches do exist if one looks for them. All over the USA differing sects of coloured and white people still use methods of procuring salvation which were common in England many years ago, but in the latter country they have been abandoned as the church’s impact on the lives of ordinary men and women has steadily diminished.

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Notes:

1 W. Sargant and H. J. Shorvon, ‘Acute War Neuroses’, Arch. Neurol. Psychiat. LIV, 231 1945

2 H. J. Shorvon and W. Sargant, ‘Excitatory Abreaction’, Journ. Ment. Sci. XCIII, 709, 1947
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Re: The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticis

Postby admin » Mon May 27, 2019 12:19 am

21. General conclusions

The material discussed in this book necessarily raises the question of the validity of beliefs which have been cherished by millions of people all through history. We discovered, in treating war-time patients, that battle neuroses could be helped by provoking intense anger or fear in the patient, leading to an emotional explosion and collapse. We found that what mattered in successful treatment was not necessarily the patient’s vivid reliving of some traumatic real incident in his past, but the creation of a sufficiently powerful state of emotion about almost anything -- a comparatively trivial real incident or even an incident which had never occurred at all. When the patient came round after the collapse, he might find that he felt much better, that he felt a sense of release and calm, that he felt what a revivalist would call ‘changed’ and ‘saved’. When we find that the technique of ‘saving’ people at revival meetings follows the same pattern and depends on the same brain mechanisms, it is impossible not to wonder about the reality of the divine power supposedly responsible for the ‘change’.

As we have seen, it is not just a question of revivalist religious methods but of faith-creating techniques of all sorts. In the preceding chapters I have tried to show that the same physiological processes underlie experiences of ‘possession’ by gods or spirits or demons, the mystical experience of union with God, the gift of tongues and other phenomena of ‘enthusiastic’ religious experience, the inspired utterances of oracles and mediums, faith-healing and some aspects of witch-doctoring, and the behaviour of people under hypnosis, under certain drugs, or in states of sexual excitement.

When a man’s nervous system is subjected to such a degree of strain that his brain can no longer respond normally — whether this strain is imposed by some single experience or by stresses of less intensity but longer duration — he begins to behave abnormally, in ways which Pavlov and others have charted. He will become very much more suggestible than in his normal state of mind, far more open to ideas and people in his immediate environment and far less able to respond to them with caution, doubt, criticism and scepticism. He may be driven into a condition in which his brain activity, or sometimes one isolated area of it, becomes paradoxical, so that his accustomed outlook and values are reversed. He may reach a condition in which he is as meekly obedient to commands and suggestions as someone under hypnosis, who can be made to behave in ways which, when in command of himself, he would reject as foolish or immoral: and, by post-hypnotic suggestion, he can be made to act in these ways even after he has been brought out of trance and apparently restored to normal waking consciousness. In exactly the same way, psychiatric patients may become so suggestible that they produce in all sincerity the symptoms which suit their psychiatrist’s theories: and if they change psychiatrists, they change symptoms.

All this is particularly true, not of the insane, but of the sane, not of the severely mentally ill but of normal, ordinary, average people, who make the best possible material for moulding by those, in religion or out of it, who create faith in themselves and their doctrines by methods which involve the imposition of stress and the working of states of intense emotional excitement (especially, but not limited to, group excitement). Suggestibility is, in fact, one of the essential characteristics of being ‘normal’. A normal person is responsive to other people around him, cares about what they think of him and is reasonably open to their influence. If the great majority of people were not normally suggestible, we could not live together in society at all, we could not collaborate in any undertaking, we could not marry and bring up families happily, we could never have in any given society a generally accepted set of values and standards. But if normal people are subjected to the techniques described in this book, it is they who most easily become hysterically suggestible and open to the uncritical and enthusiastic adoption of ideas which may or may not be sensible.

From the Stone Age to Hitler, the Beatles and the modern ‘pop culture’, the brain of man has been constantly swayed by the same physiological techniques. Reason is dethroned, the normal brain computer is temporarily put out of action, and new ideas and beliefs are uncritically accepted. The mechanism is so powerful that while conducting this research into possession, trance and faith-healing in various parts of the world, I myself was sometimes affected by the techniques I was observing, even though I was on my guard against them. A knowledge of the mechanism at work may be no safeguard once emotion is aroused and the brain begins to function abnormally.

