Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections 9780857452085

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ENCOUNTERS OF BODY AND SOUL IN CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

EASA Series Published in Association with the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Series Editor: James G. Carrier, Senior Research Associate, Oxford Brookes University Social anthropology in Europe is growing, and the variety of work being done is expanding. This series is intended to present the best of the work produced by members of the EASA, both in monographs and in edited collections. The studies in this series describe societies, processes, and institutions around the world and are intended for both scholarly and student readership. 1. LEARNING FIELDS Volume 1

Educational Histories of European Social Anthropology Edited by Dorle Dracklé, Iain R. Edgar and Thomas K. Schippers

9. KNOWING HOW TO KNOW

Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present Edited by Narmala Halstead, Eric Hirsch and Judith Okely 10. POSTSOCIALIST EUROPE

2. LEARNING FIELDS Volume 2

Current Policies and Practices in European Social Anthropology Education Edited by Dorle Dracklé and Iain R. Edgar 3. GRAMMARS OF IDENTITY/ ALTERITY

A Structural Approach

Anthropological Perspectives from Home Edited by László Kürti and Peter Skalník 11. ETHNOGRAPHIC PRACTICE IN THE PRESENT Edited by Marit Melhuus, Jon P. Mitchell and Helena Wulff 12. CULTURE WARS

Edited by Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich

Context, Models and Anthropologists’ Accounts

4. MULTIPLE MEDICAL REALITIES

Edited by Deborah James, Evelyn Plaice and Christina Toren

Patients and Healers in Biomedical, Alternative and Traditional Medicine Edited by Helle Johannessen and Imre Lázár 5. FRACTURING RESEMBLANCES

Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West Simon Harrison 6. SKILLED VISIONS

Between Apprenticeship and Standards

13. POWER AND MAGIC IN ITALY Thomas Hauschild 14. POLICY WORLDS

Anthropology and Analysis of Contemporary Power Edited by Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Però 15. HEADLINES OF NATION, SUBTEXTS OF CLASS

Edited by Cristina Grasseni

Working Class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe

7. GOING FIRST CLASS?

Edited by Don Kalb and Gabor Halmai

New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement Edited by Vered Amit 8. EXPLORING REGIMES OF DISCIPLINE

The Dynamics of Restraint Edited by Noel Dyck

16. ENCOUNTERS OF BODY AND SOUL IN CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

Anthropological Reflections Edited by Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

ENCOUNTERS OF BODY AND SOUL IN

CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

Anthropological Reflections

Edited by

Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

Published in 2011 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2011 Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encounters of body and soul in contemporary religious practices : anthropological reflections / [edited by] Anna Fedele, Ruy Llera Blanes. p. cm. — (EASA series ; 16) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-207-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-85745-208-5 (ebook) 1. Human body—Religious aspects. I. Fedele, Anna. II. Blanes, Ruy Llera, 1976BL604.B64E53 2011 202’.2—dc22 2011000408

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper

ISBN 978-0-85745-207-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-208-5 (ebook)

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

x

Part I. Bodies and Souls in Catholic Settings Chapter 1. ‘I want to feel the Camino in my legs’. Trajectories of Walking on the Camino de Santiago Keith Egan

3

Chapter 2. Holding the Saint in One’s Arms. Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile Giovanna Bacchiddu

23

Chapter 3. Embodying Devotion, Embodying Passion. The Italian Tradition of The Festa dei Gigli in Nola Katia Ballacchino

43

Part II. Corporeality, Belief and Human Mobility Chapter 4. The Body and the World. Missionary Performances and the Experience of the World in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands João Rickli

69

vi ◆ Contents

Chapter 5. ‘How To Deal with the Dutch’. The Local and the Global in the Habitus of the Saved Soul Kim Knibbe Chapter 6. Is Witchcraft Embodied? Representations of the Body in Talimbi Witchcraft Aleksandra Cimpric

91

109

Part III. New Spiritualities Challenging the Body/Soul Divide Chapter 7. When Soma Encounters the Spiritual. Bodily Praxes of Performed Religiosity in Contemporary Greece Eugenia Roussou

133

Chapter 8. Reenchanted Bodies. The Significance of the Spiritual Dimension in Danish Healing Rituals Ann Ostenfeld-Rosenthal

151

Chapter 9. The Struggle for Sovereignty. The Interpretation of Bodily Experiences in Anthropology and among Mediumistic Healers in Germany Ehler Voss

168

Chapter 10. Transforming Musical Soul into Bodily Practice. Tone Eurythmy, Anthroposophy and Underlying Structures Andrew Spiegel and Silke Sponheuer

179

Notes on Contributors

203

Subject Index

206

Illustrations

Illustrations 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 4.1. 4.2. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3.

10.4.

Back from Caguach: a couple on the boat holding the saint, a chicha demijohn to the fore. Holding the saint in one’s hands: a novena owner carrying the San Antonio upon his arrival in Apiao. Another novena owner, a girl, with the saint, and one of the musicians. Dancing the cueca in front of the saint and his altar. The giglio and the boat dancing in Nola during the feast in 2008. The paranza Fantastic Team transports on their shoulders the giglio during the Feast of Nola, 2008. The fatigue of carriers during the ballata of gigli in Nola, 2008. An extreme callo di San Paolino or pataniello of Nolan carrier Vincenzo Giannini. Giving to Kerkinactie: how you can contribute to Kerkinactie’s work. ‘To Get There’. Opening bars of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major KV581. First half of bar one of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major KV581 and image of eurythmical performance of same. Bars seven and eight of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major KV581 and sequential images of eurythmical performance of same. Eurythmy gestures for musical shifts from lower to higher pitches (multiple exposure).

26 27 28 35 49 49 50 56 79 80 184 185

185 187

viii ◆ List of Illustrations

10.5. Eurythmy gestures for the three tones comprising the A-major chord – all set in the octave stretching across the standard middle C in ‘concert pitch’. 10.6. Gestures for major and minor.

187 189

Figures 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4.

The threefold spirit-soul-body relationship. Lévi-Strauss’s (1978: 490) culinary triangle. Eurythmical musical triangle. Eurythmical transformation in terms of threefold spiritsoul-body relationship.

181 190 192 193

Acknowledgements

The original discussion regarding research on corporeality in religious contexts began when the editors of this volume organised a workshop at the 10th EASA Biennial Conference (Ljubljana) entitled “Body and Soul: On Corporeality in Contemporary Religiosity.” The enthusiastic response from both participants and attendants at the workshop encouraged us to prolong the debate and propose this edited volume. A few colleagues that participated in the workshop could not, for several reasons, make it here, but we appreciated their important contributions: Isabelle Lange, Konstantinos Retsikas and Sandra Santos. As editors of this volume, we have accumulated many debts along the way. First and foremost, with the authors here included, who have contributed with their fascinating research and stimulating discussions to the overall theme of the volume. Many other colleagues have offered strategic insights, both in the workshop and in different stages of the production of this book that have helped us improve the project: William A. Christian Jr., Elisabeth Claverie, Simon Coleman, João de Pina Cabral, Diana Espírito Santo, Arnaud Halloy, Tanya Luhrmann, Cédric Masse, Vlad Naumescu, Clara Saraiva, and, last but not least, Ramon Sarró. Finally, we would especially like to acknowledge the contribution of the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript who offered stimulating feedback and allowed us, and the contributors to this volume, for fruitful revision. We would also like to thank Berghahn for their involvement and especially the editor of the Berghahn EASA series, James Carrier, for the continuous patience, explanations, insights and encouragements.

Introduction Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

In the year 2000, the spirit of an Angolan prophet called Simão Toko (1918 – 1984) entered the body of a young man called Afonso Nunes, who was then ‘personified’ by him, ‘filled’ with his soul. The young man then assumed the bodily posture of the original prophet and took up the leadership of the ‘Tokoist Church’, one of the most important Christian movements in Angola. Today, over one million believers in Angola and in the Angolan diaspora follow him, accepting this form of ‘spiritual embodiment’ (Blanes 2011). This metaphor of spiritual embodiment, obviously, is not exclusive to Angola or to prophetism. Every day Catholics all over the world attend mass and practice a version of spiritual embodiment that may appear more familiar to the Western reader: they ‘eat’ the body of Christ offered to them by a priest who also ‘drinks’ Jesus’ blood, thereby celebrating the Eucharist. Other Christians, on the other hand, prefer to ‘perform the Eucharist’ being embodied by the Holy Ghost in a Pentecostal experience. Likewise, Hindu practitioners promote fasting and vegetarianism in order to attain purity and spiritual enlightenment, and candomblé mães-desanto and pais-de-santo dance and ‘ingest spirits’ in order to be possessed by invisible entities. But other forms of ‘spiritualising’ the body can also be found in the body of the suicide bomber, who sacrifices his physical self, hoping to find a place in paradise (see Asad 2007). Social scientists confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying, and questioned themselves about the role of the body in the construction of those experiences. Analysing religious experiences, anthropologists often distinguished between ‘body’ and ‘soul’, between nonmaterial, spiritual experiences related to the soul and physical, mechanical experiences related to the body. But until today insufficient attention has been paid to the codependent relationship

Introduction ◆ xi

between these two entities, the way in which different religious cultures describe them and the different strategies developed by social scientists to deal with the overlapping of these two spheres. As the above examples of ‘spiritual embodiment’ show us, the challenge remains relevant to this day. This book, therefore, proposes a comprehensive approach to this key point: the significance and agency behind religious conceptions of the body in their relationship with ideas of the soul. We propose to bring to the forefront of the anthropology of religion the part of the body-soul dichotomy that tended to be neglected or treated as merely accessory in many discussions of religious phenomena: the issue of corporeality in religious contexts.1 As is shown in the ethnographic examples analysed in the different articles of this book, the body and its reactions play an important role not only in healing rituals, but also in establishing a relationship with sacred objects and figures, during pilgrimage experiences, in contexts of religious apprenticeship or in the development of doctrinal configurations. The metaphorical, representational, political, often suffering or dysfunctional body described by the contributors to this volume is not a passive vessel of religious practices but a crucial entity of the experience of the sacred that appears intertwined with and not separated from the soul. With this volume we propose to discuss the importance of the body and its perceptions in contemporary religious faith, taking the body/soul divide as an epistemological starting point. Bearing in mind that these two entities may be perceived and described in different ways in different cultural contexts, the contributors to this volume confront the following questions: What are the definitions set forth, in contemporary ethnographic contexts, of ‘body’ and ‘soul’? What is the role of the body in contexts of religious agency and creativity? And in contexts of mobility and migration? In which ways can ‘spirituality’ be interpreted in terms of a bodily habitus or of other embodiment theories? How can the body, but also the soul become a locus of political, ideological and doctrinal expression and discourse? What kind of theories of person and ‘being’ are involved?

Anthropological Approaches to Corporeality in Religious Contexts At the beginning of the twentieth century it might have been a stimulating challenge to define or establish the ‘essence’ and role of the soul (see e.g., James 1982 [1902]), but it was still possible to ‘measure’ the body and its functions. Yet today, the quick and constant development of medical science allows us to manipulate the body and its processes in the name of survival, sexual orientation or even aesthetical preferences; on the other hand, the deinstitutionalisation and reconfiguration of belief and religious

xii ◆ Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

practice at a global scale have challenged universalist or fixed conceptions of belief and spirituality. Thus, the ‘body’ and the ‘soul’ have lost the reassuring limits they had in the past, forcing us to question their disciplinary place. As we mentioned previously, throughout the history of the discipline, anthropologists tended to distinguish between nonmaterial, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body), developing differentiated strategies to deal with the overlapping of these two spheres. Thus today, despite the development of important subdisciplines such as a ‘medical anthropology’ (see Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987) or, on the other hand, an ‘anthropology of emotions’ (see Lutz and White 1986), the issue of corporeality in religious contexts, as a potential challenge to the classic binarism between ‘body’ and ‘soul’, has not been a central theme in the debate. Most of the efforts in this direction have been produced either in religious studies or in theological and philosophical disciplines (see Eilberg-Schwartz 1992; Law 1995; Tilley and Ross 1995; Ammicht-Quinn and Tamez 2002; Coakley 1997; Nicholson 1997; Cooper 2000; Armour and St. Ville 2006; Murphy 2006). Despite noticeable exceptions that will be mentioned henceforth, this interaction has not been object of a recent, extended discussion within the field of the anthropology of religion.2 The ‘body’, as an empirical ground for (and epistemological construct within) the anthropological discipline, would be expected, at a first glance, to be a pivotal figure in the description and interpretation of social and cultural facts – as Mauss had already proposed in his study on techniques du corps (1936). Yet, as Margaret Lock (1993) and Miguel Vale de Almeida (1996) among others have pointed out, it was only after the growing input of certain philosophical currents and tenets in anthropological theory – phenomenology, postmodernism, subjectivism and reflexivity on the one hand, poststructuralism on the other – and the subsequent development of ‘body theories’ (‘embodiment’, ‘body subject’, ‘body politics’, etc.), that corporeality was brought to the intellectual spotlight.3 Of these, perhaps Pierre Bourdieu’s practice and habitus theory, and Michel Foucault’s analytics of power in The Will to Knowledge (1976) were the most impacting. In particular, Bourdieu’s re-elaboration of Mauss’s classical concept of habitus (of which we will read discussions in this volume) as a complex of ‘beliefs and dispositions’ and mediator between objective and subjective stances were an important background for posterior phenomenological approaches introduced in the anthropology of religion (see below).4 Thus, theories of personhood (Strathern and Lambek 1998), ‘bodily sociality’ (Turner 1996; Lambert and MacDonald 2009), ‘mindful bodies’ (Strathern 1996), ‘re-formed bodies’ (Mellor and Shilling 1997) and ‘self’ (Douglas 1992; Csordas 1994a), among others, have become landmarks in contemporary social theory, using ideas of socialisation, agency and practice to remove the body from its epistemological subalternity and plac-

Introduction ◆ xiii

ing it as an object of ‘anthropological puzzlement’ (Strathern and Lambek 1998: 5). These philosophical contributions can be understood as attempts to locate the singular and shifting place of the body in the history of the anthropology of religion (Strathern and Lambek 1998: 5). Following Sarah Coakley (1997: 3), the ubiquity of the body was simultaneously its conceptual Achilles’ heel: it is present in multiple stances of sociality (race, performance, ritual, symbol, power etc.), and therefore it is methodologically slippery. Yet, despite having placed the body historically at the margins of the anthropology of religion, we should not fall into theoretically comfortable ‘marginalisation arguments’, as it is also true that we can observe a recurrence of the issue of corporeality in religious contexts that emerged even from early analyses of religious experiences – a recurrence that shows us that it has, after all, been a concern for several anthropologists throughout the history of the discipline. Frazer, for instance, debated examples of ‘succession of the soul’ as forms of bodily transmission of power and sacredness, examples of the ‘absence of the soul’ of the body in different cultures, or examples of the impact of the soul, as an invisible entity, in the physical world (1922). Likewise, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl discussed, in The Primitive Soul, notions of ontological individuality (and duality) among ‘primitive cultures’ with relation to beliefs in souls and spirits and their bodily manifestations – infants, corpses, werewolves, etc. (1927). Frazer and Lévy-Bruhl’s proto-ethnographic accounts sampled what countless other anthropologists, from Evans-Pritchard to Mary Douglas, to name but two of the most notorious, also gathered in their researches on religion and witchcraft. Mary Douglas’s pivotal work on notions of pollution and cleanliness in biblical culture offered a symbolic interpretation of the body, as agent of ‘prescription’ (taboo) and ‘boundary’ (1966). Evans-Pritchard, on the other hand, described how the Azande believed ‘witchcraft’ to be a substance placed in the body of the witch, but himself defined the phenomenon as a ‘psychic act’ (1976: 1). Yet, an ad hoc critique to these classical interpretations of religious phenomena has been, precisely, the underrepresentation of the body, understood most of the time as a physical recipient, passive signifier or locus of cultural, symbolic or political expressions – devoid, therefore, of individuality and significance. Informed by modern and postmodern philosophical concepts – but also by other disciplines (psychology, cognitive studies, etc.), and concomitant to the subsequent ‘body theories’, recent anthropological approaches have progressively proposed different ways of understanding the place of corporeality in religious contexts. We think, for instance, of the revival of the research on ‘spirit possession’ following I. M. Lewis’s influential work on ‘ecstatic religion’ (1971). After the groundbreaking research developed by, among others, Janice Boddy, who explicitly articulated notions of gender, sexuality and self in the context of feminine spirit possession in Muslim Northern Sudan

xiv ◆ Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

(1982, 1988, 1989), this topic seems to be returning to the main debates, also due to the input of recent work on Afro-Brazilian possession cults such as candomblé, etc. (see Goldman 2008 and Saraiva 2008, among others).5 But spirit possession has also been object of renewed observation from the perspective of cognitive anthropology. An example that comes to mind is Emma Cohen’s The Mind Possessed (2007). Her approach is also a contribution to one of the liveliest ongoing debates in the discipline: that of the cognitive perspectives on religious practice, memory and transmission. Her book, and others (e.g., Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004), has promoted, in contrast with previous approaches that explored the social contexts of possession (e.g., Lambek 1981), a focus on ‘perception’ and psychological ‘disposition’ as ways of defining different religious ritual experiences. Yet, an important critique to this approach has been its excessive ‘psychologization’ of religious experience, which seems to undermine the importance of physical, bodily experiences in these contexts. In contrast, the burgeoning research on ‘religious learning’ (see Berliner and Sarró 2007) has argued for the complexity and interrelatedness of bodily and mental practices in the process of religious transmission. As is proposed, transmission (in relation to religious memory) is not processed solely through cognitive processes, but also implies social processes where the body can act as a site of religious learning and experience (2007: 7 and following). Likewise, recent approaches to pilgrimage (see e.g., Eickelman and Piscatori 1990; Eade and Sallnow 1991; Morinis 1992; Badone and Roseman 2004; Coleman and Eade 2004; Hermkens, Jansen and Notermans 2009) have suggested the importance of the body and suffering in the narrativization of religious faith as forms of spiritual ascription of physical experiences (pain, walking, etc.). Through this perspective, the body appears as an active participant of the religious experience: a fulfiller of promises and the locator/producer of religious dispositions (sacrifice, introspection, etc.) and discourses. Equally noticeable in this context is the study of the historical constitution of discipline and regimes of practice as parts of the process of conviction and belief. We are referring here to Talal Asad’s famed comments on discipline and humility in medieval monasticism (1993: 125–67), in which the body becomes ‘competent’ through ritual practice (1993: 75). In this particular respect, this approach comes close to that of Jean Comaroff, who saw the social body as historically constitutive and simultaneously representational in terms of ‘signifying practices’ in Tswana Zionist cults (1985: 6–9). Some research on spiritual apparitions has also highlighted the importance of physical (visual, bodily, etc.) ‘presence’ as a mediation between the empirical, ideological and spiritual aspects of belief (see e.g., Christian 1989; Claverie 2003). These approaches have reminded us of the importance of the social integration of religious experiences, and of the processes of ‘socialization’ of spiritual (or nonmaterial) entities through prophecies, visions, dreams (see Stewart 1997), gifts (Coleman 2004), etc. Paraphrasing

Introduction ◆ xv

Matthew Engelke, the issue of ‘presence’ is, in fact, a ‘problem’ (2007: 11 and following), in terms of the dialectics between the theoretical, ideological belief in God (or a god that is not visible, for this argument) and the lived experience of faith. The challenge here would be to locate and reflect upon these processes of mediation. For instance, for many Christians they are expressed in the sacrificial character of Jesus Christ’s life on earth, while for Charismatics and Pentecostals they would appear in the bodily experience of the descent of the Holy Ghost.6 In this line of thought, the senses can play a central epistemological role in the mediation (i.e., identification, definition, interpretation) of religious experience (Meyer 2008a, 2008b). But perhaps one of the most influential theories in contemporary anthropology regarding the role of corporeality in religious experience has been Csordas’s work on embodiment (1994) and the phenomenology of healing in religious contexts (2002), which implied an epistemological breakthrough regarding subjectivity and the relationship between psychological and bodily dimensions (overcoming the classic mind/body divide). Through an ‘existential’ approach to the concept of embodiment, overcoming the idea of the body as ‘recipient’, Csordas proposed an interpretation of how the ‘self’ is constituted as ‘sacred’ in specific contexts (namely, of Charismatic healing).7 Csordas, whose arguments are invoked and discussed by several contributors to this volume, encapsulates, in the concepts of ‘practice’ and ‘perception’ that support his theory of embodiment, the main stances of the body-soul interrelationship: mediation, experience, discourse. From this particular perspective, the problem of ‘suffering’ reveals itself as a striking locus for the study of these interfaces (see e.g., Antze and Lambek 1996; Lambek and Antze 2003; Sarró 2009). The different anthropological efforts we have just debated constitute rich contributions that, when put into comparison, defy or at least complexify8 the common-sense assumption of a body/soul dichotomized heritage – or the Western problem of monism and dualism and related ‘philosophies of personhood’ (see Strathern 1996: 41; Lambek 1998) – and suggest new paths for rethinking the place, agency and discursive weight of the body or bodily experience in contemporary religious experience. They also represent a challenging legacy of concepts, interpretive schemes and theoretical paradigms to those who are dealing with novel empirical contexts within contemporary religiosity. As many authors have argued, contemporary phenomena such as migration, mobility and multiculturalism have brought religion once more into the spotlight in contemporary social theory (see Rudolph and Piscatori 1997; Baumann 1999; Berger 1999), and demanded new efforts for their description and interpretation – shifting aims, moving targets, as Clifford Geertz put it (2005). How can we, as anthropologists, interpret, for instance, the development of an ‘individualized Christian pilgrimage’ that focuses on bodily sensations, anthroposophical conceptions of the soul and their development into spe-

xvi ◆ Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

cific bodily movements or “New Age” influenced spiritual responses to the ‘evil eye’ in contemporary Greece? The contributors to this volume explain how they responded to this challenge and how their findings can contribute to the cross-cultural understanding of corporeality in a religious context.

Ethnographic Accounts on Body and Soul Having realized that little attention had been paid to the relationship between body and soul and the importance of corporeality in the study of contemporary religiosity, we organized a panel at the biennial conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists held in Ljubljana in 2008 with the title ‘Body and Soul: On Corporeality in Contemporary Religiosity.’ We interpreted the success of the panel as the confirmation of the existence of a gap in the anthropological study of religion and decided to give continuity to this project. In the call for papers for the conference we had emphasized our interest in ethnographically rooted texts; we believed that the contribution scholars in anthropology could give to the transdisciplinary debate about the importance of corporeality in religious contexts derived primarily from their ability to contextualize their analysis through references to fresh fieldwork data (Coakley 1997; Strathern and Lambek 1998). Interestingly enough, the papers selected that now form the chapters of this volume refer in their majority to ethnographic contexts related to Christianity and to ‘new spiritualities’ also described as ‘New Age spiritualities.’ This probably relates to the fact that in the Christian ethos the distinction/opposition of body and soul is a central issue, and alternative spiritualities overtly challenge this dichotomy and advocate for a different sort of sacralization of the body and the physical world. Other religious contexts where corporeality turned out to play an important role are those of migration and missionary action (Rickli and Knibbe in this volume). We decided to divide the contributions into three sections referring respectively to the contexts of Catholic religiosity, religious mobility and new spiritualities.9

Bodies and Souls in Catholic Settings The ethnographic accounts that form the first part of this volume refer to countries where the presence of Catholicism is still very evident, namely, Spain, Chile and Italy. The religious tourists or secular pilgrims Egan describes on their way to Santiago are those further away from Catholic orthodoxy. However, Egan observes that this pilgrimage cannot be considered as a totally secularized one and ‘the question of motivation can never completely discount religious motives.’ This first chapter explores in fact the multiple ways in

Introduction ◆ xvii

which the pilgrims ‘engage the religious en route’ and find through the physical and spiritual experience of the Camino a way to deal with the sense of dissatisfaction they feel about their lives. The following two chapters both refer to the cult of an Italian saint and the people venerating these saints considering themselves to be ‘good Catholics’, as Giovanna Bacchiddu puts it. However, the devotional acts they developed are far from being orthodox. Bacchiddu focuses on the cult of a miraculous chalk statue of Saint Anthony of Padua on the island of Apiao in southern Chile. Offering a detailed description of the relationship Apiao islanders establish with the saint, Bacchiddu argues that the interaction between people and sacred objects can and should be considered as a social relationship (Gell 1998). Situating this kind of devotion in the context of Amerindian Christianity, Bacchiddu observes that ‘Apiao people’s experiences of religion strongly merge the physical with the spiritual, and religion cannot be separated from sociality: in fact, it can be accurately described as coinciding with sociality’. Analysing the impressive mobilization of money and people to celebrate San Paolino in Nola, Katia Ballacchino also relates religion with sociality. Ballacchino points out that ‘on the day of the feast … , the body becomes the principal space for the representation of religious belief, expression of the sense of belonging to the community and of the recognition of a cultural identity’. Here as in the other chapters of this section, we can see that the evident somatism of the devotional acts cannot be separated from the social dimension, and its meanings can be grasped only if considering the corporeal dimension on an individual but also on a collective level. In this first section we can see how both ‘soul’ and ‘body’ are not abstract entities with a fixed, universal meaning that can be invariably applied as such to analyse different ethnographic contexts. On the contrary, body and soul are socially constructed entities; their meanings and limits are the result of a constant negotiation and can only be understood in the cultural context that generated them. As Bacchiddu points out referring to Fenella Cannell’s analysis of the anthropology of Christianity (2005, 2006), anthropology has been influenced by Christianity’s separation of body and soul, but ethnographic studies ‘easily contradict such clear-cut approaches and fresh data reveal a focus on the body as the fundamental vessel of spirituality – not as a symbolic carrier of asceticism but as the main relational expression of the otherworldly’ (Bacchiddu this volume). Compared with the ever-present bodies described in this section, the soul emerges as a more elusive entity. Due to its invisibility and its almost ungraspable essence, rather than an entity in itself the soul often appears as a ‘bridging device’ that acts as a ‘heuristic to engage with an oblique institution but often not in traditionally received ways’ (Egan, this volume). It seems as if defining the soul would deprive it from its essence, and the Santiago pilgrims avoid giving a defined sense to the term soul, as do other social actors described not only in this but also in the other sections.

xviii ◆ Anna Fedele and Ruy Llera Blanes

The chapters of this first section also show how the Catholic institutions struggle to control the way in which people manipulate their shrines, statues and pilgrimage routes.10 It is through this manipulation and appropriation process that people make these institutions, routes and statues come alive. As other scholars have shown analysing popular Marian devotion, the ethnographic examples of unorthodoxy among practicing Christians described in this section are not isolated cases (e.g., Christian 1989, 1996; Claverie 2003; Dubisch 1995); ‘lived religion’ should be distinguished from ‘organised religion’ (Ostenfeld-Rosenthal this volume, referring to McGuire 2008). It is in these ‘lived’ religious contexts that anthropologists realize that when we penetrate into the realm of enacted religion, the clear cut limits between body and soul postulated by Christianity and other religions lose their meanings.

Corporeality, Belief and Human Mobility The three chapters of the second section provide insights about the importance of corporeality in situations where a certain religious body (in its multiple meanings) arrives to a country that is not its area of origin. This happens typically in the context of migration, such as when African Pentecostal churches envisage “bringing the gospel back to Europe” (Knibbe, this volume) or missionaries from the Dutch Protestant church explain their activities in extra-European countries (Rickli this volume). Although religion appears as being mainly a matter related to the soul, the chapters of this section reveal that in reality it is through bodily performances that religion is enacted in everyday life. In turn, in Cimpric’s article about witchcraft in the Central African Republic we learn how beliefs imported by missionaries, such as the body/soul divide and the association of witchcraft with the figure of the Devil, are imported and translated into the local economy of conceptualizations of witchcraft that are later expressed in beliefs in cannibalism and crocodile-men. In the first chapter of this section, João Rickli focuses on the importance of corporeality in missionary initiatives. Drawing on Birgit Meyer’s concept of ‘sensational forms’ as ‘relatively fixed, authorized modes of invoking, and organizing access to the transcendental’ (2008b), Rickli argues that the Dutch Protestant liturgical performances related to mission and deaconry promote the experience of religion through the body and making the transcendental real. Rickli also described missionary activities as processes of ‘production of locality’ (Appadurai 1996: 204), allowing the Protestant churchgoers to experience through their senses the ‘religious maps’ they are confronted with and to conceive the missionary enterprise not only on an abstract but also on a very practical and physical level. In her chapter about the Nigerian-initiated Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the world, Kim Knibbe refers to bodily changes in religious settings in the context of

Introduction ◆ xix

migration. She points out the differences between the enthusiastic modes of attending the religious services displayed by African, mostly Nigerian members of RCCG and the ‘lukewarm’ attitude of ‘ethnically Dutch’ members. She argues that in the context of religious migration, not only bodily practices but also the habitus (Bourdieu 1977) changes. Exploring the relationship between individual religious experiences, the habitus and globalization, Knibbe elaborates the concept of ‘habitus of the saved soul’. This latter allows believers to find their place in the context of a globalization process that encompasses the political, the economical as well as the religious sphere. From the context of a African/Nigerian Christianity we are introduced, in the last chapter of this section, to a classical topic for Africanist anthropologists interested in religious phenomena, namely, the problem of witchcraft. Emphasising the advantages of “thinking through the body” (Sanders 2008: 199), Aleksandra Cimpric analyses the codependency of body and soul in the context of talimbi witchcraft in the Central African Republic. Following Peter Geschiere (1999: 215), she considers Central African witchcraft as a useful device to make sense of globalization processes and analyses the evils related to the work of sorcerers as a critique of capitalism and local practices of enrichment (Geschiere 1995). Cimpric also points out the difficulty of disentangling native concepts of witchcraft from later ideas and interpretations related to it deriving from Christianity. In Cimpric, as in the other contributions to this section, it appears evident that in contexts of religious mobility, the notions of body and soul are very often interwoven and the meanings attributed to the body are of crucial importance to understand the whole religious context.

New Spiritualities Challenging the Body/Soul Divide An important number of contributions to this volume refer to religious movements that can be described with the umbrella term of ‘new spiritualities’. As we will see now, spiritualities criticize and often construct themselves in opposition to established religions and postulate the necessity of overcoming the body/soul divide. In the opening chapter of this section, Eugenia Roussou describes the beliefs in the transmission of evil eye in Thessaloniki and in Crete and analyses the afflictions deriving from it as well as the ritual practices used to remove it. Even if the social actors she describes formally belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, they mostly rely on non-Christian spiritual practices to deal with evil eye afflictions; especially, younger evil eye therapists are open to beliefs and techniques related to New Age spirituality. Roussou observes that the beliefs and practices related to the evil eye imply the interaction between body, soul and spirit and analyses the creative rapport of these three entities in a complex system of Orthodox and non-Orthodox negotiations with ‘d/evil’.

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In her analysis of spiritual healing experiences among patients with medically unexplained symptoms in Denmark, Ann Ostenfeld-Rosenthal focuses on bodily sensed spiritual experiences. Drawing upon Meredith McGuire’s distinction between lived and organized religion (2008), Rosenthal argues similarly to Bacchiddu and Ballacchino that anthropologists should focus more on the religious phenomena as they are experienced and practised by social actors and not study them ‘from the perspective of organized religion’. The healers and patients she describes refuse to consider themselves as ‘religious’ and prefer the label of ‘spiritual’, arguing that ‘religion is spirituality contaminated by power and hierarchy’. This is a common trend in the new spiritualities (Eller 1993; Heelas et al. 2005; Fedele 2009; Knibbe forthcoming) shared also by the mediumistic healers described in this volume by Ehler Voss.11 In the following chapter, Voss focuses on what he describes as ‘mediumistic’ healers, acting during their sessions as mediums for different entities. Voss offers an interesting critique of Thomas Csordas’s concept of embodiment (1990, 1993, 1994a, 1994b) as well as an introduction to Bernhard Waldenfels’s ‘phenomenology of otherness’ (1997, 1998, 1999, 2006). Describing mediumistic healers and patients discussing whether the energies or the meta-empirical beings they contact are situated inside or outside the Self, the author links this debate to a more general tendency of ‘normalization of otherness’ within Western culture as theorized by Waldenfels. In the final chapter of this volume, Andrew Spiegel and Silke Sponheuer analyse eurythmy, a particular practice within anthroposophy, a philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner. Theirs is a chapter that in many ways departs from the remaining set of this volume, especially in heuristic and conceptual terms, as it is a result of an interaction between an anthropologist and a practitioner. As they explain, anthroposophy, as a modern set of beliefs and practices of non-Oriental origin and specifically idealized as a way to transcend the traditional philosophical dichotomy, had an important influence on contemporary new spiritualities and its conceptualization of spirit, body and soul as interwoven entities. Simultaneously, they describe us how eurythmists consciously engage in producing structural transformations, and the further proposition of considering Rudolf Steiner as an ‘unrecognized precursor to contemporary poststructuralist analytical models’. The practices discussed in this final section differ from the preceding ones in the extent to which they involve deliberate and calculated techniques for transcending the body/soul dichotomy. In this sense this last article of the book comes as particularly striking and innovative in terms of the debate we have proposed in this volume: what happens when the individuals that we invoke in our research engage in dialogue with our own academic conceptualizations and challenge them? In the chapters of this last section we also find a common reference to ‘energy’. In fact the reference to the existence of an all-pervading life force

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is one of the key elements of religious movements related with the New Age or with Neopaganism (Pike 2001; Magliocco 2004; Fedele 2009). In the new spiritualities the fact that body, soul and spirit are held to be made of energy allows to overcome the opposition between the material and the spiritual or sacred and profane – as body and soul are taken to be made from the same substance and none can be considered as superior or more important than the other. Moreover, as Brown (1997: 48) pointed out, there is a tendency in New Age spiritualities to overemphasize those terms of classical dichotomies perceived as having been discriminated within established religions.12 As for the concept of the soul, there seems to be within the new spiritualities described in this volume a sort of con-fusion between spirit and soul. The evil eye, spiritual and mediumistic healers described by Roussou, Rosenthal and Voss in this section seem to have taken to its extremes the anthroposophical theories about the existence of a life force described as energy and about the interwovenness of body, spirit and soul. Whereas in the anthroposophical thinking of the eurythmists analysed by Spiegel and Sponheuer, soul and spirit appear as interrelated but distinct and distinguishable, the different kinds of healers described by Roussou, Rosenthal and Voss do not necessarily differentiate between these entities. *** Through the chapters of this volume we have seen that encounters of body and soul can and do take place in different ethnographic contexts and that in order to make sense of religious experience, it is often more useful to consider these two entities as different but interwoven rather than totally separated or even opposite. The soul appears in the ethnographic contexts of this volume as a slippery concept that can only be grasped focusing on its manifestations through the body. The different authors also emphasize the importance of lived, enacted religiosity and its difference from the official, institutionalized religion. Religion is lived and made visible through the body, and the chapters that form part of this volume illustrate the importance of ‘thinking with the body’ when analysing religious phenomena. In fact analysing the multiple meanings attributed to the body and the ways of coping with its limits in religious context allows anthropologists to do what in our opinion is one of the ultimate tasks of anthropology: grasping humanity beyond cultural and religious differences.

Notes 1. Despite using both terms of ‘body’ and ‘corporeality’, in this text we are focusing more on the latter, as it is more encompassing in terms of ‘bodily experience’.

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2. Michael Lambek’s pivotal reader in the anthropology of religion (Lambek 2002), for instance, does not address this as a central issue (except perhaps Boddy’s contribution in the volume – see Boddy 1988). 3. This is not to say that the body was ‘invisible’ in the anthropological debate prior to this moment. As Talal Asad reminds us, anthropologists have always been interested in ideas of the body – ever since nineteenth-century racialism and anthropometric evolutionism (1997: 43). John Blacking’s edition of The Anthropology of the Body (1977) was, from this point of view, seminal. We refer here to the fact that the ‘body’ as a modern theoretical and philosophical construct had not been given enough attention. 4. A particular development of this theory in terms of ‘bodily habitus’ has been Loic Wacquant’s study of a boxing apprentice’s life (2004). 5. Boddy’s work, along with others such as Michael Lambek (1981), also inaugurated an approach that incorporated the problem of ‘therapeutics’, which in turn implied explicit conceptualizations of the body (see Boddy 1994). 6. Sacrifice, or self-sacrifice (Bloch 1992; Pina-Cabral 1997; Mapril 2009) can also be understood, in this line of thought, as a process of mediation. 7. Within the same philosophical framework, other approaches have focused alternatively on the existential (Jackson 2005), subjective and reflexive (Stoller 1989) character of religious experience. 8. As Michael Lambek reminds us, even if we assume that the distinction is a Western product, this does not mean that dualism does not exist in other contexts; thus, philosophical dualism is not exclusive to Western society (Lambek 1998: 106). 9. We might wonder whether the problems with the concept of ‘soul’ are not necessarily related to those posed by the notion of ‘belief’ (Needham 1972; Coleman and Lindquist 2008; Gil, Livet and Pina-Cabral 2004). What is the cross-cultural currency of the concept of ‘soul’? Such a question cannot be answered here because the chapters of this volume all actually refer to contexts where ‘soul’ does appear as a useful analytical category, but one that cannot be easily separated from ‘body’. 10. For further examples of the reinterpretation and appropriation by nonpracticing Christians of Christian sites and pilgrimage routes see Pina-Cabral (1992); Frey (1998); Badone (2008); Weibel (2005); Fedele (2009). 11. Referring to a ‘culture of spirituality’ Tanya Luhrmann pointed out that ‘the interest in unusual sensory experience of a type called “spiritual”’ is a common feature not only in the New Age or neopagan movements but also in Christian and other religious groups in the United States (2005: 140–42). 12. For this reason there is in these new spiritualities a particular emphasis on the importance and sacrality of the body (Brown 1997: 42; Fedele 2006) and of sexuality (Urban 2000; Fedele 2009).

