Possession, Demoniacal And Other
Page 33
The patient puts on the clothing demanded by the Zar; the slaves of the shechah drum a particular magic march which anyone with a little experience can immediately distinguish from other music. The shechah handles the body of the possessed according to the rules of her art, and all sorts of strange usages are added which render this pagan game still more shocking to pious men of learning; for example, a lamb is sacrificed and the forehead and other parts of the body of the possessed are smeared with its blood. Each method of treatment has its prescribed external signs by which the breaking of the charm is evidenced: the possessed must dance, sway her body, or else faint and this is the moment when the muttering shechah declares that the Zar has departed. This sometimes happens only on the second or third night….1
Particularly interesting is Snouck Hurgronje’s declaration that the Zar appears not only amongst the Arabs of Mecca but also amongst persons of all nationalities residing in that city. That town contains subjects and even whole colonies of a very large number of Mohammedan peoples, the majority of whom have been induced to settle there for religious reasons, particularly the desire to live in the immediate vicinity of the holy places; but also by such material considerations as the hope of a lucrative existence. Amongst all of these peoples manifestations of the Zar occur, indeed they bring them in with them, so that the appearance of these phenomena amongst numerous peoples through occurrence amongst their representatives at Mecca seems assured at one blow.
Zar appear amongst all the nations represented at Mecca, for although in their own countries they may bear other names, they soon adopt the one customary here. Nevertheless there subsist national differences which must also be taken into account in treatment. There are, for example, exorcisms of the Zar in the Maghrib,1 Soudanese, Abyssinian, and Turkish manner which can only be employed in specific cases; but it cannot be gainsaid that verification of the Zar’s nationality almost always leads the she-chah who has been called in to the conclusion that her method has been the right one.2
According to Klunzinger also possession is not rare in any part of the Mohammedan world. States of rapture or ecstasy “are also attributed to the djinns, who suddenly make themselves master of a person, change his clothes or ride him and speak and act through him.” Klunzinger mentions later certain dances or zikr which are continued to the point of frenzy, but there is nothing in his description authorizing us to regard them as possession. It must therefore remain indeterminate whether these dances are really phenomena of possession, whereas this can be positively affirmed of the Zar which he also describes.
Here is the description of the Zar, or as he calls it, the Sar. It is evident from his narrative that exorcism is rather the cause of possession than a weapon used to combat it, and his account vividly recalls certain cases of the Romantic period which we have already met and where possession is first induced in the patient by the doctor’s treatment.
The “Sar,” a certain djinn, is the potent genius of sickness and principally attacks women. Where a woman shows symptoms of any malady the causes of which are not as clear as daylight, it is the Sar who is to blame.… It is at once made known that to day the Sar is with such and such a one; but this must be on a Saturday, Tuesday or Thursday. A crowd of women and girls stream into the house of the patient and are offered busa, the half-fermented Arab beer, the favourite drink of the Abyssinians together with sheep’s tripe. Then they sing, beat cymbals and dance the Sar-dance. The women in a squatting position or with legs bent under them sway their trunk and head backwards and forwards as in the zikr. Soon some of them become possessed and leap around dancing madly. All this is under the direction of the shechah of the Sar, who is a person known for her tendency to dance ecstatic dances; in most cases it is a female slave who earns large sums in this way. As soon as she and the others are in ecstasy, the somnambulist is questioned as to the means of curing the sickness. The remedy always consists in a plain silver finger-ring, thick, without stones, or more rarely in bracelets or anklets, and as soon as the greedy Sar is satisfied with this gift the malady disappears. Faith in success is so great that many sacrifice their last penny to obtain the silver ornament and meet the very considerable cost of entertaining the multitude of female guests.
Like the tarantella of the Middle Ages the Sar is infectious; one woman after another rises up in the Sar-gathering and is involuntarily gripped by the dance, boys and even men who are here and there admitted to these orgies being no exception. In many cases the features are altered, they strike their faces, bang their heads against the walls, weep, howl, try to strangle themselves and are restrained only with difficulty. They give themselves out as other persons, saints, and particularly the Sar itself. They are asked what they want, are shown a silver ring, henna-paste or busa. They cast a furious glance upon these objects, seize them suddenly with a wild grip, put on the ring, grasp the henna-paste in the fist, or drink the busa. This suffices as a rule to satisfy and quiet the Sar; the possessed wipes the sweat from her and now talks composedly and reasonably as before. On a day fixed by the Sar the fit is often renewed and ends like the first with the satisfaction of an often strange wish.