On the religious front, one can scarcely help noticing that against different backgrounds the same process creates convinced belief in different and mutually antagonistic divine beings. States of possession show this very clearly. In a Christian context, a person may be ‘possessed’ by God or by God’s opposite and adversary, the Devil. The same mechanism in other contexts produces possession by the spirits of the ancestors, or by Allah, Dionysus, Seraphis, Shango, Zars, Pepos, the spirits of foxes, and an extraordinary variety of other supernatural agencies. In a mingled context it produces possession by beings who are half African deities and half Christian saints. Are any of these beings real at all, and if any, which?

What are we to think, then, about the truth or falsity of the numerous creeds and faiths that have been physiologically implanted in human beings in different societies and at different periods? It is sometimes suggested that the proof of the pudding lies in the eating: that belief in the real god and the right creed produces good and worth-while results in human behaviour, while belief in a non-existent god and a wrong creed produces evil. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ But unfortunately, the methods we have been considering are perfectly capable of making good seem evil and evil seem good. We have also seen that they are equally effective in maintaining the status quo and keeping people contented with traditional beliefs, conventions and social systems, or in inducing acceptance of new ideas which overthrow tradition and orthodoxy. Some people believe that there is one true God, one great ultimate Reality, behind all the different faiths of man, and that each of us has a choice between good and evil. But, unfortunately, there is no question of man choosing at all, when he can so readily be induced to adopt beliefs diametrically opposed to those he previously held, due to the creation by emotional arousal of paradoxical and ultraparadoxical phases of brain activity.

Again, it may be argued that a great many people never experience possession or states of trance and ecstasy, and so are not influenced by those means. But the fact is that few, if any, of us go through our lives without experiencing stresses and emotional excitements which cause heightened suggestibility and create states of brain activity in which new ideas and beliefs may be implanted and accepted against our normal judgement. The new faith may fade away again with a return to a calmer state, but in many cases it may persist, secure from criticism in its own niche in the mind.

Our personal vulnerability will depend in part on the type of nervous system and brain that we have inherited. Where obsessional tendencies and compulsive thinking are marked, there is much less tendency to develop states of hysterical suggestibility and mental dissociation or to go into trance and possession. Obsessional people can live much more easily on a basis of rational thought. The difficulty is, however, that if new ideas, whether valuable or not, are finally implanted in the obsessional type of person, the excessive rigidity of his temperament makes subsequent readjustment very difficult to achieve. Many of the great moral reformers of the past, including Wesley, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius Loyola and others, have been people of obsessional temperament. It took a severe illness, a severe physical debilitation, or a prolonged emotional crisis, perhaps occurring all at the same time, to produce fundamental alterations in their patterns of thought and the emergence of new beliefs and modes of living.

The whole process of civilization depends almost entirely on a number of people being born in each new generation who have important new beliefs and ideas, and hold on to them with obsessional tenacity. Most great scientific discoverers, for example, have to cling obstinately to their new ideas and findings, often for years, before they find acceptance. This means that the originators of new ideas and the founders of new systems are rarely themselves ‘normal’ people; if they were, they would drop their new notions comparatively quickly in the face of the hostility of their fellows.

The person with manic-depressive tendencies, on the other hand, will find himself constantly changing his views and beliefs, in tune with his changing swings of mood. A strong religious faith may be totally lost during a depressive attack and regained in a subsequent elated or normal period. The schizophrenic and the schizoid thinker is the most immune of all to outside influences dominating his ideas. His ideas come much more often from inside himself and may be the product of hallucinations, delusions and other abnormal thought processes which he experiences, and which he tries to explain on the basis of further delusional thinking. During the war, schizophrenics were rarely upset by bombing, for instance, being far too preoccupied with their own inner turmoils and worries.

Anxiety-prone people will change their views fairly frequently unless there are strong obsessive components in their personalities. Anxiety and fear create heightened suggestibility and make them prone to changing states of faith. They may experience periods of wild panic, when an individual starts to clutch at straws and precipitates the ever-present threat of switching into paradoxical and ultra-paradoxical modes of thought, resulting in repeated alteration of viewpoint and belief. Persons of hysterical temperament are also highly suggestible. Hysterical behaviour is most commonly the result of normal people breaking down under severe stresses, as was seen again and again during the war and as we have seen repeatedly in this book.

I think I might have to end these long years of research with the conclusion that there are no gods, but only impressions of gods created in man’s mind, so varied are the gods and creeds which have been brought into being by playing on emotional arousal, increased suggestibility and abnormal phases of brain activity. Certainly, totally different beliefs can be and are created and maintained by the methods of indoctrination discussed in the previous chapters. Faith-healing, in both simple and sophisticated societies, also depends on the induction of emotional excitement to achieve the breaking up of old behaviour patterns and the emergence of new ones. Faith healing and spirit possession rarely happen in a calm, rational atmosphere, as every witch-doctor and faith-healer knows only too well. Emotion must be aroused for success to be obtained. There is no need for there to be a god to do the healing. Any method which induces states of excitement leading to a suitable degree of exhaustion and consequent alteration in brain function can work miracles on its own.

