4 - Illnesses of God: personhood, knowledge, and healing

Summary

Spirit possession rites and verbal art imagery do not occur as discrete entities, but as a continuous code. Ritual and mythology are mirror images of each other in their articulation of issues surrounding concepts of self. Both address healing in their interconnected themes of suffering and social conflict, and both draw upon the same symbolic repertoire and imagery. Both encapsulate the contradictions of the individual/society relationship.

The local etiology of spirit possession as being inherited from mother to daughter reveals ways in which structural sources of conflict affect domestic cycles, marriage, and descent. An examination of possession tropes has shown that internal well-being is inseparable from external well-being, social stratum, and kinship roles. Among Kel Ewey, despite the cultural preoccupation with the relationship between fertility, maternity, and nurturance, social status and descent cause tensions between spouses on the one hand, and among mothers, sisters, and daughters on the other. The domestic unit enacts in a microcosmic form the larger conflicts pertaining to economics and descent. These issues have emerged as central concerns in images of possession and in concepts of person. Illness, misfortune, general suffering, and the responses of others to these phenomena are linked to one's position in the social structure.