These states are not mere simulation, as may be clearly seen; for otherwise why should the possessed wound themselves, often dangerously? It is acute delirium or ecstasy. The spiritualist calls these persons “mediums,” the believer in animal magnetism calls them “magnetized.”1
The Zar derives, as we have already observed, from Abyssinia. As early as 1868 the English traveller Plowden speaks as follows of those possessed by the Zar.
These Zars are spirits or devils of a somewhat humorous turn, who, taking possession of their victim, cause him to perform the most curious antics, and sometimes become visible to him while they are so to no one else—somewhat I fancy after the fashion of the “Erl King.” The favourite remedies are amulets and severe tom-toming, and screeching without cessation, till the possessed, doubtless distracted with the noise, rushes violently out of the house, pelted and beaten, and driven to the nearest brook, where the Zar quits him, and he becomes well.1
To rationalist objections that there are no Zar spirits the Abyssinian Christians reply, exactly like the orthodox European Christians, that there were possessed persons in the time of Jesus and that they still exist in their country, even if these supernatural phenomena no longer occur in Europe.
M. J. de Goeje refers to the narrative of a French traveller, J. Borelli, who writes:
To all their superstitions the Abyssinians add a particular fear of evil spirits, especially “Bouddha” and “Zarr.”
The person who proclaims himself possessed rises in the middle of the night, rolls upon the ground and utters inarticulate cries. After one or two hours of contortions he is exhausted and remains lying as if inanimate. The most efficacious remedy then consists in taking a hen and swinging it round the head of the possessed, subsequently throwing it upon the ground. If the hen dies at once or soon afterwards it is a good omen; the Zarr or Bouddha has passed into the body of the fowl and caused it to perish. If the hen survives this ill-treatment it is clear that the demon has resisted and has remained in the patient’s body; another attempt must be made.
The Zarr has numerous followers, and in certain localities is the object of a sort of worship. He has incarnations, and various forms and names. In the neighbourhood of Ankoboer the evil spirit, for reasons quite unknown to me, is designated by the name of “Waïzero Encolal,” that is to say literally “Miss Egg.” At certain periods of the year the initiates of the Zarr unite and shut themselves up for three days and nights, indulging in practices as mysterious as they are grotesque. In these assemblies the Zarr does not fail to appear to his pious votaries.2
It is regrettable that the accounts in my possession do not permit of an assured judgement as to the relationship of this Zar-possession to the facts reported by Tremearne. Are they essentially the same phenomena, or else manifestations of possession which, as such, show some natural psycholo
gical resemblance, but without genetic or ethnological connection?
1 Delitzsch, Mehr Licht, Leipzig, 1907, p. 61, note 23.
1 Ibid., p. 40.
2 R. Campbell Thompson, The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, 2 vols., London, 1903–1904 (Luzac’s Semitic Text and Translation, series xiv and xv). H. Zimmern, Beiträge zur Kentniss der babylonischen Religion, Leipzig, 1901 (Assyriologische Bibliothek, edited by F. Delitzsch and P. Haupt, xii). Knut L. Tallqvist, Die assyrische Beschwörungsserie Maqlû, from the originals in the British Museum. In Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicœ, xx, Helsingfors, 1895.
3 Morris Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, 4 vols., Giessen, 1905–12. Alfred Jeremias, Handbuch der orientalischen Geisteskultur, Leipzig, 1913.
1 Thompson, loc. cit., vol. i, p. 1.17.
2 E. de Rougé, Étude d’une stéle égyptienne in “Journal asiatique,” 5th series, vol. xii, 1858, pp. 253 sq.; and also Œuvres, tome xxiii, of the Bibliothèque égyptologique, Paris, 1910, p. 282.
1 Cf. also Ad. Erman, Die Betreschstele, in Zschft. für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, xxi (1883), pp. 54–60.