Perhaps we must therefore conclude that it is man who has created the gods and made them in his image, reflecting his varying imaginings, aspirations and fears, just as he, and not some mysterious fate or necessity or abstract historical dynamic, has created his varying political creeds and moral codes. And yet we need faith. Without faith of some sort, living becomes extraordinarily difficult. We do not live by reason alone and we have to take all sorts of people and assumptions on trust. We need confidence in ourselves, in the value of the work we do, in certain people and standards. We cannot, or most of us cannot, for ever be doubting and questioning and withholding final judgement on everything and everyone. Most of us quite evidently need the support of some general religious, political or social framework of faith, however bizarre or dangerous a particular belief-system may be. We need faith and yet, as I have tried to demonstrate, we must suspect it.

This book obviously poses as many problems as it solves. But if it does no more than stimulate fresh thought and help us to be on our guard against beliefs acquired in states of emotional arousal when our brains may be betraying us, then it will have served some purpose. We must equally beware of trying to influence our fellow-men by the methods discussed here. In the future, the conquest and control of man’s mind is going to be a far more important matter for us than the development of bigger and better nuclear weapons, and it is essential that we learn all we can about how the brain works and how human beings can be psychologically coerced.

But the paradoxes remain. We need faith, but must suspect it. We need to be suggestible, but our suggestibility is dangerous. And the last dread paradox is that people’s beliefs and behaviour can only be changed radically and swiftly by the methods we have been considering, and very rarely by purely intellectual and rational argument. Man will continue to be possessed by many gods and devils and beliefs. He will continue to reach the sublimest heights of good and the lowest depths of evil, for the range of his normal behaviour patterns, and therefore his ability to cope with all life’s varied stresses, has made him the most successful mammal on earth. But unless the varieties of good and evil behaviour possible to him can somehow be controlled in the future, man and his world will go down to certain destruction by his own hand. Yet how do we control man rationally, by appealing to reason rather than by arousing emotion. This is the problem that this book has presented but not solved.
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Re: The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticis

Postby admin » Mon May 27, 2019 10:09 pm

Bibliography

Andrews, E., The People Called Shakers, Oxford University Press 1953

Bharati, A., The Tantric Tradition, Allen & Unwin, London 1968

Binet, A., and Fere, C., Animal Magnetism, Kegal Paul, London 1887

Cavendish, R., The Black Arts, Routledge, London 1967

Conway, D., Magic: An Occult Primer, Cape, London 1971

Cumont, F., The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Kegal Paul, London 1911

Deren, M., The Divine Horsemen, Thames & Hudson, London 1953

Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California Press 1966

Doughty, W. L., John Wesley, Epworth Press, London 1955

Fox, George, Journal of George Fox, Dent, London

Frank, J. D., Persuasion and Healing, Johns Hopkins Press 1961

Freud and Breuer, Studies in Hysteria, Avon Library, New York 1966

Freyre, G., The Masters and the Slaves, Knopf, New York 1956

Grant, K., The Magical Revival, Muller, London 1972

Grinker, R. R., and Spiegel, J. P., Men under Stress, Blakiston, Philadelphia 1943

Guenther, H. V., Life and Teaching of Naropa, Clarendon Press 1963

Guthrie, W. K. C., The Greeks and Their Gods, Methuen, London 1950

Harrer, H., Seven Years in Tibet, Rupert Hart-Davis, London 1955

Hooke, S. H., Babylonian and Assyrian Religion, Hutchinson, London 1953

Huxley, A., The Devils of Loudun, Chatto & Windus 1952

James, E. O., The Beginnings of Religion, Hutchinson, London

James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Longmans Green, London 1914

Jones, E., Sigmund Freud, Vol 1 and 2, Hogarth Press, London 1955
 
Kiev, A., Magic, Faith and Healing, Collier-Macmillan, London 1964

King, F., Sexuality, Magic and Perversion, Spearman, London 1971

Knox, R. A., Enthusiasm, Clarendon Pres, Oxford 1950 Lantemori, V., The Religions of the Oppressed, MacGibbon & Kee, London 1963

Laski, M. Ecstasy, Cresset Press, London 1961

Latourette, K. S., History of Christianity, Harper, New York 1953

Leary, T., The Politics of Ecstasy, MacGibbon & Kee, 1970

Lee, R. B., Kung Bushman Trance Performances, ed. by Raymond Prince, Bucke Memorial Soc., Montreal 1966