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Foucault, M. 1976. Histoire de la Sexualité, 1: La Volonté de Savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Frazer, J. G. 1922. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion (Abridged Edition). London: MacMillan. Frey, N. 1998. Pilgrim Stories. On and off the Way to Santiago. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geertz, C. 2005. ‘Shifting Aims, Moving Targets: On the Anthropology of Religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 11: 1–15. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geschiere, P. 1995. Sorcellerie et politique en Afrique. La Viande des Autres. Paris: Karthala. ———. 1999 ‘Globalization and the Power of Indeterminate Meaning: Witchcraft and Spirit Cults in Africa and East Asia’, in B. Meyer and P. Geschiere (eds), Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, pp. 211–38. Gil, F., P. Livet and J. Pina-Cabral (eds). 2004. O Processo da Crença. Lisbon: Gradiva. Goldman, M. 2008. ‘How to Learn in an Afro-Brazilian Spirit Possession Religion. Ontology and Multiplicity in Candomblé’, in D. Berliner and R. Sarró (eds), Learning Religion. Anthropological Approaches. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 103–19. Hanegraaff, W. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: Brill. Heelas, P. et al. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution; Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Heelas, P. 1996. The New Age Movement. Oxford: Blackwell. Hermkens, A.K., W. Jansen and C. Notermans (eds). 2009. Moved by Mary: The Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Jackson, M. 2005. Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies and Effects. New York: Berghahn Books. James, W. 1982 (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. London: Penguin. Knibbe, K. (forthcoming). ‘Relating to Christianity: Searching for a Religion without Power‘, in P. Heelas and D. Houtman (eds). Inner Life Spirituality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lambek, M. (ed.). 2002. A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell (2nd ed. 2008). ———. 1998. ‘Body and Mind in Mind, Body and Mind in Body: Some Anthropological Interventions in a Long Conversation’, in M. Lambek and A. Strathern (eds), Bodies and Persons. Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103–26. ———. 1981. Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lambek, M. and P. Antze (eds). 2003. Illness and Irony. On the Ambiguity of Suffering in Culture. Oxford: Berghahn. Lambert, H. and M. MacDonald (eds). 2009. Social Bodies. Oxford: Berghahn.

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Sarró, R. 2009. ‘O Sofrimento como Modelo Cultural: Uma reflexão antropológica sobre a memória religiosa na diáspora africana’, in C. Pussetti and L. S. Pereira (eds), Os Saberes da Cura: Antropologia da Doença e Práticas Terapêuticas. Lisbon: ISPA. Scheper-Hughes, N. and M. 1987. ‘The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly (N.S.) 1(1): 6–41. Stewart, C. 1997. ‘Fields in Dreams: Anxiety, Experience, and the Limits of Social Constructionism in Modern Greek Dream Narratives’, American Ethnologist 24(4): 877–94. Stoller, P. 1989. Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strathern, A. 1996. Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Strathern, A. and M. Lambek. 1998. ‘Introduction. Embodying Sociality: Africanist-Melanesianist Comparisons’, in M. Lambek and A. Strathern (eds), Bodies and Persons. Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Synnott, A. 1997 (1993). The Body Social. Symbolism, Self and Society. London: Routledge. Tilley, M. and S. Ross (eds). 1995. Broken and Whole: Essays on Religion and the Body. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Turner, B. 1996 (1994). The Body & Society. Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. Urban, H. 2000. ‘The Cult of Ecstasy: Tantrism, the New Age, and the Spiritual Logic of Late Capitalism’, History of Religions 39(3): 268–304. Vilaça, A. and R. Wright. 2009. ‘Introduction’, in A. Vilaça and R. Wright (eds), Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, pp. 1–19. Vilaça, A. ‘Chronically Unstable Bodies: Reflections on Amazonian Corporalities’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 11(3): 445–64. Wacquant, L. 2004. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waldenfels, B. 2006. Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1999. Vielstimmigkeit der Rede: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 4. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1998. Grenzen der Normalisierung: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1997. Topographie des Fremden: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Ware, K. 1999. The Orthodox Way (Rev. ed.). Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Weibel, D. 2005. ‘Of Consciousness Changes and Fortified Faith: Creativist and Catholic Pilgrimage at French Catholic Shrines’, in J. Dubisch and M. Winkelman (eds), Pilgrimage and Healing, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 111–34. Whitehouse, H. and J. Laidlaw (eds). 2004. Ritual and Memory: Toward a Comparative Anthropology of Ritual. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Part I Bodies and Souls in Catholic Settings

1 ‘I want to feel the Camino in my legs’ Trajectories of Walking on the Camino de Santiago Keith Egan

Introduction Every year tens of thousands of men and women travel to a small village in France at the foot of the Pyrenees and sign up to trek for weeks across northern Spain. Making their way west, moving slowly under an oftenblistering sun and through a landscape that preserves much evidence of a thousand-year heritage, they eventually arrive at the medieval city of Santiago de Compostela and the supposed relics of St James, the disciple of Jesus Christ who, with John his brother and Peter, were present at key moments in Christ’s ministry and formed his ‘inner circle’ of apostles (see Mk 5:35–43, 9:2–10, 14:32–42). The Camino’s call to pilgrimage as an imaginative draw of the medieval, a longing to set out walking through the past in order to escape from the dreaded and the dreary of everyday life, is a commonly cited motivation compelling pilgrims to join the Camino de Santiago. This motive, though, stands in contrast to how pilgrims actually engage the religious en route, through the Romanesque art and architecture, for instance, scattered along the route for their edification, but which do not draw them towards an encounter with the divine, as it had with medieval pilgrims. A large majority of pilgrims seem to skirt around traditional orthodox aspects of the pilgrimage on their journey, avoiding participation in Eucharistic celebrations and choosing church-based refuges for their ‘authenticity’ rather than for their access to church structures. Indeed, the Camino de Santiago is today marketed as an adventure route for tourists to travel in rural and exotic Spain, while pilgrims appropriate the route to emphasize their bodily presence in a rustic setting they claim is

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somehow authentic. Neither group of travellers, so-called tourists or pilgrims, engage the Camino as a sustained religious activity. It is difficult to see the Camino today as a revival of a medieval Christian pilgrimage, the purpose of which is to earn ‘penitents’ a plenary expiation of sins (Frey 1998: 12, Sumption 2003: 205). Rather, it is a reinvention of the contemporary phenomenon of walking as a leisure pursuit, moving ‘at a human speed’ (Frey 1998), and its deployment as a rejection of particular forms of modernity (Reader 2007: 9) along a pilgrimage route that maintains an ‘aura’ of authenticity without any compelling sense of religious attachment perduring in a medieval habitus. This newer, contemporary call to pilgrimage on the Camino is a product of contemporary concerns grounded in the immediacy of existential crises and aspirations for a bodily or worldly transcendence, as much as it may emerge from some sense of a ‘recovered’ medieval religious fervour.1 Camino pilgrims reject modern modes of travel by taking to the pilgrimage on foot or on bikes and, in doing so, seem to be rejecting a facile retrieval of an old route too, preferring instead to invent their own rituals as they continue through the pilgrimage. The question of motivation can never completely discount religious motives, however. Those on the Camino continue to struggle with their motivations for doing the pilgrimage, continually reassessing their religious or spiritual reasons, skirting the contours of a dimly remembered faith that is composed of a number of vague and equally improvised beliefs, but never in a way that had taken much attention or demanded much analysis. Their lives often appear to have relied on a series of improvisations, which have led to an unspoken, indeed probably unspeakable, sense of dissatisfaction with how their lives are turning out. However poorly conceived, we all carry with us some sense of our lives as nascent projects with goals and objectives that direct our actions, a sense of these lives in terms of velocity or destination (Rapport 2003: 6). In the undoing of their ‘life-projects’ through bad marriages that cannot be left for fear of hurting children, careers that once promised so much and went nowhere, crushing bereavements or a profound restlessness that has been nagging somewhere deep, pilgrims find themselves drawn onto the road with promises of a simpler time and a reduced world, temporarily fitting as it does into a backpack, and a return to some sense of directionality. In this critical rereading, or deliberate misreading, of the course of their lives while travelling at a ‘human speed’, pilgrims negotiate a valuable ‘strong poetics’ (Bloom 1997 [1973]) that reinvigorates their own lives and puts them back into a feeling of control over themselves. As a nostalgic return to a frontier experience, then, the draw of walking the ‘real’ Spain frames what is a postmodern encounter with pilgrimage as one that reeks of the search for the ‘really real’ (Geertz 1973), or for ‘belief in belief’ (Dennett 2007).2 Many ills that afflict us do not find a vocabulary in our everyday, in essence they remain unspeakable, in the sense of being beyond both normative and linguistic competence, and so,

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leaving a world of decisions, choices and consequences, pilgrims travel back in time. They travel back through their own biographical fragments in search of something that can reclaim the tragedy of their trajectories, to uncover this ‘strong poetics’ through the physical challenge of walking along a medieval pilgrimage that itself has been reclaimed from a trajectory of racial intolerance, religious reformation, fascism and indifference, to emerge as a twentieth century ruta de la terapia (Frey 1998: 45). The pilgrimage today is thus a thoroughly modern and secularizing pilgrimage. It is far enough removed from its medieval religious origins, in time, meaning and practice, to appeal to contemporary walkers who use the Camino to explore the contours of a more earthly experience. It is also less in line with a yearning for salvation through the expiation of sins, offered formally by the Catholic Church upon completion of the pilgrimage, than a context for healing as ‘an intensification of the encounter between suffering and hope at the moment in which it finds a voice’ (Csordas 2002: 10). This ‘finding a voice’ is a self-process, articulating suffering and hope in the immediacy of a struggle towards a more rich experience of life. Many, then, opt for the Camino as means to test their bodies on the long walk, and the pilgrimage distinguishes itself from the decorporealized and torpid everyday life they are trying to leave behind; the choice to walk the Camino is often a conscious attempt by pilgrims to break with home, spatially, temporally and bodily, to relocate to a new ‘behavioural environment’. Grounding the self in the body subverts the requirements for a ‘final vocabulary’ (Rapport 2003) in favour of a bodily idiom of distress. Thus, the healing process may be initiated by performing the pilgrimage ritual as much as through more narrative therapeutic forms (Csordas 1997). The Camino endures as a contemplative mode of movement; the walk as a ritual ordeal ‘exhausts the habitual self’ (Glucklich 2001: 128) while pilgrims traverse an often inchoate landscape of the self to seek wholeness and community more than they search for Christian communion or a sense of an orthodox sacredness. In this sense, pilgrims’ motivations for beginning the pilgrimage often undergo some reconstruction as they identify newer motives that keep them on the path, while the day brings a desire to immerse one’s difficulties among equals and reach for a lasting idiom of recovery and celebration in the company of sympathetic strangers.

“Friend pilgrim, there is no Camino, the Camino is you” Pilgrims leave a lot behind when they start walking: older pilgrims, for instance, often use the pilgrimage around retirement. Others walk in old age to reflect on their own mortality. These pilgrims move more slowly, casting off the dreaded discourse of authentic pilgrims that can haunt many of the younger ones, as they prepare for a completely different life. They

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often talk about it being their last big adventure, the extended transition of the pilgrimage in time serving to help them make sense of lives lived more or less well and which, for them, are coming to an end. To be fair, the two perspectives are often complimentary, as the old and the young regularly find each other and walk together, sharing their Caminos in the common pool of experience that emerges from the days’ travails. If older pilgrims embrace the Camino as ‘commentary’ in Jungian terms, in the second half of their lives, then younger pilgrims use the Camino to provide ‘text’ in the first half of theirs, negotiating a career break or life change, with the time spent walking allowing them not to think about the adjustment in direction for weeks while they sort out the possible decisions and ramifications.3 They are awed by the rest of their lives stretching before them as a future without any sure footing. One young American man admitted that he had specifically come to the Camino to ‘experience a rite of passage’ having read Victor Turner and Edith Turner’s (1978) Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture for a college course. For these young pilgrims, the new of the pilgrimage, of Spain, of the food, the wine and the walk is as important as the old, the past that is held, stored and hidden in plain sight from them. They walk through tradition, many happy enough to confirm that it still exists as they try to find their own original walking experience. Priests and nuns who walk often hide their vocation and travel quietly among lay people, enjoying the anonymity (see for example Rupp 2005: 223). Those with medical training, on the other hand, are quickly identified and called upon. Most pilgrims find it possible to be someone different from who they were at home whilst on the Camino.4 They do, however, continue to reside in the complex local moral worlds they left behind, life worlds that are resistant to change, difficult at times to maintain and often impossible to refine. One older woman found the Camino able to cushion the painful discovery of her father’s impending death at home while she was on the Camino, the shadow of his death cast over her leaving in his final days. She wrote to me, ‘It was in O Cebrero in one of those funny huts that I checked my email and realized from my sister’s email that my father was dying. I came back to the auberge and Nancy hugged me. Still, I was and still am somehow comforted that this information came to me when I was, literally it seemed, on top of the world’. Life remains an intensely moral experience, composed of, among other things, the parts of our existence that struggle to cohere, and these days it can be difficult to find a space to struggle along, to be unwell, feeling unwanted pain and establishing the kinds of narratives and rituals that can process experience. In such circumstances, none of us experience our lives, or ourselves, at the centre of life worlds with much significant momentum; ‘experience is not an existential given, but rather a historically and culturally constituted process predicated on a certain way of being in the world’; in other words for many us, when we do not experience the

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world, we often just ‘struggle along’ (Desjarlais 1996: 72).5 If experience is a public matter, then, struggling remains one of intense privacy; while experience tends towards ‘an aesthetics of integration, coherence, renewal and transcendent meaning—of tying things together through time … A good day for someone who struggles along, in contrast, might be a smooth one, where nothing much happens, where a few bucks are earned, and where there are enough cigarettes to last the day. The ingredients of such a day draw from the forces of expediency, equilibrium and stasis’ (Desjarlais 1996: 87). It is not too much to stretch Desjarlais’s portrait of the inhabitants of the Boston shelter to identify the coordinates of pilgrims’ struggling with the pilgrimage process as they come to terms with the experience. Pilgrims, then, begin to make sense of it all in the company of others equally attempting to be alone and together in transient groups for a month or more at a time as the pilgrimage begins to, in Heidegger’s terms, befall them, to strike them, to overwhelm and transform them (see Desjarlais 1996: 89). In some ways one can argue that such a pilgrimage sounds very Catholic in its appeal to overt expressions of misery, or Protestant in its exhortations of local religious experts to find Jesus, but there is great joy on the pilgrimage too, and much wine and song. ‘Existential friendships’ (Rupp 2005) that form and last for only days on the road can be maintained over years after, such is the initial intensity of contact. The wine and food, the song and the people, represent ways of drinking the pilgrimage and eating it, of singing the pilgrimage and making friends with it, even falling in love with it on occasion. These modes of accessing the pilgrimage together are not easily forgotten or left behind. In the midst of such revelry, though, the pilgrimage never loses its ability to be a memento mori: there are too many roadside memorials for pilgrims who have died en route for the Camino to be permanently reduced to a frivolous affair. One pilgrim, who came to the Camino to retrace his sister’s footsteps exactly a year after she had walked the Camino herself and passed away quietly in Santiago from a tumour that she never knew she had, became a symbolic focus for pilgrims all through the Camino for the length of his time walking. Their story spread far and wide, his body a mobile memorial for his sister’s untimely passing, with many being touched by the gesture and haunted by the implication of following his sister’s ghost across Spain. For John, it was how he was able to push as close as possible to his sister, who had died so far from home in such an unexpected manner. He searched refuge registers for messages from her to other pilgrims, and, having found them, showed them to his fellow walkers, a loose group gathered around him. In time, having learned the story, a few pilgrims felt sufficiently connected to it to move off and grieve for her themselves and tell others. Having heard the story, for example, a violinist walking the pilgrimage performed a composition he wrote about John and his sister at the pilgrim’s mass in Santiago. For a few, it seemed, the experi-

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ence gave them permission to grieve for the first time in years. Replacing an ambivalent sense of requirement to be original and orthodox in one’s peregrination, there was a reassurance of influence, where others’ stories helped form a ‘strong poetical’ (Bloom 1997) response to lives that felt thoroughly improvised in the weak sense, lacking an original direction and the momentum to accomplish it. In the story of this woman who had been lost to her family, John, and those he told of her, could find some touchstone for their own ends, for some the seriousness of the pilgrimage became clearer, while for John, the long goodbye he had been denied due to her sudden death was within his grasp after a year of difficult mourning; and the story of her death had a new ending for everyone. Among the multitude of moving bodies, shifting stories and kindred souls, pilgrims shun the overt orthodoxy of religious forms for more immediate, emergent and heterodox techniques of kinaesthetic spirituality that make the modern Camino a far different, but equally compelling and grave undertaking for ‘strong poets’ in search of meaning and hope ‘in a different place’ (Dubisch 1995).

Moving On—The Concept of Peregrination, the Peregrination of a Concept After a long period of relative inattention, the anthropological study of pilgrimage began in earnest with the Turners’ classic Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978), culminating in something of a devastating critique by John Eade and Michael Sallnow (1991). In the last decades, Peter Margry notes, pilgrimage has been ‘regained, localized, re-invented, contested, deconstructed, explored, intersected [and] reframed’ (2008: 13). Recent attention on pilgrimages around the world has moved to less traditional forms of peregrination, with the very term ‘pilgrimage’ exercising scholars hoping to reinterpret journeys to destinations held dear and which can point to a sense of ‘the sacred, the religious, the cultus object’ (Margry 2008: 29) as the foci of these nascent pilgrimages in a secular world (Elvis and Jim Morrison are two examples in Margry’s volume). The focus on pilgrimages has been expanded to chart the touristic origins of shrines (Swatos and Tomasi 2002) and disaster sites as potential sites for contemplation of the sacred (Blasi 2002), to embracing the possibilities for bodily, emotional or spiritual healing at various sites or en route to them (Dubisch and Winkelman 2005), and the importance of movement as an organizing trope for pilgrims (Coleman and Eade 2004). Indeed where these journeys do ‘intersect’ (Roseman and Badone 2004) is when those who travel, whether intentionally or not, encounter something to ‘influence their existential condition’ (Margry 2008: 17). These developments in pilgrimage research point to a characterization of religion as somehow premodern, superstitious fragments in a secular era and address religion more

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seriously as displaying its dynamic character in adapting to modern times (Mellor and Shilling 1997: 14). In a modernity where we display some attraction towards ‘self-referentiality, nostalgia and doubt’ (Mellor and Shilling 1997: 25), wherein a ‘cultural tragedy of modern life’ finds people uncovering a sense of ‘personal incompleteness … in a culture which can never be wholly assimilated’ (1997: 27); religious practice seems to be recovering its footing in addressing such existential dilemmas.6 The ethnographic accounts of desacramentalized religious behaviours in pilgrimage settings display the paradox that the secularization process may yet depend on forms of corporeality (Mellor and Shilling 1997) emerging dialectically in early modern times as the basis of new forms of belonging. To stretch the term ‘pilgrimage’ to cover a Cancer Forest in the Netherlands, Soekarno’s grave in Indonesia or Graceland may seem to be doing too much, but it is characteristic of the increasing secularization of the term to account for the modern search for meaning (see for instance Gilmore 2005; Porter 2004; St John 2001). It also accounts for the term secular pilgrimage being dropped because it is no longer ‘helpful’ (Reader 2007: 4n4) or oxymoronic (Margry 2008: 14). There is still much work to be done, though, at traditional pilgrimage sites, as many pilgrims to the new sites would have no difficulty in identifying Jerusalem, Lourdes or Mecca as iconic pilgrimages that anchor their own imaginations of more contemporary sacred journeys (see for instance Westwood 2003 and Cousineau 1998). While it can be said that the centre has not held in terms of religious pilgrimage, Jonathan Smith points clearly that the term religion ‘is not a native category … it is an anthropological, not a theological category’, one properly belonging to social science rather than to the very religious adherents that occupy our attention (Smith 1998: 269), a distinction that Dubisch (1995: 46) extends to the term ‘pilgrimage’. As I have pointed out above, one way around this potential impasse has been to discard the notion of a secular pilgrimage. Another approach calls into question the obverse, that is, to consider any such journey as a form of religious tourism (Swatos and Tomasi 2002),7 as a form of diversionary, experiential, experimental or existential tourism (Cohen 1992), highlighting the interrelatedness of both the structural and the personal elements in shaping sacred journeys. Another direction is to explore the contours of secularizing pilgrimages, drawing on the processes by which older journeys are experiencing their overt religious components being leached away. Finally, one may follow the approach of those like Thomas Tweed, the religious scholar, in theorizing the religious by deploying the metaphor of travel, reimagining theories as itineraries, ‘proposals for a journey, representations of a journey, and the journey itself’ (2006: 9, see also Clifford 1997). These approaches are hardly exhaustive, but they do point to the many avenues open to scholars of religion and pilgrimage in carefully expanding the scope and complexity of our studies while not making the term ‘pilgrimage’ so pervasive as to lose any meaningful coherence. Ordinary

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landmarks can be sacralised, as in the recent development of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a Marian shrine (see Bax 1995: 68), and the sacred can be spatialized (see McKevitt’s [1991] examination of the cult of Padre [now Saint] Pio). The religious geography of a shrine can be diminished too (for instance becoming a victim of its popularity and losing the ‘enchantment’ of the original draw to a sacred edge that the shrine had represented) while retaining an ‘aura’ of former sacredness as it continues to draw pilgrims. Such is, I believe, the case for the Camino. I thus want to place more emphasis on ‘pilgrimage’ as a social process, rather than as an easily circumscribable field of relations or activity. For my own part, then, I am drawn to characterize the Camino as a secularizing pilgrimage, a contemporary tourist itinerary losing the battle to retain a relevant medieval Christian heritage for pilgrims today. Insofar as the Camino becomes unmoored from its religious history and practice, walking pilgrims (and those on bikes) are able to uncover the existential potential of the pilgrimage through modern recreational means (what Coleman and Kohn [2007] refer as the ‘discipline of leisure’), to orient themselves towards pressing problems in their lives, ‘the loss of life, livelihood or lifeworld’ as Michael Jackson (2005: 187) puts it.

Theorising the Soul of the Camino In her impressive, experience-near examination of the Camino de Santiago pilgrims during and following their pilgrimages, Nancy Frey (1998: 45) has argued that the Camino is a pilgrimage motivated not by ‘the pains of the suffering body, but by the pains of the suffering soul’, making the distinction that, for the most part, Camino pilgrims (unlike pilgrims to Marian shrines, for instance) do not travel looking for bodily cures (1998: 219). For Frey’s informants, the term ‘soul’ moves between a number of distinct uses in the orthodox sense of soul, for instance, as that aspect of self preserved after death (240, 256n12), while she also uses ‘soul’ to denote an inner landscape, ‘a place in the soul’ (87) and as an inner ‘home’ (199), brought about through the sustained activity of pilgrimage. Frey’s informants connote an animistic sense of soul as ‘life-force’ (237), one which the Camino itself is capable of possessing. Finally the soul is sentient, capable of feeling, suffering, and searching for ‘contact’ and ‘transformation’ (219). Yet all of these terms avoid a defined sense of soul, and Frey does not include the term ‘soul’ as a main entry in her index, while ‘body’, ‘feet’, ‘physical activity’ and ‘senses’ are all listed. This reflects the reality on the Camino that pilgrims rely on their bodies as the loci of experience and transformation. A common joke among pilgrims, for instance, is to call out ‘O Lord save our soles’ with each other, relegating explicit spiritual benefits in favour of the humorous acknowledgement of the pilgrimage’s inexorable physical challenge.

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What emerges then is that the notion of soul, while it may be clear for some of Frey’s pilgrims, is not consistent among them. The power of the Camino as an extended ritual activity is that it does not attempt to comprehend a single definition of soul that binds the modern pilgrimage to Catholic doctrine. Pilgrims value the journey and hospitality much more than adherence to Catholic teaching, though these notions of soul rarely fall afoul of official interpretations or other pilgrims. When disputes do arise, pilgrims simply separate or move on and away; the Camino is too diffuse to anchor doctrine spatially, except in churches and cathedrals, and pilgrims can visit these places purely as tourists, at the end of a day’s walk and away from the central reasons for their journey, the Camino itself and their own lives’ problems. Thus what initially might seem to be a contradiction, being a pilgrim and rejecting the orthodox logic for pilgrimage, is easily resolved once no one place is capable of defining the Camino. Even the cathedral in Santiago receives pilgrims and tourists equally, and pilgrims leave the cathedral fully as tourists, a fact that drives many to continue on the ‘original route’ (one discouraged by the official church) on to Finisterre on the coast to achieve a sense of culmination and fulfilment. How is this idiomatic soul connected to the pilgrimage, then? It is hard to see a prevalence of soulful pilgrims, aware of some inner religious essence in need of purification through the traditional means available in the pilgrimage as an orthodox pedagogical device. Pilgrims do not seem to ‘learn’ to be purer on the road. The soul is often a bridging device; a heuristic to engage with an oblique institution but often not in traditionally received ways.8 Instead, bodies are marshalled to the cause of the day’s task, drawing on aspects of the medieval mode of suffering and weeping as moral resources to undermine the tradition (even as these practices echo them). They are certainly not devotional in nature, having no supernatural focus; the intentional stances of the pilgrims ebb and flow inwards and among each other. Psychological and therapeutic idioms abound, and Freud and the Buddha are more common currency than the figure of Christ. The proof of the spiritual pudding is, it seems, more in the reconstitution of a medieval moral framework of right suffering remade to fit the exigent requirements of a pilgrim ‘self’ crafted through disciplined activity (see Kondo 1990). The multitude of reflections on the impermanency of the goals established during the walk and of the transience of life, in many written accounts, attests to the diminishing significance of the imperishable soul enduring earthly purgation. Contemporary pilgrims do not walk to save themselves; they walk to cure themselves, seeking ‘grace through grief’ (Egan 2004), to experience a ‘pilgrimage with tears’ (Starkie 1957), to walk reflecting on a child’s impending death (Luard 1998) or simply to discover a motive for walking (Hitt 2005). Frey’s idiom of the ‘suffering soul’ does not deny the body’s inescapable materiality either, as the physical challenge is obviously never abandoned over the course of the month’s walk. In doing so, the body is brought

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forward and becomes the focus of other pilgrims’ attention, particularly as pilgrims’ bodies break down under this physical challenge. Pilgrims often care for each other’s wounds at the end of each day, piercing blisters, rubbing ointment onto sore legs and massaging tired limbs. These ‘rites of massage’ often become important rituals for pilgrims coming to know each other through radically new techniques of mutual surveillance that stand as witness to effort and, in time, to healing. It is no wonder, then, that pilgrims often document their blisters and cuts with photographs. Through reinforcing connections by touch, pilgrims rarely continue through the pilgrimage without forming into some loose grouping, as few are able to remain unharmed by the long journey. That people come looking for more than Spain or religion per se can be seen in witnessing how they use this physical pain to develop a personal idiom of distress, which then forms some of the contours of this idiomatic ‘suffering soul’. One Spanish woman told me that after one day of a particularly difficult and long walk, she had kept going and she had finished. She added that that was the first time in a long time she had been able to say that about her day. Walking through the physical limits of her body opened a space for her to envisage a way of continuing through some unnamed emotional distress, to feel that she had accomplished something really meaningful that day.9 It is in this fashion that the connotation of soul as inner space became a bridge between the needs of the pilgrim to identify something essential within themselves and their concerns not to leave the rhetorical territory of the pilgrimage by abandoning completely the religious frame of reference.

Bodies among Bodies and in between The body in motion on the Camino, in contrast, moves to the centre of awareness and becomes a mobile locus to elaborate existential troubles within the Camino’s framework, which provides geographical, moral and narrative contexts to address those troubles. Breath, effort, stride, fatigue and pain, all become heightened in meaning; ‘Such corporeal states as hunger, thirst, and sexual craving are not simply “internal twinges” but modes whereby the environment stands forth … the lived body is thus first and foremost not a located thing but a path of access, a being-in-theworld’ (Leder 1990: 21). ‘Be thankful for it all’, a Dutch pilgrim told me as he walked by me with difficulty in the Pyrenees, ‘I sweat from the first step, but I don’t care. Be thankful for the sweat, the heat, every tree every shade, the aches and pains. You will become boastful, not in an outward way, but inside’. His enjoyment of the pilgrimage emanated from his feeling of being a body struggling to do the work of walking. Each twinge of pain for him was a clear sign of his body’s vitality. As pilgrims set out on the Camino de Santiago, in a ‘mixture of biological principle and cultural idiom in the shifting contours of personality and identity’ (Glucklich

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2001: 7), they recall and embody earlier beliefs about pain in its ‘historical, cultural and psychosocial construction’ (Morris 1991: 1). As a liminoid ritual, the Camino foregrounds the sensory experiences: the heat of the bright sun, the salty taste of sweat at the corner of the mouth, the sound of laboured breathing and the dull rhythmic clash of the backpack and its contents, the aches and sores of walking.10 The problems of ‘presence’, of becoming aware of one’s body and of being a body with limitations, are all important emergent goals and means by which the ‘meaningfulness’ of the pilgrimage can be gauged. The Camino provides a liminoid space in which people may temporarily suspend the complexity of their everyday lives in favour of entering the ‘betwixt and between’ of the rite of passage, a hypothetical break with a previous life trajectory. The rite of passage is in evidence, but this ritual has few of the ennobling aspects that Van Gennep and especially Turner sought to describe. Through the eruption of bodies, a symphony, of oozing fluids from burst blisters, soaking sweat and other pungent odours, assaults the senses and marks every shelter’s confined communal area each night. Which is not to mention the cacophony of snoring that assails the ears and impatient sighing from those victims who forgot earplugs, the noise burning the neophyte’s blood in the unquiet darkness. The person in transition, then, is a brute assault on the senses of others, a barrage of smells, noises and effluvia to be overcome and accommodated: grotesque bodies on parade, with modesty and personal boundaries suspended in refuges that, as one French pilgrim wrote in a hostel register, reminded him of the asylum in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Such ‘opportunities for revulsion’ do not represent the lessons to be learned; they are bodies’ ‘paths of access’ to the core struggle that the pilgrimage initiates.11

Foregrounding Pilgrim’s Bodies For pilgrims faced with the inchoate and exigent dilemmas of everyday life before setting out on pilgrimage, the body attains a greater importance while walking as the world shrinks to the body’s boundaries and the body expands to the horizon of the day’s walk. Over the course of the pilgrimage, this present body becomes an important issue to be faced and dealt with. The pilgrimage, for instance, can help correct a trajectory of physical and personal suffering over years, representing, for example, a promise made in recovery from illness; one Austrian woman walked as proof of her recovery having had bone cancer in her leg, as a means to see her struggling body as capable of positive, hope-filled experience, capable of pain without suffering. For others, the Camino can facilitate the repair of a spiritual trajectory; Alex, the Swiss pilgrim who provides the title of this piece, spent twenty years dreaming of the pilgrimage. He finally began his walk as a way of marking his conversion from Swiss Protestantism to

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Catholicism. Following his confirmation in a monastery in the Swiss Alps at Pentecost, he began his three-month pilgrimage with little more than a backpack and a Bible. The Camino was his choice to begin inhabiting the reality of having converted, and through the habituating peregrination he began to construct what Csordas (1997) refers to as a ‘sacred self’.12 The cultural forms that had brought the Camino into being from the eighth to the twelfth century have slipped away, though; any notion of following some actual historical trajectory of pilgrims slips daily into the background as modern pilgrims foreground once more the source of their engagement with the world; their own bodies. The ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that have been stored and neglected in the bodies of pilgrims come to the fore, and many pilgrims begin to talk, cry or stay silent with themselves and in the company of others, marvelling at this reemergence of vigour. The visual lessons carved into the churches along the way for God-fearing (and often illiterate) medieval pilgrims do not address the concerns of contemporary travellers (Sumption 2003: 9, 198, 438). Rather than being drawn by the Christian cult of relics to St James’s ‘remains’, world citizens today travel together, recomposing an ephemeral, free-floating cultural experience from fragments of popular culture and other cultural artefacts now disembedded as they walk or cycle past churches and monuments that are for the most part ciphers, emptied of meaning for them – literally, undecipherable. The vast majority of modern pilgrims cannot identify any figures or scenes depicted; they examine architectural marvels as immediate, visual and as part of the landscape. Most of these figures and scenes have vanished from collective memory, unable to provide any instruction or generate meaning for the weary pilgrim who, having looked up, moves on. Many pilgrims do retain some religious motivation for walking; when imagination is dulled by the routines of everyday life, of feeling thwarted by or ‘thrown’ into the world, religion and pilgrimage can still capture our attention. The pilgrimage environment is not essentially religious, though, (a common feature in medieval European pilgrimage itineraries, which focused on moveable relics instead, according to Nolan 1983: 422) as the Camino is much more a journey through Spanish regions and neighbourhoods than an explicitly Catholic itinerary.13 Even if one may argue that the pilgrimage has not become a secular journey, the world through which the Camino passes largely has; religious elements take greater effort to be imagined and practiced, rather than being discovered, as the plethora of saints, relics, hospitals and churches scattered along the route from its inception have been for the most part consigned to history (Sumption 2003: 163). Thus, religious pilgrims often have to imagine themselves following medieval footsteps than being on a religiously defined quest per se, and though the remaining active churches along the way do help, their secrets too are lost on passing witnesses to their past glory when pilgrims cannot read the medieval messages they preserve.

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It is instead pilgrim’s bodies that emerge on the long trek as sign generators, as they inspect each other for injuries, touching them, rubbing them, commenting on the pains and the cuts, finding meaning in each twinge. Pain and touch often become tools in an ephemeral idiom of bodily recovery, strengthening and mutual support; pain becomes a collective problem and touch, hugging and massaging become shared opportunities to attend to another with one’s own body, ‘modes of somatic attention’ (Csordas 2002). The body as memorial comes to the fore in the presence of others who struggle down a path shared. The bodily idiom circumvents a requirement for an explicit language, first, because although the lingua franca of the Camino is English, for many it is not their first language; they simply do not have the words to say what they want to each other. Secondly, though, in the larger sense of ‘negotiating the unspeakable’, many pilgrims find themselves unable to speak from moral concerns. One couple, for example, walked the Camino having discovered that their son had been molesting his sister; they simply could not speak openly or easily about their reason for the pilgrimage. Hours of silence found structure through shared suffering as they walked wordlessly together. They simply took each day as it arrived. Who, for that matter, would wish to give voice to worries and pains, buried for years, maybe decades? While there is a welcome intensity to the initial frisson of sharing one’s deepest self with a stranger, it is often better to leave much unsaid. However, one often finds that with the extended temporality of the Camino, the stranger in your company, day after day, knows things that you, on reflection, would really prefer to have remained hidden. The troubled person you had described, you suspect now, has become a different you. Coleman (2002), for instance, writes of a woman who offered him money as part of a ‘charismatic gift’ that helped frame the divinely structured event they both attended and briefly met at. The stranger’s sense of her sacred self was framed too, in a sense that would have found sustained contact untenable in the context of divinely charged ‘moment’ of her unreturnable gift. ‘Your body is speaking to you’, a genuinely concerned pilgrim told me once as I limped into a refuge in Navarrete. ‘You should listen carefully’. Injuries are often seen as moral statements, that the pilgrim has not fully found his or her way onto the Camino and has continued to behave with little regard to the body’s ‘messages’.14 The body in pain is thus an exhortation for intercession and judgement by others who share the road. The search, the call that sustains pilgrims, is for integration in a world experienced as free floating and fragmented, without necessarily undoing that fragmentation; pilgrims rarely want to remake the world. Criticisms of liminality that point to the dearth of alternative formulations for society that emerge from such experiences tend to overlook that for many ‘neophytes’ it is sufficient to find a place in the world through such endeavours. Modern liminoid places do not require the world to be remade, rather they provide a context within which selves are remade, for a place

16 ◆ Keith Egan

in which one may belong to be uncovered and approached. The Camino as a liminoid place provides a spatial anchor and an emergent ‘moral geography’ (see Basso 1998) within which the self can be grounded in the Camino and its ephemeral communities, a sentiment written on a wall outside Najerá: ‘la meta no es Santiago, la meta es el Camino’—The goal is the walk itself, not the destination. The satisfaction of pursuing such a goal is in entering ‘the indeterminate, ambiguous, and manifold character of lived experience’ (Jackson 1995: 160), not attempting the lofty goal of finding the truth of human consciousness through a correspondence in the truth in nature (1995: 116), but to walk in the world in order to find a home in it.

Conclusion The centuries of effort that the medieval church put into promoting a ‘vigorous medieval physicality’ quickly became unstable in the decades following the Protestant reformation. Religion soon ceased to be a matter of ‘sensuous taste’, becoming instead primarily a cognitive phenomenon (Mellor and Shilling 1997: 79); the birth of modern corporeal sensibilities had begun and the modern disciplining of bodies through various institutional reforms (Foucault 1977, 1989), through increased governance over a differentiated population, replacing a homogenous people (Mellor and Shilling 1997: 151), and the invention of modern confessional culture, rigorously filling out the interiority of medieval selfhood through the confessional technologies of the inquisition (Glucklich 2001), has led to more mindful bodies, greater individualism and greater control over those individuals. In the experience of so many people today, then, one finds the basis of modern society’s sense of self15 lying in a Cartesian ‘I think therefore I am’, that pervades reflection about positive thought and the defeat of spiritual affliction before the body can be healed. As Maurice MerleauPonty argues, though, life is not so much a matter of ‘I think’, but of ‘I can’. Instead of a thinking subject bearing himself (and Descartes’ cogito is male) into being, the thrown-ness into the world that we experience can become a project of overcoming through the body.16 In fact, Michael Jackson asks whether life is not actually more often composed from a deeper sense of ‘I cannot’ rather than ‘I can’ (2005: xiii). The course of life and its trajectory are often undone; plans and hopes must be rethought and compromised when babies arrive, jobs are lost or loved ones are taken in the prime of life. ‘To be human is not only to have intentions and purposes, which one strives to consummate, despite limited possibilities, finite abilities and scarce resources; it is to be thwarted, conflicted and thrown by contingency and circumstance … though human existence is relational—a mode of being-in-the-world—it is continually at risk’ (Jackson 2005: xiv).17 A state of well-being is not, after all, much

Trajectories of Walking on the Camino de Santiago ◆ 17

more than an aspiration in a world that objectively neither cares for us nor takes our presence personally. These events that frustrate our plans for our lives, rob us of possibilities, stymie our potential or deny us the resources to accomplish meaningful goals do not diminish our humanity. Indeed, such frustrations, Kleinman (2006) argues, are the very stuff from which our humanity is composed. They can be only dimly perceived; roles, rules, norms and duties, as David Schneider listed them, often step in to provide the normative responses to tragedies, deflections, frustrations and outright failures before we can find our way through, often alone or misrepresented in our efforts to grieve, rejoice or hope in the face of life happening to us as much as for us. For a part of the time at least, pilgrims want to share the pilgrimage and that part of their lives under inspection as they seek out a strong poetics to guide them through decisions and consequences that await them at the end. For some that end is the city of Santiago, others continue to Finisterre, the geographical ‘end of the earth’, and partake in a ritual of burning something that has become precious on the Camino; clothes or other mementos. Thus they confront the thrown-ness and transience that evokes a primal human response in us all; like King Canute, they stand on the beach at Finisterre, at land’s end, acknowledging the power of the ocean to push them back, to dictate the end of their time. Then, with much less ceremony, they turn their backs on the Atlantic Ocean and, taking a bus back to Santiago, move toward the lives they had interrupted to re-enter the flow of their trajectories. Returning home, they are reinvigorated, if not transformed, able to assume a modified stance towards life projects that had previously, and to varying degrees, frustrated them. For many what remains is the positive qualitative possibility of resting in the experience of struggling in and through their bodies as sources of experience.18 In the supposed recovery of this medieval pilgrimage route, pilgrims have engaged in a nostalgic return that allows for a journey of wounded souls in search of more fleshed-out wounded bodies. Such bodies can be capable of manifesting the ills of often dimly perceived and improvised lives, lives that have not required words to give them shape, but the immediacy of bodies in the midst of struggle to give them direction. In this aspect of the pilgrimage, then, one finds not a recovery so much as a new articulation within the context of an old theme: suffering, meaning and hope in an attenuated religious context.