2 A. v. Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 3rd ed., Leipzig, 1915, vol. i, p. 138.
3 Kurt Sethe, Sarapis und die sogenannten des Sarapis: Zwei Probleme der griechisch-ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte, in Abhandlungen der Kgl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-histor. Klasse, Neue Folge, vol. xiv, 1913, No. 5. Sethe’s work has been answered by Wilcken in “Archiv für Papyrusforschung,” vol. vi (1920), pp. 184–212: Zu den des Serapeums (cf. partic., pp. 186 and 197). Sethe in turn has replied under the title: Wilcken, Zu den des Serapeums in the “Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen,” 176th year (1914). Diels has upheld Wilcken: Zu Philodemos, Ueber die Götter, vol. i, Abhandlungen der Kgl. Preuss. Akad. der Wiss., 1915, Phil.-hist. Kl., No. 7, p. 78, note 1.
1 This is, as I have lately observed, the opinion of W. Schubarth: Ein Jahrtausend am Nil. Briefe aus dem Altertum verdeutscht und erklärt, Berlin, 1912, p. 21.
2 L. Mitteis and Wilcken, Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, Leipzig, 1912, vol. i, 2, p. 130 sq. Cf. Erwin Preuschen, Mōnchtum und Sarapiskult, 2nd edit., Giessen, 1903.
3 Sethe, loc. cit., xiv (1913), pp. 69 sq.
4 Catalogus codicum astrologorum grœcorum, Brussels, 1904, vol. v, 2, p. 146.
1 Vettius Valens, Anthologiarum libri, ed. G. Kroll, Berlin, 1908, lib. ii, cap. xvi, p. 73 and also pp. 24 sq.
2 Ibid., lib. ii, cap. vii, pp. 63 and 29 sq. Catalogus, v, 2, p. 146.
3 H. Diels, Zu Philodemos …, loc. cit., p. 78. The Greek as restored by Diels is doubtful in places.
1 Mitteis and Wilcken, loc. cit., p. 222.
2 It is regrettable that this author has not yet been translated into German (nor English—TRANS.), as he is considered the most difficult of the Greek writers. In the his language is sometimes so difficult that it would remain incomprehensible in places except to philologists, were it not for the existence of an old Latin translation by G. Cantor. It appeared at Bâle in 1566 without the Greek text and has been re-edited with the Greek by Jebb at Oxford in 1722–30. The whole of this author’s writings are of such importance to the history of religion in his time that a translation should be made with all speed. For Aristides, cf. F. G. Welcker, Kleine Schriften, 3rd part, Bonn, 1850, pp. 89–156; G. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, vol. i, Leipzig, 1907, pp. 302 sq. Herm. Baumgart, Aelius Aristides, Leipzig, 1874.
3 Commentatio de dœmoniacis quorum in novo testamento fit mentio, editio quarto multo iam auctior, Halœ, 1777. This is supplemented by his: Umständliche Untersuchung der dämonischen Leute oder sogenannten Besessenen, nebst Beantwortung einiger Angriffe, Halle, 1762, pp. 41 sq.
4 De antiquorum dœmonismo, Giessen, 1909, Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, vol. vii, 3.
1 Georg Finsler, Homer, 1st part: Der Dichter und seine Welt, 2nd edit., Leipzig, 1914, p. 270. The passages referred to are from the Iliad, iv, 31 and vi, 486.
1 “The appearance of prophets inspired by the Divinity (Sibyls, Bacehids, etc.) in sundry regions of Greek Asia Minor and ancient Hellas is one of the phenomena characteristic of the religious life of a well-defined period, that fateful time which immediately preceded the philosophic age of the Greeks” (Erwin Rohde, Psyche, 2nd edit., vol. ii, p. 65).
1 A detailed account of divine passions will be found in vol. ii of my Phänomenologie des Ich.
2 Moreover, the Plato of the last years shows in some respects, such as his moral rigorism, tendencies closely related to those of Kant and which overstep the classical domain.
3 Cf. in the first place Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. A meagre collection of documents on Plotinus by François da Costa Guimarais: Contribution à la pathologie des mystiques, anamnèse de quatre cas. Paris, 1908, pp. 7–13.
1 Medizinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengeschichte in: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, vol. viii, p. 108.