Leuba, J. H., A Psychological Study of Religion, Macmillan, New York 1912

Leuba, J. H., Psychology of Religious Mysticism, London 1929

Lewis, I. M., Ecstatic Religion, Pelican Books 1971

Lindblom, J., Prophesy in Ancient Israel, Blackwell, Oxford 1962

Lucian, Satirical Sketches, Penguin Books 1961

Man, Myth and Magic, ed. by Richard Cavendish, Purnell, London, 1970-72

Maringer, J., The Gods of Prehistoric Man, Weidenfeld, London 1960

Masters, R. E., The Sexual Revolution, Playboy Press, Chicago 1970

Mediaeval Mystics of England, edited by E. Colledge, Murray, London 1962

O’Brien, E., Varieties of Mystic Experiences, Holt, New York 1964

Oesterreich, T. K., Possession, Demoniacal and Other, Kegan Paul, London 1930

Pavlov, I. P., Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes, vol. 2, Lawrence & Wishart, London 1941

Podmore, F., Mediums of the 19th Century, vols 1 and 2, University Books, New York 1963

Ross, L. V., Vice in Bombay, Tallis Press, London 1969

Sachner, R. C., Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, Oxford University Press 1961

St John of the Cross, Poems, Penguin Books 1960

Salmon, G., A Sermon on the Work of the Holy Spirit, Hodges, Smith, Dublin 1859

Sargant, W., Battle for the Mind, Heinemann 1957; Pan 1959

Sargant, W., The Unquiet Mind, Heinemann 1967; Pan 1971

Shorvon, H. J., ‘Abreaction’, Proc. Roy. Soc. Med. 1953, p, 158

Smith, H. W., Man and his Gods, Cape, London 1953

Southey, R., Life of Wesley, Longmans, London 1820

Spencer, P., The Samburu, Routledge, London 1965

Spencer, S., Mysticism in World Religion, Penguin Books 1963

Starbuck, E. D., The Psychology of Religion, Scott, London 1901

Trance and Possession States, edited by R. Prince, Bucke Society, Montreal 1968

Verger, P., Dieux d’Afrique, Hartman, Paris 1954

Virgil, Aeneid, Penguin Books 1956

Walker, B., Hindu World, Allen & Unwin, London 1968

Wasson, R. G., Soma, Harcourt Brace, New York 1968

Wesley, J., Journal of John Wesley, Charles Kelly, London 1909-16

Youssoupoff, F., Lost Splendour, Cape, London 1953

Articles and books published by author on subjects discussed in this book

N.B. BMJ refers to the British Medical Journal

1938 ‘Hyperventilation Attacks’, Fraser, R. and Sargant, W., BMJ, p. 378

1940 ‘Acute War Neuroses’, Sargant, W. and Slater E., Lancet, p. 1

1940 ‘The Hyperventilation Syndrome’, Sargant, W., Lancet, p. 314

1941 ‘The Treatment of War Neuroses’, Debenham, G., Sargant, W., Hill, D. and Slater, E., Lancet, p. 107

1941 ‘Amnesic Syndromes in War’, Sargant, W. and Slater E., Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., p. 47

1941 ‘Modified Insulin Therapy in War Neuroses’, Sargant, W. and Craske, N., Lancet, p. 212

1942 ‘The Treatment of Depression in Later Life’, Sargant, W. and Sands, D. E., BMJ, p. 520

1942 ‘Physical Treatment of Acute War Neuroses’, Sargant, W., BMJ, p. 574

1944— Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, edns 1-5. Sargant, W., 1947 Slater, E. and Livingstone, S., Edinburgh

1945 ‘Acute War Neuroses ’, special reference to Abreaction, Sargant, W. and Shorvon, H. J., Arck. Neurol. Psychiat., p. 231

1947 ‘Chronic Battle Neurosis treated with Leucotomy’, Sargant, W. and Stewart, O. M., BMJ, p. 866

1947 ‘Treatment by Insulin in Sub-shock Doses’, Sargant,. W. and Slater, E., Journ. Mental and Nervous Dis., p. 493

1947 ‘Excitatory Abreaction: with special reference to its Mechanism and the Use of Ether’, Shorvon, H. J. and Sargant, W., Journ. Mental Sci., p. 709  

1948 ‘Some Observations on Abreaction with Drugs’, Sargant, W., Digest of Neurol, and Psychiatry, p. 193

1949 ‘Some Cultural Group Abreactive Techniques and their Relation to Modem Treatment’, Sargant, W., Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., p. 367

1951 ‘The Mechanism of Conversion’, Sargant, W., BMJ, p. 311

1957 ‘Aim and Method in Treatment: Twenty Years of British and American Psychiatry’, Journ. Mental Sci., p. 699

1961 ‘Drugs in the Treatment of Depression’, Sargant, W., BMJ, p. 225.