Notes 1. The notion of recovery I am using here is part of a broader series of changes in Europe arising from the democratisation of travel and regularisation of work and holiday schedules in the nineteenth century that have freed potential pil-

18 ◆ Keith Egan

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

grims to travel. This attempt is what Leder calls the ‘dys-appearance of the body’, ‘A rising interest in finding ways to “return to the body” whether via exercise, hatha yoga, body therapies, craft-work, or intimacy with nature, is but a reaction to this general trend toward a “decorporealised” existence … only because the body has intrinsic tendencies toward self-concealment could such tendencies be exaggerated by linguistic and technological extensions’ (Leder 1990: 3). Csordas (1997) identifies three aspects of the postmodern in contemporary religion: free-floating signifiers, lack of central authority and the globalisation of culture. The Camino is postmodern in Csordas’s sense par excellence. I use ‘commentary’ and ‘text’ to draw out two contrasting uses of the Camino—‘text’ refers to the accumulation of life experiences that motivates much contemporary travel across the world among younger people, a form of ‘writing life’ or an adaption to cultural milieux. ‘Commentary’, then, refers to the sifting of life experience characteristic among older people not wishing to add more life experience so much as to turn inward to deepen one’s self-understanding, a process of redaction and critical renewal of life experience, where, for Jung, death remained the goal; ‘From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. For in the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal’ (cited in http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/jung .html). This poetic psychological approach nevertheless speaks to the experience of so many pilgrims who use the Camino in the wake of personal crises in order to retake charge of their lives. As Frey points out, the issue of whether one can find authentic pilgrims on the road today is a moot one; ‘The point is that there is no authentic pilgrim but that there are many authenticities’ (1998: 136). Heidegger writes, ‘To experience is to go along a way. The way leads through a landscape’. If narrative is the form of human consciousness, as Rapport (2003: 29) asserts, then, long periods of movement that contain habituating, rhythmic elements can serve as a primary organising experience of emergence for the struggle for being. De Botton reminds us that ‘journeys are the midwives of thought … Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape … Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks, are charged with listening to music or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness and which runs scared of memories, longings, introspective or original ideas and prefers instead the administrative and impersonal’ (De Botton 2002: 57). The fact that such doubts about life and trajectories can be acknowledged at all can lead to a healing through an embodied co-presence, in the pilgrim’s somatic attention to him or herself and to another’s credible presence of pain, a ‘turning towards’ another (Csordas 2002: 245). Even in what I, in my experience of religion, would have thought were clichéd circumstances, in a refuge in Manjarín, where people are prayed with awkwardly, at dirty tables over cups of coffee and outdoors amidst buzzing flies, I have witnessed spontaneous bursts of emotion and release. People find what they had sought on the

Trajectories of Walking on the Camino de Santiago ◆ 19

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Camino in places such as these, wordlessly moved to tears having been gently touched on the shoulder by a stranger and extolled to pray, to repent or to let Jesus in. Ironically, the term ‘religious tourism’ has not been similarly singled out as oxymoronic with ‘secular pilgrimage’. Traditionally in the Bible, the term ‘soul’ (nephesh) indicates the unity of self (‘spirit’ is translated from ruach, breath or wind, and refers to inner life force). Nephesh in fact refers to the throat, encompassing the human capacity for hunger, thirst and more generally for desire (Boadt 1984: 248). If the Western heritage of the sovereign rational soul, or psyche, is to underline the basic cleavage that separates us from ourselves, so to speak, from Plato to Descartes, modern pilgrims do not comply easily (Davies 2002: 28). Modern notions of soul are more diffuse as pilgrims for instance see, in the monuments of dead pilgrims, souls that have travelled on to the next world; they do not see them as ghosts. As pilgrims look on in reverential awe at these monuments, their respect and affection begins to define the dead pilgrim as something more of an ancestor than a ghost or soul per se. ‘S/he was one of us’ they seem to say, and their sudden ‘absence’ from the task of the walk or cycle is a shock. Pilgrims take the point quickly though that the rest of the pilgrimage awaits them and they soon set off once more. When pushed, pilgrims will assert that the soul of the pilgrim was allowed entry into heaven because he or she died on pilgrimage, but often would demur when asked if their soul might access a similar fate upon death. It seems that the thought of someone else getting to heaven is fine, once one does not contemplate the implications of the teaching for oneself. Pilgrims use stories too, when the language barrier permits, or fragments of stories when it does not, to establish ad hoc symbolic ‘communities of interpretation’ (Taylor 1995). I use the term ‘liminoid’ here, following Turner (1974, 1982), to distinguish the Camino pilgrimage as a postindustrial ritual activity that is both individual and voluntary. Turner described the liminoid as ‘forms of symbolic action, genres of free-time activity, in which all previous standards and models are subjected to criticism and fresh new ways of describing and interpreting sociocultural experience are formulated … they are outside the arenas of direct industrial production … they constitute the “liminoid” analogues of liminal processes and phenomena in tribal and early agrarian societies … To be either their agents or their audience is an optional activity—… a pleasurable quality which enables them all the more readily to be absorbed by individual consciousnesses’ (1974: 15, 16; original emphasis). Pilgrims tend to take little notice of each other over time in the refuges, becoming less embarrassed at undressing in front of other pilgrims, except to comment mischievously as several older women did, ‘Have you noticed how beautiful everyone is getting’; these lax boundaries lead to many relationships beginning on, but lasting only as long as, the pilgrimage itself. Alex often chided me for trying to understand the Camino by talking about it. ‘Imagine that every day you only had one word, walk with that word’, was something he said more than once to me to highlight that walking in silence, experiencing the moment of each step, was where the lessons lay. Roseman (2004) explores how the city authorities in Santiago have deployed the Christian provenance of the Camino to their own advantage, by having

20 ◆ Keith Egan

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

Santiago named a European City of Culture and repositioning Galicia as European rather than Spanish, by virtue of a complex understanding of how culture can accommodate postmodern implications for local belonging in an emerging globalised context. One pilgrim walked the Camino at such a pace that he was denounced quietly as ‘cycling the Camino on foot,’ further underlying the idea that the speed of pilgrimage was as important as the mode of transport. See Harris (2000) for a similar argument regarding the attraction of Lourdes for fin-de-siècle pilgrims rethinking the contours of an emerging European selfhood. Alfred Gell (1996: 115) argues that the ego moves out into the world through his or her body first before learning about the world and its mysteries: bodily modes of attention are prioritised before extrapolating general principles. For the pilgrim, the formula can be read as something like: ‘I walk therefore I am, so I can master the body’. Jackson does not see humanity being composed out of a will-to-be; many of our actions and deliberations are less products of our determination so much as of the world opening up and closing off its various possibilities to us (2005: xii, xv). In a parody of Wittgenstein (1969), one may write that pilgrims learn to know where their left leg and their right leg are, so that we may grant them the rest.

Bibliography Basso, K. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press. Bax, M. 1995. Medjugorje: Religion, Politics and Violence in Rural Bosnia. Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij. Blasi, A. 2002. ‘Visitations to Disaster Sites’, in W. Swatos and L. Tomasi (eds), From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety. Westport, CT: Praeger. Bloom, H. 1997 (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press. Boadt, L. 1984. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Clifford, J. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cohen, E. 1992. ‘Pilgrimage and Tourism’ in A. Morinis (ed.), Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Coleman, S. 2004. ‘The Charismatic Gift,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10(2): 421–442. ———. 2002. ‘“Do you believe in pilgrimage?” Communitas, Contestation and Beyond’, Anthropological Theory 2(3): 355–68. Coleman, S. and J. Eade (eds). 2004. Reframing Pilgrimage. London: Routledge. Coleman, S. and T. Kohn (eds). 2007. The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of ‘Recreation’. New York: Berghahn Books.

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Cousineau, P. 1998. The Art of Pilgrimage: the seeker’s guide to making travel sacred. San Francisco: Conari Press. Csordas, T. 2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. New York and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 1997. Language, Charisma and Creativity. New York: Palgrave. Davies, D. 2002. Anthropology and Theology. Oxford: Berg. De Botton, A. 2002. The Art of Travel. London: Penguin. Dennett, D. 2007. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. London: Penguin. Desjarlais, R. 1996. ‘Struggling Along’, in M. Jackson (ed.), Things As They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dubisch, J. 1995. In a Different Place. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dubisch, J. and M. Winkelman. 2005. Pilgrimage and Healing. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Eade, J. and M. Sallnow (eds). 1991. Contesting the Sacred: An Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. London: Routledge. Egan, K. 2004. Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago. London: Doubleday Press. Foucault, M. 1989 (1973). The Birth of the Clinic. New York: Routledge. ———. 1979 (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Frey, N. 1998. Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago. Berkeley: University of California Press. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Fontana Press. Gell, A. 1996. ‘Reflections On A Cut Finger: Taboo in the Umeda Conception of Self’, in M. Jackson (ed.), Things As They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gilmore, L. 2005. ‘Embers, Dust and Ashes: Pilgrimage and Healing at the Burning Man Festival’, in J. Dubisch and M. Winkelman (eds), Pilgrimage and Healing. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Glucklich, A. 2001. Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, R. 2000. Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Compass. Hitt, J. 2005 [1994]. Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain. London: Simon and Schuster. Jackson, M. 2005. Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies and Effects. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. ———. 1995. At Home in the World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kleinman, A. 2006. What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life amidst Uncertainty and Danger. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kondo, D. 1990. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leder, D. 1990. The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luard, N. 1998. The Field of the Star: A Pilgrim’s Journey to Santiago de Compostela. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Margry, P. J. (ed.). 2008. Shrines and Pilgrimages in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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McKevitt, C. 1991. ‘San Giovanni Rotondo and the Shrine of Padre Pio’, in J. Eade and M. Sallnow (eds), Contesting the Sacred: An Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. New York: Routledge Press. Mellor, P. and C. Shilling (eds). 1997. Re-forming the Body: Religion, Community and Modernity. London: Sage Publications. Morris, D. 1991. The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nolan, M. L. 1983. ‘Irish Pilgrimage: The Different Tradition’, Annals of the Association of Geographers 73(3): 421–38. Porter, J. 2004. ‘Pilgrimage and IDIC Ethic: Exploring Star Trek Convention Attendance as Pilgrimage’, in S. Roseman and E. Badone (eds), Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rapport, N. 2003. I Am Dynamite. London: Routledge. Reader, I. 2007. ‘Pilgrimage Growth in the Modern World: Meanings and Implications’, Religion 37(3): 210–29. Roseman, S. 2004. ‘Santiago de Compostela in the Year 2000: From Religious Center to European City of Culture’, in S. Roseman and E. Badone (eds), Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Roseman, S. and E. Badone (eds). 2004. Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rupp, J. 2005. Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino. New York: Orbis Books. Smith, J. 1998. ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, in M. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Starkie, W. 1957. The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St James. London: John Murray. St John, G. 2001. ‘Alternative Cultural Heterotopias and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at Confest’, Australian Journal of Anthropology 12(1): 47–66. Swatos, W. and L. Tomasi (eds). 2002. From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety. Westport, CT: Praeger. Sumption, J. 2003 [1975]. The Age of Pilgrimage: The Medieval Journey to God. Mahwah, NJ: Hiddenspring. Taylor, L. 1995. Occasions of Faith. Dublin: Lilliput Press. Turner, V. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. ———. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Turner, V. and E. Turner. 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Tweed, T. 2006. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Westwood, J. 2003 (1997). On Pilgrimage: Sacred Journeys around the World. Mahwah, NJ: Hiddenspring. Wittgenstein, L. 1969. On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright and trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.

2 Holding the Saint in One’s Arms Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile Giovanna Bacchiddu

Introduction This essay is dedicated to the relationship Apiao people have with the miraculous San Antonio de Padua,1 and to the supreme expression of this relationship, the ritual thanking for the saint’s gift of a miracle with a novena. San Antonio novenas are public gatherings in private households to celebrate the statue of a miraculous saint with prayers, food and alcoholic drinks, and dance. Apiao is a small island of the archipelago of Chiloé, in southern Chile, with a population of approximately seven hundred inhabitants living in scattered households inserted in a peaceful rural setting, who live out of agriculture combined with small-animal farming, fishing and shell collecting. The closest town, Achao, that hosts the local government seat, bank, post office and hospital, can be reached by boat in three hours, and people regularly travel there for shopping and running errands. Mostly Catholic, with a very small minority of Protestant Evangelicals, Apiao people consider themselves to be good Catholics, and recent attempts to introduce Evangelic Protestantism into the community have encountered stiff resistance (see Bacchiddu 2009). Partly due to its relative geographical isolation, that shields it from a regular presence of the official church (a priest visits the island once or twice a year), Apiao religious sensibility was able to evolve somehow independently from the established orthodoxy of mainstream Catholicism, maintaining some distinctive traits. Apiao people’s experience of religion strongly merges the physical with the spiritual, and religion cannot be separated from sociality: in fact, it

24 ◆ Giovanna Bacchiddu

can be accurately described as coinciding with sociality. Is this acceptable within the mainstream Christian world? In her recent work on Christianity (2005, 2006) Fenella Cannell offers a detailed discussion of the way Christianity rests on the fundamental divide of body and soul. She points out that Christian doctrine has always focused on a dualistic separation between material and spiritual, placing asceticism over material life, spirit over flesh, in a hierarchical scale. She also argues that anthropology as an academic discipline has been heavily influenced by this aspect of Christianity; in its analyses of religious beliefs and practices this dualism has been stereotypically included as a tool or analytical device to classify people’s religious affiliations and determine which type of Christianity is authentic, and which one is not (2005: 339). In most theoretical approaches to Christianity, she found, a hierarchical view of physical over spiritual matters and an underlying antagonism between body and spirit has been assumed, classifying as heterodox Christianities ‘those which fail to supply such apparent essentials as a radical separation between body and spirit, between this life and the life to come, or between spirituality and kinship’ (2005: 352). Ethnographic studies, however, easily contradict such clear-cut approaches and fresh data reveal a focus on the body as the fundamental vessel of spirituality – not as a symbolic carrier of asceticism but as the main relational expression of the otherwordly. Along the same lines, recent approaches to the role of the body in lowland South America – the wider geographical area to which the people discussed in this chapter belong – have shown how assuming a radical separation of body/soul, material/ spiritual is not very fruitful and is in fact problematic. Cecilia McCallum (1996), speaking of the Cashinahua, argues for a reevaluation of the fundamental dualisms that in indigenous thought do exist, but ‘need not be interpreted as dichotomous – that is, static, encompassing, and divisive – but rather as dynamic, expansive, and centrifugal’ (1996: 364). Beth Conklin summing the argument writes that indigenous perspectives ‘either do not recognize these as distinct domains or see them as interdependent’ (1996: 373). To appreciate how spiritual and material merge in the Amerindian world, several authors have highlighted the importance of the body as the locus of construction of sociality.2 The focus is on the body as an active vessel of relationality, rather than a passive recipient of symbolic meaning (see the introduction to this volume). Knowledge (physical, social, religious) is constructed in the body and through it: to borrow an image from Terence Turner (1995), the body is imbricated in social praxis. Bodies are fundamentally social products, constituted by multiple levels of relations with others. In the words of Aparecida Vilaça, ‘substances transmitted through conception are less important than or at least equally important to those acquired and exchanged through social practice, thus asserting that the body is not given at birth but made throughout life’ (2005: 459).

Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile ◆ 25

McCallum proposes to define the body as a ‘constructed and knowing social whole’ (1996: 364). The focus on the social body carries along a strong spiritual engagement, and to consider the body without reference to mind and spirit and vice versa makes no sense. The bifurcation of persons into bodies and souls, fundamental for Euro-American cultures, is removed from the understanding of different Amazonian people, who draw connections between physical disease and social disruption/disintegration. Both the Kulina (Pollock 1996) and the Kayapo (Turner 1995) see bodies afflicted by sickness as a signal of deep social disorder, rather than an individual subjective state, because the individual and the social are mutually inscribed. An approach to the body divorced from the spheres of both the social and the spiritual is unthinkable in Apiao, Chiloé, like in the rest of native lowland South America. This essay endeavours to illustrate how the body, the spiritual and the social interact and mutually build each other in the devotion to a local Catholic saint. A little statue of a miraculous saint is the interlocutor in an articulate dialectical exchange; an individual with whom people engage and build meaningful social relationships. In what ways can we address a social relationship where the other is not a fellow human being, but a chalk statue? Contributing to a recent debate on the problem of evidence in the anthropology of religion, Webb Keane (2008) called for a more careful consideration of materiality in the study of religious practices and objects, on the grounds that the roots of social experience, historical modifications, creative innovations and responses to beliefs lie precisely in their material manifestations. Materiality is to be considered and legitimated in its own right, rather than as a secondary evidence for immaterial beliefs. Undoubtedly, this view would have been shared by Alfred Gell. In his reformulation of the anthropology of art, Gell theorised an approach to art objects as loci of social relations, integral parts of social processes of interaction. Art, he writes, is a system of action, and art objects are seen as having a practical mediatory role in the social process (1998: 6). He rejects the discussion of art as a system of meaning and symbols to be decoded, and supports instead an actionoriented approach where objects have, and produce, social agency. In this light, ‘anything whatsoever could, conceivably, be an art object from the anthropological point of view, including living persons, because the anthropological theory of art (which we can roughly define as “the social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social agency”) merges seamlessly with the social anthropology of persons and their bodies’ (1998: 7). The overcoming of a symbolic reading of art objects echoes the step forward taken by anthropologists in their shift from the symbolic to the relational in their more recent approach to the body. The focus on social agency and the generative capacity inherent in objects viewed as fundamentally relational is particularly fruitful in the context of the body/soul debate, and especially relevant to my own material. Keane’s proposition

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and Gell’s helpful method allow us to merge the material aspect of the saint, subject of my contribution to this volume (the statue, which is ultimately a material object) and the spiritual attachment Apiao people experience towards it, which is deeply rooted and expressed in dynamics of social and bodily interaction. Summing up, what follows is theoretically informed by these main points: lifting the separation between body and soul; focusing on the body as crucial locus of sociality construction; viewing interaction between people and sacred objects as a proper social relation.

‘De’ que tengo juicio’: The Saint I heard about San Antonio of Padua – el santito, as Apiao people call him3 – almost immediately upon my arrival on the island. The saint’s fame preceded him, and I was introduced to this powerful entity by my guest family. They informed me of the saint’s existence as they would of a family member’s. Chiloé churches host some beautiful eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Spanish statues, carved out of wood, part of a corpus known as santería chilota. I initially thought that the renowned saint belonged to the santería, but I was to be surprised. When I first saw the little statue, its minute dimensions and unexpected simplicity baffled me. El santito, ‘the little Illustration 2.1. Back from Caguach: saint’ is a small statue, about fifteen a couple on the boat holding the centimetres tall, of a friar. The statue, saint, a chicha demijohn to the fore. made of painted chalk, is not particPhoto by Giovanna Bacchiddu. ularly old or aesthetically pleasing, nor valuable. However, it is believed to be extremely powerful and miraculous. Usually reserved and reticent, Apiao people are generally happy to talk about the saint and often say that he has always been part of their lives: ‘I have always known San Antonio. I call him just Chuco, I have much faith in him and lots of respect, because everything I asked him, he has always granted me. I have always known him, de’ que tengo juicio’.4 ‘Every single thing I ever asked him, he gave to me. Sometimes he takes time to give you what you asked for, but he always gives you what you asked him’. ‘He’s very powerful, very miraculous’.

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Unlike all the other saints that are venerated in the archipelago, San Antonio does not belong to a church, but to a private owner. This detail makes the saint unique5 within Chiloé, where devotion to saints is usually strictly associated with the churches that host them. The owner is a woman who lives on the nearby island of Caguach. She inherited the little statue from her grandmother, who in turn inherited it from her own grandmother. The details about the origin of the santito are obscure; according to the owner he might have landed on the beach in a wooden box after a storm.6 The woman, impoverished and with a complicated family situation, owns the little statue and keeps it in her own household, and always made it available to the Apiao pilgrims, who regularly travel to borrow the saint to take back to their own island for a novena. Interestingly, the cult of San Antonio is limited to Apiao.7 The saint travels regularly between the two islands. Apiao faithful embark in a ritual voyage to fetch him and take him home with them. They keep the statue for approximately ten days, which include a novena, and on the tenth day, weather permitting, he is fetched back to his island and to his owner. He is extremely popular in Apiao: during my two-year stay, eight novenas for the saint were celebrated. The unique feeling of hosting a saint in one’s household is a privilege that people look forward to: as my landlord told me once, ‘I could hold him here, in my lap, as if he was my child’. Respect and awe for this powerful saint, and acquaintance with what is now a familiar character merge in the novena events for all those involved. The holy is not only socialised but familiarised, turned into an intimate acquaintance. The strength of this devotion is accentuated by its domestic character. The presence of the saint transforms an everyday family space into a sacred place. San Antonio, Illustration 2.2. Holding the saint in removed from the officiality one’s hands: a novena owner carrying San of churches, chapels or shrines, Antonio upon his arrival in Apiao. Photo by and exclusive to the domestic Giovanna Bacchiddu.

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Illustration 2.3. Another novena owner, a girl, with the saint, and one of the musicians. Photo by Giovanna Bacchiddu.

space, renders the Apiao household temporarily charged with holiness. While the saint’s presence fills the space with a sacred aura, at the same time the saint himself is incorporated in that domestic space, he partakes of the details of everyday life in an Apiao household; he momentarily becomes one of them. Through his physical presence, he brings a corporeal manifestation of the sacred into everyday life. This unique access to the saint is evocative of the ‘privatisation of the holy’ mentioned by Peter Brown in his historical narrative of the cult of saints and martyrs in late antiquity. What pertained to distant and inaccessible officialdom is now reclaimed and enjoyed by the community at large. This way ‘Christian piety gained the incalculable advantage of being firmly rooted in day-to-day experience’ (Brown 1981: 62).

The Miracles San Antonio is said to grant miracles to those who request his help with faith and devotion. Whenever a person in Apiao experiences an intense danger, especially in a life-threatening situation, they ask San Antonio for help; more specifically, they ask him for a miracle. In addressing the saint individuals are in fact proposing an exchange: whenever they ask for something to happen, they always inevitably promise to return something else. In the very moment of addressing the saint, they commit to giving him a reward for his help. Generally the reward offered is a novena, a nine-day prayer meeting to be held in the supplicant’s household. Organising a novena is a burdensome task that requires years of hard work and saving, as well as the involvement of several people. However, the offer is conditional: whoever addresses the saint offers a novena in gratitude to the saint only in case of positive outcome of the request. The background context of each novena is unique and personal. The requests and the miracles that prompt novenas are hardly ever discussed and generally kept private. Although people tend to be discreet on the matter, I was told that the saint is usually addressed mostly in life-threatening situations, typically such as someone falling from a boat into the sea, not being able to swim and addressing the saint to be saved. This is a common occurrence on the island, where the majority cannot swim. Some have addressed the saint when their family members were suffering from a serious illness. More rarely, requests concern less dramatic matters, such as

Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile ◆ 29

the strength to finish building one’s household. A man told me that once his young child was gravely ill. On the way to the nearest hospital, he addressed the saint, asking him to spare the child’s life. “Had he not granted me the miracle,” the man said, “I would have never done a novena. My request was clear, and my offer was clear too: only if you give me what I ask you, I’ll pay you back the way I promised in the first place.” His child survived. As soon as he and his family could gather all the necessary goods, a proper novena was organised and celebrated. The overall assertiveness of the man in his address to the saint is remarkably indicative of the relational approach that people establish with the saint. By stating their request, and their offer, they are inviting the saint to a one-to-one dialogue. By granting the miracle, the saint is endorsing and approving the initiative of his interlocutors, thereby showing his willingness to get into a relationship with those who address him. The saint’s response defines him as a ‘social agent’ in Gell’s terms: he is proving where he stands in a network of social relations (see Gell 1998: 123). More rarely, people invert the exchange terms, anticipating the gift: they ask for a miracle and celebrate a novena immediately, offering a gift to the saint, displaying a strong faith. This happened once during my stay on the island: a couple celebrated a novena hoping that the saint would rescue their son, accused of having committed a crime for which he always denied charges. By offering a novena before receiving the miracle, they were somehow putting the saint in an indebted position. The episode highlights the great faith in the saint’s powers and the willingness to offer a great deal in order for a wish to be granted. However, this episode also shows how the faithful try to manipulate the powerful other instrumentally.

Powerful, Miraculous and Very Vengeful The saint was consistently described as both miraculous and powerful. His powers are ambivalent: able to dispense miracles, he is believed to expect a return; this is especially true whenever people make a statement of a commitment to the saint. While usually Apiao people do not pay much attention to spoken words when interacting with their fellow islanders, they consider each uttered word very carefully whenever talking about the saint. This is why they refer to any commitment towards the saint with the much-heard expression ‘lo tengo dicho,’ (I have said so). With that expression they are officially stating a pact made with the saint, and they are making that pact public. By speaking out, a person is committing to follow words with appropriate action. By uttering those words, the pact is sealed, and the community is witness to that pact. Conversely, if someone promises to attend a novena for a certain number of days, or promises to attend and light a certain number of candles, or to offer an amount of money, but fails to do it, that is considered not only a lack of

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respect, but a sacrilegious act that calls for the saint’s revenge. His attribute of castigador, vengeful, in fact was always spelt out next to poderoso, powerful. Once a person commits to offer something to the saint, they must attend to that commitment as soon as possible. While it is acceptable that gathering the necessary resources might take years, to deliberately ignore the promise made, to pretend not to have promised or to dismiss a novena celebration to avoid expenditure amounts to grave misbehaviour towards the saint. Such fault is always blamed and frowned upon by the community, and in such cases the saint’s punishment is to be expected. Stories abound of people who, being parsimonious, kept delaying the celebrations and suffered misfortunes such as the loss of cattle, or the loss of a considerable sum of money, or worse, serious illness.8 This is interpreted as a clear warning from the saint, who, after granting the miracle, was never paid back as promised. Sometimes the misfortunes come at regular intervals, in growing proportion, so that whoever failed to comply would be warned. One such person had made a promise to the saint while risking his life, but after being rescued he had ignored his commitment to the saint. Then he suddenly experienced various predicaments and untoward events. At some point, his sister wondered about the origin of his misfortune and asked him if by any chance he had any pending responsibility. When he revealed a nonfulfilled commitment to the saint, she urged him to immediately start gathering the resources for a novena. Another woman was taking her time to fulfil her commitment to the saint, when one day she tripped and fell while seven months’ pregnant. Here follows a long passage from a conversation we had that well articulates the relational experience connecting people and saint. Originally from Apiao, she moved to Argentina where she got married. She returned to fulfil her duty of a novena according to what she had promised the saint sometime in the past: De’ que tengo juicio … I have always known San Antonio. I just call him Chuco. I have a lot of faith and respect for him, because he always fulfilled everything I ever asked him. My parents held a novena when I was two years old, and I held one myself ten years ago, and now. I came from so far away, four days of travelling to keep my promise; I really had to do this. Two years ago I came with my husband, but we were not ready yet for a novena, the money was simply not enough. That is why I had committed to come back just for this purpose. The trip went fine; I always ask him to protect me. For the first novena I asked him to take care of my parents, because I had to leave them and go abroad. I am an only child; my parents are the most important thing to me. Then I asked him to give me a house, and he complied, and then I asked him to protect my children and my family. But if people make fun of him, or don’t keep their promise, he punishes them. And people don’t realise, until things happen to them. For example, I had this promise to fulfil, and I had not done it yet, and when I was seven months’ pregnant I fell, I slipped on the ice and I fell on my belly. I was coming back from the hospital, I just had my check-up; I was only five blocks

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away from home. Luckily I was holding my husband’s hand, I fainted and my daughter got really scared. I went back to the hospital and they checked everything again. Everything was fine with the baby, thank God. That was him warning me that I still had my promise to keep. I was really frightened, but he trusted me and continued protecting me. Some people on the island have made a promise, but they don’t fulfil their duty. They keep postponing and they say that one day they’ll do it, because they don’t have the resources, the money and all that is necessary. And the years pass. But they should know that when they least expect it, the saint is going to punish them.

The following excerpt from the same conversation is indicative of the agency attributed to the saint by Apiao people. San Antonio’s will is manifested through the weather, forcing people to change their plans: We wanted to go to Achao to leave him the money [rather than going all the way to Caguach], but he didn’t want to, and we missed the boat. I told my father, Chuco wants me to go to Caguach! And this is what happened: good weather! I wanted to leave the island to buy my ticket to go back to Argentina, but the weather was always bad. Anchuquito didn’t want to give me the good weather! But when I myself went to take him back, with my daughter, then, only then the weather got better. He wanted me to take him back to Caguach!

In the woman’s rendition, the saint is just like another individual with whom she interacts. She talks about the saint as if he were a person of flesh and bone. She calls him affectionately Chuco or Anchuquito, giving him not one but two nicknames, a practice in use among close acquaintances or relatives. The use of nicknames is indicative of being in a social relationship; San Antonio is a name, Anchuquito is more than a name: it attests of a connection.9 Feeling comfortable to use nicknames versus the common name is indicative of a mutual personal engagement, of an association, of a ‘domestication’ (Christian 1989: 26). A further crucial element is the attribution of agency: the woman depicts him as someone that listens, delivers, warns, punishes, guides people’s actions by giving the right weather at the right time to have them act in one way rather than in another. He has his own way to show his interlocutors what he wants, and they readily receive the message, acknowledge it and act consequently.

Negotiation A typical characteristic of the dialectical interaction with the saint is the use of negotiation. Just like relationships with fellow islanders are never taken for granted, but constantly tested and renovated, the relationship entertained with the saint mirrors this pattern. People interact with him, in a sort of dialogic form, formulating a question and waiting for an answer, making an offer and thereby agreeing on an exchange, or otherwise

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offering an apology and expecting the apology to be accepted. Despite perceiving the obvious gap between a supernatural, powerful entity and the limited condition of human beings, Apiao people do not feel this gap to be a constraint, and actively engage with San Antonio in assertive and creative ways. Carlos, a young boat owner, was supposed to participate in a novena. However, he was unexpectedly offered a well-paid job: the nearby municipality offered to rent his boat and his service for a whole day. I heard the story during a conversation between women, busy preparing the meal for the remate night, the last novena day. Carlos’s sister was telling everyone how she encouraged him to ask permission from the saint to go: ‘He is going to grant it, because he knows you, you already brought him here a few times!’ to which several of the women present agreed, nodding their heads and enthusiastically confirming the woman’s words. Here is the sequence of the man-saint negotiation: • Talking to the saint, mentioning possible participation in the novena • A good job offer appears: change of plan, consequent inability to go and sit in the praying ritual as expected and as promised • Talking to the saint again, asking for his permission, reminding him of the previous times a connection bound them together • Firm belief in the saint granting permission • Decision to proceed and take the job People allow themselves to negotiate with the saint; it has to be done ‘with a good heart,’ as I was told several times. If one’s intentions are honest, the saint will listen and accept what the individual proposes. It must be kept in mind that Apiao people are a strongly egalitarian, indigenous community and they continuously face encounters with others which they perceive as hierarchically superior. Such others are all the non-Apiao people, but specifically all the people who are not from a small island, all townspeople, all those who earn a salary, all educated people. It is, therefore, not particularly surprising that manipulative strategies are an integral part of the relational repertoire in social interaction, with both fellow humans and the saint. Negotiation and manipulation (see also Ortner 1978: 68 and following) are strategies to deal with the powerful other, a way to control a dangerous other and ‘tame’ him into an intimate relationship, through the witty use of offers intrinsic to hospitality. Hospitality rituals are the main social tool in Apiao: relations revolve around the offering and receiving of food and drink in one’s household kitchen. Hospitality, which is strongly ritualised in Apiao (see Bacchiddu 2007), is inherently hierarchical in its form, in that it implies, and performs, a (temporary) difference in status: the host assumes a humble attitude and apologises, allowing the guest to assume a hierarchical role. This inversion is necessary for the hospitality ritual

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to succeed.10 The novena is a large-scale reenactment of this performance and this principle. The saint is treated like a guest, welcomed in the house and offered a special treatment. On another level, he also acts as a mediator: thanks to his presence the hospitality ritual comprises the community, perpetuating the cycle of social relations, making people alternatively take the role of host and guest, assuming hierarchically different roles – temporarily so, because people’s sameness is only momentarily suspended, in the name of the saint.

The Novena The novena to San Antonio is an elaborate, lengthy ritual, involving the offering of food and alcoholic drinks to a crowd of fellow islanders, who take part in the celebration as a token of faith to the saint, and of solidarity towards the novena organiser. In what follows I will try to highlight some crucial aspects of it. The actual novena celebrations mark the culmination of a long period of preparation, in which a substantial amount of resources need to be gathered. If we consider that the goods consumed in a novena easily amount to the general expenses of a household within one or even two years, we can appreciate the aspect of commitment intrinsic in this ritual. The novena begins on the day the saint is brought from the island Caguach. The novena organiser (called dueño, owner of the promesa) goes to fetch the saint accompanied by a group of friends, family and four ritual specialists: a fiscal 11 and three musicians. The fiscal leads the rosaries and imparts the blessings throughout the novena, accompanied by a team of two prayer specialists. The musicians are in charge of the ritual instruments: two drums and an accordion. The trip to the nearby island is a ritualised sacred voyage. On the boat, the dueño constantly offers alcoholic drink, and sometimes food, to each traveller. The drink can be wine or chicha, the locally produced apple cider. He is the host of the event, and he attends his guests as if they were sitting in the kitchen of his household. He must offer them food and drink, and they must receive it, in the name of San Antonio. In Caguach the pilgrims engage in an exchange ritual with the saint owner: fixed formulas, prayers and cueca dancing are performed in honour of the saint in his own house, with abundant offers of chicha. The encounter with the saint is always emotional. When a former Apiao resident, a woman who has been living in Argentina for three decades, saw the saint, she spoke to him as if he was a long-lost child: ‘I finally arrived to fetch you my darling, I have wanted to see you again for such a long time’, she said, lovingly caressing the saint’s clothes and plastic jewellery. Later on she addressed the saint in baby talk, and carried on for a while talking to him in the same style, in her long-awaited reunion with the

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powerful saint. This is another remarkable example of the merging of the body and soul in a spiritual relationship that cannot disengage from the social, and cannot exist without a tangible, concrete engagement. Devotion to San Antonio is intrinsically ingrained, and must culminate in a physical encounter between faithful and saint. There is no other way to think of this saint for Apiao people, other than planning to meet him personally, offer him material items, hold him in one’s hands. Eventually, the group leaves in a procession-like line, the owner of the promise leading the way, carrying the saint in his hands. After the saint and the fiscal, follow the three musicians who continuously play a religious march on the way to the boat, pausing only when crossing and jumping fences. Everybody else follows behind. Throughout the whole trip back to Apiao, the novena host holds the saint as if he was a baby, taking all possible care, protecting him from raindrops, and carefully shielding him while transferring from the little rowing boat to the bigger motorboat, in leaving Caguach and upon arrival in Apiao. During the boat trip the musicians play, while chicha is continuously served to all, adults and children alike. When the motorboat arrives in Apiao there is always a small crowd waiting for the saint on the beach, and sometimes a few boats follow from the canal to the beach where he lands. Going to meet the little saint is a much-appreciated emotional moment. The novena consists of the recitation of two sets of rosaries led by three praying experts, the fiscales, and accompanied by a group of faithful, who attend the celebration in devotion to the saint as a token of respect and solidarity to the novena organiser, who is hosting the saint in his own household for the duration of the novena, that is, nine days. The novena certainly marks a special, sacred time during which every effort is made to appropriately welcome the sacred guest. Household boundaries are temporarily modified: a large room is emptied and arranged to receive a large number of visitors. If households do not have a wide enough room, the thin walls of plywood that separate the rooms from each other are temporarily brought down. Two sets of parallel benches, facing each other, are built on both sides of the room, one for the men and one for the women and the children, who are generally brought along in great numbers. San Antonio witnesses the celebration from a small table transformed into an altar, adorned with branches of trees, flowers and glittery decorations. Three chairs for the fiscales are placed around the altar, facing the saint. Prayers are alternated with songs, sung to the music of drums and accordion. Three musicians sit in front of the first row of the men’s benches, close to the altar. Each novena night two rosaries are prayed, complemented by more prayers and litanies. In addition, every night a different text concerning the saint’s life and miracles is read. Prayers and songs are always preceded and followed by drinking, and the sessions are concluded with either eating or dancing. Before starting to pray and in between rosaries everyone,

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children included, is offered a glass of alcohol; every other night everyone is offered a cooked dinner, after the prayers. All drinks and food are consumed sitting on the benches. On alternate nights the Chilean national dance, cueca, is danced to the music of the accordion accompanied by cueca singing. The cueca is very popular in Chiloé, where it has its own variant, the cueca chilota, and in Apiao it has a strong religious connotation. The dancers, always in couples (a man and a woman), follow a fixed pattern, their bodies never touching, eyes Illustration 2.4. Dancing the cueca in front of the saint and his altar. Photo by Giovanna Bacchiddu. never meeting. Dancing in the novena acquires a special ritualistic meaning: couples dance by the altar of the saint, and the dance is offered in exchange and in fulfilment of a promise. The men need to take the initiative and invite a woman to join them in the dance, and they say that they need to be slightly inebriated to overcome the embarrassment. Often the dancers are children: they learn the cueca in school and are less shy than adults. Dancing for the saint is experienced and enjoyed as a ritual performance, and dancers are appreciated for rendering a service to both saint and community. At the same time, dancing has a distinct jovial side to it, and amusing cueca sessions and humorous dancers are remembered and talked about for a long time. The engagement of Apiao people in dancing, an activity which is both sacred and jocose, performed in a convivial situation, is yet another iconic instance of the merging of body and soul. Expressing a spiritual and religious feeling through engaging the body in dance is a further crucial example of the ways in which in Apiao the spiritual is embedded in the physical and must be expressed through the physical to be validated. Believing in the saint would not be validated without a novena, and a novena would not make sense without all its components, and the dancing is one of them.12

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While organising a novena is the seal of an interpersonal pact between someone and the saint, involving two individuals, at the same time a novena by definition implies a crowd of faithful to pray and sing. In fact, a San Antonio novena provides the opportunity to see real solidarity in action on the island. While in the past communal work (minga) was paramount, nowadays most work is done for money. However, in religious matters there is still a strong display of mutuality and solidarity. By participating in this crucial event, islanders are acknowledging their status as human beings: they all might, at some point, need the same solidarity. The reciprocity pattern is always present on several levels, and it is the leitmotif behind the novena celebrations.