2 J. Burckhardt, Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen, 2nd edit., Leipzig, 1880, p. 215.
3 Ibid., p. 230.
1 Ibid., p. 243.
2 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, i, 21, 142 (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. i, p. 443. Edinburgh, 1867).
1 Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 3rd ed., revised and augmented, Leipzig, 1915, vol. i, p. 138.
2 Ibid.
3 Justin Martyr, Apol., ii, 6. It would be interesting to know whether possession also existed in Athens, the centre of learning, and if so in what circles and from what date.
1 Sulpicius Severus, Dialogues, i, 20. (“A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,” second series, Oxford, 1894, vol. xi, p. 33.)
2 Gregory the Great, Dialogues, i, c. 10. (“The Dialogues of Saint Gregory, surnamed the Great … translated into our English tongue,” Paris, RIDCVIII, re-edited E. G. Gardner, London, 1911, p. 39.)
1 Saint Jerome, Epistula, c. viii, 13, ed. Migne, i, p. 889. Jacob Burckhardt, loc. cit., p. 447.
2 Gregory the Great, loc. cit., i, c. 10. Dialogues, etc., pp. 38–39.
3 Gregory the Great, To Rusticiana, Patrician (Epistles, book xi, no. xliv).
1 Sulpicius Severus, loc. cit., i, c. 20 (p. 34).
2 Cassian’s Conferences, vii, ch. xxv. (“A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,” second series, Oxford, 1894, vol. xi, p. 371.)
3 Ibid., p. 500.
1 Rabbulœ Edesseni Canones, Migne, P.G., vol. lxxvii.
2 Cassian, loc. cit., v, ch. xxv. (“A Select Library,” etc.)
3 Cassian, ibid., p. 496.
4 Harnack, Die Mission, vol. i, p. 141. Cf. also H. Achelis, Das Christentum in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, Leipzig, 1912, vol. i, pp. 132–147.
1 Justin, Apol., ii, 6. (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. ii. Justin Martyr, pp. 76–77, Edinburgh, 1868.)
2 For further details, cf. Harnack, loc. cit., p. 142.
3 Quoted by Harnack, loc. cit., p. 153.
1 Some details concerning these exorcisms have been collected by Fred. Probst; Sakramente und Sakramentalien in den drei ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten, Tübingen, 1872, pp. 46 sq.
2 Ibid., pp. 52 sq.
3 Sulpicius Severus, loc. cit., p. 115.
4 Origen, In num. hom. 16 n. i, p. 418, quoted by Probst, loc. cit., p. 44.
1 Tertullian, Apol., c. 23. The Writings of Tertullian (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xi, Edinburgh, 1869).
2 Origen, Against Celsus, i, 24. (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. X, Writings of Origen, pp. 421–22, Edinburgh, 1869.)
1 Origen, Against Celsus, i, 25. Ibid., pp. 421–23.
2 A. J. Binterirn, Die vorzüglichsten Denkwürdigkeiten der christkatholischen Kirche aus den ersten, mittleren und letxten Zeiten, vol. viii, part i, chap. 5, Mainz, 1831.
3 1 Sam. xvi, 14 sq. (Moff
at’s edit.).
1 1 Sam. xviii, 10 sq. (ibid.).
2 1 Sam. xix, 9 sq. (ibid.).
3 Hans Duhm, Die bösen Geister im alten Testament, Tübingen, 1904.
4 Ibid., p. 31.
5 Ibid., p. 63.
6 Herbert Loewe, Encyclopœdia of Religion and Ethics, vol. iv, p. 613.
1 Antiquities of the Jews, book viii, chap. ii. (The Works of Flavius Josephus, Whiston’s translation revised, A. R. Shilleto, London, 1900, vol. ii, pp. 79–80.)
2 Josephus, Jewish War, vii, 186. (Loeb Classical Library, Josephus, vol. iii, p. 559.)
3 Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums in Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, 2nd edit., Berlin, 1906, p. 388.
4 Ibid., p. 387.
1 Cf. Jos. Kohler, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1907, 3259.
2 H. Oppenheim, Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten, 6th edit., Berlin, 1913, vol. ii, p. 1393.
3 Oppenheim adds to these reasons the growth of the spirit of industry fostered by unfavourable conditions of life.