1962 ‘Treatment of Anxiety States by Antidepressant Drugs’, Sargant, W. and Dally, P., BMJ, p. 6

1967 ‘Witch Doctoring, Zar and Voodoo: Their Relation to Modern Psychiatric Treatments’, Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., p. 47 .

1969 ‘The Physiology of Faith ’ (Maudsley Lecture), Brit. Journ. Psychiat., p. 505
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Re: The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticis

Postby admin » Mon May 27, 2019 10:28 pm

Index

Figures in italics refer to-entire chapters

Abbey of Thelema 121
Abreaction 13-29
aims of 13
chronic neurosis, in 16, 21
depression, in 16
drugs used in 15, 20, 21, 26,
62, 123-4, 134
effects of 13, 26, 50
emotional arousal and, 13-17
ether, 20, 28
Kenya, in 154
obsessive behaviour, in 26-7
schizophrenia, in 16
technique 13, 14, 50
Voodoo and 216
War neuroses, in 13, 14-16,
41,73,220
Abreactive dancing 195
Achille, case of 56-7
Addis Ababa 170, 171, 172, 174
Aeneid 79
African healing methods 177
African religions 201
African slaves 211
African studies 139-47
Agwe 213, 216
Alcohol, aid to ecstasy 124-7
al-Ghazali 97-8, 109
Alkalosis 144, 163
Alline, Henry 105
Amnesia 49
Anger, arousal of 15
Animal experiments 19, 20, 49,
93
Animal impersonation 77
Animal magnetism 31, 34, 39,
59
Anxiety 238-9
Apollo 79
Asmodeus 65
Astral force 126
Aurelian, Fr 66
Australian aborigines 78
Autohypnosis 97
Automatic writing 52
Azuni, Dr. 176

Bahia Conference 186
Macumba 182-8
Orisha worship 183-6
Bahia, Governor of 186
Bailly 32-3
Baquet treatment 31-2, 44
Barbados 206-7
Baron Samedi 211,213
Basher, Dr, 148, 166, 167
Battle neuroses (see War)
Beast ‘660’ 121
Beatles, the 145, 236
Beaubrun, Michael 190
Bentui 148, 149, 150, 151
Bethlem Hospital 87
Bhairav (terror) 113
Bharati, Agehananda 112
Bible Belt, USA 220
Billot, G. P. 59
Binet, A. 33, 34, 41, 44, 45
Birth trauma 133
Black Power Movement 202
Blessed Damosel 57
Braid, James 40, 58, 59
Brain activity, abnormal 58,
94, 222, 235
alkalosis 163
excitation 93, 94, 95
function 77
hypnoid phase of 48, 49, 50,
105
phases of 23, 25, 51, 68, 94, 105
protective inhibition 22, 23,
25,48,49, 111,220
religious possession, in 96
transmarginal phase 23, 24,
27, 29
Brain excitement and sex 122
Brain- washing 46, 181, 189
Brazil 181, 182-9
Catholicism in 182
Macumba initiation 182, 183,
184-5
Orisha deities 183, 184
Breuer 14, 48, 49, 50, 72, 88,
134
British Broadcasting
Corporation 202-3
Brooke, John 139
Brown, Rosemary 52
Bunn, Pastor 221, 222, 225, 226
Butts, Thomas 91

Cagliostro, possession by 65, 66
Caldwell, E. 112
Caribbean Psychiatric
Congress 206
Casting out devils 158, 159,
152-60, 171 -5 (see Exorcism)
Catalepsy 43, 44, 45, 57, 185
Cataplexy in mesmerism 40,
44, 45
Catharsis 50
Cavendish, Richard 126
Charcot, Dr 43-4, 46, 74
Chemical eroticism 132
Chloroform and ecstasy 129
Christians, early 81
Christ’s miracles 175
Christian saints, possession by
192, 193, 196, 197
Christianity 178, 179, 182,
205-6
in Trinidad 191, 192, 193, 195
Church of Cherubim and
Seraphim 176, 205
Church of God in Christ Jesus
227
Cincinnati Mental Ward 229
Clay County Farmers 231
Cloquet (see Puysegur)
Colosseum 93
Commission of Investigation,
Paris 32, 35, 36, 37
Contemplation 102
Conversion, sudden 51, 72,
105,135,220,229
Convulsion 32, 33, 34, 35 , 38,
40, 65
Coptic Church 172
Creative dynamism 123
Crichton-Browne, J. 132
Crises, nervous 32, 33, 34, 38
Critchley, Prof. 171
Crowley, Aleister 116-21, 123
Abbey of Thelema 121
Cephalu Monastery 121
Sexual trance 117-19
Cumae 79
Cyril of Jerusalem 63