The Presents The saint is always offered presents during his stay in Apiao: on each novena night there is a constant flow of people leaving their benches to go to the saint’s altar, sign themselves and offer him some money, which they put in a wooden box kept for that purpose. Then they sign themselves again and return to their seat. People make promises to the saint and accomplish them during a novena. They can either promise to attend a certain number of nights, or to buy him some candles, or to give him some cash, or some food. Whatever is promised must involve an effort or expense. Usual gifts include money, live chickens, smoked fish, wine, chicha, potatoes and garlic. The presents belong to the saint, and are given to the saint owner when the saint is returned. These offerings are private and represent people’s work,13 and they are never commented upon. Equally, no one would dare to keep any of the goods destined for the saint: to do so would be equal to stealing from the saint and would provoke his powerful wrath. I was told of someone who suffered from a terrible accident while he was doing a novena: his household caught fire and even the saint was badly burnt. People commented that most likely the owner had bad intentions, or had stolen from the goods offered to the saint as a present. No one ever questions the final destination of the offers; once people return what they previously promised, the imbalance is neutralised, the equilibrium is restored. It is irrelevant that all of these goods are collected and enjoyed by the woman who owns the statue: giving them to the saint (in gratitude for something received, or to accompany a request) is what really matters. This shows once more how the saint is experienced as a person, to the point that he is given gifts that benefit a human being, rather than a saint:14 money to spend and resources to consume. The saint’s owner – who could be seen to be profiting from the situation – is legitimised by Apiao people by her position as owner. She breaks the chain of reciprocity because she is the final recipient of the goods; she is out of the reciprocity circle and has no obligations in this sense.15

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Conclusion The San Antonio novena is a complex, elaborate and detailed ritual that synthesises a set of crucial beliefs on the natural, the supernatural, the social and the relational of Apiao people’s lived world. In the novena, values and behaviours of everyday life are repeated and magnified in a religious framework that highlights spiritual and physical bonds between people and a tiny statue of a powerful saint. In Apiao engaging with the others (both fellow islanders, and human and supernatural powerful others) entails entering in a social relation with them. Devotion to the saint implies being in a social relationship with him. A social relation is necessarily indistinguishable from a physical relation, is made visible and activated through the body, through physical interaction with the saint, because for each spiritual address, such as asking something to the saint, a physical counterpart is needed to complete the circle. In Apiao there is no such a thing as a separate sphere of religion: religion is encompassed by sociality and is ‘inhabited by and constructed through the body’ (McCallum 1996: 365). Part and parcel of everyday life, two sides of the same coin, religion is deeply entwined with sociality (for a full exploration of this, see Bacchiddu 2009). The transcendent and the material meet up constantly, because they are part of the same whole. The only way to interact with the saint is having a full-circle, social involvement with him, which is expressed by carrying him, holding him in one’s hands and lap, taking him home and welcoming him to be part of the family. Further examples of this are the custom of nicknaming him and the familiarity with which he is spoken of. This social relationship is necessarily an embodied relationship: it cannot but involve the physical engagement of both Apiao people, and the saint. This saint, whenever addressed, is asked something practical; he must be given something practical in return. He is promised to be taken along physically. The experience of the saint is always embodied, the mediation passes always through the bodies of those involved: Apiao people and San Antonio. The corporeality of this relationship is further expressed in the alcoholic drinking and food sharing, in the bodies closely sitting next to one another in the crowded novena benches, in the cueca dancing. The saint is also instrumental in the making of the social individual: the sense of the person, in Apiao, is strictly connected with the acquisition of maturity, exemplified in the ability to act according to productivity and independence. Children are taught from an early age to take care of themselves and of the household by being given small tasks. They are taught basic skills first, and more complex ones later on. Children actively take part in and contribute to the ritual and are willing to do so: for example, they ask to carry the saint and they regularly dance the cueca. It is common for adolescents and young adults to commit to the saint; they start accumulating resources to keep their promise and eventually perform a

38 ◆ Giovanna Bacchiddu

novena in their early twenties. Committing to the saint and managing to celebrate the novena is an important indicator of maturity. People sometimes perform novenas two, three or more times in their life. The structural elements that compose the novena are regularly experienced by Apiao people in everyday contexts, and yet in the novena they assume a distinctively sacred emphasis. The duty to fulfil an obligation, to honour an agreement, is a crucial element in the relationships between fellow islanders, and it assumes a supreme importance whenever dealing with the saint. Balanced, reciprocal exchange is what articulates people’s sociality, and this is often reiterated in everyday life, in its most basic aspects. This same code of conduct is valid in the interaction with the sacred. The saint, despite belonging to the supernatural realm, is treated as an individual, like a fellow human being. People ask, they negotiate, they offer in return, they pay their debt. Once they have received what had been asked for, it must be paid back just as it had been previously promised. Like neighbours, friends and relatives who are expected to reciprocate, pay back and return whatever was previously offered to them (be it work, food, alcoholic drink, tools or help in different situations) in the correct amount, reproducing exactly what was previously taken, the faithful are expected to return to the saint what they had committed to give him. That is the main principle of society. In their attitudes to the saint, Apiao people reproduce a social relation, replicating the pattern of the relations they entertain with their fellow islanders.16 Furthermore, Apiao people’s dialectic interaction with the saint as a powerful other illustrates the local way to engage in unequal power relations. Through negotiation they bridge between two profoundly different positions: the human, who needs, and the powerful other, who can. This is done through bringing the saint into their world and socialising him. To conclude, I borrow the words of Vilaça and Wright, that bring us back into the Amerindian native world: Apiao people ‘understand Christianity via native categories – that is, a collective experience focused on the body and on the relations between humans and non-humans, and encompassed by the inclusive relational model characteristic of shamanism, which includes animals, spirits and Catholic saints within the sphere of humanity’ (2009: 14).

Notes This essay is based on fieldwork conducted in Apiao between the years 2000 and 2002, with additional research in 2003 and 2007–2008. Research was financed by the Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (Assessorato della Pubblica Istruzione – Assegni di Studio post-lauream programme) and I gratefully ac-

Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile ◆ 39

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

knowledge it. I thank Anna Fedele and Ruy Blanes for welcoming me to the EASA workshop upon which this volume is based, and for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks are due to Joseph Tendler for his help with the editing. All translations from Spanish are my own. Although several sources report of the well-known devotion to this saint in Europe and South America (see Christian for Spain, 1989: 84; Vainfas 2003 for Brazil amongst others), and despite the presence of immensely popular shrines in Padua, Italy, and Portugal, this has hardly any repercussion for Apiao people. In fact they are not aware of the worldwide popularity of this saint, nor of the diffusion of its cult. They are not familiar with the saint’s hagiography, nor are they aware that Padua is an existing location. They engage with San Antonio, the statue that stays in the nearby island Caguach, and that specific saint is integral part of their life. In addition to the authors cited in this chapter, see also the contributions in the following recent collections: Overing and Passes (2000); Rival and Whitehead (2001); Vilaça and Wright (2009) and the two special editions of Tipití on The Body in Amazonia (Rival 2005) and Amerindian Modes of Knowledge (Santos-Granero and Mentore 2006). This list is by no means exhaustive, since most Amerindianists have devoted at least some of their work to illustrate beliefs and practices related to the body and their repercussions in social life. I refer to the saint as ‘him’ because this is the way Apiao people themselves indicate him. It is also important to remark that the saint is identified with the statue: the statue is the saint. By having the statue in their household, people are in fact hosting San Antonio the miraculous saint – not just a statue. See also Gell 1998: 13. This expression, commonly used in Apiao, literally means ‘since I have judgement.’ We can translate the word juicio as ‘conscience’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘memory’. This saint is unique in another sense: he is not a mediator; he is not used as a means to get closer to God. In fact the saint himself is the target of the approach, as I will develop further below. It is quite meaningful that the San Antonio comes from somewhere else – and, incidentally, he has no particular value for the people of the locality where he is based. This is particularly relevant in the Chiloé context, where the famous wooden churches host various statues of saints. Apiao church itself hosts several such statues, but none of them has ever acquired the importance of San Antonio. Caguach people have their own special devotion to el Nazareno de Caguach, a life-size miraculous statue of a Christ, also defined ‘saint,’ which sits on the island’s church. The Nazareno is celebrated twice a year with an important festival, a large-scale event that attracts thousands of pilgrims. This same theme is present in the folk narratives on ‘drunken priests’ in Lawrence Taylor’s account of Irish Catholicism (1995: 102 and following). These charismatic individuals, like San Antonio, have ambivalent powers and can be benevolent or revengeful. See also the retribution episode, revolving around a sacred well, involving the death of a cow (1995: 76). Rodrigo Villagra (personal communication) mentioned a popular LatinAmerican song, ‘Palo Bonito,’ whose lyrics say ‘Tengo a San Antonio puesto

40 ◆ Giovanna Bacchiddu

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

de cabeza, si no me da novia, nadie lo endereza’ (I’m keeping San Antonio turned upside down, if he does not give me a girlfriend, no one will turn him up again). The song lyrics are yet another example, taken from popular culture, of addressing a powerful other in familiar terms. In some areas the saint is considered miraculous for the specific task of finding a marriage partner. This, however, is not the case in Apiao. Both Pitt-Rivers (1968) and Ortner (1978) elaborated on practices of hospitality in localities as far apart as Spain and Nepal, reaching similar conclusions. Ortner talks of explicitly manipulative prestation performances, and both authors underline how the success of hospitality transactions lies in the asymmetry of host and guest, and in their inequality. This is because the guest is always potentially dangerous, and the host aims at taming and transforming the immanent hostility through generous acts. The pervasive hospitality ritual that is repeated in Apiao households several times per day, and its elaborate replication during the novena in a collective dramatization, are a further instance of socialising a threatening other. On the same feature of asymmetry in religious rituals, as performances that mimic hospitality in its aspect of hierarchical reciprocality, see also Feuchtwang 2007. The fiscal is a local representative of the church, chosen by the community, who is in charge of communal prayers and funeral rites. The position, entirely voluntary and nonremunerated, was instituted by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. In this context it is interesting to note that radical Protestants have a ban on dance on the basis of it being a sinful activity. The Evangelical missionaries that currently live in Apiao follow this doctrine, and strongly disapprove of the novena in its entirety. Apiao’s subsistence economy means people produce most of what they need to live: the potatoes from their fields, the meat of their own pigs and chickens, the shellfish and fish they collect and catch; all these products are not simply property but extensions of the people who own them and work to produce them. This saint is in a rather different position from the Virgin Mary, as described by those who witnessed her apparitions discussed in W. Christian (1981). Her requests were typically for people to engage in the confession, for shrines to be built, masses to be said in her name, processions to be held, often with precise instructions to build a church, if they wanted to be spared from ominous events and receive graces. In contrast, San Antonio does not ask for prayers or penance. Similarly, devotion in Apiao shows a general lack of interest towards individual salvation. Apiao people are equally uninterested in the idea of salvation, or the concept of penance; they hardly ever mention hell, heaven or purgatory, and even the idea of sin as one of the main pillars of the Christian doctrine is alien to them. The woman covers the role of the priest in the church, wherever standard novenas are celebrated. However, since she is not part of the clergy she is not invested of an official role and there is no power play in action. The fact that human exchanges with divine figures parallels modes of exchange with each other is a point made by Brown (1981) and especially by Christian (1989).

Miracles and Exchange in Apiao, Southern Chile ◆ 41

Bibliography Bacchiddu, G. 2009. ‘Before we were all Catholics’: Changing Religion in Apiao, Southern Chile,’ in R. M. Wright and A. Vilaça (eds), Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, pp. 53–70. ———. 2007. ‘Gente de Isla – Island People. An Ethnography of Apiao, Chiloé, southern Chile,’ Ph.D. Dissertation, University of St Andrews. Brown, P. 1981. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cannell, F. 2006. ‘The Anthropology of Christianity,’ in F. Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–50. ———. 2005. ‘The Christianity of Anthropology,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N.S. 11(2): 335–56. Christian, W. A. 1989. Person and God in a Spanish Valley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 1981. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Conklin, B.A. 1996. ‘Reflections on Amazonian Anthropologies of the Body,’ Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10(3): 373–75. Feuchtwang, S. 2007. ‘On Religious Ritual as Deference and Communicative Excess,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N.S. 13(1): 57–72. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keane, W. 2008. ‘The Evidence of the Senses and the Materiality of Religion,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N.S. 14(1): 110–27. McCallum, C. 1996. ‘The Body That Knows: From Cashinahua Epistemology to a Medical Anthropology of Lowland South America,’ Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10(3): 347–72. Ortner, S. B. 1978. Sherpas through their Rituals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Overing, J. and A. Passes (eds). 2000. The Anthropology of Love and Anger. The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia. London: Routledge. Pitt-Rivers, J. 1968. ‘The Stranger, the Guest and the Hostile Host. Introduction to the Study of the Laws of Hospitality,’ in J. Peristiany (ed.), Contributions to Mediterranean Sociology. Paris: Mouton. Pollock, D. 1996. ‘Personhood and Illness among the Kulina,’ Medical Anthropology Quarterly 10(3): 319–41. Rival, L. (ed.). 2005. ‘The Body in Amazonia,’ special issue for Tipití – Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 3(2). Rival, L. and N. L. Whitehead (eds). 2001. Beyond the Visible and the Material. The Amerindianisation of Society in the Work of Peter Rivière. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Santos-Granero, F. and G. Mentore (eds). 2006. ‘Amerindian Modes of Knowledge,’ special issue for Tipití – Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 4(1–2). Taylor, L. J. 1995. Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Turner, T. 1995. ‘Social Body and Embodied Subject: Bodiliness, Subjectivity, and Sociality among the Kayapo,’ Cultural Anthropology 10(2): 143–70. Vainfas, R. 2003. ‘St. Anthony in Portuguese America: Saint of the Restoration,’ in A. Greer and J. Bilinkoff (eds), Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas 1500–1800. New York: Routledge, pp. 99–111. Vilaça, A. 2005. ‘Chronically Unstable Bodies: Reflections on Amazonian Corporalities,’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute N.S. 11(3): 445–64. Vilaça, A. and R. M. Wright. 2009. ‘Introduction,’ in R. M. Wright and A. Vilaça (eds), Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, pp. 1–19.

3 Embodying Devotion, Embodying Passion The Italian Tradition of The Festa dei Gigli in Nola Katia Ballacchino

The complex scenario of the body, of corporeal reality and its tight link with the notion of ‘soul’ is a delicate problem that has been investigated by different scholars such as theology experts, philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists, etc. Nevertheless, the debate around the dichotomy between body and soul has often evolved in an unbalanced and fragmented way. Within the interdisciplinary dimension of such plural and sparse reflections, the contribution of anthropology occupies a role deserving some rethinking, especially considering the specificity of the ethnographic work that mirrors the complexity of each individual field of investigation. The empirical approach that characterises anthropology enriches this debate with reflections based on case studies that highlight the cultural dimensions of the corporeal and of the spiritual meanings of the relational dynamics in focus. In some anthropological works, an analysis of the body and of its display in the contexts of people’s spiritual dimension has in fact provoked some rethinking within the discipline, for instance regarding the incorporation of knowledge and new ways of applying the methodologies of ethnographic research (Thomas and Ahmed 2004; Lock 1993; Retsikas 2008), namel,y of how to ‘be in the field’ and how to activate a constant though paradoxical tendency to ‘participate and observe’.1 The second half of the twentieth century liberated us in some way from theories that were, in a certain sense, ‘incorporeal’; different authors put the corporality of the individual at the centre of the social scene and argued that relationships of power and domination are primarily inscribed upon each individual human body, and only secondarily upon the social

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body. Amongst the many further contributions, Bourdieu’s (1979, 1980, 1988) and Foucault’s (1977, 1993, 1996) are from my point of view the most relevant; the former with his theories on the somatisation of social codes and the latter with his idea of bio-power, according to which it is through the body that the production of subjectivity and the elaboration of cultural forms are analysed. Unfortunately in this text these arguments cannot be followed up in any exhaustive way. For Csordas (1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003) the notion of embodiment (derived from Bourdieu) represents learned habits and the technique of the culturally modelled body, through which persons are in their body and in the world.2 Therefore embodiment3 represents the ongoing dimension of the somatisation of culture and of the use of the body to produce culture. Finally if we follow the approach proposed by Mary Douglas (1979 [1970]), the body may be read through ‘incorporation’ as a source of representations or as ‘being in the world’. A certain strain of anthropological thought analyses the role of the corporeal dimension within the study of ‘traditions’; these traditions are linked to the dimensions of communitarian belief and devotion through specific rituals, but also through emotions of a more lay nature, shared by single individuals regardless of their religious beliefs. In fact, the concept of ‘soul’ is not as present as the concept of ‘body’ in my analysis, but I think that it is important to introduce the concept of ‘passion’ as a link between the bodily and spiritual experience, grounding my discourse in the habitus perspective. I will start by readdressing the concept of habitus (Bourdieu 1980), that possesses a collective and individual dimension at the same time and is related to a common, implicit and explicit knowledge, interiorised by the subjects in their cognition and behaviour and even bodily posture and sentiments.4 As Marano (2008) has argued, the body should not exclusively be considered as a ‘carrier’ of culture, nor as totally opposed to or integrated with the soul, but as a way in which individuals live reality, believe it and recreate it, act politically, activate a form of resistance or contestation and have social roles and belong to society in various ways.5 In this sense, even more so today, the contradictions of modern society can be read through the body: liberating tendencies on the one hand, and those repressive on the other. Every culture constructs techniques of the body through which it can transmit its own traditions. These can become emblematic theatrical stages where one can represent or observe modernity thanks to the bodily performance that is implicated in specific rituals. This is the main aspect that I would like to dwell upon in this essay, attempting to analyse a specific ethnographic case that brings to light a concept of ‘soul’ that is much broader and goes well beyond the classic Judeo-Christian conception in its complex aspects of representation through corporeality, even though the confessional status of reference is Catholicism.

Embodying Devotion, Embodying Passion. The Festa dei Gigli in Nola ◆ 45

A Complex Feast, a Revealing Force The somatic approach proposed here unites the materiality of the creative action that is visible to the participants with the invisible dimension that is today defined by Appadurai (1996) as ‘locality’. We are talking about the analysis of a complex ritual, la Festa dei Gigli (the Lily Feast)6 that is celebrated and constantly renewed each year in Nola, a village in Campania in Italy. This feast represents a clear example of how in some contexts in southern Italy it is possible to ‘perform’ shared passions ‘on stage’ through the intense theatricalisation of the body, tied both to the Catholic devotion for the local saint or more generally to the spiritual dimension. It is beyond the scope of this essay to address the numerous Italian contributions7 on the theme of the body within anthropological science, and so I have opted for a critical reflection on some aspects of this complex feast.8 According to Mazzacane (1985) it is possible to classify the types of feasts celebrated in southern Italy through the following criteria: pilgrimage of a popular nature, feasts dedicated to the Virgin Mary of a local nature (because tied to a specific cult), and the feasts of patron saints, based upon a choral dimension performed according to the specialisation and miraculous powers of the patron saint. The feast that this essay is dedicated to is celebrated in honour of Saint Paulinus and can be placed in this final category, even though Saint Paulinus is only co-patron of Nola and not its primary patron saint. The festivities and organisation of the various feast moments involve the citizens of Nola and passionate ‘externals’ in vortices of emotion shared by thousands of people, mainly men of all ages, for the entire solar year. The feast is part of a series of popular traditions that retain an extremely high level of participation and involvement of the local community in Italy and are centred around the procession of a ‘feast machine’ transported on the shoulders of groups of men.9 The ‘feast machines,’ known as gigli, look something like the celebrated guglie (a type of obelisk) found in several of the squares of the Neapolitan capital. In this case there are eight obelisks constructed each year from wood and covered in a local papiermâché, each machine is twenty-five metres high and can weigh up to two tons. At the base of each obelisk we find a musical band that accompanies the giglio as it is carried—or more correctly, made to dance—by a group of about a hundred and twenty-eight men known as collatori or cullatori (lifters, carriers or rockers); the collatori, united in the transport10 of the obelisk, form the so-called paranza (a fishing boat). A boat, constructed in a similar way, is also made to dance; it represents the anchorage to the religious symbol derived from the legend of the Nolans, enslaved in a foreign country, freed by Paulinus and returned to the city by boat.11 In the ethnographic research I carried out in recent years, I also focused on the various celebrations of the feast in a migratory context, with the

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principal research being carried out in Williamsburg, a district of Brooklyn in New York, where the feast has been celebrated for more than a century with substantial variations in respect to that of Nola.12 An analysis of this other ethnographic context is beyond the scope of this essay, but I will refer to some useful data in order to consolidate the interpretation of the gigli tradition here proposed. The feast is not only a moment for the public representation of the religious confession of a Catholic country, but also an occasion for social unity and extreme competition between the numerous protagonists. On the day of the feast, as on all the other appointments tied to the gigli, the body becomes the principal space for the representation of religious belief, expression of the sense of belonging to the community and recognition of a cultural identity. Today the dance of the eight obelisks and the boat in the streets of the historical centre of Nola lasts more than twenty hours and involves more or less two thousand protagonists, men accompanied throughout the procession by their families, relatives and friends, in the transportation to the sound of music, more than representing a ritual to the spectators that is codified but never fixed or immobile. The carriers incorporate their own personal devotion to the saint through a performance in which their strength and masculine virility is also celebrated. The act of belonging to a paranza contributes to strengthening the members’ hierarchical order and status, indispensable for the smooth celebration of the feast. The fundamental figure is the capo paranza (head of the boat), who with the help of the caporali (corporals or lieutenants)—the supporting figures during the transport of the obelisks—has the job of choosing, organising and maintaining the unity of the members of the paranza for the duration of the year. He must also command the group during the dance by exercising his power13 that goes well beyond that of the single day of the feast, but takes its weight from the ritual orders that he imposes during the procession, to which precise movements correspond for each single carrier, thus producing the consequent serpentine movement of the machine. Every man that places his shoulder under the giglio is challenging nature, while ritually carrying out an act of passion that is shared with all the other carriers. The very term collare, or cullare, means to ‘carry together,’ highlighting the collective dimension of the ritual. One could therefore speak of a collective body as an expression of identity that symbolises the sense of belonging to a group, through a simultaneously and collectively performed dance. The collective exaltation that is punctually seen at the end of every gigli performance and during the parading of the feast machines through the narrow passages of the city of Nola is not simply an expression of the dimension of unity or liberation of the male group; it is a noteworthy demonstration of pride on the part of the men who through this trial of enormous fatigue find a way of renewing the absence of the ‘cultural order’ of reference and in some measure demonstrate the continuity of the values and traditions of their community of belonging.

Embodying Devotion, Embodying Passion. The Festa dei Gigli in Nola ◆ 47

It also demonstrates the mystic phenomenology of the body as the privileged seat of salvation sufferance, and the theatre of the passion of Christ that consumes and purifies14 in modern Catholic society—as in that in which it has its origins although with obvious transformations. Such a standpoint, however, is often not shared—and is in some cases impeded by the church, as has historically been the case in Nola. Lombardi Satriani recently said about the Festa dei Gigli: Offering one’s own fatigue and the sufferance that this brings with it to the divinity means in some way to carry out a form of symbolic exchange: On the one hand, one’s own physicality, one’s own fatigue, one’s own mortality; on the other, power, the knowledge of he who can do everything because he is omnipotent, or of those who participate in his omnipotence. On the one hand temporality, on the other, eternity, that can be held as a foundation of temporality and therefore its legitimacy and guarantee … Men, in their existential fragility, can only count upon themselves, on their capacity to suffer, on their fatigue … They offer their own existence to divinity, epitomised and symbolised by their own blood, in exchange for reassurance and protection on the part of the divine. In all of these cases of the theatralisation of fatigue and the theatralisation of blood and its language, lies the human attempt to found existential temporality on the rock of eternity. From this perspective the Gigli of Nola … demonstrate radically human needs and articulate a strategy of hope. (2008: 4)

The experience of fatigue is lived from a very early age in Nola. As the feast draws near, a day is dedicated to children, during which they learn to collare a miniature giglio, also made of wood and papier-mâché, carrying out the movement and dance steps to the sound of music. The initiation aspect of this part of the ceremony is quite evident: the children’s giglio is like a gymnasium in which they prepare and train while waiting to carry a real giglio on their shoulders, when they reach the correct height and have enough strength to support the great fatigue that is always lying in wait. This is the much-anticipated moment in which each child subjects its body to a real ‘rite of passage’ from childhood to adolescence (Van Gennep 1909). The role and the performative dimension of the female components of the feast also deserve particular attention. Women are only apparently excluded from a feast that has historical masculine connotations. In reality it has been recently noted that women of various ages, although not having an up-front role on the feast stage, occupy an ever more important role of memory and activism around the paranza, particularly with their dance movements, characteristic of the dance of the gigli and of this geographic zone in general. Gathered in groups around the dancing gigli, the women enrich the ceremony with sensuality and joy as their gestures imitate and at the same time suggest the male movement of the dance of the giglio, controlled by their men, be they husbands, boyfriends, brothers, sons or friends.

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Another way of participating in the feast on the part of the population is that of ‘putting one’s nose’ in the hot points of the passage of the procession, which means to challenge the sea of people and the torrid heat of late June, submerging oneself in the sweat and the pushing of those who want to be close and experience the high points of the dance from the front row, cheering for their favourite paranza and immersing themselves and all their senses in the tumultuous passage of the giglio. This copious participation is often tiring and holds connotations for the body: the smallest children follow the gigli dancing to the rhythm of the music on their parents’ shoulders; the women scrutinise the men from close up, often choosing their favourite based on their physical ability and behaviour under the giglio; the mothers dance around the machine in movement waiting to be able to dry the sweat and give a drink to their sons that are destroyed by fatigue; the carriers from opposing paranza dart down the narrowest alleys in order to watch the performance of their adversaries, or to see with their own eyes the moments that will be remembered throughout the year on DVD and through photos. In this way they can say, ‘I was there and I saw it,’ I am a witness of the feast: my body, my sight, my hearing, my smell and my senses were ‘present’. Any anthropologist who wants to observe and fully participate in the feast cannot avoid the immersion of her body and senses in the ritual and in its dynamics of representation. The idea of incorporation as a methodology for ethnographic observation is almost obligatory in this sense in order to perceive the living of the feast and its real production in the physical space that hosts it, and to go beyond that of the spiritual, devotional and religious dimension. It is also interesting to note how one can see ex-carriers, either too old or with some physical problem that makes it impossible for them to physically take part, closely following the procession and scrutinising the spectacle through lucid eyes that they had once directly participated in. It is often easy to see that they are fighting against the insatiable desire to participate once more, to support the fatigue that in most cases is just a memory to relive through sight, still loaded with passion and marked by nostalgia. The gigli in fact also represent an object of memory, unmissably marking every year in the life of the Nolan people. ‘To participate in the feast you must have the physique!’ is one of the phrases heard during many of the interviews with the interlocutors of this research, emblematically demonstrating how the corporeal dimension is fundamental to the feast. In fact to ‘resist’ the crowd, the pushing, the advancing wave that is inevitably dragged behind the giglio, to resist what Roberto De Simone (2009) defines as the ‘violent somatism’ of the Festa dei Gigli, one must have a strong constitution. We can therefore specify at least two corporeal dimensions present in this ritual: one collective, that is made evident through the dance of the obelisks, a moment that becomes the place in which the human soul is expressed through a shared passion for the saint and the feast and that

Embodying Devotion, Embodying Passion. The Festa dei Gigli in Nola ◆ 49

Illustration 3.1. The giglio and the boat dancing in Nola during the feast in 2008. Photo by Alessandro Cola.

creates a distinction and a common identity belonging; and an individual corporeal dimension, expressed through the tattoos and other permanent traces on the bodies of the protagonists, that become distinctive signs of social exclusion/inclusion according to the place in which they are seen.

Illustration 3.2. The paranza Fantastic Team transports on their shoulders the giglio during the Feast of Nola, 2008. Photo by Alessandro Cola.

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Illustration 3.3. The fatigue of carriers during the ballata of gigli in Nola, 2008. Photo by Alessandro Cola.

The Multiple Meanings of Passione In the Italian context the word passione, with its twin meanings of ‘passage’ and ‘suffering,’ refers not only to feelings and emotions but also to the passion of Christ and his passing from life to death and death to life again, and finally also to Christ’s suffering in the Latin sense of the word. However, the references to the passion of Christ are a quite complex phenomenon in the ceremony I will describe and are embedded in the Catholic setting experienced by the actors. These references are particularly evident in the actors’ devotional form of fatigue in which the body is the typically ‘popular’ root of the experience of faith. The relationship between official faith and popular devotion investigated by Lombardi Satriani and Meligrana (1989) within Easter rituals and the cult of the dead in Southern Italian peasant culture highlights the contradiction or at least the tension and ambivalence that exist between official positions within the cult and the popular manipulation and contamination of the ceremony connected to pre-Christian practices or to belief systems that have not totally been subjected to the formalisation of the official Catholic church. In fact the notion of ‘passion’ that I would like to use here is tied to the meaning of emotivity and sentiments ‘in the field’ of the ceremonial action. An explicit relationship between the physical fatigue of the carriers in the ritual and the passion of Christ upon which the Catholic world is founded (above all within the popular devotion of Southern Europe)

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could not be found in this context. We cannot however exclude the possibility that a reference could exist, even if extremely implicit, if we bear in mind the fact that the entire feast maintains a structural relationship with devotional aspects connected to the transportation of the relics of saints (in this case transporting Paolino, the saint to whom the ritual is dedicated) and therefore could at least in part relate to a religious framework that could load the mechanics of the feast with ‘passionate’ valence. We can see throughout the text that much more than the aspect of ‘sufferance’ related to transporting the enormous ceremonial machines, we witness an exhibition of the strength and cleverness of the carriers. These men consider this performance as a real and bloody competition for the affirmation of capacity and masculine virility. This charges the ceremony with intense passion but is less connected to the devotional aspects, or at least this appears today to be the most commonly accepted interpretation of the ritual. As for the interpretation of passion as a ‘passage’, we can say that the feast under investigation is characterised by an uninterrupted cycle of activities connected to its organisation and presentation (‘the feast begins when it dies’ as they say in Nola, lasting the entire year without a pause). Therefore more than a theological idea of the ceremony that would fully place it within the framework of Christian events, here a cyclical aspect prevails that seems related to the endless and incessant movement of the seasons and activities connected to the agricultural calendar, even though the ceremony is characterised by its strongly urban context. The relevant aspect that emerges clearly is that of completely human and extremely intense passions at work within the relationships in the festive scene – in the competition between ‘paranze’, passion that ties men to women and is therefore private, and public and political passion that permeates the running and daily administration of the feast’s organisational machine, as we shall see.

Marked Bodies: Stage Scenery and Identity Vehicles The debate on corporeality within anthropology has interpreted the body as a privileged political arena in which challenges to identity are received and counteracted. The anthropological analysis moves, for example, from the power to bio-power in Agamben (2005) and Foucault (1977, 1993), as well as in Pandolfi (2003). In each transmission or change of identity the body becomes the fundamental vehicle for every symbolic communication and its surface seems to be a kind of ‘social skin’ – as Turner (1972, 1992) would say – a border between society and individual, a stage on which men interpret the ‘drama’ of socialisation. Multiple sensory systems give the body the qualities of a social and historical product. Culture modifies the body, marks its external surfaces, modifies it internally and

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imposes gestuality, movement and posture. In this way the body becomes the fruit of the relations between individual and group and between individual and society. In the Festa dei Gigli, the main consequence of the enormous physical force repeated each year is the pataniello, a bodily deformation that afflicts many of the collatori: this is caused by the constant and repeated friction that the back suffers under the weight of do lignamme, that is to say the varre, the beams that sustain the giglio. The so-called pataniello – in local dialect – or callo di San Paolino or tumore di San Paolino (callous or tumour of Saint Paulinus) that is formed on the shoulders of the collatore is in medico-surgical terminology, a fibrolipoma caused by rubbing, classified as a benign tumour of the subcutaneous tissue that, however, infiltrates the muscle. Although in the imagination of the youngest members of the Nola population, this callous represents a mark of honour and prestige, the oldest often seem to suffer it as a real and personal martyrdom.15 Though unwanted nor consciously provoked, this is in fact an almost inevitable physical consequence of the repeated ritual of the theatralisation and socialisation of communal ‘passion’. Therefore, being an often uncontrollable consequence, and notwithstanding the fact that within the community the hunched shoulder continues to be a symbol of prestige that demonstrates an active and determinant role in the feast and therefore by extension in some way in the society itself, the callous is often feared, also because a large part of the youth risk discrimination in their relationships outside the feast, for example in their working lives or in socialisation dynamics outside the city, acts of exclusion and marginalisation due to this physical imperfection that is not always fully understood in a complex contemporary society. Regarding this argument, the following is part of an interview with a young Nolan carrier who has been living in Rome for several years for work: When they told me in the past that outside my city, Nola, nobody knew what that hump between the neck and back meant, I didn’t listen to them. Because for us from Nola the pataniello means strength, importance, a mixture of vanity and pride. I mean in respect to someone who has flat shoulders, I, who have the callous am considered stronger. But having had to take this inevitable characteristic to Rome with me has been an awful experience. The first people to make me take notice of this ‘difference’ were my Roman work colleagues, who asked me what it was and whether it would go away with time. One of them even told me that I had two brains or that I was like a prawn that has its brain behind its head, I have heard everything. They ask me everything, if it hurts, if it contains liquid, everything. Once for example I was at the barbers in Rome, and I noticed that he tried to lower the collar of my shirt thinking that I had a fold under it on my neck, then he moved the collar to see what it was, and once he saw what it was, embarrassed, he immediately covered me up with the shirt without looking me in the eyes through the mirror. At first I felt that the pride

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that I feel when I am in Nola had been stolen. The habits and traditions of my Roman colleagues had nothing to do with the feast of the gigli, and they did not accept the malformation that they saw behind my neck. So I deduced that if you are not born Nolan you cannot understand and in some cases appreciate what one has under their shirt.