Dahomey 176, 177, 178, 179,
181
Dalai Lama 79
Dancing, effects of 77, 150, 151
Dancing, Western 143, 176
Davy, Humphrey 132
Death by fear 149, 150
Deleuze 39, 59
Delphic Oracle 79
Delusions 49
Demon possession 34, 36, 56,
57, 62,67-75,95, 115, 121-2,
171
Demonology 61-91 and passim
Depression and Mysticism 102,
229, 230
manic 238
Deren, Maya 210, 218, 222
Deslon 34, 36
Dhikr 97
Dhyana 116
Dionysus 125
worship rituals 125
Dodds, Prof. E. R. 81, 125
Douyon, Dr 209
Dreams 78, 124, 184
Dumballah (snake loa) 211,
213
Dunham, Katherine 209, 210,
213,214
Drugs and Possession 133-35
alcohol 124, 127
ether 127, 131
hashish 133
Indian use of 123
LSD 123, 132, 133,134
marijuana 123
Mexican drugs 124, 1 31
nitrous oxide 127, 132
psychedelic 1 16, 120, 123,
124, 127
toadstools 124
soma 123
trance-producing 124
Drumming, effects of 141, 154,
158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 177,
212, 213, 214
Drury, Captain 89
Duke University Medical
School 220, 229
Durham, USA 220, 225, 226,
227
Duvalier, President 209, 214

Ecstatic states 93-107, 109-33,
123-35
ECT (Electro-convulsive
therapy) 16
in Trinidad 194
in Zambia 165
Edwards, Jonathan 105
Egyptian Sed-Festival 78
Ekstasis 125
Elegba (Satan) 178, 19 1, 206
Emerson, R. W. 104
Emotional arousal 62, 220, 237,
239 ( see Abreaction)
Emotional release 211,213,
214
Emotional shock 48
Endereli 124
English public schools 141
Enthousiasmos 125
Environmental influences 25
Erszuli-Ge-Rouge 211,213,
216
Esdaile 43
Ether 21, 120
Ethiopia 166, 170, 171, 172-5
Exorcism 56, 59; 62-6, 1 72,
173, 177
Expulsion of spirits 152-60
Extrasensory perception 39

Fabing, Howard 19, 21
Faith, divine 106, 112
Faith healing 236, 239
Faith, need of 240
Faria 39
Fason, Bishop 227
Fasting 127, 204, 205
Fatigue 13
Fear, arousal of 113, 149-50
relief from 208
Fenelon 102
Fere, Charles 33, 34, 41, 44, 45
Fire-walking 115
Flagellation 195
Flournoy 66
Fox, George 89
Francis of Assisi 238
Franklin, Benjamin 37
French Royal Society of
Medicine 32
Frenzy 127
Freud, S. 14, 19, 39, 48, 50, 75,
134,135
Freyre, Gilberto 183, 187
Friends of God 99

Galen 140
Gantt, Horsley 19
Ghede 21 1, 213, 215
Gift of Tongues 82, 83, 199
God’s Bible School 228, 230
Golden Dawn, the 116,117
Graves, Robert 131
Greene, Graham 209
Grinker, R. 18, 19
Group indoctrination 112
Group sexual practices 114-22
Guru, the 113, 114
Guthrie, Prof. W. K. C. 125
Guyon, Mme 102

Haiti 183, 208-19
Minister of Health 209
Voodoo rituals 208, 209, 210,
212, 213
‘Half-death’ 146, 147, 223
Hallucinations under hypnosis
42
schizophrenic 238
Harlem Revival Church 233
Harrer, H. 80
Hashish 1 13, 133
delirium 55
Healing, native 152, 201
Heroin addiction 120
Hilton, Walter 100, 110
Hinduism 97
Hindu gods 98
Hippocrates 22
Hippocratic basic
temperaments 22, 140
Hitler rallies 143, 195, 236
Holy Ghost, possession by 18,
66, 81, 89, 90, 112, 176, 201,
203, 204, 221-5, 22 7, 22 8
in Trinidad 199
Holy oils 180
Holy Trinity 101
Howarth, Dr 161, 162
Huxley, Aldous 71, 131
Huxley, Francis 124
Hypnosis 31, 39, 40, 41, 48-59,
72, 235
abreaction in 49, 50
autohypnotic states 49