Since the 1970s the body has generally been represented as perfect, and ever more modified through plastic surgery and modelling techniques of various types, while ugliness or defects are not culturally acceptable. ‘Every day of the year I feel the weight of the feast on my shoulders’: these are the emotional words of another collatore, uttered during an interview in the field as he showed me his swollen and bloodied back that was the aftereffect of the dance. The sensation of the ‘weight of the feast’ is in effect very visible and often makes people equally as proud of their own fatigue, offered without trepidation, as embarrassed about the mark that remains throughout one’s life as a tangible symbol of the force demonstrated for the feast and the saint. It is interesting to note how throughout the year various carriers, including some non-Nolan,16 recognise each other because of this mark, and even the position that they take under the giglio through its position on the shoulders. For example, a lot of the stories told by the Nolans interviewed during this research recount meetings on the beach of men that are evidently ‘marked’ by the feast, and through this marking an immediate spirit of recognition and understanding is created. In this sense the practice of the ritual, displayed throughout the year by signs left on the body, is as if a ‘community of practice’17 were created, a shared sense of community that is not solely derived from the belonging to a local territory or the sharing of a religious belief or ethnicity, as is the case in the example of migrants in the United States, but of a common ‘practice’ of ritual that calls upon complex and varied values. In the case that we are here dealing with, the ritual transport of the giglio is not an act of devotion towards God or to the figure of Christ, but if anything it is the act of offering fatigue to Saint Paolino to whom the ritual is dedicated and whose silver ‘bust’ is used to bless the Nolans and their gigli before the start of the dance, something that is typical of many Catholic rituals, with the bishop acting as intermediary between Paulinus (symbolically incarnated in the ‘body’ that represents him) and the believers. The sufferance of the body is something that is constantly encountered in the popular traditions of Southern Italy, both in the sense of the bodily sufferance of the saints and martyrs, such as that of Padre Pio as Milicia (2010) argues and in that of the men that celebrate rituals, feasts and moments in the passage of the year or of life in honour of these saints. In 1961 De Martino wrote about the ‘strong body’ of the tarantata18 in his famous 1950s study of Salento; bearing in mind the arguments here discussed, we

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remember the emblematic case of the devotees of the Madonna dell’Arco19 at the Sanctuary of S. Anastasia, in Campania, for whom the theme of intense corporality seems to follow similar lines. Via the ‘strength’ expressed through the theatralised body, one can express one’s devotion, pain and existential crisis. Through suffering,20 one’s sins can be forgiven; through the dance we can enjoy ourselves all together while bringing pleasure to the onlookers through the mechanism of the sharing of passion, which is fundamental throughout the year and which constructs the memory of the ‘community’ itself. According to Connerton (1989) both rites and myths can equally be considered as collective symbolic texts; in the rite the body carries out the appropriate acts and moves following the prescribed actions, the performative memory is in reality much more widespread than commemorative celebrations that are rich with representation. Connerton highlights the way in which memory functions in two distinctive areas of social activity: in the commemorative rite and in traditional bodily gestures. In habitual memory the past is deposited in the body becoming a sign. As MerleauPonty argues, the phenomena of habit should lead us into rethinking the notion of ‘understanding’ as well as that of ‘body’. Habit is to know and remember through the hands and the body, and as it develops our body ‘understands’. Bourdieu (1979, 1980), Bateson (1980), Bateson and Bateson (1987) and Merleau-Ponty (1965) have reflected upon the interdependence between movement and perception in the construction of the relationships between humans and the environment, through which one can think about the question of ‘locality’, as in the case of Nola, and of its ritual and movement interpreted through an analysis of the bodily movements of its protagonists.21 For Merleau-Ponty corporeality is the source of meaning, visible in the history of the social and cultural control of the body and in its microgestuality, able to construct relationships, borders and unions between corporeality and spirituality in order to stabilise the visible dimensions of body and soul. Another interesting aspect of the body regarding the feast in question are the tattoos22 with which the protagonists of the feast mark their skin, particularly their arms and legs confirming their relationship through recognisable bodily images. In the ‘giglistic’ tradition in Nola, but even more so in Williamsburg, we find the ever more frequent occurrence of the bodily tattooing of the carriers, with images of the giglio and of the name or the place of the paranza in which they participated (more often than the image or name of the saint himself). For the gigli feast the recourse to the body could in some way represent the inadequacy of words in explaining thoughts as Le Breton (2005, 2007) argues and the necessity to make their role explicit, their presence in a role, in a society from which it is maybe still difficult to emerge and make yourself known because of your own values. Marked bodies therefore, are places of social liberation

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and their manifestation, theatres of cultural distinction and places where one can demonstrate one’s own belonging, not exclusively religious but above all social and cultural belonging. Reflecting upon the role of the bodily and emotive dimensions in different areas of life and researching the emotional aspects of the ethnographic context become fundamental for following the pathway here outlined. Ritual becomes the place and the time for the creation of a ‘being at home’ with oneself and within a community of belonging, through the body and through one’s own gestures and passion, signs of a ‘popular’ culture that is not lost, despite the acceleration and changes imposed by a world immersed in global movement and processes, but that remains alive thanks to the performative relationships between men on many different levels. This body, without solutions of continuity, is tied to other bodies, implied and involved in relationships and therefore alive and constantly reinvented. ‘The giglio is still, without life, and we give it its soul,’ these are the words of a Nolan capoparanza (head carrier) taken from a television interview in which he was asked to define the role of the group of carriers within the feast. Through the use of the individual and collective body the ‘feast machine’, once immobile, comes to life and through the unified movement of the bodies below, the soul is symbolically conferred to the animate giglio that contemporarily represents the soul of the carriers. It should here be specified that transporting the giglio is not carried out by the carriers exclusively as an act of faith for the saint, and this fact is demonstrated by the fact that in the past the paranza was made up of outsiders that were paid to carry the obelisks and were in fact known as facchini (transporters or movers) because their function was one of physical transport. In reality the act of faith was better represented by the maestro di festa (feast master) who having decided with his family to ‘take a giglio’ was then obliged to take care of organising the feast throughout the year and above all to stand the economic obligations23 that the feast entails, which in some ways could be seen as an act of faith and sacrifice. For many decades now in Nola the gigli have been carried by the Nolans themselves without any economic compensation in the majority of cases, and the community dimension and feeling of ‘collective sacrifice’ that was previously expressed in different ways has spread. This radical and modern-day change demonstrates and is in fact emblematic of the continuous reinvention that rituals such as these undertake, eroding the ideas of those that see folklore as festive occasions that are exclusively the fruit of representations of a popular undercurrent relegated to a mythical, static and distant past. In this case the growth in the active participation and attention paid to the feast on behalf of those living in the city, the physical bodily responsibility taken mainly by young professionals or those with relatively high social status (something that was previously relegated to external labourers such as dock workers or so-called heavy labourers), has

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radically changed the idea of the ritual and its emotional importance in the community. The ‘absolute dimension’ of the festive period within the community of the Nolans is also demonstrated by another very interesting type of ‘incorporation’. If we analyse the multitude of linguistic expressions24 found in the jargon relating to the feast and used metaphorically in other daily contexts, we note that some could be more correctly considered proverbial, while others are more a jargon or mainly used by the ‘workforce’ of the paranza. These exclusively Nolan turns of phrase confirm the idea of the total incorporation of the feast that also permeates linguistics as described by Tedlock (1983) and allows us to see how the structure of the giglio is perceived as a real ‘body’, with feet and a head, and how it often becomes metaphorically personified through the idea that it is a girl, a son or a carrier, etc., through the many local verses of poetry and song that are created especially for the feast. From the many expressions used on a daily basis taken from feast jargon the following examples highlight the preponderance of bodily images that animate the ceremony. ‘Tene o traversone ruott’ (to have a broken beam) during the feast means to have damaged the weight-bearing beam that supports the edge of the giglio and constitutes a principal element of the machine. In its daily use this expression describes a person who has a curved or distorted posture. When describing a person that takes her time, like the giglio does as it moves while dancing with its typical ‘short steps’ therefore proceeding slowly and elegantly, they say that ‘se ne vène a miezz pass’ (he/she comes here with short steps). On the contrary ‘staje co’ père ’nterra’ (with your feet on the floor) is used for a person that is tired, fatigued or failing. Here the reference to the ritual performance refers to the feet of the giglio that remain on the floor because the paranza does not have the strength or the technique to raise it off the ground. Referring to one’s capacity to resist in difficult situations, with particular reference to the strength required by the carriers of the cantone (a lateral beam) in order to remain static as the giglio turns in the narrow streets, the jargon term used is ‘mantenere ’o cantone’ (keep the corners still). Illustration 3.4. An extreme callo di San For each of these as is the Paolino or pataniello of Nolan carrier Vincenzo Giannini. Photo by Rodolfo Ronga. case for other proverbial ex-

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pressions or those taken from jargon, each Nolan is immediately able to understand what is being referred to, regardless of the generation to which they belong and independently from their participation (or nonparticipation) in the feast, an evident sign that the feast is part of the citizens’ way of thinking as well as of their metaphoric language.

Conclusions If one accepts the idea that there can be no spirituality unless an incarnated one, and that in any case every transcendence starts from something situated, a body that expresses a position in the world and a concrete individual presence, it is necessary to refer to a body that is imbued with sense only if it is relational, namely, only if it is in relation with something. In this case one can speak of a sacramental dimension, symbolic of the body and at the same time linked to religious transcendence. The body incorporates passion. Passions allow the transmission, expression and theatralisation into choral materiality of a sense of the soul meant as spirituality, regardless of the place and the culture in which the body of the individual is physically found at the ritual moment, that is, in the folkloric scene. Today more than ever one can see the tendency towards an extreme ‘bodilisation’ of the contemporary folkloric scene, as noted from the analysis of the case here reported, which could be attributed to several different causes: the relinquishment or partial reduction of transcendent values; the domination of images and of corporeality in contemporary communication; the ‘spectacularisation’ of ritual in a desacralised context. In Nola the body also has a liberating function, never completely subjected to an official logic of the church’s hierarchy, which has always tried to govern and control these types of passionate acts of devotion mixed with other types of passion. For the numerous protagonists of this feast, to collare is to act according to an almost military logic, commanded and organised through an internal hierarchy. It is a way of incorporating and expressing sentiments and ‘emotions’ that exist regardless of one’s own religion and its dogma, and that is conducted in an almost anarchic style vis-à-vis the laws of an ‘order’ dictated by clerics. For the Catholic Church in fact the contemplation of the body is only addressed in the light of the Christian revelation that sees total integration, the perfect union of body and soul, and every instrumentalisation or violation of the body becomes in this sense a loss of trust in God. According to Catholic doctrine there is a need to ‘defend man, that creature that through the inseparable unity of body and soul, is the image of God’ (Benedetto XVI 2006). Body and soul are great areas of significance for belonging, for being and for human destiny, and are two of the most representative fields of the most recent intellectual reflection, including anthropological theory. Thanks to the mediation of the body, ‘civilisation’

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has been written upon the soul; a perfect body, in this sense, seems to be the testimony of a perfect soul for the Catholic religion. One can certainly not deny that today the body incorporates passion, and that passions transmit a sense of the soul, physically expressed in choral theatre, regardless of the place and of the culture in which the individual’s body is physically found and located in the ritual moment and in the folkloric scene; and also even regardless of religious creed, even if belonging to one seems to be the real motivation and guide of the ritual carried out. In fact the body, which definitely has an extraordinary centrality in the expressive dynamics of humans in their reciprocal relationships, is intertwined with and confused by a multitude of bodily and or only partially bodily dimensions: the system of passion and emotion, the sense of transcendence, the hope of religious purification and the refusal of power dynamics. These thoughts are demonstrated by the celebrated studies of de Martino and also by the already cited line of medical anthropology that studies the complexities of the political-cultural processes that involve the body and institutions such as that of Pizza (2005). The most recent texts regarding the anthropology of the body mainly follow a social approach to corporeality, such as Turner (1993), Bateson (1972) and Foucault, who regarding the relationship between body and power argues, ‘That which makes power hold and be accepted, is simply that it does not weigh down only as a power that says no, but in bodily acts produces things, brings joy, informs our understanding, produces discourse; we need to consider it as a productive web that passes through all of the social body, rather than a negative agency whose function is to restrain’ (1977: 13). For Merleau-Ponty, corporeality is the source of meaning, visible in the history of the sociocultural control of the body and in its microgestuality, constructing relationships, borders and unions between corporeality and spirituality and fixing the visible dimensions of body and soul. Here we are also oriented towards a notion of passion and emotion in the devotional practices that accentuates the corporeal aspect of devotion, its ‘embodiment’. In this sense the soul as a concept purely separate from its relationship to corporality (or in any case transcendent in respect to it) becomes a broader and less constrained concept than the official Catholic theological line and takes on passionate and emotional aspects that go beyond religious orthodoxy and create a complex representation of meaning, and even discourses treating the experience of the sacred derived from religious forms that probably precede the Catholic formalisation of the ritual or are in any case parallel. In this case the considerations of both Cannell (2006) on the underlying Catholic positions towards the precolonial and premissionary religious experiences in Latin America and Southeast Asia25 and the critique of the classically European notion of soul in relation to the experience of the body present in Leavitt (1996) and Lewis (1977) are also useful.

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The contributions of Abu-Lughod and Lutz (1990) and Svašek (2005) could be considered as key texts for this rereading of emotion as a central element for the comprehension of the social dynamics active in a public and ceremonial scene, as they argue that ‘the return of “the body” as a focus in anthropological theory of emotions (not locating emotions as “bodily passions” outside the realm of mind, but regarding bodily experience as an inherent factor in emotional processes) has mainly been pushed by French and American social scientists . . . Inspired by Mauss’s (1950) work on the socialisation of body techniques’.26 To conclude, the body in the Festa dei Gigli is therefore an expression of passion27 more than an expression of devotion, an expression of an individual and collective cultural identity, according to an anthropology that concentrates its interests on the individual, on the person and not only on a general theory of a culture.

Notes Translation of the original Italian text: Jonathan Hankins and Katia Ballacchino. 1. See Malinowski (2004 [1922]), Spradley (1980), Tedlock (1991) and Fabietti (1999). 2. For the concept of ‘embodiment’, see Csordas (1990, 1994a, 1994b, 1999) and Wacquant (2004). 3. See Mauss (1936) and Bourdieu (1979, 1992). 4. See Wacquant (2004). 5. See Marano (2008). 6. The ethnographic research—started in 2005 and coming to its conclusion as I write—was part of a PhD program entitled ‘Ethnology and Ethnoanthropology. Myth, Rite and Symbolic Practices,’ held at the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’, under the scientific guide of Luigi M. Lombardi Satriani. Due to the nature of this text I am only able to address some aspects of my work and will give a more exhaustive account of the ethnographic research in a future monograph. See Ballacchino (2009). 7. For a collection of studies of the conception of soul and body see Galimberti 1983, 1987. To cite just a few of the Italian contributions on the body I recommend the following texts: AA. VV. 2003; Faeta et al. 2007. For studies of the notion of soul as physical see: Lombardi Satriani and Meligrana 1989. I would also like to cite different contributions such as Faranda (1996), Niola (1997), Bindi (1999), Faeta (2008: 33–41) and Fusaschi (2008). For multiple identities that the studies of the bodies of migrants refer to, see Camporesi (1991) and Pandolfi (1996). Regarding the more specific study of the body in traditions see Carpitella (1981: 61–70), Grimaldi (1999), Vacca (2004), Marano (2008) and Guizzardi (2009). 8. For a general approach to the Festa dei Gigli in Nola see: Manganelli (1973), Avella (1993) and Mazzacane (2000).

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9. There is a very interesting contribution regarding the feast of Corpus Domini in Campobasso, which is also celebrated with the procession of religious misteri (relics) carried on the shoulders of groups of men: Bindi (2009). 10. Not much ethnographic research exists into the ‘carriers’ of tradition to which I have dedicated a large part of my research. For this argument see the article on the team of costaleros of the Semana Santa of Seville in Spain: Diaz Ruiz (2008). 11. The legendary story says that the Nolans greeted their bishop Ponzio Anicio Meropio Paolino of Bordeaux (355–431 CE) with flowers on his return by ship, with the gigli (lilies). Over the centuries these lilies have become ever bigger, in proportion to the growth of devotion for the saint, until reaching their present structure and height; these latter remind us of the scenic machines used in Naples during the ephemeral baroque period on various occasions. According to other interpretations, however, the origins of the feast lie in the Christian revisiting of a celebration based on pre-Christian fertility rituals. 12. For more than a century the feast has been celebrated by dozens of American families of Italian origin at Williamsburg. The feast occurs annually on the first Sunday after 22 June (Saint Paulinus) in Nola but the week around 16 July (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) in Williamsburg itself. The link between the Festa dei Gigli and Madonna del Carmine is interesting because of the aspect relative to the Marian devotion in the American migratory context. Due to its complexity it would be difficult to enter into the merit of the analysis of the ritual in the migratory context in this paper. For an analysis of this feast in Williamsburg see: Sciorra (1985, 1989, 1999, 2003), Posen (1986) and Ballacchino (2008). 13. See Bateson (1972) and Foucault (1977, 1996). 14. Some texts examine the history of the church in relation to sensuality and therefore the corporeality of the individual in respect to spiritual values: Brown (1988); Pelaja and Scaraffia (2008). 15. As are for example the marks left on the skin from the ritual of self-flagellation that takes place during the Holy Week in certain parts of Southern Italy. These marks are often seen as a ‘performance’ of the logic of life and death that is confronted and overcome in the name of Christ’s resurrection that allowed humanity’s liberation from sin and death of the soul. For this argument amongst the principal contributions see: Faeta (1998) and Lombardi Satriani (2000). 16. The feast is in fact celebrated in various other zones in Campania, on various festive occasions and in honour of different saints and through very different festive systems, but always remaining centred upon the procession of a giglio similar to that of Nola. 17. For literature on ‘communities of practice’ see: Goffman (1967), Lave (1988), Brown and Duguid (1991), Lave and Wenger (1991), Chaiklin and Lave (1993), Wenger (1998), Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002), Grasseni and Ronzon (2004) and Benadusi (2007). 18. From the numerous contributions on the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Madonna dell’Arco see: Bitti, Pompeo, Broccolini and Satta (1990–91) and Broccolini (1998). Recently Broccolini is also working on the corporeal dimensions of this complex ritual in Campania.

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19. ‘Tarantism’ is the object of a celebrated Italian study by Ernesto de Martino who investigated this Southern Italian phenomena in the 1950s, an ecstatic possession cult of the spider, or tarantula that is sometimes identified with St. Paolo. 20. Regarding thoughts about the suffering of the body and sufferance in general see: Burkitt (1999), Chirban (1996), Coakley (1997) and Gibbs (2002). 21. Some of the most interesting contributions regarding the study of rituals, religion, the body and movement, although each in very different ways are: Parkin (1992), Coakley (1997), Law (1995), Mellor and Shilling (1997), Orsi (2002), Coleman and Eade (2004) and Marano (2008). 22. For studies on tattooing and modification of the body see De Mello (2000), Featherstone (2000) and Schildkrout (2004). 23. It is believed that each giglio costs thousands of euros, but the complete organisation of the feast, lasting an entire year, could cost from fifty to one hundred thousand euros and in some cases even more. The maestro di festa is traditionally helped by the community thanks to the questua ritual, and the feast anyway assumes a strongly collective dimension because it is the entire city that concretely participates every year independently from the church giving the city rights over its execution. 24. Merleau-Ponty considers language to be the core of culture, examining the ties between the development of thought and sense through the analysis of language acquisition and bodily expression. 25. For the references to a critique on Catholic conceptions of ‘soul’ see: Cannell (2006) and Corrigan, Crump and Kloos (2000). 26. See De Certeau (1984); Lyon and Barbalet (1994); Lutz and White (1986); Lock (1993); Shweder and LeVine (1984); Csordas (1990), AA.VV. (2006). 27. With reference to the Bolognese and Tuscan territories a text that studies the individual ‘passion’ that leads each generation to look for the response to emotional needs within the individual and collective practices of song is Staro (2001).

Bibliography AA. VV. 2006. Antropologia. Emozioni. 6. Rome: Meltemi. AA. VV. 2003. Antropologia. Corpi. 3. Rome: Meltemi. Abu-Lughod, L. and Lutz, C. (eds). 1990. Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Agamben, G. 2005. Homo Sacer. Il Potere Sovrano e la Nuda Vita. Torino: Einaudi. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Avella, L. 1993. La Festa dei Gigli. Nola: Scala. Ballacchino, K. (ed.). 2009. La festa. Dinamiche Socio-culturali e Patrimonio immateriale. Nola: L’arca e l’arco.

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———. 2008. ‘Il Giglio di Nola a New York. Uno sguardo etnografico sulla festa e i suoi protagonisti,’ Altreitalie. Rivista Internazionale di Studi sulle Migrazioni Italiane nel Mondo 36–37: 275–289. Bateson, G. 1980. Mind and Nature—A Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam Books. ———. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Balantine. Bateson, G. and Bateson, M. C. 1987. Angels Fear—Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Bell, C. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Benadusi, M. 2007. La Scuola in Pratica. Prospettive Antropologiche sull’Educazione. Firenze: Guaraldi. Benedetto XVI. 2006. Discorso Natalizio ai Membri della Curia Romana. 22 December. Bindi, L. 2009. Volatili Misteri. Festa e città a Campobasso e altre divagazioni immateriali. Rome: Armando. ———. 1999. La Tragedia in Corpo. Reggio Calabria: Falzea. Bitti, V., F. Pompeo, A. Broccolini and A. G. Satta. 1990–91. ‘Madonna dell’Arco. Materiali per uno studio antropologico,’ Materiali per lo studio della cultura folclorica 5–6: 135–238. Bourdieu, P. 1992 (1990). ‘Structures, Habitus, Practices,’ in The Logic of Practice. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 52–65. ———. 1988. Il Corpo tra Natura e Cultura. Milan: Franco Angeli. ———. 1980. Le Sens Pratique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. ———. 1979. La distinction. Critique sociale du Jugement. Paris: Minuit. Broccolini, A. 1998. ‘Contextualizing European Feasts: Continuity and Uses of Tradition in a Southern Italian Pilgrimage,’ in C. Papa, G. Pizza and F. M. Zerilli (eds), Incontri di Etnologia Europea: European Ethnology Meetings. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, pp. 175–94. Brown, J. S. and P. Duguid. 1991. ‘Organizational Learning and Communities of Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning and Innovation,’ Organization Science 2(1): 40–57. Brown, P. R. 1988. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press. Burkitt, I. 1999. Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity, and Modernity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Cannell, F. 2006. The Anthropology of Christianity. New York: Duke University Press. Camporesi, P. 1991. La Carne Impassibile. Milan: Il Saggiatore. Carpitella, D. 1981. ‘Cinesica 1 Napoli. Il linguaggio del corpo e le tradizioni popolari codici cinesici e ricerca cinematografica; Sceneggiatura,’ RF 3(2): 61–70. Combi, M. 2000. Corpo e Tecnologie. Rappresentazioni e Immaginari. Rome: Meltemi. ———. 1998. Il Grido e la Carezza. Percorsi nell’immaginario del corpo e della parola. Rome: Meltemi. Corrigan, J., E. Crump and J. M. Kloos (eds). 2000. Emotion and Religion: A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

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Chaiklin, S. and J. Lave (eds). 1993. Understanding Practice. Perspectives on Activity and Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chirban, J. T. 1996. Personhood: Orthodox Christianity and the Connection between Body, Mind, and Soul. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Coakley, S. (ed). 1997. Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connerton, P. 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Csordas, T. J. 2003. ‘Incorporazione e fenomenologia culturale,’ in AA.VV. Antropologia. Corpi. 3. Rome: Meltemi. ———. 1999. ‘The Body’s Career in Anthropology,’ in H. Moore (ed.), Anthropological Theory Today. Malden, MA: Polity Press. ———. 1994a. Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1994b. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1990. ‘Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology,’ Ethos 18(1): 5–47. De Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. De Martino, E. 1961. La Terra del Rimorso. Milan: Il Saggiatore. De Mello, M. 2000. Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. De Simone, R. 2009. ‘Il piede metrico del Giglio,’ in K. Ballacchino (ed.), La Festa. Dinamiche socio-culturali e patrimonio immateriale. Nola: L’Arcael’arco. Diaz Ruiz, F. 2008. ‘Las cuadrillas de Costaleros en Sevilla: identidad y formas de sociabilidad,’ in J. L. Alonso Ponga, D. Álvarez Cineira, P. Panero García and P. Tirado Marro (eds), La Semana Santa: Antropología y Religión en Latinoamérica. Valladolid: Ayuntamiento de Valladolid, pp. 257–65. Douglas, M. 1979 (1970). ‘I due corpi,’ in I Simboli Naturali. Sistema cosmologico e struttura sociale. Torino: Einaudi. Fabietti, U. 1999. Antropologia Culturale. L’esperienza e l’interpretazione. Bari: Laterza. Faeta, F. 2008. ‘Lo sguardo, il corpo, l’immagine. Riflessioni intorno al paradigma visualista a partire da Pierre Bourdieu e Maurice Merleau-Ponty,’ in C. Grasseni (ed.), Imparare a Guardare. Sapienza ed esperienza della visione. Milan: Franco Angeli, pp. 33–41. ———. 1998. ‘Il Sangue, la Rosa e il Cardo. Note sul corpo in un contesto rituale,’ Etnosistemi 5(5): 59–72. Faeta, F., L. Faranda, M. Geraci, L. Mazzacane, M. Niola, A. Ricci and V. Teti. 2007. Il Tessuto del Mondo. Immagini e rappresentazioni del corpo. NapoliRoma: L’ancora del Mediterraneo. Faranda, L. 1996. Dimore del Corpo. Profili dell’identità femminile nella Grecia classica. Rome: Meltemi. Featherstone, M. 2000. Body Modification. London: Sage. Foucault, M. 1996. ‘I Rapporti di Potere Passano Attraverso i Corpi,’ in Biopolitica e Territorio. Milan: Mimesis. ———. 1993. Sorvegliare e punire. Torino: Einaudi. ———. 1977. Microfisica del potere. Torino: Einaudi. Fusaschi, M. 2008. Corporalmente Corretto. Note di antropologia. Rome: Meltemi.

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Galimberti, U. 1987. Equivoci dell’Anima. Milan: Feltrinelli. ———. 1983. Il Corpo. Milan: Feltrinelli. Gibbs, R. and R. W. Elliot. 2002. Suffering Religion. New York: Routledge. Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior. Chicago: Aldine. Grasseni, C. and F. Ronzon. 2004. Pratiche e Cognizione. Note di ecologia della cultura. Rome: Meltemi. Grimaldi, P. (ed.). 1999. Il Corpo e la Festa. Forme, pratiche, saperi della sessualità popolare. Rome: Meltemi. Guizzardi, G. (ed.). 2009. Identità Incorporate, Segni, Immagini, Differenze. Bologna: Il Mulino. Lave, J. and E. Wenger. 1988. Cognition in Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Leavitt, J. 1996. ‘Meaning and Feeling in the Anthropology of Emotions,’ American Ethnologist 23(3): 514–39. Le Breton, D. 2007. Antropologia del Corpo e Modernità. Milan: Giuffrè. ———. 2005. La Pelle e la Traccia. Le ferite del sé. Rome: Meltemi. Lewis, I. (ed.). 1977. Symbols and Sentiments: Cross-cultural Studies in Symbolism. London: Academic Press. Lock, M. 1993. ‘Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 22: 133–55. Lombardi Satriani, L. M. 2008. ‘Un Rituale Identitario e Totalizzante,’ Infinitimondi 1(1): 4. ———. 2000. De Sanguine. Rome: Meltemi. Lombardi Satriani, L. M. and M. Meligrana. 1989. Il Ponte di San Giacomo. Palermo: Sellerio. Lutz, C. and G. M. White. 1986. ‘The Anthropology of Emotions,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 405–36. Lyon, M. L. and J. M. Barbalet. 1994. ‘Society’s Body: Emotion and the “Somatisation” of Social Theory,’ in T. J. Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Malinowski, B. 2004 (1922). Argonauti del Pacifico Occidentale. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Manganelli, F. 1973. La Festa Infelice. Naples: L.E.R. Marano, F. 2008. ‘Corpi in Festa. L’uso del corpo in alcune feste religiose,’ Melissi 14–15: 115–21. Mauss, M. 1936. ‘Le tecniche del corpo,’ Teoria Generale della Magia e altri Saggi. Torino: Einaudi. Mazzacane, L. 2000. ‘La Festa di Nola: conoscenza, rispetto e tutela di una festa come immagine riflessa della cultura folklorica,’ in I. E. Buttitta and R. Perricone (eds), La Forza dei Simboli. Studi sulla religiosità popolare. Palermo: Folkstudio, pp. 207–17. ———. 1985. Struttura di festa. Forma struttura e modello delle feste religiose meridionali. Milan: Franco Angeli. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1965. Fenomenologia della Percezione. Milan: Il Saggiatore.

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Milicia, M. T. 2010. ‘Tecnologie della carne incorruttibile: maschera di santità e maschera di bellezza,’ in L. M. Lombardi Satriani (ed.), RelativaMente. Nuovi territori scientifici & Prospettive antropologiche, Atti del congresso AISEA 2008. Rome: Armando. Niola, M. 1997. Il Corpo Mirabile. Rome: Meltemi. Pandolfi, M. 2003. ‘Le Arene Politiche del Corpo,’ Antropologia Corpi 3: 141–54. ———. (ed.). 1996. Perché il Corpo. Rome: Meltemi. Parkin, D. 1992. ‘Ritual as Spatial Direction and Bodily Division,’ in D. De Coppet (ed.), Understanding Rituals. London: Routledge. Pelaja, M. and L. Scaraffia. 2008. Due in una Carne. Chiesa e sessualità nella storia. Bari: Laterza. Pizza, G. 2005. Antropologia Medica. Saperi, pratiche e politiche del corpo. Rome: Carocci. Posen Sheldon, I. 1986. ‘Storing Contexts: The Brooklyn Giglio as Folk Art,’ in J. M. Vlach and S. J. Bronner (eds.), Folk Art and Art Worlds. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. Retsikas, K. 2008. ‘Knowledge from the Body: Fieldwork, Power, and the Acquisition of a New Self,’ in N. Halstead, E. Hirsch and J. Okely (eds), Knowing How to Know: Fieldwork and the Ethnographic Present. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 110–29. Schildkrout, E. 2004. ‘Inscribing the Body,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 319–44. Sciorra, J. 2003. ‘Summer Spirit of Giglio: A Brief History of the Giglio Feast in Italy and America,’ America and Italia Review 1. ———. 1999. ‘“We Go Where the Italians Live”: Religious Processions as Ethnic and Territorial Markers in a Multi-Ethnic Brooklyn Neighborhood,’ in R. Orsi (ed.), Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 310–40. ———. 1989. ‘“O Giglio e Paradiso”: Celebration and Identity in an Urban Ethnic Community,’ Urban Resources 5(3): 15–20. ———. 1985. ‘Religious Processions in Italian Williamsburg,’ Drama Review 29(3): 65–81. Spradley, J. P. 1980. Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Staro, P. 2001. Il Canto delle Donne Antiche. Con garbo e sentimento. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana. Svašek, M. 2005. ‘Emotions in Anthropology,’ in K. Milton and M. Svašek (eds), Mixed Emotion: Anthropological Studies of Feeling. Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 1–24. Shweder, R. A. and R. A. LeVine (eds). 1984. Culture Theory. Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tedlock, B. 1991. ‘From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography,’ Journal of Anthropological Research 47: 69–94. Tedlock, D. 1983. The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Thomas H. and J. Ahmed. (eds). 2004. Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Turner, V. 1993. Antropologia della Performance. Bologna: Il Mulino.

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———. 1992. La Foresta dei Simboli. Brescia: Morcelliana. ———. 1972. Il Processo Rituale. Brescia: Morcelliana. Vacca, G. 2004. Nel Corpo della Tradizione. Cultura popolare e modernità nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia. Rome: Squilibri. Van Gennep, A. 1909. Les Rites de Passage. Paris: Nourry. Wacquant, L. 2004. Body and Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E., R. McDermott and W. M. Snyder. 2002. Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Part II Corporeality, Belief and Human Mobility

4 The Body and the World Missionary Performances and the Experience of the World in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands João Rickli

Introduction This chapter analyses sensational and bodily aspects of missionary and diaconal initiatives of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, examining the role played by the displaying of liturgical elements related to mission and diaconate, such as images, objects, people and narratives, in the ritual life of the church. Following the proposition of this volume, namely, to foreground the often neglected body-soul dichotomy in the study of religious phenomena, this chapter aims at showing how mission and world-diaconate come alive in the parishes of the Dutch Protestant Church. I argue that mission and diaconate are not only understood as abstract theological ideas, but they are also experienced by the senses through the use of body metaphors and images, and through the physical evocation and reproduction of the missionary field. The events described in this chapter belong to a domain of the church designated by the abbreviation ZWO. ZWO (zending, werelddiaconaat en ontwikkelingsamenwerking – mission, world-diaconate and development cooperation) is the name given in the Dutch Protestant Church to the institutions and activities related to its international social and missionary action.1 Every parish in the Netherlands is supposed to have a ZWO committee, which is responsible for promoting the relations between the local community and the missionary and diaconal projects of the church, centralised in an organisation called Kerk in Actie (Church in Action – KiA). The text focuses, therefore, on the ‘native’ context of

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the Dutch mission, as opposed to the missionary encounters occurring in the specific missionary or social projects developed by the Dutch Church outside the Netherlands. Academic (and nonacademic) observers seldom associate mainstream Protestant churches in Western Europe with the issue of corporeality. On the rare occasions that the Protestant body is mentioned, it normally carries negative connotations, as disciplined and absent from religious rituals, a passive and sober container of the soul, seen as the exclusive locus of an intellectual and highly rationalised faith.2 My point here is that the absence of ritual dances, possessions, trances, or other kinds of exuberant bodily performances in the Protestant liturgical practices I observed in the Netherlands does not mean that the issue of corporeality is not important within this specific religious tradition. I believe an analysis focused on body and corporeality can reveal interesting aspects of the European mainstream Protestant churches. In this text, I approach these issues analysing the missionary and diaconal activities of one of these churches. My suggestion is that the use of metaphors and images of the body in the religious discourse of the church turns its missionary and diaconal action into something tangible and apprehensible through the senses and the emotions.3 This chapter, therefore, differs slightly from the customary approach within the growing literature on the relationship between religion and corporeality, which often emphasises clearly circumscribed practices aimed at determined body responses, echoing older concepts such as Marcel Mauss’s techniques du corps (1950), and Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus (1972).4 Thus, I am not attempting to describe here something that could be clearly framed as a specific ‘technique of the Protestant body’, but rather explore how the physical evocation of the missionary and diaconal field addresses the senses and bodies of the members of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Moreover, I seek to investigate the relation between the metaphors of the body and the process of mapping the globe, while depicting the cultural diversity of the world in terms that are simultaneously religious and geographical. This chapter is divided in three parts. The first summarily introduces the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and some characteristics of its missionary and diaconal work. The second examines the uses of metaphors and images of the body in the rituals related to ZWO issues in the local parishes. This section argues that these metaphors and images are means to attuning emotions and feelings, being an important part of the embodied experience of belonging to the church as a member of the body of Christ. Furthermore, paraphrasing Clifford Geertz’s models of and models for,5 the text shows how these images and metaphors are not only metaphors of the body, but also metaphors for the body, insofar they are aimed at the senses and emotions of the Protestant subjects. The appeal to the tangibility of the missionary and diaconal enterprise of the church will be analysed using the notion of sensational forms, as elaborated by Birgit

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Meyer (2006: 8). The section is based on varied sources, mainly religious performances observed in services and on other ritual occasions (meetings and short celebrations), which address mission and world-diaconate in the Dutch Protestant Church. Attending many of these missionary events during my fieldwork, I could perceive that metaphors of body and world are one of their most distinctive features. In the present chapter I will rely specially upon three ZWO services addressing relationships with different countries, encapsulating many important issues and offering eloquent examples of the processes I observed in the field. The section closes with a short analysis of two images published in folders produced by KiA. The third part of the chapter analyses the elaborated and rich images of the world associated to missionary and diaconal activities of the church. The text argues that mapping the globe in a determined religious way and promoting a specific experience of the world for the Dutch church members are fundamental characteristics of the mission of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Building on Arjun Appadurai’s notion of production of locality (1996: 204), as well as on some concepts coined by Tim Ingold (2000: 231–238) such as mapping (as opposed to mapmaking) and way-finding (as opposed to navigation), the text approaches the phenomenological relation between the body and the world. The analysis is based on images and metaphors observed in the same ZWO services described in the previous section, as well as extracts from interviews with church members. The chapter ends with a short conclusion summarizing the main argument and foregrounding some correspondences between the central elements of the second and third parts.

The Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Kerk in Actie and the ZWO Activities The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (Protestant Kerk in Nederland) was founded in 2004, from the merging of three different denominations: the Netherlands Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk – NHK), the Reformed Church in the Netherlands (Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland – GKN) and the Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Evangelisch-Lutherse Kerk in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden). The new church is the biggest Protestant group in the country, with more than two and a half million members, and it is broadly recognised as the main heir to the preponderantly Calvinist Reformation in the Netherlands.6 Elaborating a comprehensive picture of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands is far beyond the objectives of this chapter, but some of its characteristics must be mentioned in order to make the relation between the centralised mission and the parishes clear. First, being the result of a

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century-long history of inflamed theological debates and disputes, schisms and mergers,7 the church shelters a quite diverse range of theological and political positions. Its decisions and policies are always the result of negotiations and compromises among these different trends. This diversity is reflected in the variety of projects supported and developed abroad by the church’s mission and diaconate, going from leftist labour unions, for instance, to evangelical conversion-oriented missions. A second characteristic is the absence of a strict hierarchy, with fixed and lifelong functions, like bishops or other correspondent positions. The Synod, a council that gathers representatives of all the regional districts (classes), is the church’s highest institution. The Synod has a management committee and a chairperson, both elected to occupy this position for a determined number of years. Within such a structure, there is not much room for strong centralised institutions and organisations directly administrated by the church as a whole. The most important one is Kerk in Actie, the dienstenorganisatie (service organisation) of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, which is responsible for the missionary and diaconal services of the church abroad and, until 2006, also for the projects developed in the Netherlands. The third important point, which is in some way an outcome of the former two, is the high level of independence the parishes have to choose their own way of organising their services and activities, and to a certain degree, their theological positions. There are, of course, a number of core dogmas, values and norms that must be followed everywhere, as well as some general rules for the arrangement of practical and financial issues, but there is much room for local groups to make their own options and positions. Such independence of the local communities turns the Protestant Church in the Netherlands into a quite heterogeneous denomination. For instance, some parishes do not accept blessing homosexual couples (some do not even accept second marriage of divorced people), and at the same time, in the same denomination, other parishes have a transsexual pastor. In the field of missionary and diaconal action, the outcome of this high level of freedom is that local parishes can choose, within a list of projects offered by KiA, what sort of missionary and diaconal action they want to support and get involved with. Kerk in Actie, thus, is the organisation that designs, plans, organises and executes the international missionary and diaconal activities of the church, based on policy documents approved by the Synod. This work performed by KiA is generally referred to as a triad – mission, worlddiaconate and development cooperation – and people in general refer to it using the Dutch abbreviation ZWO, as mentioned in the introduction of this chapter. One can use it as an adjective to everything and everybody that refers to the church’s international relations. There are ZWO committees, ZWO people, ZWO services, ZWO atmosphere, etc. The actual ZWO work consists mostly in supporting partner organisations in differ-

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ent places of the world. As I have already mentioned, the list of partners is quite diverse, most of them being either local church institutions involved with mission and social work or NGOs related to all sorts of development issues. Kerk in Actie sometimes sends missionaries to live and work abroad, most of them teaching at local theological institutes. Kerk in Actie is also responsible for stimulating missionary and diaconal activities in the parishes, not only to raise the funds that make the work possible, but also to invest the raised money with a religious character, to make the work of the organisation come alive in the parishes as the missionary and diaconal work of the church. The relationship between the organisation and the local communities and the churchgoers is, therefore, extremely important, both to guarantee the flow of money that sustains KiA, and to give to their work the religious meaning it is supposed to have. The most important instruments for the production and reproduction of these relationships are the ZWO commissies, locally or regionally based committees of laypersons that take care of mission, world-diaconate and development – the ZWO triad. They are the actual gear connecting the missionary action designed and developed by KiA and the ritual (and financial) life of the communities at the local level. The profile of the people that take part in a ZWO committee can vary, depending on the characteristics of the parish, such as its size, location (in rural or urban areas), province, average income of the neighbourhood it is located in, etc. Almost all members of the ZWO committees I mention in this chapter came originally from rural areas, living in small and middlesized cities in the countryside, and belonging to the Dutch massive middle class, with its considerably high standards of living. The majority of them were women around their fifties, working part-time (sometimes doing voluntary work) or recently retired, and with grown-up children. The few men were mostly in their sixties and were, with only one exception, pensioners. There are different ways of locally engaging in ZWO work. The simplest one is to follow the official calendar of the church, which suggests a couple of ZWO services during the year, in which the liturgy is oriented to a reflection about mission and diaconate and the offerings collected during the service are dedicated to KiA as a whole. During the Lenten period before Easter, the local parishes can also join the national campaign promoted by the church, which foregrounds one specific theme the church as a whole should reflect about, and to which the funds raised during the campaign should be directed. This is the most basic and superficial way of locally fulfilling the ‘missionary call’ of the national church, to put it in emic words. Another possibility which demands more time and commitment of the community is the program called Interactief, which aims at establishing connections between specific parishes in the Netherlands and specific projects or partners abroad. In adhering to the program, the parish can

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‘earmark’ its financial contribution in order to make it go to one specific project, and receive more information, images, and maybe even visits from people working at the chosen partner organisation. Most of the data I will present here come from ZWO activities that took place within the framework of the Interactief program.

Metaphors of and for the Body – Physical Presence and Sensational Forms In November 2006 a small group from Nicaragua, most of them NGO workers and church leaders, was invited by KiA to come to the Netherlands and visit different groups and churches that supported their missionary and social work. They had a busy schedule of meetings, services and celebrations in which they presented themselves and, among other things, told people about their activities, presented official reports, sang Nicaraguan songs and said prayers in Spanish. Two members of this delegation worked for a project called CEPAD, a council of Protestant churches in Nicaragua that develops projects aiming at poverty reduction. One of these projects, providing food for poor children in schools, had an Interactief connection with the Protestant Community in Beilen, in the province of Drenthe. Two CEPAD staff members – a social worker and a Presbyterian pastor – were invited to participate in the Sunday-morning service in Beilen in November 2006. I volunteered to escort the Nicaraguan guests during the two-hour trip from their accommodation in Utrecht to the church. We arrived at the church about fifteen minutes before the service started, at ten o’clock in the morning. The guests were welcomed by members of the local ZWO committee, the elders responsible for the service and the pastor of the church. The parish had managed to find a volunteer translator, a woman from the region, who had lived in South America for a couple of years. The service in Beilen was a very typical ZWO service: a regular Sunday-morning service, following the traditional Reformed liturgy, and having mission and diaconate as main theme, with special participation of the local ZWO committee.8 The presence of the Nicaraguan guests was accommodated within the liturgy: the Nicaraguan pastor was to read a text from the Bible and say a prayer in Spanish, right before the sermon, while the social worker would say a few words about the CEPAD project, before collecting offerings. They were told about their roles in the ceremony right after they arrived in Beilen, a few minutes before the service started. The social worker had no speech prepared, and she became very concerned about what she should say. She was quickly calmed down with the explanation that it did not really matter what she said, since the most important thing for the people in the church was to see her and to listen to her voice and language; thus, a few words of gratitude would fit perfectly.

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In addition to the participation of the guests, Nicaragua was represented in three Latin American songs translated into Dutch, sung at different moments throughout the liturgy, and in the special decoration of the liturgical table that the ZWO committee had prepared, consisting of many big pans, wooden spoons, and pictures of children receiving food, as well as a map of Nicaragua. The spoons were distributed to the congregation after the service. Another ZWO service, occurring in October 2007 in Coevorden, also in Drenthe, was about Brazil. The service was the closing of a special campaign – the Brazilië-maand (month of Brazil) – in the Protestant community of Coevorden. During one whole month, different activities related to Brazil were promoted by the local ZWO committee to raise funds and attention to ADL, a Lutheran special school for impoverished small-scale farmers in Brazil. Brazilian songs, pictures, decoration, etc, were part of the liturgy, especially during the Confession of Sins and the Congregational Prayer and Giving of Offerings. The congregational prayer – normally the longest and the most important one in the Reformed liturgy – was preceded by a prayer I was invited to read, as a participant (observer) of the Month of Brazil. It was a translation into Dutch of a text written by the Brazilian Catholic theologian Leonardo Boff – one of the most important names of Liberation Theology. The request that I read the prayer was justified by the fact that I would probably be the only Brazilian present in the service, and also because it would be nice for people to listen to Dutch with a Brazilian accent. The last service I will describe in this section was a so-called uitzendingdienst (sending service), which is the consecration of new missionaries (and often their families) to their new ministry abroad, being one of the most important ritual moments of this kind of enterprise. No one can become an official missionary of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands without participating in one of these events. It celebrates a ritual commitment established between missionaries and the local community where the service takes place. However, they are officially sent by the Protestant Church in the Netherlands as a whole, with the financial resources coming from KiA, and the practical details and decisions being handled in the headquarters of the church in Utrecht. The relationships between missionaries and local parishes established during the sending service have mainly a religious and ritual character, being also accommodated in the Interactief program. The uitzendingdienst I attended took place in Oss, province of North Brabant, Southern Netherlands, in January 2006. It was the sending of a couple and their children to Mozambique, where they would teach at a Protestant seminar. The choice of Oss as the sending church was related to a decision taken by the central church, connecting specific regions in the Netherlands with specific continents in the world. North Brabant, together with some other provinces, is specially related to Africa. Those two

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missionaries had almost no previous relationships with the church in Oss before the service. The liturgy also followed the traditional Reformed formula, with its three main parts – Call to Worship, Service of the Word, and Giving of Offerings. Its culminating point was the ceremony of the missionary vows, at the end of the service. This liturgical moment was constructed around a rich variety of metaphorical images of the body and its different members, depicting the missionary endeavour in an embodied form. The ceremony took place after the sermon, which mentioned the church as the body of Christ and highlighted the physical presence of the missionaries. The minister invited the missionaries and their children to stand up in front of the congregation for the ceremony, which consisted of (1) a text read by the minister; (2) a song performed by the church choir; (3) vows of the missionaries and of the community; (4) the same song again, but now sung by the whole church; (5) giving of gifts to the missionaries and their children; (6) prayers; and (7) a hymn sung by the church. The opening text, read by the minister, mentioned that the missionaries should travel ‘with open ears and eyes and, above all, with an open heart’. The reference to ears and eyes was later connected to the specific task of observing and learning. The text invites the missionaries to tell the church, in return, what they have learned: ‘The way our brothers and sisters understand their existence and the way they are Christian there can be a challenge to our reflection about ourselves, our way of believing, and our church and society’. The open heart is related to the openness ‘to work as much as you can for the benefit of people there, and to learn as much as you can for the benefit of us here’. And further: ‘Never forget that everything you do is part of the solidarity of people, churches, peoples and cultures. Remain modest about what you do, but at the same time, realise that the few things you do are part of something bigger: the history of God with people in the world’. The song performed by the choir was about the human hands, presented as the only tools for the construction of the kingdom of God on the Earth. ‘Sent by the Lord, our hands are ready to build his kingdom in this place, because it is not through the power of angels that this earthly vale will become a new world where peace prevails’. In the vows themselves, the missionaries made three promises: to keep their hearts open to respect and learn from people in Mozambique; to contribute to the good relations between people ‘here’ and ‘there’; and to keep their faith in the inspiration and the power of the Holy Spirit to perform their task for God’s glory. The congregation, in its turn, promised to reflect about what they would hear from the experiences in Mozambique and learn from it and to remember the missionaries in their prayers. The song about the hands was sung one more time by the whole congregation, and the representative of the church council made a short speech and brought some gifts: candles to be lightened in difficult moments; and

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drawings done by the children of the community for the children of the missionaries. After that, she announced that after the service everybody was invited for a cup of coffee or tea in a room close to the church building, where people would have the opportunity to say farewell to the family. A song performed at the beginning of the service is also worth quoting. During the Call to Worship, right after the Confession of Sins, the congregation sung, with the help of the choir, a song in Portuguese and Dutch from a songbook called Hoop van alle volken (Hope of All Peoples), a compilation of religious songs collected worldwide and translated into Dutch. The main image in the lyrics relates the feet and the religious path of the Christians, beginning with Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. ‘Jesus gathered all his friends, washed their feet and sent them to the dangerous world’, says one verse, and ‘Come, Jesus, and wash away from our feet the dust of the endless roads of this world’, says another one. The last strophe prays: ‘Wash our feet in your clear fountains and let them go through the path of your peace’. These examples summarize something that I could observe on many other occasions during my fieldwork: the frequent metaphorical reference to the body highlighting different aspects of the missionary endeavour. Sermons emphasizing the unity of the church as the body of Christ; songs poetically referring to feet, hands, senses and hearts; people, images and languages that, in their liturgical presence, embody cultural diversity are constitutive parts of the performance of mission and diaconate in the churches in the Netherlands. More specifically, the ubiquitous metaphor of the church as the body of Christ is an eloquent image of unity and belonging, something that, according to Margot Lyon and Jack Barbalet (1994: 55), extrapolates the strict sense of a metaphor, in a process of production of an embodied social group through the attuning of emotions and recurrence to images. Belonging to the church is more than simply having your name in a list of members; it is also being part of a living organism characterized by attuned feelings. These short descriptions highlight the use of metaphors and images of the body as a means to attune emotions and render the abstract missionary (and diaconal) endeavour concrete and tangible in the rituals. My next observation, paraphrasing Geertz (1973: 93), is that these metaphors are not only metaphors of the body, but also metaphors for the body. In other words, they are not only verbal and discursive expressions of the unity of the church as one metaphorical body (metaphor of ). They are also a liturgical display of people, objects, songs, languages, images and words aimed at the body of the church members, insofar they address senses and feelings (metaphor for). They are organised in order to turn the missionary and diaconal tasks of the church accessible to the sensitive qualities of the body, attuning emotions and provoking specific feelings. My argument is that these liturgical performances of mission and diaconate could be interestingly analysed as sensational forms, following the

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concept coined by Meyer (2006: 8): ‘Sensational forms, in my understanding, are relatively fixed, authorized modes of invoking, and organizing access to the transcendental, thereby creating and sustaining links between religious practitioners in the context of particular religious organizations. Sensational forms are transmitted and shared, they involve religious practitioners in particular practices of worship and play a central role in forming religious subjects’. An important characteristic of these sensational forms is that they are not rational theological statements about the transcendental, but they are aimed at the senses, they are means to the embodied experience of religion. Objects and songs, languages and accents, pictures and people are there to be seen, heard, smelled and touched. They are not only important for the understanding of mission and diaconate but also for the feeling of the whole endeavour. It is important to remember that the absolute majority of the members of the Dutch Protestant Church do not ‘go there’, meaning they do not have a personal experience of the missionary field. For most of them, the most tangible relation they can have with mission and diaconate is the donation of money during the services.9 Many aspects of the church services presented above can be analysed as sensational forms. In the uitzendingdienst in Oss, through the rich and elaborated images of body parts, the specific and tangible feet, eyes, ears and hands of those specific and tangible missionaries become, in the service, the physical and embodied expression of the mission of the church. The whole ritual, conceived as a celebration of the tie between the missionaries and that specific parish, on the one hand, turns the church into a concrete church to the missionaries – an ‘embodied’ community to which they are now connected. On the other hand, to that specific community the abstract idea of its missionary task becomes embodied in that family they are sending abroad. They can talk to them, listen to them, touch them and give them gifts. It is important to stress, moreover, that although those missionaries had almost no previous relationships with that specific parish, the atmosphere during the ‘farewell coffee’ after the service was very emotional, with timid hugs and kisses and even some sober and rather discreet tears. This observation shows how effective these sensational forms were in creating concrete ties and attuned feelings. In the two other ZWO services, introducing in the liturgy objects, songs and people that represent Nicaragua and Brazil and their poverty is a way of displaying them to the senses, making the mission of the church not only an intellectual theological issue and a rational and practical Christian responsibility, but also a sensational enterprise that can be accessed and felt through the bodily senses. The fact that the contents of what the Nicaraguan guests would say clearly does not matter introduces another dimension to the analyses. For ritual purposes, foreign guests (and anthropologists) are themselves sensational forms, special liturgical media that with their distinct and exotic languages, accents and bodies can

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display the missionary enterprise to the senses of the Protestant subjects. They embody the metaphor of the body of Christ as a multicultural and colourful body propitiated by the missionary and diaconal effort. In other words, the metaphors of the body are themselves embodied through sensational forms that are metonymical allusions to the targets of the missionary effort. They are there to dispose the multicultural character of the missionary endeavour to the senses of the churchgoers. The accommodation of the foreign guests within a predetermined liturgy raises one other question. The use of people as sensational forms relies on an identification of the ‘earthly’ other and the transcendental other, which echoes one of the foundational biblical texts of mission and diaconate – Matthew 25 – establishing the so-called Seven Corporal Works of Mercy.10 This identification can be understood as a way of spiritualising the body, in this specific case, spiritualising the body of the other, which becomes a sensational means to the transcendence. What they have to say is not interesting in itself; they are important in their corporeality, which becomes a visible sign of Christian values and beliefs. Finally, the appeal to the emotions and bodily sensations observed in the services can also be verified in the iconography of otherness produced by KiA’s Department of Communication and Fundraising. Managed by professionals of marketing and communication, the department is responsible for, among other things, producing all sorts of publicity for KiA’s activities. Folders describing projects, posters and banners for campaigns, guides explaining how to donate and how to declare these amounts to the tax authorities are some examples of the material produced by the department. The two pictures presented here are good examples of the appeal to bodily sensations connecting the church members and their others. Figure 1 is the cover of a booklet explaining the Illustration 4.1. Giving to Kerkinactie: how different ways to make an you can contribute to Kerkinactie’s work. individual donation to KiA Source: ICCO and Kerk in Actie.

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(the text says: ‘Giving to Kerkinactie: how can you contribute to Kerkinactie’s work’11). Figure 2 is the cover of a folder publicizing a program called ‘Togetthere’, which facilitates the permanence of young Dutch people working as volunteers for Kerk in Actie’s (and ICCO’s) projects abroad. The interesting point about these pictures is that they not only show the colourful body of the other, the target of the action of the church, but they also show Dutch Protestant bodies in action. This is very evident in Figure 2, in which a blond Dutch girl being literally touched by ‘black Africa’ is surrounded by people wearing colourful clothes, with her hands sensuously covered with some muddy African paste. Figure 1 builds on

Illustration 4.2. ‘To Get There’. Source: ICCO and Kerk in Actie.

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the physicality of the act of giving, showing hands putting money in the traditional liturgical collection bag used in the services. While white hands put money in the bag, food is poured in a plate held by black hands. Money, this abstract entity, whose value comes from its meaning, not from its sensitive properties as object, is transformed into a rather tangible (and sticky) porridge. The act of donating money, which for the overwhelming majority of churchgoers is the most expressive way (often the only way) of participating in the missionary activity of the church, is invested with meaning through the appeal to the tangibility of the act itself.

The Body and the World Together with the metaphors of and for the body, the liturgical language of mission and diaconate in the Dutch Protestant Church is very sophisticated when depicting the world as the landscape of its action, the whole earth being the environment of the body of the church. If one thinks about the definition of diaconate as the secular services the church is supposed to provide to the society that surrounds it, the very idea of a worlddiaconate – the W in the ZWO triad – is a powerful example of the sort of relation between the living organism of the church and the whole world as its landscape. The mapping of the globe and the production of an experience of the world are important parts of the liturgies of the ZWO services, sometimes with elaborated images that go beyond those of the body. In this section I argue that these are orientational processes influencing the perception of cultural difference and diversity, localizing the Protestant subjects in what they often call ‘the broader world’, and producing the experience of the global character of the church.12 To develop these ideas, my starting point is Arjun Appadurai´s definition of locality as a ‘complex phenomenological quality, constituted by a series of links between the sense of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity and the relativity of contexts’ (1996: 204). The author sees locality as ‘an inherently fragile social achievement’, something ‘maintained carefully against various kinds of odds’. Locality, therefore, is socially produced, and the analyst should be aware of the social process to create and maintain it, instead of taking it for granted. In this section, I argue that the Dutch Protestant missionary and diaconal performances can be partly understood as efforts to produce locality. Further in the text, Appadurai analyses the power play in the process of production of locality, opposing what he calls ‘neighbourhoods’, the actual accomplishment of locality in existing social forms, and ‘largerscale social formations (nation-states, kingdoms, missionary empires and trading cartels)’ (1996: 211). Even though he explicitly states his intention to avoid oppositional tropes in producing an ethnography of the modern (small and large, cold and hot, then and now, etc.), his insistence in

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understanding ‘local’ reactions to global modernity (in its larger-scale social formations) ends up producing a sophisticated version of the very oppositional tropes he is trying to avoid. So far, his phenomenology of localisation has apparently nothing to say about how some of these very ‘larger-scale social formations’ localise themselves as global phenomenon, as if ‘missionary empires or trading cartels’ were global by nature, not being submitted to the same processes of producing locality and context that Appadurai so sharply analyses when focusing on neighbourhoods. Furthermore, although the author raises the important issue of the interaction between body and locality, he does not really develop the idea. He mentions that some ceremonies (rites of passage, specifically) could be analysed as ‘complex social techniques for the inscription of locality onto bodies. Looked at slightly differently, they are ways to embody locality as well as to locate bodies in socially and spatially defined communities’ (1996: 205). The main problem here is that his idea of inscription can relegate the body to a passive position, a sort of blank sheet onto which a disincarnated society inscribes its spatial orientation. I prefer to think that body and society are not two separate entities, but different and partial reflections of one sole reality. Although I follow Appadurai’s plea to a phenomenological approach to globalization and I believe his definition of the process of localisation is very useful to shed light on the missionary and diaconal initiatives at stake here, I am trying to avoid the taken-for-granted ‘globality’ of the West, analysing how the global character of one of its institutions – the Protestant Church in the Netherlands – is locally produced, reproduced and experienced. I am not saying that the ritual performance of mission and diaconate inscribes a specific locality onto the bodies of the Dutch members of the Protestant Church, but I am saying that these bodies produce and experience the world as their environment through these missionary performances. In order to make this point clear, I will introduce some concepts elaborated by Tim Ingold treating the issues of environment and landscape. Ingold’s view, encapsulated in the phenomenological notion of dwelling, proposes a comprehension of the relation between beings and environment that takes into account temporality, experience and situated perspectives. The author develops his approach building on a series of oppositions, which, unfortunately, there is not enough room here to present in detail. I will, thus, start with Ingold’s distinction between mapping and mapmaking, which will elucidate the process of production of locality in the case of the Dutch Protestant missionary and diaconal initiatives. Building on different definitions elaborated by anthropologists and geographers that were concerned with understanding the processes of mapping, mapmaking, navigation and way-finding, Ingold presents his own concepts, based on the constant awareness of the distinction between depictions of the world that are produced from an external (vertical) per-

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spective (often referred to as ‘the bird’s-eye view’), and the images that are elaborated from an internal (lateral) perspective, that of ‘an inhabitant journeying from place to place along a way of life’ (2000: 227). Ingold argues that ‘the designs to which mapping gives rise … are not so much representations of space as condensed histories’ (2000: 220). Mapping, thus, is the reenactment, in inscriptive gestures, of the movements of people as they come and go between places (way-finding). Mapmaking, in contrast, is the project of modern cartography, engaged in the processes of making maps ‘from a point of view above and beyond’ (bird’s-eye view), bracketing out these movements, creating maps as end-products of projects of spatial representation (2000: 234). That is what Ingold calls ‘the cartographic illusion’, ‘the appearance that the structure of the map springs directly from the structure of the world, as though the mapmaker serve merely to mediate a transcription from one to the other … One aspect of this illusion lies in the assumption that the structure of the world, and so also that of the map which purports to represent it, is fixed without regard to the movement of its inhabitants. Like a theatrical stage from which all the actors have mysteriously disappeared, the world – as it is represented in the map – appears deserted, devoid of life’ (2000: 234). The missionary and diaconal activities of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands can be analysed simultaneously as processes of production of locality and of mapping (as opposed to mapmaking, in Ingold’s terms). On the one hand, they are part of the process of mapping the world, localising the Protestant churchgoers in a religiously conceived globe. On the other hand, they reenact the movements of the missionary enterprise, engaging the churchgoers in a vivid experience of the world. In order to develop this idea, we need to return to the services in Oss and Coevorden. In the uitzendingdienst in Oss, the Service of the Word, the central part of the Reformed liturgy, was made up of two Bible texts, Psalm 87 and Acts 16:6–10, each of them followed by one strophe of a song. Both texts are highly cartographic. Psalm 87 places Zion among other regions – Rahab (Egypt), Babylon, Philistia, Tyre and Ethiopia – as the beloved city of God, the foundation of God’s reign. The text from the New Testament lists different places – Phrygia, Galatia, Mysia, Bythinia, Troas and finally Macedonia, to where Paul decides to go, after having a vision about a Macedonian man asking for help. The strophe of the song performed after the Psalm says: ‘In Christ there is no West, no East/ In Him no North, no South/ The human kind is one in His comfort/ The world in one in His word’. The last strophe, sung after Acts, prays: ‘Let South and North now rejoice/ West and East praise Him/ The whole world belongs to Christ/ its comfort is in Him’. In the service in Coevorden, the one about Brazilian poor farmers, the global landscape was depicted at the very beginning of the liturgy. During the Call to Worship, which includes the Confession of Sins, three songs were sung. The first was a traditional Protestant hymn, which uses the

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images of sun, earth, night and day to compare the beginning of the morning with the rise of the eternal light over the whole earth. The second was a very simple ‘song of peace’, sung in Portuguese and Dutch, with the help of the choir. The last song was Psalm 24 from the Geneva Psalter. The few strophes sung that day describe the earth as the kingdom of God, with geographical images such as rivers, land and oceans. The last verse says: ‘He comes, He makes his dwelling among us’. After this Psalm, the moment of confession was completely related to the theme of the service. ADL, the project in Brazil supported by Coevorden, was briefly introduced and an antiphonal prayer was read by some of the participants of the Month of Brazil. In the printed liturgy this prayer was announced as a prayer for the needs of the world, and different global problems were mentioned, starting with the issues of poverty and access to land, which are directly connected to the project supported in Brazil. The geographical images in the sending service in Oss are quite eloquent. Texts and songs during the Service of the Word were basically lists of places depicting the cartographies of Old and New Testament, combined with strophes of a song that have the cardinal points as their central image. Together with the reference to the feet of missionaries going from ‘here’ to ‘there’ through the dusty pathways of this world, mentioned in the previous section, they seem to provide a depiction of an allegorical map of the world where the missionary call of the church is fulfilled. Similarly, the opening of the service in Coevorden liturgically aligned, during the Call to Worshiping, four images: the sun shining on the earth; the needs of the world, associated to the confession of sins; the poverty in Brazil, especially in rural areas; and the earth as the dwelling of God. The liturgy relates the sins of that specific group of Christians to global poverty and inequality. Through this liturgical performance, Coevorden in the Netherlands and the impoverished farmers in Brazil are localised in specific and previously determined positions on the same religious globe. These are examples of how elaborated the production of spatial images associated to the missionary enterprise can be. Besides, the ubiquitous references to ‘here’ and ‘there’, to the act of travelling, navigating and flying, not to mention the correspondences between the Dutch territory and the world, as expressed in the division of the missionary action in the different continents of the world among the different Dutch provinces and regions, create a global atmosphere around the ZWO activities. The use of maps is also remarkable. They are everywhere in the ZWO environment – in special arrangements in liturgical celebrations (as in the service about Nicaragua), hanging everywhere in Kerk in Actie’s headquarters, in folders publicizing the Interactief connections, which normally bring a comparison between the size of the country where the project is developed, and the size of Dutch territory. Maps are also in the website of the organisation, where one can click on a world-map to access the list of projects supported in every country.

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This global atmosphere, often referred to as the ‘broader world’ or the ‘overseas’, caused a great impression on the people I interviewed, who with almost no exception mention it as the greatest advantage of being active in the ZWO work of the church. For instance, a ZWO member, giving me an example of how enriching the possibility of being in touch with a broader world can be, told me: ‘I was so surprised when I heard that São Paulo is almost as big as the Netherlands, because before that, I could imagine that an enormous city would be as big as Friesland [his province], and suddenly I heard about a city as big as the Netherlands! I found this so unimaginable! When we look at all those maps, this is so unimaginable; it is so different from our tiny little country’. Another one told me how important and enriching it was for her to have contact with foreign countries – she lived for a couple of years abroad, and she told me that, because of this experience, she had the responsibility of helping the community to be involved with overseas projects, through the ZWO committee. In another moment, talking about the selection of members for the ZWO committee, she states that, in general, only people that already have ‘an experience with the overseas’ would voluntarily become a member of one of these committees. I am not arguing that the members of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands are ignorant about world geography and that ZWO activities provide them with information and education on the subject. Of course the majority of them have basic (sometimes more than basic) knowledge about different countries and continents, not to mention information about ‘the overseas’ received from different sources – TV shows and news, newspapers, books and touristic trips, among others. In other words, most churchgoers I have talked to in the parishes have a reasonably high amount of information about the world and a reasonable command of the maps of the official scientific cartography. What they got at the ZWO activities in the church is the possibility of feeling committed to the world, of getting into a closer relationship to these regions that otherwise are blanket areas in abstract maps. In all the interviews I have done, three words were constantly repeated: ontmoeting, betrokkenheid, and nabijheid – encounter, commitment, and proximity. They are all words related to an experience of the world that is the result of a specific interaction between body and landscape produced by the missionary and diaconal action. The idea of an experience of the world is opposed to the view of the world as an empty theatrical stage, in the same terms that the phenomenological approach to embodiment is opposed to the view of the body as the inert container of the soul, criticised in the introduction of this volume. Both images of emptiness, inertia and flatness are products of an external perspective of reality (bird’s-eye view); both deny the importance and intensity of experience, fixing clear-cut boundaries. In the image of body as container, the fixed and static boundaries separate body and soul. In the image of the world as an empty stage, the boundaries separate hu-

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man beings and environment. Isabel Cristina Moura Carvalho and Carlos Alberto Steil (2008: 296), analysing the convergence of religious and ecological practices, emphasise these similarities and point to a simultaneous understanding of body and landscape. My argument here follows this suggestion, showing how the liturgical reenactment of the missionary enterprise through sensational forms produces a certain experience of the world that articulates the domains of body and landscape. This kind of locality produced in the missionary enterprise situates, on the one hand, the Protestant churchgoers, a majority of whom do not leave their villages, cities or provinces very often, as global subjects concerned and connected to a varied gamut of ‘needs of the world’. On the other hand, the religious maps of the Protestant mission also situate the diversity of the world in previously determined positions, rendering it apprehensible and ‘domesticating’ the otherness. The colourful variety of bodies and cultures are disposed within a predetermined liturgy of contacts, connections and commitments. Neither the locality reproduced in the liturgical images of the world is just a description of the empty stage where the missionary drama takes place, nor are the global concerns and connections of the local churchgoers only a matter of rational understanding. The use of sensational forms, explored in the previous section, brings these images and concerns to the domain of an embodied experience, localising the Protestant subjects in the world and reenacting the missionary journeys, making them tangible and displaying them to the body. In this sense, the ZWO activities and celebrations not only localise the Protestant bodies in the world, but they also localise this religiously conceived world within the Protestant body.

Conclusion This chapter addressed the role played by the ritual performances of mission and diaconate in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, analysed from two different perspectives: the way these performances relate to the body and the way they are part of the processes of creating locality and mapping the world. The chapter argues that the liturgical displaying of mission and diaconate produces a specific experience of the world to the Dutch Protestants. By way of conclusion, I will recover some of the ideas introduced in the text and highlight specific aspects of the correspondence between the body and the world. In the second section of the chapter I described three ZWO services, showing how the liturgical displaying of elements of mission and diaconate can be analysed as sensational forms that promote the embodied experience of the abstract missionary call of the church. In the third section, I showed how the world is depicted in the ZWO activities and how the reenactment of the missionary and diaconal journeys between ‘here’ and

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‘there’ propitiates to the churchgoers (who only rarely actually ‘go there’) a vivid experience of this religiously conceived globe. The mere existence of the word werelddiaconaat (world-diaconate), places the whole world as the environment that surrounds the church community. At the end of this section, I emphasised how a dynamic relation between body and world can be observed through the analysis of the sensational re-creation of the missionary environment. Taking this dynamic relation into account, the association of the Protestant religion to a bodiless rationality of mind and soul, mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, resonates with the association of Western society to a sort of ‘delocalised globality’, as if the West were an abstract entity that exists nulle part et partout. For social scientists, the Western mind seems to live without (or despite) any sort of correspondent Western body, as well as Western society seems to globally reproduce itself without (or despite) any correspondent locality. Both perspectives are based upon a ‘point of view above and beyond’, in Ingold’s words, which is immediately associated to the Western global rationality. My point here is that social scientists studying Western phenomena should try to understand the processes of production of this ‘point of view above and beyond’, analysing them as embodied and localised processes. Understanding these phenomena in these terms may be a way of giving the West a more concrete and less residual theoretical treatment. Finally, I want to point out some possible correspondences between money and map. Both are rather intangible abstractions, very special objects that bear in them the denial of their own objectivity, whose value does not spring from their sensitive qualities, but from their reference to something external to their physical existence. The efforts made by the Protestant Church in the Netherlands to make the mission and diaconate exist in a tangible way in the ritual life of the parishes seek, on the one hand, to give meaning to the money (process eloquently portrayed in the money/porridge image), to turn it into something more than just a financial and anonymous donation. Kerk in Actie’s campaigns are not only aimed at raising money to the accomplishment of a religious goal, but also (and mainly) to give a religious goal to the money that is already there. Giving to KiA is something that must be felt as missionary and diaconal action. On the other hand, the performances of mission and diaconate also seek to bring the religious maps to the domain of experience; to turn the missionary cartography of the world into a landscape were those Christian bodies dwell. These performances are an attempt to move people’s perspective from the bird’s-eye view, to the dwelling view, through the use of metaphors and sensational forms. In this sense, the process at stake in the missionary performances seems to be precisely the opposite of the process of mapmaking in scientific cartography. While the latter tries to bracket out the experience of travelling around the world in order to produce the external nonindexical perspective, the former relies on sensational forms related to the missionary

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travels and encounters to reproduce ‘at home’ the experience of world associated to the missionary map. They seek to bring the bird’s-eye view down to earth again, to produce a tangible and sensational map of the globe. They reenact the journeying of people back and forth (missionaries, NGO workers, pastors, churchgoers, visitors from abroad) through the ‘dusty pathways’ of the missionary network.

Notes I would like to thank Kim Knibbe, André Droogers, Marjo de Theije, Birgit Meyer, Scott Dalby, Rhoda Woets, Karim Berkhoudt, Joan van Wijk and Maria Paula Adinolfi, from the VU University Amsterdam, as well as the organisers and participants of the panel Body and Soul: on Corporeality in Contemporary Religiosity, at the 10th EASA Conference, for their valuable comments and suggestions. 1. The definitions of the differences between mission, diaconate and development can be quite diverse inside the network around the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. I do not have enough room to elaborate on this point here, but as a provisional definition, I can say that the terms diaconal/diaconate refer to all services that the church provides to the society that surrounds it, often without an explicit religious and Christian discursive content. Missionary work can be distinguished from diaconate because it is directly linked to the testimony of the Christian faith, and to themes such as conversion to Christianity and interreligious dialogues. Development cooperation relates in general to projects that have a very distant relation with religion, having often no other connection to the church than the financial support received from Kerk in Actie. 2. A good example of this commonsensical assumption outside the academic world can be found on the website of Trouw – one of the biggest Dutch national newspapers, originally associated with the Protestant churches. As part of the celebrations of the five hundredth anniversary of Calvin’s birth, the readers of Trouw could answer an online quiz and check how their daily habits were (or were not) linked to Calvinist dogmas. The answers were gathered and quantified, generating a percentage the website humorously calls the ‘Cfactor’. The explanation of the results of questions about emotions, body and sex associates Calvinist behaviour to soberness, frugality and disregard to bodily issues (see http://www.trouw.nl/religie-filosofie/nieuws/article1934690.ece. Accessed on 11 June 2009.) Also in the academic world the association of Protestants with the body seems to be problematic. Just to keep on with Dutch examples, I can mention the reactions I got when I first presented my research proposal to my colleagues at the VU University. The inclusion of body and embodiment in the theoretical framework was deeply questioned, with some people saying that, once I was studying the Dutch Protestant Church, I would hardly find anything interesting relating body and religion in my fieldwork.

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3. In his work about Dutch Catholic missions in Africa in the beginning of the twentieth century, Peter Pels (1999) suggests that providing a tactile experience of Africa to the church public in the Netherlands was a crucial element of the missionary effort. In his book, the author explores the outcomes of this fact in the organisation of the mission itself, and in the missionary encounters in Africa, but he does not develop the role played by this tangibility of mission into the church in the Netherlands. That is what I intend to explore in this chapter. 4. The introduction of this volume offers a good overview of the studies relating religion and corporeality, mentioning many authors that build on Mauss’s and Bourdieu’s definitions. Some of the chapters presented here also provide exemplary analyses of clearly circumscribed techniques du corps in relation to religious contexts. 5. In his classical article ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, Geertz defines cultural patterns as models, in which he sees two complementary aspects expressed in the ideas of models of and models for (1973: 93). The former emphasises how systems of symbols are modelled by nonsymbolic systems, and the latter stresses how symbolic systems can model social reality. I am not subscribing to this idea in all its details here, but am just paraphrasing the distinction formulated by Geertz to shed some light on the relation between metaphor and body, as I hope to make clear in the second section of this chapter. 6. For a detailed overview of the role of the new church in the religious landscape of the Netherlands, see the volume edited by Erik Sengers (2005). For an analysis of the recent history of the Dutch ‘religiouscape’, see André Droogers (2007). 7. For an overview of the history of Dutch Calvinism, see Gerrit Jan Schutte (2000). 8. Within the Dutch Protestant Church, there are many different variations on the threefold model of the Reformed liturgy. Even the names given for its three main sections can vary a lot, depending on the theological orientation of the parish. For the objectives of this chapter it is enough to summarily mention the main lines of the model, as follows: the first part focused on the preparation for the service, with worshiping hymns and confession of sins, normally called Call to Worshiping; the second section organised around the reading of the Bible and the sermon (Service of Word); and the last part based on the intercession prayer, giving of offerings and the final blessing (Congregational Prayer and Giving of Offerings). 9. The relation between donation of money and missionary action has theoretical implications relating gift and religion that unfortunately I cannot explore here. Chapter 5 of my PhD dissertation develops this point (Rickli, 2010). 10. ‘“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me”. Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?” The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”’ (Matthew 25:35–40)

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11. This folder was produced before the beginning of 2007, when the name of the organisation changed from Kerkinactie to Kerk in Actie, reflecting some structural changes within the institution, whose elucidation is far beyond the objectives of this chapter. 12. The relation between geography/cartography, globalisation and religion has been recently pointed out by authors such as Simon Coleman (2006) and Kim Knibbe (2009).

Bibliography Appadurai, A. 1996. ‘The Production of Locality’, in R. Fardon (ed.), Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge. London: Routledge, pp. 204–25. Bourdieu, P. 1972. Esquisse d’une Théorie de la Pratique. Genève: Droz. Carvalho, I. C .M. and C. A. Steil. 2008. ‘A sacralização da natureza e a “naturalização” do sagrado: aportes teóricos para a compreensão dos entrecruzamentos entre saúde, ecologia e espiritualidade’, Ambiente & Sociedade 11(2): 289–305. Coleman, S. 2006. ‘Studying “Global” Pentecostalism: Tensions, Representations and Opportunities’, PentecoStudies 5(1): 1–17. Droogers, A. 2007. ‘Beyond Secularisation versus Sacralisation: Lessons from a Study of the Dutch Case’, in K. Flanagan and P. C. Jupp (eds), A Sociology of Spirituality. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, pp. 81–99. Geertz, C. 1973. ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Knibbe, K. 2009, ‘We did not come here as tenants, but as landlords: Nigerian Pentecostals and the Power of Maps’, African Diaspora 2(2): 133–58. Lyon, M. L. and J. M. Barbalet. 1994. ‘Society’s Body: Emotions and the “Somatization” of Social Theory,’ in T. Csordas (ed.). Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mauss, M. 1950. ‘Les Techniques du Corps,’ in Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Meyer, B. 2006. ‘Religious Sensations: Why Media, Aesthetics and Power Matter in the Study of Contemporary Religion’, inaugural lecture, VU University, Amsterdam. Pels, P. 1999. A Politics of Presence: Contacts between Missionaries and Waluguru in Late Colonial Tanganyika. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Rickli, J. 2010. Negotiating Otherness in the Dutch Protestant World: Missionary and Diaconal Encounters between the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and Brazilian Organisations, PhD dissertation, VU University, Amsterdam. Schutte, G. J. 2000. Het Calvinistisch Nederland: Mythe en Werkelijkheid. Hilversum: Verloren. Sengers, E. (ed.). 2005. The Dutch and Their Gods: Secularization and Transformation of Religion in the Netherlands since 1950. Hilversum: Verloren.

5 ‘How To Deal with the Dutch’ The Local and the Global in the Habitus of the Saved Soul Kim Knibbe

In December 2007 I attended a workshop in The Hague, Netherlands, organised by a Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal church that has set itself the task of ‘bringing the gospel back to Europe’, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). The workshop was titled ‘How To Deal with the Dutch’. Many of the about fifty people that attended were pastors and church workers in the RCCG Netherlands themselves, both male and female; some couples had brought their children. This workshop was remarkable in the way the woman leading the workshop confronted the mostly African, in many cases Nigerian, leaders of the parishes in the Netherlands with the inappropriateness of how they were reaching out to the Dutch. She was (ethnically) Dutch herself, a member of the RCCG in the Netherlands and married to a Nigerian. She started with a telling example, which immediately drew out some of the differences between the (mostly Nigerian or other African) members of the Redeemed and the Dutch: “How do we shout Halleluiah?” Enthusiastically, her audience responded with a shout of “HALLELUIAH!” accompanied by exuberant arm movements. “And how do the Dutch shout Halleluiah?” Her audience laughed, and tried to imitate the lack of enthusiasm they perceived among the Dutch in different ways: a softly mumbled halleluiah, huddled and hesitant arm movements that barely raised the hands above the head and kept elbows firmly clipped to the sides. Approving, she continued with her next question, encapsulating the problem in one distinct contrast: “And how do they shout when they are watching a football match?” To this, her audience responded like the crowd in a bar when the Dutch football team scores during a soccer match: loud shouting, flinging arms upwards and jumping up and down.

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The contrast she evoked was meant to cast Nigerians in quite a good light in comparison to the Dutch: they are enthusiastic worshippers, whereas Dutch Christians are cast in the role of lukewarm believers, if they believe at all: they get more enthusiastic about soccer than about God! These stereotypes were recognised by everyone. However, in the remainder of her presentation, the workshop-leader was quite critical of the ‘Nigerian-ness’ of the RCCG which she saw as an obstacle to successful evangelization among the Dutch. One by one, she criticised the way Nigerians tend to emphasise their titles and material possessions, and how often they fly around the world. Furthermore, she outlined how time should be managed (strictly!), and emphasised that an all-night vigil, a monthly practice for the RCCG, should not last the whole night but should start at nine and finish around midnight so people have a chance to take the last train or bus home. The RCCG Netherlands should furthermore develop their own materials for Sunday school rather than use the Nigerian ‘open heavens’ material (available via internet). And lastly, she criticised the outdated notions of role division within the RCCG: women in the Netherlands should not have to give up their independence. This workshop was conducted as part of the school of disciples for active members of the RCCG in the Netherlands. The Redeemed Christian Church of God is the largest Pentecostal church in Nigeria, and perhaps in the world (Hunt 2000; Ukah 2006; Burgess 2008; Marshall 2009). It is present in more than 150 countries, including the Netherlands. It sees Europe as the ‘dark continent’, and its church-planting mission in Europe is often phrased as ‘bringing the gospel back to Europe’. Not surprisingly, the first question people usually ask me when I talk about my research is: ‘So how many Dutch people have they actually managed to convert?’ This question is ambiguous, becomes it assumes a notion of ‘Dutchness’ that is restricted to white, indigenous Dutch (like myself). Strictly speaking, taking ‘Dutch’ to mean nationality, they are moderately successful: although each of the parishes is small, partly due to the practice of quickly setting up a new parish as soon as one grows, it seems most or all of them include people with the Dutch nationality. However, what people usually mean is: how many ‘ethnically Dutch’, i.e., ‘white’ Dutch, have become members of the RCCG? Most Dutch who have joined have a Surinam or Dutch Antillean background. The RCCG in the Netherlands recognise that they have a great problem reaching the ‘Dutch Dutch’ as one pastor called those Dutch people who do not trace their origins to a country outside the Netherlands. Most of the people in this church who fit that description come there because they are married to a Nigerian. Other Nigerian churches in the Netherlands have similar problems. In this chapter, however, I focus on the RCCG. The problem of reaching the ‘Dutch Dutch’ and European ‘natives’ in general is framed in different ways by Nigerian Pentecostals in the Netherlands, but also in England, Germany and Nigeria where I and my col-

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leagues have also spoken to Nigerian Pentecostals. Some emphasised the relative wealth of Europe: when people have everything, they think they do not need God. In prayers and prophecies, the conversion of Europe and the Netherlands is often framed in terms of releasing the hold of Satan over the land, clearing the way to revival. At the same time, there is some attention for the cultural differences that might be at the root of difficulties to get across the message. The workshop I described above is part of an attempt to address these issues. Indeed, my welcome as a ‘Dutch Dutch’ researcher could also be seen in this context, although I did my best to detach my research from any such concerns of ‘usefulness’ to the church. In the view of the Dutch Dutch women I spoke to within the RCCG, the attempts to bridge cultural differences still fall far short of the ideal. In their view, Nigerian Pentecostal missionaries are making the same mistakes as the ‘old’ missionaries used to make: I always tell them, they are making the same mistake as we did. We used to go to Africa, and preach a European gospel to them. We insisted on wearing a threepiece suit while going into the interior. And now they are coming here, also wearing a three-piece suit and we are not wearing that kind of thing anymore!