[Pg. 250-251 MISSING]

Nardii 149
Necrophilic rites 113 (see
Crowley)
Negro Revivalist Churches 221,
227,233
Negro spirituals 232
Nelson, John 104
Nervengeist 58
Neuberg, Victor 117, 119, 120
New Deal Incorporated 227
Newgate Prison conversions
17-18
Neuroses, chronic 16
Nigeria 66, 176-81
Church of Cherubim and
Seraphim 176
Christian ceremonies 176
Nightmares 13
Nitrous oxide 127, 128
effects 132
Normandy beach-head
casualties 17,25
Nunneries, mystical possession
in 36, 65, 67, 111

Obsessionals and possession
70-71,94
Obsessional personality 238-9
Oesterreich, T. K. 61, 67, 74
Ogoun, God of Iron 177, 178
180, 184, 195
ceremonies 191, 192, 196
priests 177
Order of the Golden Dawn 116,
117
Ordo Templi Orientis 117, 121
Orgasm 36, ill, 112, 127
Orishacult 180-81, 183-6, 188
convent 180
healing 185
initiation ceremonies 184, 185
Overbreathing 144, 145, 174,
201
Ouidah 181

Pain, inhibition of 93, 94
Paralysis 34
Paris Conference 179, 182, 188
Paul, St 81, 82, 83, 98, 199
Pavlov, I. P- 19-23, 49, 93, 95,
173, 235
Pentothal in abreaction 15, 18
Pepo possession 158-g
Peyote cactus 124
Physical causes of breakdown
25
Pocomania 144, 201, 203, 204
Podmore 55
Port au Prince 210, 216
Port of Spain 190
Possession, States of 61-76
(see also 93-107)
autohypnosis 97
Babylonia, in 78
causal effects 71
children, in 66
in Convents 65, 69-71
demons {see Demonology,
61-91 and passim)
Drugs {see Drugs & Possession)
in Ethiopia 63
in Greece 79
Hypnosis and 48-59
Hysteria 74, 75
Induced 61, 62, 65
in Israel 79
Japanese case 72
lucid possession 67, 68
in Madrid 67
Mesopotamia 78
Middle Ages 195
personality types 70
rhythmic dancing 77, 78, 90
Sex (see Sex & Possession)
soma 123
symptoms 61, 62
Syria 63
Tibet 79-80
Praeterhuman knowledge 123
Prana 119
Prehistoric art 77
Proclus 80
Psychical research 52
Psychical Research Society 54
Psychoanalysis 29-30, 134, 185
Puysegur 37-9

Quakers 89, 102
Quietism 102

Rauwolfia 180
Recife 182-4
possession and trance in 182,
183, 184
Reincarnation 54
Religious conversion 17, 83
(see Wesley)
Religious possession 93, 95,
Remigius, Fr 66
Revelation under anaesthesia
128, 129, 130, 131
Revival Meetings in USA 105,
179, 220-33
depression and Evangelism
229-30
Harlem, in 233
hypnotic states 222
individual reactions 229
Negro Revival churches 221,
227
New Deal Incorporated 227
psychopathy and Evangelism
230-31
Second coming of Christ 231
snake-handling 221-6
techniques 112
Zion Tabernacle 221
Rich, St Edmund 98
Romer, case of 57-8
Ross, Alan 114, 115