What is striking is that the differences mentioned, also in the interviews, seem so trivial: body language, ways of emphasizing social status, timemanagement, ways of dressing. This calls to mind the analysis of the missionary encounter in Africa by the Jean and John Comaroff, who show that it is in the particulars of dress and embodiment that ‘Christian’ subjectivities were shaped (1991). Nigerian Pentecostals very much feel that they embody a ‘habitus of the saved soul’, expressed in regular praying, fasting and enthusiastic praise and worship that is global, not bound to a particular culture. As the workshop leader drew out skilfully, they see the Dutch (even those who call themselves Christian) as falling short in terms of religious enthusiasm and dedication, summarised by those softly mumbled halleluiahs and huddled body language while worshipping. The relationship between the body and soul is very explicit and clear in the brand of Pentecostalism exemplified by the RCCG, which has been strongly influenced by the holiness tradition: a good Christian does not smoke or drink, have sex before marriage or in other ways fall into sin, because this would risk his salvation. The body is the temple of the soul, and bodily practices are central to the daily practice of belief. A good Christian worships and prays regularly and enthusiastically. With respect to all of these yardsticks, the Dutch fall far short. However, the workshop leader suggested very strongly that the lack of success in reaching the natives has something to do with some aspects of the embodiment and habitus of Nigerian missionaries. The message that this workshop leader tried to get across was that Nigerian Pentecostals should set aside their ‘cultural’ peculiarities’ to remove

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any barriers to effective evangelizing. In Christian thought, ‘the soul’ is universal: everybody has one, and therefore can be saved by ‘giving his life to Jesus’. This notion has energised Christian organizations for centuries to evangelise ‘lost souls’. At the same time, Pentecostal Christianity is focused on the reform of bodily practices. The saving of souls and the expansion of Christianity has to be realised through embodied subjects. A good Christian has a particular habitus, and this is assumed to be the same all over the world. The attention of the Dutch lady who was teaching the workshop I described above to what seem to be ‘trivial’ matters highlights that ‘reversing’ the flow of mission produces a contradiction between what one could call the habitus of the ‘saved soul’ and a ‘cultural’ habitus. In this particular situation in the Netherlands, but probably in situations across the world, the question that emerges out of missionary practices is: what is local and what is universal in the embodiment of the saved soul? What is Nigerian, what is Dutch and what is properly Pentecostal, and who decides this? Why do Dutch Pentecostals only mumble their halleluiahs, whereas Nigerians shout? Why do Nigerians emphasise how often they fly around the world, whereas Dutch people seem allergic to any (overt) means of emphasizing status? In this essay I will use the negotiations between what is global and what is local in the ‘habitus of the saved soul’ to bring a series of linkages into focus: between individual embodiment, religious experience, the motivation to save souls, institutional power and the global expansion of charismatic Christianity. In this, I follow Ruth Marshall’s description of Nigerian Pentecostalism as a ‘political spirituality’ (2009). This label is important in the sense that it summarises how such a seemingly individual and private thing as the religious experience of how body and soul implicate each other in daily life can have far-reaching consequences on a national (in the case of Nigeria) and global level, through missionary practices. Whereas a focus on ‘Body and Soul’ seems to perpetuate a tradition in anthropology that is principally concerned with the experience of religious subjects, my purpose in this article is to show that this should also be a intrinsic part of an anthropology that wants to provide a critical and insightful account of the workings of religion in the world. To do this I will first focus (1) on the notion of habitus and embodiment in relation to Pentecostalism. I will then (2) show how power is linked to both embodiment, to institutional power and to expansion. In the end I will show (3) how the missionaries my colleagues and I encountered in Europe became missionaries and thereby as it were ‘body forth’ the church to create a global geography of conversion. Via this long explanation we will finally arrive back at the start of this article, namely, (4) the local resistance to this global geography of conversion created through missionary practices.

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Pentecostalism, the Notion of Habitus and the Progressive Embodiment of Holiness Pentecostalism defies any kind of simple distinction between body and soul. In Pentecostalism, there is usually a strong emphasis on holiness, on the direct experience of the Holy Spirit, charismatic gifts and on conversion as an ongoing experience, not something that happens at one point in time when one ‘gives ones life to Jesus’. It is a constant call for renewal that is reinforced in Sunday services, through prayer, through all-night vigils and fasting, and through deliverance to achieve a breakthrough in life, to ‘get to the next level’. The emphasis on holiness in many cases is intimately, if controversially, connected to an emphasis on prosperity: healing, going from poverty to wealth, from stagnation to success, from rags to riches (see especially Marshall 2009). The aim of all this is to bring about a thorough change in what anthropologists would refer to, after Pierre Bourdieu, as the habitus. Although anthropology as a discipline has little to say on an ontological level about the notion of soul, nor about the need to save it,1 it does recognise the importance of this notion in Christian practices in shaping the habitus and in particular the ‘bodily hexis’: ways of talking, moving, doing things, apprehending things. The concept of habitus encompasses habits, dispositions and embodiment in one concept, linked theoretically to a quite complex view of the relation between individuals and structure (Bourdieu 1977). In Pentecostalism, the reform of the habitus focuses on the personally embodied identification with practices that are demonised as bad, or belonging to a station in life that is not what God has intended for you. As shown by Meyer, the aim is to make a ‘complete break with the past’ (1998). Coleman, in his study of the Word of Life movement, shows how words become embodied: words to charismatic and Pentecostal Christians are not just words, but powerfully charged (2000, chapter 5). This can be both negative and positive. According to some, this is the reason why many Nigerian churches urge people to pray aloud: because prayer is more powerful that way, but also so that people cannot put a curse rather than speaking prayers, blessings or prophecies. Through constant prayer, fasting, seeking visions and through speech, a person is made anew. This starts by saying a prayer of salvation to become born again (the actual text varies, but it has to include repentance of sins, a proclamation of belief that Jesus died for your sins and rose from the dead, and a request to be saved). Strikingly, it is not enough to think privately you accept Jesus in your life, you have to actually say it for the change from unsaved to saved to take place. This is justified by referring to Romans 10:9–10: ‘If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved’.

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A charismatic interpretation of this quotation is that words only gain transformative power by saying them aloud. This results in physically felt changes as well, as the Holy Spirit begins to fill the body. This moment is the start of a lifelong process of sanctification whereby sin, and thereby the entry point for the ‘ministry of the devil’, is progressively removed from one’s life. It will affect how you feel, what you dream and how you read the Bible. Reading the Bible is seen as a transforming practice; again, it is the actual words that will effect change. However, if you are not born again, reading the Bible will not have this effect. The Holy Spirit will not be able to do its transforming work, old covenants cannot be broken, the body remains open to the ministry of the Devil. By comparing these views to Coleman’s descriptions of how words become embodied in the Swedish Word of Life movement, it becomes clear that there are many similarities, and one could, therefore, argue that something like a global ‘habitus of the saved soul’ has emerged among Pentecostals and Charismatics worldwide. This is also what Ruth Marshall argues specifically with regard to Nigerian Pentecostals: they do not see themselves as bound to their own ‘culture’, rather, Pentecostalism is a way of overcoming the limitations of local culture perceived as corrupt and binding people to evil covenants. In their lifestyle and beliefs, Nigerian Pentecostals share more with Pentecostals worldwide than with other, non-Pentecostal Nigerians (Marshall 2009). Nevertheless, as the workshop on ‘how to deal with the Dutch’ shows, this universal ‘habitus of the saved soul’ still requires negotiation about what is local and what is universal. The ‘Dutch Dutch’ women I spoke to see a historical parallel here, as is evidenced by the quote about missionaries in three-piece suits, evoking a strong image of the lonely and superior missionary who does not fit in, observed warily by the ‘locals’: we used to go in our three-piece suit into the interior, now the Africans are coming here, in their three-piece suits and making the same mistakes. In most interviews with Nigerian missionaries, they make concessions to some minimal cultural sensitivity, but this is seen as a necessary intermediate stage: don’t deny the Germans their beer immediately. The end goal is clear, however: the ideal of holiness that prohibits alcohol and cigarettes, strict obedience to God, paying tithes and offerings, no sex before marriage, etc. Although the concept of habitus seems appropriate to draw together the multitude of details that become subject to negotiation between Dutch and Nigerian Pentecostals, this concept is part of a quite complex view of the relationship between individuals and social structures that this case seems to go against. To start with, the Pentecostal ‘habit to change the habitus’ contradicts Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus as an ‘ontological conspiracy’ between bodily hexis and social order, as something that is prediscursive and therefore not subject to change. This is quite clearly not the case: Charismatics and Pentecostals are remarkably similar the world over

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in some aspects and becoming a practicing born-again Christian does seem to produce a long-lasting change in people’s habits in many cases. Other authors, notably Wacquant and Mahmood, have taken up Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to show how it is worked on and created through practice in everyday life in such diverse contexts as boxing and the Egyptian mosque movement, elaborating a more flexible interpretation of this concept (for instance, Mahmood 2001a, 2001b; Wacquant 2005). How can we understand, for example, Pentecostalism and other religions that strive for healing and personal change if not as an attempt to act on the habitus itself and change it permanently? In the context of the missionary encounter between Nigerian and Dutch Pentecostals, however, it becomes clear that the backdrop against which this continuous working on the habitus makes sense matters very much, reinforcing Bourdieu’s take on habitus as intrinsically connected to structure, even in opposing it. As Marshall shows, Nigerian Pentecostalism provides a critical discourse on, and conceptualization of, the corruption and mistrust pervasive in Nigerian society. Personal salvation and integrity is seen as the route out of the hopelessness of this situation, interpreted as the result of devilish influences. In comparison, Dutch people do not have a lot to complain about with regard to these kinds of issues. A second point of criticism of the notion of habitus as elaborated by Bourdieu can be taken from the destabilizing effects of globalisation and transnational flows. How can ontological conspiracies remain intact when people move between radically different universes of practice, as missionaries and migrants do? According to Appadurai, where once improvisation had to be ‘snatched from the glacial undertow of the habitus, habitus now has to be painstakingly reinforced in the face of life-worlds that are frequently in flux’ (Appadurai 1996: 56). He argues to give priority to examining the role of imaginaries to cultural reproduction and thereby, to the grounding of this reproduction; the habitus. Global Pentecostalism can be seen as a particularly strong example of a global imaginary, promising health, wealth and happiness in this life in harmony with global capitalism and salvation in the next for everybody who gives his life to Jesus. How then, can we see the relationship between embodiment, religious experience, global imaginaries such as Pentecostalism and the new structurally unstable conditions brought about by transnational flows of people? On the subject of (religious) experience and embodiment, many authors have taken their inspiration from phenomenology, such as Stoller (1989, 1997; Stoller and Olkes 1987), Jackson (1989, 1996, 1998, 2002), Csordas (1990, 1994, 1997) and Desjarlais (1997, 1992). These studies stress the indeterminate, unbounded and unarticulated nature of human experience (see, for a critical discussion of these authors, Knibbe and Versteeg 2008). Central to the programme of the phenomenological approach in anthropology is the thought that the Cartesian dichotomy between subject and

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object, inherent to most epistemological stances within the social sciences and beyond, is untenable. Rather than seeing human consciousness as an enclosed ‘globe’ with holes in it to convey perceptions from the outside world to the brain, phenomenology takes as its point of departure the examination of the workings of human consciousness itself. For as Husserl, one of the founding fathers of phenomenology realised, ‘the world’ and our experience of it are inseparable. This would mean that ‘objective science’ is an impossible ideal, except, as Husserl argued, if we try to return human consciousness to its ‘original state’ by withholding the conviction that what we see is the truth. This insight led him to set up a research programme to arrive at a more scientific basis for our knowledge by ‘bracketing’ experience, our ‘natural attitude’: rather than following our unconscious (and therefore unscientific) objectifying assumptions about the world around us, and then theorizing on this shaky basis, we should follow these assumptions inward and learn to apprehend our own consciousness, examining the ways in which we constitute our world. In the end, this would lead to ‘things as they are’, a truly scientific understanding of the world. The concept of ‘bracketing’ and the programme of examining the ways in which we constitute the world through our experience of it have been enthusiastically taken up within anthropology and have led to fascinating ethnographies and discussion, as well as experiments with conveying this experience through new styles of writing. But the end goal of Husserl’s project seems to have been abandoned altogether by these anthropologists. Taking up the original phenomenological critique of Cartesian dichotomies, they seem to have set up camp permanently ‘between the brackets’, describing the workings of their own consciousness in apprehending the world around them and the process of learning how to participate in the intersubjectivities of the people they live with for longer or shorter periods of time without seeming to arrive at any endpoint of ‘objective science’ as Husserl hoped. Indeed, Stoller argues that anthropologists must possess a ‘negative capability’ to simply experience, describe and be carried along by the baffling phenomena of sorcery, witchcraft or the miraculous without attempting to come to any sort of final conclusions about the metaphysics of these phenomena (1989: 144–45, 152). Often, they are more inspired by Merleau Ponty, who extended the study of the working of human consciousness to include the body as consciousness-projected-inthe-world. As with Husserl, he seems to want to return to a ‘pre-reflective experience’, an original consciousness, thus passing on a problematic heritage to anthropologists inspired by phenomenology that has, in my opinion, not been sufficiently recognised (Knibbe and Versteeg 2008). Nevertheless, phenomenological anthropology seems to be a good approach to a religion that is so preoccupied with the direct experience of the Holy Spirit, and that is so focused on changing the very way one perceives the world. While participating in the context of a Pentecostal

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church, one is constantly challenged and called upon on a very personal level. Participating physically by singing, dancing, raising one’s hands in prayer, produces strongly felt emotions even in me, someone whose habitus is a stranger to these practices (which would seem to confirm the argument made in Csordas 1990). Other approaches, not necessarily inspired by phenomenological anthropology, have also emphasised strongly the importance of the body and the senses in Pentecostalism (for example, Witte 2008; Meyer 2010). From a critical point of view, however, experience and embodiment, while fascinating, should not be where the analysis stops. Certainly, it does not lead to an Edenic ‘things as they are’.2 If one wants anthropology to be more than a representation of a mythical ‘insider’s’ view, one could ask how one could, while taking into account the importance of not reducing religious experience to something else, still develop a critical view on its workings in the world. An anthropologist moves between worlds, and thereby develops a ‘natural attitude’ that is different and includes more reflexivity than that of others. The location of the anthropologist affords a view of the historical, economic and political forces shaping a life world. This is not a plea to disregard or reduce the lived experience, but rather to relate it to forces that go beyond the lived context and to pay attention to how the forces generated through experience generate their own particular power. Indeed, as I will show in the next section, power is very often at the heart of religious enterprises and of religious experience, and at the heart of issues of body and soul.

Power as a Key Term in Studying Religiously Embodied Practice In research on religion, the tension between reductive social-scientific understandings and believers’ own understanding of religion has been addressed in many ways (for instance, Hervieu-Léger 2000; Knibbe and Versteeg 2008; Marshall 2009). Anthropologists inspired by phenomenology such as those cited above attempt to go beyond this reduction by paying close attention to the lived experience, rather than using concepts alien to the life world of believers to explain their cosmologies. In the case of Nigerian-initiated Pentecostalism described here, a focus on power is actually in close concordance with the believer’s point of view (in contrast to, to name an example, liberal Christianity in Europe, which seems to want to undermine power that is religiously legitimised [Knibbe 2008]). According to Ellis and Ter Haar, African religion should mainly be understood in terms of power and effectiveness (Ellis and Haar 2004). Political, social and economic power in Africa, they argue, is always seen as inextricably linked to supernatural sources. Indeed, when I started my research on the RCCG two years ago, the (display of) power of this church,

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in every sense, was what struck me most. Personal empowerment, the power to accomplish things in this world, is visibly displayed in countless ways and is in each and every case directly linked to God and the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the economy of a church like the RCCG is astounding in size and it operates several banks (Ukah 2006: 61). It has direct links to powerful politicians in Nigeria and to big business everywhere in the world. In the United States, it has bought a huge plot of land to build a redemption camp (Adogame 2004) similar to the one in Nigeria. This camp, located along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, houses a university, several colleges, schools and houses for the missionaries when they return from their posts all over the world (Ukah 2008). In preaching, in prayer and in prophecy, power is a key term (see also Marshall 1991, 2009). The RCCG is a Nigerian-initiated church that arose out of the Aladura movement in Nigeria after the war. Aladura is a term used for the movements and churches springing up in Nigeria around this time that created a Christianity that centred on the concerns and practices of Nigerians (Peel 1968) and is generally seen as syncretistic, including practices that are criticised as being not Christian (although some argue that they are African forms of Pentecostalism). The founder of the RCCG, Akindayomi, was by all accounts a man with little education who had gone from African traditional religion to Christianity in search of more spiritual power. Finding the Christianity of the missionaries too arid, he joined the Aladura movement Cherubim and Seraphim, still existing now. Akindayomi broke away from this movement and started his own church. Until the early 1980s, this church did not attract many members: it had a strong emphasis on holiness, on fasting, on a sober lifestyle. Important in the Nigerian context, for example, was that they emphasised monogamy and they demanded from their converts that they send any ‘extra’ wives back home, with proper provisions, of course (a practice referred to as restitution) (Ojo 2006; Ukah 2008). Since the early 1980s, this church has been led by the current leader, Enoch Adejare Adeboye. A former lecturer in mathematics, he has taken the RCCG into a completely new direction and developed it into a megachurch with thousands of parishes around the globe. Along with this change in organizational format came a change in emphasis in the theology and practice of this church. Like other Pentecostal churches worldwide, the RCCG started to emphasise prosperity along with holiness. This ‘prosperity gospel’ which is usually seen as part of the Faith movement, can be summed up in one sentence: God has meant you to be rich (see also Marshall 1991, 2009; Coleman 2000). Ukah has described this change within the RCCG as a ‘refounding of the church’ by Adeboye, creating what he has called a ‘new paradigm of power’ (Ukah 2008). This paradigm includes a heavy use of media, a pyramidal organisation with the top represented by Adeboye and a deliberate involvement of elites, creating a tangle of influences that challenges the politically innocent face that Pentecos-

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tals usually prefer to hold up to the world (see also Ellis and Haar 2004). Closeness to God, personal salvation, personal empowerment, wealth and political power are all seen as part of the same causal chain. The struggle of the Pentecostal churches in Nigeria is against the supernatural powers that underpin the power of those politicians and influential people that have created havoc in Nigerian society, holding it back from the prosperity that is its due. At the same time, the religious power of Nigeria and its people is transforming worldwide religionscapes and creating new geographies.

Europe, the Dark Continent: Bodying Forth Religious Geographies The Europeans, you know, they do not know what we are doing. We have not been able to reach out to the Europeans … We see the churches as indigenous churches. We do not see it for example as the RCCG Nigeria. No. We see it as the Redeemed Christian Church of God of Netherlands. We see it as a situation where the Dutch people will come into the church and the Nigerian pastors will withdraw. (interview with Brown Oyitsu, head of missions RCCG, Lagos, June 2007)

The main goal of the RCCG according to its mission statement is to go to heaven, take as many people as possible with them, and in order to achieve this, to plant churches: within five minutes’ walking distance in all developing countries and within ten minutes driving distance in developed countries. In Nigeria, especially in the southwest, they seem to be very successful: branches of the RCCG are literally everywhere you look. In Europe, their expansion is also a fact: in the Netherlands, the RCCG has grown from a single prayer group to nineteen parishes (perhaps already twenty) in ten years. In the United Kingdom, their parishes run into the hundreds. As I have shown in another essay, the power of the RCCG is derived in part from its ambition to ‘cover territory’. Through its churchplanting strategies, the RCCG creates a geography that feeds back on itself to mobilise yet more money and people to increase the size and scope of the RCCG (Knibbe 2009). In short, the RCCG is involved, makes use of and is itself a force of that conglomerate of processes that is indicated with the blanket term globalisation. How should we see the relationship between individual religious experience and globalisation? Several authors have paid attention to the relationship between globalisation and the subject, in some cases with specific reference to charismatic Christianity (Appadurai 1996; Coleman 2000; Dijk 2001; Csordas 2007). In many cases, their emphasis is on transnational migrants: people who move from one place to the other to find a job, create a better life for their children. In this section, however, I want to stress that although religious globalisation often rides on the back of

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transnational migration, this should not deter us from considering the pastors who contribute to the worldwide spread of the RCCG as missionaries and not as migrants. The two missionaries I introduce below earn their keep as pastors, see themselves as missionaries and prove it by having actually planted thriving churches. Transnational migration is not the only context in which the spread of Nigerian churches should be seen, as is evident by their success in Eastern Europe (Wanner 2003, 2004; AsamoahGyadu 2005). In the first part of this essay, I did what anthropologists usually do when studying the impact of missionaries: I focused on ‘the locals’ and how they react to the missionary aspirations of the RCCG. The locals, in this case, are the Dutch, and their reactions made clear how important it is to study religious expansion from a perspective that takes the fact of embodiment seriously and goes beyond an opposition between body and soul. However, to properly draw out the relationship between globalisation and embodiment, it is necessary to focus on the missionaries themselves. One of the missionaries I spoke to in the course of my research, a woman, became a missionary while she was in the United Kingdom. She had left Nigeria after a period of marital problems and gone to live in London, to be closer to her daughter who was studying there. London is an important centre for the Nigerian diaspora, and houses some of the biggest Nigerian Pentecostal churches as well. While in London, she became member of an RCCG parish called Holy Ghost Zone, headed by a woman. This parish has in turn planted many other parishes, resulting in a whole network of pastors that is still growing and that is dominated by women. She was having a hard time in London and prayed often to find a way out of her situation. A successful businesswoman in Nigeria, she was uneasy with her life. At one point she found herself working as a cleaner in London. She begged God to show her a way, and after a period of fasting, the answer came to her via unexpected signs: One day, she was in the bathroom, again praying to God to show her what she must do. Her attention was drawn to a place-name she saw on the dustbin in the toilet: Coventry. At that moment, it became clear to her that she must go to that place and plant a church, that she had been resisting her calling for years and that this was the reason for all the hardships she had encountered. That was several years ago. Since then, nineteen other churches have been planted from the parish in Coventry. Her becoming a missionary not only empowered her personally, but gave rise to new structures of power in which other missionaries are integrated: the nineteen missionaries (often couples) who were first part of her parish before they went out to plant their own church all report to her as their mentor and in many cases also administratively, as their provincial pastor. Although she got her call while she was in the United Kingdom, other missionaries found their calling while still in Nigeria. This was the case

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for pastor Abarshi, who is currently a zonal pastor in the Netherlands. When he was first called to plant a church in Amsterdam, he was part of a network that has come out of Apapa parish in Lagos, which has produced many other missionaries (Ukah 2008: 113). At the time, he was a provincial pastor and worked for a bank. The Apapa family network has been an important source for religious innovation, creating the first ‘model’ parishes specifically aimed at young professionals and developing the strong emphasis on church planting that has come to characterise the RCCG since the early 1990s. While on a retreat with the general overseer of the RCCG in Israel, after a period of fasting, he received a call to go to Amsterdam. This was in fact against his own wishes: he did not want to leave Nigeria. And if he had to leave Nigeria, he would rather have gone to London, where his wife was born and where parishes of the RCCG flourish. Instead, he is now based in Amsterdam where his congregation is struggling to pay the mortgage on the building they have bought, confronting an uninterested Dutch population that is accustomed to seeing Nigerians in two ways: as poor migrants or victims of human traffickers, or as criminals. The disappointments and difficulties he encounters become part of a personal narrative of a humble servant of God who gave up a prestigious professional career to become a missionary. Socially, he has lost a lot in terms of status. However, by planting a church in Amsterdam, he is contributing to a global geography created by the RCCG that is central to its self-perception as an uncanny success story (Knibbe 2009). The religious geography that is created is literally bodied forth through personal religious practices such as fasting and praying, cultivating closeness to God, looking for signs and hearing a call to plant a church somewhere in ‘unknown’ territory. However, as stated above, religion should be seen as a form of power. These religious geographies are therefore geographies of power as well: supernatural and worldly power as two sides of the same coin. The centres of this power are determined by how many churches a particular parish has in turn been able to plant, the number of ‘daughter parishes’. London, for example, has become an important secondary centre of the RCCG, where the general overseer can often be found. The power that this geography conveys can be understood by noting the resistance against it by the ‘locals’, i.e., the Dutch. The woman conducting the workshop was not alone in her criticism: other Dutch Dutch women shared it, although they did not all agree that it should be voiced so strongly. Most of all, they did not want to have anything to do with the hierarchical aspect of the RCCG: despite having visited Nigeria, they had never visited the Redemption Camp or attended a Holy Ghost night, the locus of the strongest spiritual power within the RCCG. Rickli (this volume) shows quite clearly how embodiment, perception and geographical orientation are linked within religious cosmologies. In

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this light, the refusal to visit the Redemption Camp can be understood as something very significant: a refusal to embody the religious geography of the RCCG, as well as a refusal to become part of the ‘body of the church’ in terms of its power relationships (for a theorising of the links between individual corporeal bodies and social and political bodies see Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). They emphasised that it was especially the unspoken dimensions of the exercise of differences in power that they disliked: how someone always carried the Bible of the visiting pastor, how senior pastors can just make you wait and waste your time, how tasks were delegated to them without prior consultation, how people talked in different ways ‘up’ than ‘down’ depending on social position. All this goes very much against the egalitarian spirit of Dutch people. As an aside, this does not mean that all Dutch people talk the same way to people in power and to those that are less powerful. However, this difference is invisible to themselves, because it feels so ‘natural’, it is part of the normal generative routines, an example of habitus. During the workshop several pastors challenged the ‘adaptation model’ to Dutch culture that the leader of this workshop was propagating, emphasizing that the RCCG is a multicultural, international church. This casts the unwilling Dutch Dutch potential converts in the role of ‘locals’ too bound into their own local society to be able to appreciate the wider horizons in which the RCCG operates: that of ‘global Christianity’. The negotiation between the local and the global in the ‘habitus of the saved soul’ is born out of a confrontation that brings to light all sorts of unconscious, prereflective ways of being, relating and belonging.

Conclusions The intention of this paper was to bring into focus a series of linkages: between individual embodiment, religious experience, the motivation to save souls, institutional power and the global expansion of charismatic Christianity. I have argued that notions of power – individual, supernatural, institutional, economic – are central to the globalisation of religion and even to everyday religious practice, the ongoing sanctification of the body to close it off to the ministry of the devil. The habit of changing the habitus, itself the habitus of the saved soul, needs constant reinforcement from communities of believers that can be found anywhere through the religious geographies that are created by missionaries that are fuelled by deeply personal religious experiences and life narratives of redemption. A central argument of this paper therefore is not only that the habitus can be subject to constant change, but that it also creates global flows, religious geograp hies of conversion that orient the believer towards particular centres of religious power such as the Redemption Camp in Nigeria or

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the Festival of Life in London. Through the habitus of the saved soul one becomes incorporated into transnational religious geographies that have multiple centres of spiritual, financial and political power. The question of ‘ontological conspiracy’ then becomes reversed: through the need to constantly change the habitus, an expanding social power structure is created that situates itself within the larger social field of global Pentecostalism. Notably, resistance to this transnational power structure is expressed through particular bodily and spatial practices: the women, who, however committed they are to their local parish, refuse to visit the Redemption Camp and to see their own beliefs in terms of loyalty towards a global church led by one charismatic leader. As I showed at the start of this essay, the creation of transnational geographies through church planting results in a negotiation between what is considered universal, part of the practices that hallow the body to save the soul, and what is particular, part of those practices that should be left behind. What some Dutch considered to be Nigerian, Nigerians considered to be Pentecostal, and therefore not something that should be changed. These things range from practices central to the RCCG, such as all-night vigils, to the prosaic, such as wearing a good suit. These negotiations beg to be compared to the account of mission in Africa such as those by Jean and John Comaroff, John Peel and Birgit Meyer (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Meyer 1996; Peel 2003). This will have to be left to another time, however. For now, the challenge the RCCG is struggling with is how to become ‘global’ rather than only transnational in terms of the habitus of their pastors, how to shrug off the cultural peculiarity assigned to them by the natives they are trying to evangelize. Many questions remain after this initial outline of the links between individual religious experience, the habitus and globalisation. A more theoretical concern of this paper has been to show that although religious experience, such as a call from God, can be the starting point of an anthropology of body and soul, it does not have to be the end point and can give crucial insights into the dynamics of religious globalization. The implications of this should be elaborated through comparison with other religious movements. Another issue is the ways the economics that enable this expansion are linked to the practices of paying tithes and giving donations and offerings that are such an important part of the ‘prosperity gospel’. This prosperity gospel is particularly persuasive in the context of ideologies of neoliberal globalisation. What will happen if this financial motor of expansion falters? For now, the Pentecostal habitus and the geographies that it brings into being and is in turn sustained by produce and are produced by religiously institutionalised power operating on a global level according to a ‘new paradigm’ that makes no distinction between power in this world and salvation in the next world, between holiness and prosperity, between the material and the spiritual.

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Notes I wish to thank my colleagues at the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the VU, especially João Rickli, for comments on earlier versions of this article. Furthermore, I wish to thank Anna Fedele and Ruy Blanes for their constructive comments throughout the process. This research is part of a larger international project on Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal churches, networks and believers in Northern Europe, funded by NORFACE. This research included joint research with Dr Richard Burgess, University of Birmingham, and Anna Quaas, University of Heidelberg. This research was initiated by GloPent, the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism and is administrated by VU University, Amsterdam. For more information see http://www.glopent.net/norface. 1. It is interesting to note that a simple search of the term body in the library database of VU University returns countless references in the anthropological library, whereas a search with the term soul links only to books in the theological library. 2. The title of an edited volume on phenomenological anthropology by Michael Jackson (1996).

Bibliography Adogame, A. 2004. ‘Contesting the Ambivalences of Modernity in a Global Context: The Redeemed Christian Church of God, North America.’ Studies in World Christianity 10(1): 25–48. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Asamoah-Gyadu, J. K. 2005. ‘An African Pentecostal on Mission in Eastern Europe: The Church of the “Embassy of God” in the Ukraine,’ PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 27(2): 297–321. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burgess, R. 2008. ‘Freedom from the Past and Faith for the Future,’ PentecoStudies 7(2): 29–63. Coleman, S. 2000. The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity. Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Comaroff, J. And J. Comaroff. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1. Christianity, Colonialism ad Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Csordas, T. 2007. ‘Modalities of Transnational Transcendence,’ Anthropological Theory 7(3): 259–57. ———. 1997. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: the Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press ———. 1994. Embodiment and Experience: the Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 1990. ‘Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology,’ Ethos 18(1): 5–47. Desjarlais, R. 1997. Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood among the Homeless. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 1992. Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press Dijk, R. v. 2001. ‘Time and Transcultural Technologies of the Self in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora,’ in A. Corten and R. Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost. Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. London: Hurst & Company Droogers, A. and K. Knibbe. under review. ‘Exploring Methodological Ludism in Research and Fieldwork on Religion and Spirituality.’ Ellis, S. and G. T. Haar. 2004. Worlds of Power. Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. London: Hurst and Company. Hervieu-Léger, D. 2000. Religion as a Chain of Memory. Oxford: Polity Press. Hunt, S. 2000. ‘The ‘New’ Black Pentecostal Churches in Britain,’ paper presented at the CESNUR 14th International Conference, Riga, Latvia, 29–31 August. Jackson, M. 2002. The Politics of Storytelling: Violence, Transgression and Intersubjectivity. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. ———. 1998. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1996. Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington & Indianopolis: Indiana University Press . ———. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington & Indianopolis: Indiana University Press. Knibbe, K. 2009. ‘“We did not come here as tenants, but as landlords”: Nigerian Pentecostals and the Power of Maps,’ African Diaspora 2(2): 133–58. ———. 2008. ‘The Role of Religious Certainty and Uncertainty in Moral Orientation in a Catholic Province in the Netherlands,’ Social Compass 55(1): 20–31. Knibbe, K. and P. Versteeg. 2008. ‘Assessing Phenomenology in Anthropology: Lessons from the Study of Religion and Experience,’ Critique of Anthropology 28(1): 47–62. Mahmood, S. 2001a. ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,’ Cultural Anthropology 16(2): 202–36. ———. 2001b. ‘Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual: Disciplines Of “Salat”,’ American Ethnologist 28(4): 827–53. Marshall, R. 2009. Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1991. ‘Power in the Name of Jesus,’ Review of African Political Economy 18(52): 21–37. Meyer, B. 2010. ‘Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational Forms’, South Atlantic Quarterly 109(4): 741-763. ———. 1998. ‘“Make a Complete Break with the Past”: Memory and Postcolonial Modernity in Ghanaian Pentecostalist Discourse,’ Journal of Religion in Africa 28(3): 316–49. ———. 1996. Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Ojo, M. A. 2006. The End-Time Army: Charismatic Movements in Modern Nigeria. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Peel, J. D. Y. 2003. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1968. Aladura. A Religious Movement among the Yoruba. Oxford: Oxford University Press for International Africa Institute. Scheper-Hughes, N. and M. Lock. 1987. ‘The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology,’ Medical Anthropological Quarterly 1(1): 6–41. Stoller, P. 1997. Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 1989. The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Stoller, P. And C. Olkes. 1987. In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ukah, A. 2008. A New Paradigm of Pentecostal Power: a Study of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press. ———. 2006. Reverse Mission or Asylum Christianity? African Christian Churches in Europe. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. Wacquant, L. 2005. ‘Carnal Connections: On Embodiment, Apprenticeship, and Membership,’ Qualitative Sociology 28: 445–75. Wanner, C. 2004. ‘Missionaries of Faith and Culture: Evangelical Encounters in Ukraine,’ Slavic Review 63(4): 732–55. ———. 2003. ‘Advocating New Moralities: Conversion to Evangelicalism in Ukraine,’ Religion, State and Society 31(3): 273–87. Witte, M. de. 2008. “Accra’s sounds and sacred spaces”. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32(3): 690–709.

6 Is Witchcraft Embodied? Representations of the Body in Talimbi Witchcraft Aleksandra Cimpric

Stories of witches ‘eating the heart or soul’ of their victims, transforming them into animals or zombies, are quite common throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The Central African Republic (CAR) is no exception. Witches, sorcerers, vampires, zombies, Mami-Wata or mermaids, those figures that are according to Joseph Tonda (2005) ‘imaginary or invisible’, are generally part of daily life for much of the Central African population. Adam Ashforth (2001: 208), working in Soweto, points out that ‘they (Sowetans) live in a world with witches.’ These figures ensue from ‘the natural attitude’ because they are simply a part of everyday life (Olivier de Sardan 1988: 528). Even if they belong to the invisible world, they are as a result no less real because they interfere constantly in the visible sphere (Tonda 2005). Consequently, they should be considered and analysed as real. For example, the heart of one person being eaten in the invisible sphere can cause sickness or even death to a victim in the visible sphere. When I first arrived in Bangui, the capital city of the Central African Republic, I was surprised by the multitude of discourses I witnessed about all sorts of occult forces, mostly defined by local populations as sorcellerie (witchcraft). It is striking that discourses and rumours about witchcraft continue to occupy both public and private spheres, even the most modern ones (Geschiere 1995). Witchcraft remains the most common explanation of misfortune, illness and death. As the term witchcraft can be considered very flexible and vague, it has the capacity to adapt to a variety of situations, therefore providing an explanation for new situations and answers to new requests. As Evans-Pritchard mentioned in his monograph on the Zande (1976 [1937]: 513), ‘new situations demand new magic’.

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As ‘modern discourses’ have been integrated into these societies, witchcraft also provides an explanation for capitalism and new forms of production, which often carry a negative connotation among the local population. Witches are, for Jean and John Comaroff (1993: xxix), ‘modernity’s prototypical malcontents’. Furthermore, such discourses and rumours also provide answers to questions about wealth accumulation and personal enrichment (Fisiy and Geschiere 1991; Geschiere 1995; Englund 1996), and about power and politics (Rowlands and Warnier 1988; Schatzberg 2000; Ashforth 2001). The main aim of this text is not to generally discuss the current representations of witchcraft, but to revisit the notion of the body and how it is perceived – using my fieldwork in Central African Republic as a reference – as well as to provide some reflections on the codependent relationship between body and soul. The first part of this article explains the significance of the body in the context of witchcraft through a general introduction of the role it plays in the phenomena, followed by an analysis of the notions of witchcraft in anthropological literature, in order to introduce the concept of talimbi. It emphasises, by exposing the emic point of view, the importance of understanding local representations and interpretations related to the body. After analysing current interpretations of witchcraft – transformations of the body, devouring, stealing or selling the human body and body parts – it appears that the notion of the body is a central one. Still more, as Joseph Tonda (2005: 19) asserts, ‘cannibalism came galloping into our (African) society’ and with cannibalism, ‘devouring the body’. Consequently, anthropologists studying these phenomena should constantly question this central notion. In analysing religious experience, as well as witchcraft beliefs, anthropologists have often tried to distinguish between ‘body’, the physical experience, and ‘soul’, the spiritual one. The third section of the present article explores the difficulties associated with translating the local terms téré and yingo as ‘body’ and ‘soul’. While analysing the representations of a particular occult practice known as talimbi I realized that local populations actually use the notions of body and soul to explain this practice. Nevertheless, it is necessary to examine the current perceptions of body in talimbi witchcraft. Are these perceptions historically determined? If so, do they correspond to a specific meaning from a particular period? To anticipate my overall argument: even if the notion of the soul appears in these discourses, it is always closely correlated to that of the body. By correlating tightly body and soul, the model of talimbi witchcraft avoids the Cartesian split, which often leads to false antinomies between the rational mind and the disorderly life of the body and the emotions. As body and soul are codependent, the final part of this text questions the role of spiritual and/or physical experience in the representations of talimbi witchcraft.