Sakti 113
Salmon, George 89-90
Samburu tribe 139-45, 202
collapse states 144-5
initiation rites 140, 141
mode of life 139-41
Morans 141-4
personality types 140
trance states 142, 143, 144,
145
tribal dancing 142-5
Scarlet woman, the 121
Schizophrenia in Africa 1 80
delusions 128-9
hypnosis in 46
native cultures and 194
Serpasil 180
Sex and Possession 109-22
Bhairavi 113
brain excitement 122
carezza 111
Christian mystics no, 115
definition 109, 111
demonology 115-22
deviant practices 111, 115-22
dhyana 116
drugs used in 116, 120, 121,
123-35
group practices 115
Indian practices 112-15
Sex and Possession — continued
mantras 113
necrophilic rites 113
orgasm tog, 110, 111, 112
physiological mechanism 110
suggestibility and 75,97, 112
ritual intercourse m-14
tantrism 112-14, 115, 116
terror, induced 113
torture 114-15
trance, sexual 112, 117, 118,
119, 120, 122
Western cultures 115
Zatra festival 114
Sexual assault 75, 95
Sexual union 132-3
Shango ceremonies 177, 178,
179, 180, 183, 187, 188, 195,
197, 198
Sherrington, Prof. 93
Shock therapy {see ECT)
Shorvon, H. J. 220
Siberia 124
Siva 113
Smith, Helene, case of 65-6
Snake-bite 223, 224
Snake-handling 221-6
Sollier 68
Soma 123
Somnambulism 41-2, 43, 49,
59, 61-2
Soul, the 109, 110
Space exploration, mesmeric 59
Speaking in tongues 52-3, 54,
55, 81-3
Spiegel, E. A. 18, 19
Spiritual Baptists 198
funeral rites 206
Spiritualism 34, 38, 52, 53, 54
Stanford, Colonel 170
Starbuck, Dr E. D. 104
St Luke’s Hospital, London 87
Stockham, Alice in
Stone Age tribe 145-7
Stopes, Marie in
Stramonium 124
Stress, reaction to 13-30
Subconscious mind, the 19,
134-5
Sudanese tribes 148-51
Dinkas 148
mode of life 151
nervous diseases 148-9
personality types 148
Shilluks 148
Tribal dancing 148, 150-51
Tribal solidarity 151
Witch-doctors 149-50
Sufis 97
Sufi-al-Hallaj 97
Suggestibility, increased 17,21,
24, 34, 42, 44, 46, 57, 58, 79,
101, 105, 151, 189, 195, 202,
226, 233, 235
normals, in 235-6
physiological processes 236
post-hypnotic 41,43
Suicides 229
Surin, Fr 69-70, 73
Syrian cases 63

Tantrism 112-14, 115, 116, 123
Tauler 99
Teita tribes 158, 159
Temperaments, basic 22, 25
Tension, relief of 194-5
Teresa of Avila 101
Teyjat 77
Theurgy 80
Thyrsos 125
Tofranil 149
Torture 114, 115
Traditional healers 152 (see
witch-doctors)
Trance states 34, 37, 39, 40, 42,
43, 44, 142, 177, 202, 203
at a distance 193
hypnosis in 55
mushrooms and 123, 124
production of 44
sexual 112, 117-20, 122
symptoms 40
Transcultural psychiatry 186
Transference situation 30, 33,
39, 111
Transitional religions 190
Transmarginal inhibition 22,
24
Travelling in trance 57-8, 66,
193, 196-7, 198-9
Trauma, mental 14, 50
Tribal solidarity 151
Trinidad 190-200
Hospital 190
Minister of Health 194
mourning 198-9
Ogoun ceremony 191-2
religious services 190-94,
195-6, 198
Spiritual Baptists 198
Trinity College, Dublin 89
Trois Freres cave 77
Tromping 201, 202, 204

Ultraparadoxical behaviour
23,96, 104,215

Van Ruysbroeck, Jan 99
Vedic hymns 123
Verger, Pierre 177, 180, 181,
187
Victorian evangelists 220
Virgil 79
Voi, Kenya 158
Voodoo 181, 193
Voodoo deities 210-11, 213,
215
Voodoo groups in Haiti 208-19
Baron Samedi 211, 213
ceremonies 209-14, 215-17
hungan, the 211
Legba-Petro 211
Mambo, the 211, 212, 215
mourning 216
Petro loa 211
sacred pool, the 209, 213
sex, effects on 215-1 6
trance 208-9

Walker, B. 113
War neuroses 13-16,25-9,50,
94, 215, 234
Wasson, Gordon 123, 124
Watts County, Cal. 232, 233
Wesley,John 17, 18,112,131,
135
abreactive techniques 87
Witchcraft 115,116, 122
in Africa 149-50, 152, 154-6
Witch-doctors 161, 164
in Dahomey 179-80
in Nigeria 179-80
diagnostic methods 152
drugs and paraphernalia
161-2
nervous illnesses 153, 155-6,
157-8
spirit possession 153-4
treatment 153-7
World Psychiatric Association
186

Yeats, W. B. 116
Yoga 97, 112, 114
Yorke, G. 116
Yornba tribes 182, 191

Zambia 161-5
Mental Hospital 164-5
Zatra festival 114
Zar possession 166-70
ceremonies 167-70
Egypt, in 168, 169
Ethiopia, in 166, 170
healing 167-70
Moslem women 167-80
Zar spirits 166, 167
Zeno of Verona 64
Zion tabernacle 221
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