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The ‘Body’ in Witchcraft Phenomena Since the beginning of the anthropological discipline, ‘body’ constitutes an analytical term. As Todd Sanders points out (2008: 199), ‘within anthropology, thinking through the “body” has allowed scholars to reinsert real actors and actions into our analytic framework’. There is a vast amount of highly developed anthropological literature on the body, notably on its classificatory and symbolic role (Turner 1997). Studies of the body are helpful in the interpretation of social and cultural facts. In his Techniques du corps, Marcel Mauss (1968 [1934]: 12) emphasises that the body is the first and the most natural human instrument and as such, the universal analytical tool. The body is a way to understand the unconscious of human behaviour determined by society. The techniques of the body form some of the constituent parts of a habitus (Mellor and Shilling 1997: 20). Habitus, according to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1980), refers to embodied social and cultural dispositions, which promote forms of human orientations, perceptions, appreciations and actions. It is this sens pratique that determines and explains everyday life, ways of existence and life in the world. The perceptions of reality, of the invisible and visible worlds, which influence the perceptions of body, are a part of habitus, notably the religious habitus (le habitus religieux), which governs the foundations of all thoughts, perceptions and actions in accordance with the standards of a religious symbolism of the natural and supernatural world (Bourdieu 1971: 26). The corporal embodiment of social distinction makes its mark on the individual’s behaviour and social recognition (Lévi-Strauss, 1934 [1968]; Bernault 2006). Furthermore, the analysis of representations concerning the body can explain symbolic interpretations on a larger scale. For example, Mary Douglas showed how the symbolic conceptions of a polluted or clean body could affect the interpretations of prescriptions (taboos) and boundaries. Using the biblical term of a clean body, she argues the inadequacy of taboo theory (2002 [1966]: xiv) to measure and explain cultural variation. Even more, cultural variations exist thus in the perception of the body itself. Nevertheless, the body is not only a passive object that reflects a reified social order. The body also represents a lived experience and as an agency it represents a constructive power. As a result, through the lived body experience, people actively create and re-create a sense of themselves as members of a community (Jackson and Karp 1990: 22). The body provides, as Réné Devisch (1993: 83–4) specifies, the most immediate and tangible frame of reference within which the individual forms, comprehends and interprets himself in relation to the social and natural order. Contrary to the European perception of body, the African perception of body was – and still is to some extent – defined as being composed of

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several entities: the body as a receptacle of vital force, the visible body of a living person or the body of a dead or ritually empowered person ready for burial. Body is thus not perceived only as a physical reality (Bernault 2006). In terms of nonphysical perceptions, ‘body’ appears to be highly significant in discourses related to witchcraft activity. The French notion of sorcellerie, or the English homologues ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’,1 were imported to the African continent by early explorers, colonisers and missionaries. The labelling of these local realities by single and foreign entities, highly influenced by European history and consequently pejorative, is often inappropriate. However, this ethnocentric terminology remains in anthropological studies, on the one hand because of the absence of more appropriate terms,2 and on the other because the local population has subsequently integrated these notions into their vernacular languages and now uses them on a daily basis to express a variety of phenomena, which differ greatly from one another. In sub-Saharan Africa, witchcraft is defined mainly as a capacity to cause harm by some supernatural, occult means known only to those who are practicing it. Furthermore, witchcraft is defined by Marc Augé (1974: 53) as a set of structured and common beliefs belonging to one particular population used to explain the origin of misfortune, illness or death and a set of practices of detection, therapy and sanctions corresponding to those beliefs. In this context witchcraft is ambivalent; it can be perceived as good or bad. ‘Everything depends on the context’, as Peter Geschiere (1995: vii) points out. At the beginning of the twentieth century, witchcraft was classified, together with magic, as part of a ‘primitive’ or ‘prelogical’ mentality. It was further classified as an irrational religious belief as well as a precursor to religion (Frazer 1983 [1890]; Durkheim 1968 [1912]; Lévy-Bruhl 2007 [1927]). Contrary to these theories, Evans-Pritchard (1976 [1937]) has argued that the Zande belief system regarding witchcraft is completely logical and coherent when one understands the basis, and that witchcraft is more than a simple belief or religious experience; it is a way of life. Sally F. Moore and Todd Sanders (2001: 20) concluded that ‘it is a set of discourses on morality, sociality and humanity. Far from being a set of irrational beliefs, they are a form of historical consciousnesses, a sort of social diagnostic’. It is impossible to propose a general definition of witchcraft, and the explanation mentioned above is certainly very in-depth, however, it covers many different interpretations of the term witchcraft. In many parts of Central Africa, witchcraft can be perceived as a small organ – witch force or witch substance – innate and hereditary, located in the abdomen of a witch. This substance/organ has different names according to local vernacular languages,3 for example mangu (Evans-Pritchard 1976 [1937]), djambe (Geschiere 1995), evu(s) (Fernandez 1990; MallartGuimera 1981; Laburthe-Tolra 1985), ikundu (Tonda 2000) or likundu4 in the Central African context. In these cases the act of witchcraft can be explained as unconscious. Despite the supposed physical presence of the sub-

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stance in the body of witches, an act of witchcraft has been characterised by Evans-Pritchard (1976 [1937]: 1) as a physical act. He emphasises how difficult it is to apply spiritual or physical experience to witchcraft beliefs. Furthermore, there are multiple manifestations of a witch’s activity on the ‘victim’s body’. Witchcraft manifests as a ‘cannibal hunger’5 and Geschiere’s (1995) concept of the ‘ventre plein’ is doubly pertinent. It refers simultaneously to the presence of witch substance in a witch’s abdomen and their hunger for devouring human bodies and body parts. It is this substance that gives them the capacity to exhibit ‘unusual’ or ‘extraordinary’ behaviours; it allows a witch to transform himself/herself into an animal or spirit. In this common conception, the body is possessed by the witch substance (which can be active or not), but it is its invisible dimension that takes over or transforms it into that of an animal. Witches usually work at night, and while their body is asleep and visible, their ‘double vital’ or ‘soul’ leaves the corporal envelope. The variations of an ‘act of witchcraft’ and its consequences are as numerous and diverse as the perceptions of witchcraft. Witchcraft beliefs and related practices were supposed to disappear according to development and social changes. However, the reality for countries in sub-Saharan Africa shows that stories about ritual cannibalism, zombies, head-hunters, metamorphosis or stealing and selling human parts remain omnipresent. In more recent anthropological studies of witchcraft, the body or body parts have been used as analytical terms to explain the world of occult power (Rowlands and Warnier 1988; Nyamnjoh 2001; Bernault 2006) and of economies and enrichment (Geschiere 1995; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999). To analyse the importance of the perception of body in witchcraft, I decided to use the example of a series of representations of witchcraft known as talimbi from the Central African Republic. The example of talimbi seems particularly heuristic for several reasons. First, talimbi witchcraft is, according to the hypotheses of some rare anthropologists working in the Central African Republic, a recent phenomenon that appeared in the 1950s and has developed mainly in urban areas near the Oubangui River (Buckner 1995; Grooaters 1995; De Dampierre n.d.6). Second, the representations of this particular occult activity have never been studied in detail, and finally, in discourses about talimbi, body seems to be a pertinent analytical term. Before analysing the talimbi phenomena, it seems necessary to emphasise the difficulties in translating the terms body and soul and their dichotomy in local terms.

A Globalised Body: The Translation of Local Terms Joseph Tonda (2005) demonstrates how significant and diverse local perceptions of the body can be, as well as how difficult it is to translate them.

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Missionaries (Catholic and Protestant) were the first to try to interpret local representations of body. They tried to synthesise the information they collected in attempts to equate it with notions in the Christian value system (Jacobson-Widding 1990). For this reason, the local notions have been, as Florence Bernault (2006: 216) emphasises, largely obscured by Christian-inspired attempts to force local cosmologies into the Western categories of body and soul. The confusion still remains mainly because of the presence and importance of ecclesiastic language in the daily life of African populations. In Sango,7 the notion of body can be translated as tèrè. This notion seems to be used often in the extensive sense, not only in reference to physical experience. ‘See you soon’ is translated as I ba tèrè ti I. In this expression ‘body’ actually signifies a person as a whole. Tèrè is both material and sacred and refers to multiple expressions related to the human body. In some contexts, one can witness the implication of tèrè in the visible and invisible sphere. For example, when one says ‘mo hondo tère ti mo’ (you hide your body), he means, ‘you render your body invisible to witches’. The notion of yingo that stands for ‘soul’ is even more complex, as it has several meanings. First, it means ‘the shadow’. The shadow has, in different parts of Central Africa, a symbolic sense. As it can be seen but not touched, it represents the invisible world of witches.8 Second, it stands for the ‘vital breath’, ‘vital principle’ or ‘double vital.’ Thirdly, yingo stands for the soul and spirit of a living person, as opposed to toro, which is the spirit of nature or of dead people – ancestors. It resides in the liver and remains in the body after death. Moreover, yingo is also a personal spirit that can be good or evil. For example, when they say mo ké na yingo, which means literally ‘you have the spirit’, they express that nothing bad can happen to you – you are protected from the evil powers of witchcraft. Still, in the same context, the reference is in fact yingo ti Nzapa, which designates the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is difficult not to analyse the influences of the Christian dualism of body and soul in the current representations of body. For example, yingo is mostly used as a direct translation of soul – a yingo ti a zo ndjoni a gué na yayu which literally signifies ‘the souls of good people go to heaven’. In the current discourses, the concepts of ‘vital breath’ or ‘double vital’ are mainly expressed by tèrè – lo tourné tère ti lo, which signifies ‘s/he [the witch] turns9 her/his body’. Witchcraft, represented as a ‘cannibalistic hunger’, is incorporated in the ecclesiastic dualistic vision of body and soul, where reality is present between the evil (Satan), a friend of the body, and good (God), a friend of the soul (Tonda 2005). The body thus is perceived as a threatening and dangerous phenomenon (Turner 1997). African witchcraft is in this sense related to body and to evil. That is also the reason why ‘witchcraft’ or more precisely, the ‘spirit of witchcraft’, has become the evil in current ecclesiastical language in Africa.

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Representations of the Body in Talimbi Occult Force The Central African Republic is located, as its name indicates, in the centre of the African continent. In the country’s capital Bangui, situated near the Oubangui River, rumours currently circulate about men, women and children who disappear in rivers across the country, particularly in Oubangui. Their bodies are usually found a few days later. The citizens of Bangui unanimously respond that this is the work of talimbi, also designated in French as hommes-caïmans.10 Talimbi11 signifies nowadays a person12 who uses mystical powers, a practice, as well as an occult force to harm others. A young student Isaac explains it in these terms: Talimbi are men who, possessing an extraordinary substance, transform their body. They can remain under water, they put their potion (talimbi) in a pot, and then they put it on their heads. Once under water, they can capture someone. These ‘medicines’13 attract others to join them, and that is how they can capture them. (May 2006)14

Moreover, Dieudonné further explains that ‘he sleeps on the potion; he sits on it for a long time. After that, he can transform himself outside into the caiman and after he descends down in the water’ (May 2006). Banguissois do not speak about talimbi until someone has drowned and disappeared in the river. African populations have historically explained drowning in rivers as the result of the interference of ‘water spirits’ (Mallart-Guimera 1981; Tchago 1997), and more recently of ‘Mami-Wata’15 (Ogrizek 1981; Jewsiewicki 2003; Tonda 2005), or ‘witches from the river’ (De Rosny 1981). Moreover, it seems that talimbi were characterised as being related to ‘water spirits’ until recent times. Thus, one notes that the human aspect of talimbi is always pointed out first. Several anthropological texts show the connection made between talimbi and ‘water spirits’. Margaret Buckner (1995: 108), while working in the southeastern part of CAR, noted, ‘A man was accused of having changed into a water genie and causing a man to drown’. According to Anne Retel-Laurentin (1969: 394), ‘Bewande are men belonging to a special fellowship, working for “water genies” by hiding in caves near the water’. The first explanation of talimbi does not contradict the second one. Actually, the two representations coexist. They do, however, refer to different symbolic material, probably historically conditioned. Consequently, the representations of the talimbi’s body are not the same. These perceptions refer to the various interpretations of the notion of talimbi. The first one is the direct translation from Sango. The second one is related to the translation of talimbi in French as hommes-caïmans. The aim of the local population is not so much to explain how they are operating, because it is

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impossible to know this if you do not possess talimbi, but rather to understand why one person has been captured and killed.

Ta – li – mbi or ‘A pot on my head’ Etymologically the word talimbi seems to derive from Yakoma dialect. This dialect is composed of Sango, Ngbandi, Mbati, Mbangi and Dendi, from the same linguistic group called Ngbandi (Boyeldieu and Diki-Kidiri 1988: 31). In Sango vernacular language, the word talimbi means ‘a pot on my head’, where ta stands for ‘pot’, li for ‘head’ and mbi for ‘I’. Sometimes, more rarely, this term can also be interpreted as ‘I strike the head’, where ta stands for ‘strike’. It is believed that talimbi have a special mystical power mostly acquired from the use of plants that permits them to stay under water. These plants are said to be rubbed inside a pot, which helps them to breathe under water. This pot, made of argil, is often compared to an aqualung; it is possible that these representations originated from the colonial period. Consequently, talimbi is supposed to be a good swimmer, and his body is quite agile in the water. For this reason, populations living next to the rivers – Ngbandi, notably Yakoma and Sango, Gbanziri and Ngbaka as well as Banda-langbashi and Gbougou – mostly fishermen, are often accused of practicing talimbi. The fact that talimbi can operate under water is related on the one hand to mystical plants and substances that make him a witch and on the other to his capacity to use a special corporal technique related to swimming. ‘Swimming’ and ‘diving’ are corporal techniques that are specific not only to a particular society but also to specific generations inside this society (Mauss 1968 [1934]). He argues that multiples techniques of swimming and diving exist, like the crawl or breaststroke. These techniques are accompanied by diverse techniques of learning. The technique of swimming includes moving the body through water by using arms and legs. While observing fishermen in Bangui swimming, I realized that their techniques and apprenticing are unlike ours. If swimming is movement through water, usually without artificial assistance, the technique of the banguissois does not actually mean to move in the water, but to be able to stay above water level by touching the ground. Similarly, the techniques like crawl or breaststroke are uncommon. Furthermore, the technique of swimming, if one can call it so, is not taught to the young. Generally, the citizens of Bangui fear the river and do not approach it without an important reason or necessity (fishing, crossing the river, etc.). This fear is mostly explained by the presence of different dangers under the water’s surface (MamiWata and talimbi). As swimming and diving are then not a part of common knowledge, a person who is able to stay under the water and to move ‘like he is outside’ (Paul, October 2007), has to possess special powers and forces related to his body. This is probably one of the reasons why talimbi practice is seen as mystical.

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Why Are Talimbi Called ‘Hommes-Caïmans’? When the local population translates talimbi into French, they never translate it literally. Talimbi are mostly interpreted as hommes-caïmans,16 rarely as hommes-crocodiles. It is thus important to emphasise that a translation of homme-caïman is a random one because caimans are aquatic reptiles from equatorial and tropical America and not from Africa. Still, I noticed that people use crocodile or caiman as synonyms. For some people talimbi as a witch would be capable of transforming into a caiman, and for others this relationship is just a symbolic one. Nevertheless, symbolic historical material constitutes the first as well as the second representation. First of all, I would like to highlight that all the representations, including those related to talimbi, are continually reproduced and adapted to correspond to actual needs and demands. The representations of occult imaginary17 do not, as accented by Rosalind Shaw (2001: 50–51), simply arise sui generis, born again and again in different circumstances, disconnected from memories; they are both ‘new’ and ‘old’. One cannot understand the actual spiritual or moral representations without taking into consideration the long and slow historical recompositions and transformations (Bernault 2006: 22). The system of representations concerning talimbi as hommes-caïmans can be compared to beliefs of secret societies18 of human-animals (leopardmen, lion-men, panther-men, caiman/crocodile-men, python-men, etc.) well known in Central and Eastern Africa. Although the literature on caiman/crocodile-men is not abundant (Vergiat 1981 [1936]; Joset 1955; Munzombo and Shanga 1987), there is on the contrary plenty of literature on leopard-men (Joset 1955; Rich 2001; Shaw 2001; Beatty 2003). Thus, according to Joset (1955: 135) the secret society of caiman/crocodile19 men spread most notably between Sierra Leone and the banks of the Volta. In the literature from the beginning and middle of the twentieth century, these phenomena have been mainly characterised as secret societies that practiced ritual killing and cannibalism. Human leopards, human crocodiles or other human animals, were accused of ritually killing their victims by imitating the animal. ‘Human leopards slaughtered their victims with five-pronged “leopard knives” in order to imitate the markings of a leopard attack’ (Shaw 2001: 55). Moreover, they dressed precisely, as Munzombo and Shanga noted (1987: 231), in crocodile skin and mimicked the reptile so perfectly that they embodied and imitated every single action of the predator in front of its prey. According to these studies, they did not transform themselves into the animal that represented their society. However, these representations should not be confounded with those of the human ‘witch’ capable of animal metamorphosis or what Jackson (1990) named shape-shifting. Witches are supposedly capable of taking the form of any animal. In the current Central African context animals like owls, black cats, cockroaches, bees or ants are particularly linked to witch

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activity. Sometimes it is believed, as mentioned above, that the witch’s body stays at home, and that only her/his soul is sent into the animal’s body, which operates under her/his will (Malinowski 1963 [1922]; LévyBruhl 2007 [1927]). Sometimes, a witch has the ability of transforming her/his body into the animal form not only to harm, but also as a protective measure, so as to ensure abundant hunting and fishing success, for example. In both cases, the witch and the animal form one being. As Tauxier (1917) explains, because of the invisible but real link, when a caiman dies, a man dies the day after. In the case of animal-men, the embodiment of the animal character seems to be a more spiritual one. It is believed that men belonging to a secret society can possess some animalistic behaviour, especially the instinct to kill. Yet, this characteristic is not the same for the person transforming its body into an animal. The idea of shape-shifting, the body being transformed into an animal, can be explained as both a bodily (physical) and sensible experience. The capacity to transform into an animal is an extraordinary assertion of individual power belonging to nature. This power emphasises not only the mastery of self but also of the world. As Pastor Gerard from a Neo-Pentecostal Church in Bangui expounded a story of his grandfather – an homme-caïman: My grandfather had potions that enabled him to turn into a caiman. He dove under water to catch fish. When the canoe was filled with fish, my grandfathercaiman came out of the water and his wife put boiling water with a special potion on his body. While she anointed the caiman’s head, the head became that of a person’s and so on. (April 2006)

While studying the talimbi phenomenon, one can ascertain that the symbolic corpus that forms the system of representations seizes the material from both earlier historical constructs: a secret society of hommes-caïmans and ‘witchcraft’. Talimbi is described as a group who keeps their actions, and especially their plants, a secret. Still, anyone can become a member of their group once initiated, as Jean explained: Talimbi are like witches. They exist in a group and they have their secrets and their mystical power. When you want to become talimbi you have to sacrifice a member of your family. You go to see the chief who gives you the potions and you learn how to use them. After, you have to sacrifice someone every year. (June 2006)

In Bangui, I noted on several occasions concerning the discourses related to talimbi transforming into hommes-caïman, that the local population shared the belief that ‘this technique is more ancient. Nowadays they don’t need to transform themselves’ (Roger, March 2005). Assuming that in the current representations concerning talimbi, rapprochement can still be done through the organization of society and its secrecy, the action under the water, the animal aspect of talimbi, seems to lose its importance. Al-

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though the concept of homme-caïman persists, assimilation remains merely symbolic. This symbolic assimilation becomes even stronger when one considers the general perception, explained by Bernard, a Yakoma fisherman: They attract their victim mystically near the river. They wait under water to take her/him. They prepare a different location that is outside (in free air) and they come out of the river. They take their victim alive and they go with him/ her to this place. They cut some parts of the body, like arms, sexes … Then they drop the body into the river three days later so it can be found by the family members. (May 2006)

Besides the fact that a caiman is able to live in the river as well as outside, it does not devour its victim immediately, but ‘takes the victim to a cache in the hollow of the gullied banks’ (De Rosny 1981: 273), as talimbi. Moreover, as Marcel exposes (March 2005), ‘sometimes when a caiman is satiated, he will cut off both the arms and the head. He eats it and leaves the rest’. In this sense the behaviour of the talimbi would imitate that of the caiman, which has also been discerned in the case of secret societies of animal men, mentioned below. Only the caiman behaviour is embodied. Still more, as talimbi no longer take animal form to kill, their witchcraft or occult power has to operate differently.

Is Talimbi Witchcraft Physical and/or Spiritual Experience? The talimbi phenomenon has been mainly explained as witchcraft.20 It is still however necessary to distinguish it from the ‘ordinary’ definition of witchcraft (likundu), characterised by possessing a witch substance. First of all, talimbi do not operate only at night. They can take action at any time. For this reason, their power is often perceived by the local population as more dangerous as the witch’s one. Additionally, contrary to what Grooaters (1995: 242) noted, ‘crocodile-men are reputed to be driven by a desire for human flesh’, these representations no longer exist in Bangui. Talimbi do not eat human flesh (as likundu witches do); rather, once killed, the victim’s body is used for different purposes. Furthermore, they do not possess a witch substance or organ in their belly; their mystic power is provided exclusively by plants and roots and the knowledge of how to prepare and use them as potions. Also, talimbi power is not innate, thus not a part of the body; only the knowledge itself can be inherited. Regardless of the interpretation that one chooses to describe the talimbi’s power and capacity, no one ever refers to the talimbi’s soul, or yingo as it is more common in likundu witchcraft. If there is any transformation, it is performed through its body as Dieudonné explains as ‘Ala tourné téré ti ala’ (April 2006), which literally means ‘They turn their body’. The ability ‘to turn’ is said to be the result of a ‘vaccination’.21 By being vaccinated they

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acquire the capacity to swim, breathe, speak and see under water; they can also see the invisible world. Sometimes it is believed that their action is achieved solely by using plants, ‘They do not take you; it is the thing [potion] that takes the person under the water’ (Jean, October 2007). In contrast to likundu witches (and because of Christian influence), the talimbi’s body is never described as possessed or spiritually embodied. This is also one of the main reasons that talimbi power or force cannot be exercised in the churches as likundu power, which became in ecclesiastical language, the ‘evil spirit’ (yingo sioni) or the ‘spirit of witchcraft’ (yingo ti likundu). The ‘yingo’ of talimbi is only considered when one refers to its intention/ action. Talimbi has an ‘evil spirit’, (lo ké na yingo sioni) which means that he is a ‘bad person’ or the opposite of a ‘good person’ (a ké na ya ti yingo). The spirit (yingo) is not actually the opposite of the body (téré); it is used more as a term to describe the human conscience. In this perspective, the talimbi’s body is neither a material construct that is completely objectified and empirical, nor a separation of a ‘spirit’ or a ‘soul’. Although the talimbi’s body (power and force) is integral in the ritual22 involvement and action, it is said that the talimbi is completely conscious about what he is doing. As Jean exposed, ‘Your idea is still good, but your body is transformed. You can breathe and walk normally’ (February 2007). Therefore, it is neither believed that it is ‘separated from the thoughtful and mastering mind’ (Fernandez 1990: 95) nor ‘no longer present as a conscious, thinking agent’ (Cohen 2007: 123), as spiritual possession is a usual occurrence. In this sense, it is difficult to express the experience of talimbi as a spiritual one. It seems, for the local population, that because of the mystical aspect of talimbi action, the question of how talimbi mobilize their power and force to make their magic work either remains unanswered,23 or it is based on the many discourses mentioned below. Moreover, while in churches it is said to be impossible to heal someone who is talimbi, and even the local nganga (traditional healers) admit that it is impossible to combat talimbi if you are not one of them yourself, there is no attempt to explain why these tasks remain impossible. They prefer to focus on the fact that talimbi are so mystical, occult and dangerous that no one should search for their secret. If one does so, he risks being captured by them. For this reason, the representations around the ‘victim’ (who can become a talimbi’s victim and why; what happens to the victim after being captured) appear to be more important. The current representations related to the talimbi victims concern firstly the ‘visible’ and then the ‘invisible’ world. The action that is inflicted on the victim originates in the occult world but has a direct impact on the real world. It has been explained in these terms: You commit a serious crime.24 Afterwards, the person goes to sell you to them (talimbi). They verify if you did the thing. They call your yingo and if it shows

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up in the pot full of water, like on TV, you’re guilty. They will capture your yingo and you will go to the river bank. After that, they will capture you and they will put some potions on you so you cannot see, but you can breathe under the water. They take you out of the water and they interrogate you. Then, they will kill you and throw your body into the river. But, if you are strong and brave, they will transform you and you become their slave. You work in their invisible fields. They can also cut off some of your parts, like your sex, and sell it. (Paul, May 2006)

Human trafficking in general and the trafficking of human body parts has become quite common in modern day Equatorial Africa. Occult beliefs have been expanded and adapted, mostly in African (local) discourse as an answer to ‘modern’ (global) changes in order to explain modern realities such as international capitalism (money, markets and consumption). As Peter Geschiere (1999: 215) demonstrates, witchcraft has the capacity not only to explain how globalisation is lived in day-to-day life, but also to help us overcome the distinction between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’. The body, body parts, or zombified victims become in this ‘capitalistic’ world of witches, a means of enrichment – of money and power. I will argue still that the current discourses on a victim’s body in the phenomenon of talimbi are not so much about the accumulation of wealth, as has been stressed by Peter Geschiere (1995) for ekong, as they are about personal morality. Ekong (and its variations) were analysed as a new form of witchcraft, as Geschiere called it, ‘sorcery of wealth’. The monetary aspect remains important in talimbi witchcraft – they are selling their services and products (potions) to become talimbi or to be protected from them. The victim’s body also becomes merchandise. Paradoxically, contrary to the common-sense definition of the verb ‘to sell’, ‘to deliver to someone in exchange for money’, selling a victim to a talimbi signifies payment for their services. The notion of ‘selling’ remains thus central as it is in ekong witchcraft (De Rosny 1981; Geschiere 1995). However, as this particular practice is related to the river and mostly fishermen are accused, local populations have difficulties explaining where the supposed wealth of talimbi can be found. It is uncommon that new rich people are suspected of talimbi or that discourses about talimbi are encouraged by the rich elite, so as to protect themselves from the envy of family members. In Bangui, as in other parts of the country, most of the population is afraid to be sold to the talimbi (ka na a talimbi). Once a person is sold to the talimbi, after one’s culpability has been verified, the talimbi are ready for action. They prepare a special pot – ta (made of argil – the same as the one they are supposed to put over their head) – in which they enclose the yingo of the victim, (this has been previously called ala iri yingo ti lo). From this moment a victim’s yingo is deemed possessed – his or her mind is possessed and the person is ‘turned’.25 By taking yingo, a victim is separated from consciousness and is therefore easily directed by the invisible force of the talimbi. After the victim has been killed talimbi can

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transform her/him into a ‘zombie’. Representations of zombified victims are known all over sub-Saharan Africa (Geschiere 1995; Comaroff and Comaroff 1999; Sanders 2001). Well known in the context of Caribbean voodoo, zombies are according to Peter Geschiere (1995) a recent phenomenon in the African context; however it has become central in the current imaginary of ‘occult economies’26 (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993). Once a victim is transformed into a zombie, s/he loses one of the body entities, the ‘double vital’ or invisible body. It is this entity that outlives the visible body after death. The victim becomes invisible to the rest of the population who finds its body, the visible part of it, at the river bank a few days after. According to Joseph Tonda (2005: 146–47), the idea that the body can be eliminated and reused without the willingness of the victim signifies that the person and the body constitute two different, though not separable entities. Their separation induces misfortune, illness or, as in this case, death. He proposes, based on Central African terminology, which I found particularly pertinent also in the context of talimbi, the use of person (social component) and body (symbolic component). The symbol is what represents the invisible. For that reason body as a symbol would manifest as invisibility. The disappearance of the person in the river at the hands of talimbi provokes in fact the disappearance of the ‘social’ person, because s/he is no longer visible, while the symbolic invisible part – the body – continues to exist in the invisible sphere. It is the symbolic part that is ‘turned’ into a zombie and that is identified as an instrument of capitalistic production. It is actually the symbol of the body that makes the vision of a person as a double social reality possible. The relation (separation as union) between those two realities is spontaneous, governed by the imaginary. As the visible part of the body is described as ‘mutilated’ and some body parts are declared cut off (mouth, hands, legs and especially sexes), this drowned body becomes a symbol of the talimbi’s action. Furthermore, the discourses on what happens to the victim’s body also have a symbolic significance. The body is, on the one hand, a symbol of the talimbi’s immoral and barbaric act, and it indicates that the victim’s actions were morally dishonorable, on the other. Second, it is a symbol or a sign of the transgression of social norms, as ‘talimbi do not take someone for nothing’ (Aimé, April 2005). In this sense, the drowned person can be suspected of an immoral or unaccepted behaviour. These discourses thus offer an occasion to either depreciate or to ameliorate the images related to the person as a moral or immoral being.27 These perceptions expressed in the discourses of individual morality simultaneously concern supposed talimbi, people who would sell someone, and the victims themselves. For these reasons, as Evans-Pritchard (1976 [1937]) has already pointed out, witchcraft prescribes a set of rules, or a code of conduct, which have to be followed by those who do not want to become a victim of witchcraft or do not want to be accused of practicing witchcraft. The discourses on the

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body as a symbol of cruelty and as an instrument in the hands of talimbi can be in this sense interpreted as a regulator of social relations.

The Multidimensional ‘Body’ as an Analytic Term in the Talimbi Phenomenon The influences of Western perceptions of the human body, those that generally oppose the soul, have abounded since colonial times. The translations of multiple local interpretations related to the body into a single one (in French, le corps) have caused the integration of these foreign terms in vernacular language and have further solidified semantic confusions. We have demonstrated that the local population thus uses both terms of body and soul. Still, these two terms are not separated entities. The notion of body, as it is presented in this article, does not correspond to a representation of a globalised, univocal body, but to a multidimensional one where yingo stands for more entities, like spirit or soul. It is furthermore difficult to analyse the experience of talimbi as either spiritual or physical. If some historical representations tend to characterise talimbi as a spiritual experience, the others should characterise it more as a physical one. In fact, as a boundary between one and the other is not so clear, talimbi experience can neither be expressed as physical nor a spiritual – as their bodies are multidimensional. It seems that the discourses about this experience are crossing permanently the boundaries of one or another. As we can observe through the talimbi phenomenon, recent studies on witchcraft and occult power (Shaw 2001; Bernault 2006) are not possible without an understanding on one hand of the historical (external as well internal conceptions) and on the other, of the current local conceptions of the body. It is necessary to emphasise also that the ‘animal-men’, notably talimbi, have been a ‘bricolage’28 in the Bastidian (Bastide 1970) sense of symbolic material from the past as well as more recent elements. These studies emphasise the importance of the colonial past, particularly memories of slavery, in this contemporary imaginary (Rich 2001; Shaw 2002), or they consider it as being a response to current social and political inequalities (Richards 2000). The body as a symbol and as a sign helps to comprehend not only the discourses about a globalised capitalistic world of production, enrichment and consumption, but also those about power, politics and authority, personal morality and social organization. Analysing a ‘turned talimbi’s body’ explained how past representations (of hommes-caïman or even ‘water spirits’) were related to the special mystic powers of some individuals as well as how the phenomenon has been reinterpreted in current contexts. In this sense, different perceptions of the body in talimbi phenomenon express a more general perception of body in Central African Republic and in other similar societies in the world today.

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The reality of the danger that is associated with stories of ‘eating a person’s heart’, ‘the trafficking of body parts’ or ‘using zombies as a work force’ cannot be explained without understanding the invisible world. As Achille Mbembe (1996) claims, one cannot understand the visible world without understanding the invisible world. We argue that the notion of multidimensional body in the talimbi phenomenon represents the instrument of both the visible and the invisible world, and thus, it is the only mediator between those two worlds. Furthermore, it is the same body that hunts, through the body of witches and their power, as well as the consequences of their malicious actions on a victim’s body become the imaginary of the local population. These representations result in the creation of permanent fear among members of these societies. Adam Ashforth (2001) tries to explain the relationship between doubts and fear in the apprehension of danger from invisible forces as a general problem of ‘spiritual insecurity’ expressed thorough the presence of dangerous bodies. Even more, in today’s global expansion of economics, capitalism and also spiritual imagination, the global world has not turned away from imaginary witchcraft, nor has the body as a symbol or a sign ceased to exist in people’s imaginations. Talimbi still represent a real danger and cause many people to live in fear of being separated from not only their social being but also their symbolic body.

Notes This article is based on several fieldwork moments (from January 2005 to March 2009), encompassing more than two years of fieldwork in CAR. 1. The distinction between ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’ has been made by EvansPritchard and corresponds to local Zande beliefs. The first stands for the mystical, innate and usually unconscious power and the second for an evil magic practice against others. Anthropological studies in the 1950s and 1960s aimed to distinguish between those two terms in different African contexts. However, it quickly became clear, as Max Marwick explained (cited in Douglas 1967: 73), that ‘the whole troublesome classification was worthless, since sorcery and witchcraft are so far subject to the same sociological generalisations’. Despite Mary Douglas’s (1967: 73) statement that ‘the ethnographic distinction between sorcery and witchcraft has yet to be sociologically justified’, in more recent studies anthropologists and historians are using the terms ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’ interchangeably as a reflection of contemporary African usages (Geschiere 2000; Bernault 2006). In this article I will use the term ‘witchcraft’ as a direct translation of the French word sorcellerie – a term used by the local population to express the skills and the powers of the occult, inexplicable world. 2. The term proposed by Cyprian F. Fisiy and Peter Geshiere (1991), ‘occult power’, has not replaced ‘witchcraft’ or ‘sorcery’.

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3. It is important to emphasise that it is inappropriate to categorize these different terms as a single substance. Usually they have larger meanings that depend on the context. Mallart-Guimera (1981) explains that evu(s) is more than substance. For more recent beliefs in evus see Laburthe-Tolra (1985). 4. Kundu means ‘stomach’ in Sango (Bouquiaux 1978) as in other proto-Bantu languages (Bernault 2006). 5. The notion of cannibal hunger refers to manducation and more generally to consumption. The representations related to witchcraft cannibalism should be explored through those of ‘manducation’. In fact the image of manducation, notably the anthropophagi, recapitulates in one single meaning, eating, copulating, killing, causing sickness. It is in this sense that it represents the mirror of social and economic changes of a society. For more details concerning manducation and anthropophagi see Joseph Tonda (2005: 197–236) and Marc Augé (1975). 6. Unpublished notes of Eric de Dampierre (see ‘Génies des eaux’, MSHO-13, and ‘Religion-Magie’), that have been preserved in the Archives of MSHO at the University of Nanterre in Paris. 7. Sango, derived from sango riverain, has slowly changed and has become the vernacular language spoken all around the country regardless of the ethnic appurtenance. Nowadays, it has the statute of a national language. 8. See A. Jacobson-Widding (1990) for more precise analyses of ‘shadow’ (the symbol of a world of witches and sorcerers) in the context of the formal and informal notion of a person. 9. ‘To turn’ signifies in this context ‘to transform’. 10. In this article I will use the French word homme-caïman, since it is used by the local population. 11. Talimbi is a Sango word. The exception is the region in the southeast where the terms bewande (in Nzakara) or kpiri (in Zande) are used and those in the southwest, where the local population also uses kifi. In this article, I will use talimbi for plural and singular. As in Sango the preposition ‘a’ (a talimbi) stands for plural, it seems impossible to use it in English. In order to maintain the original Sango word I prefer not to use the English form of plural. 12. Contrary to witches that can be men or women – nowadays mostly elderly woman are accused of witchcraft – a talimbi is always a man. 13. ‘Le médicament’ or ‘medicine’ have been appropriated by the local population, points out Florence Bernault (2006: 222) since the early twentieth century to designate charms, particularly those connected to the realm of the whites. In Sango the notion of yoro stands for remedy, poison, charm, talisman, amulet, grigri and in extension also medicine. It designates in an indifferent manner every natural or manufactured object endowed by some curative and magical powers (Bouquiaux 1978). 14. All the translations of interviews, from Sango or from French, are mine. 15. Mami-Wata is a water spirit of non-African origin (found from West to Central Africa), represented mainly as a beautiful white young woman with long black hair. Mami-Wata is a modern imaginary woman, which offers her body to one lover that she has chosen in return for some sacrifice. She is supposed to provide him with material goods. Joseph Tonda (2005: 124) analyses this spirit as a ‘spirit of money and of merchandise’. 16. In the local newspapers one can read ‘Un miraculé échappe des griffes des “hommes-caïmans”’, in Le Confident (12 July 2007. Retrieved on 12 July 2007 from

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17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

Le Confident database: http://www.leconfident.net), ‘Rambo victime d’un ‘homme caïman’, in Le Confident, (17 and 18 March 2007) or ‘Les hommescaïmans ou talimbi sont acteurs de pauvreté en RCA’, L’Agora, (19 November 2007). The term imaginary (imaginaire) is here understood in the sense that is given by C. Castoriadis. Imaginary is a corpus of social significations expressed through images and symbols produced by means of representations (see Castoriadis 1975). One can easily agree with Douglas Johnson (1991: 170) when he states that ‘secret societies are a problem for scholars’. It is often difficult to define groupings of people having a secret character. Generally, a secret society is defined as an organization that keeps hidden its existence, identity and members. They are usually characterised by specific hierarchical organisation, mystical practice, rites, secrets, initiations and philosophies, a dangerous and repressive aspect for those who are not members. Moreover, it is impossible to integrate freely into one secret society. Still, the term secret society is loaded with unspoken connotations (Johnson 1991: 171) and influenced by European history, that is why Evans-Pritchard replaced it by using ‘closed associations’ (1931 and 1976 [1937]). Joset (1955: 135–38) also entitles a small chapter in his book ‘hommes-caïmans’ and not ‘hommes- crocodiles’. ‘A talimbi a ké tongana a zo ti likundu’. (Jean, May 2006). The terms vaccination or vaccine were probably borrowed from the European medical vocabulary and are used by the local population to describe how a talimbi transforms himself. To ‘vaccinate’ can actually mean to swallow the remedy or to make small incisions on several specific parts of the body on which the medicines are placed. As one nganga (traditional healer) explained, ‘they take this [remedy] and they vaccinate themselves with it. After that, they go and they achieve their mission’ (Nganga Apanade, November 2007). Talimbi as a type of witchcraft can be interpreted more as a ritual (see Comaroff and Comaroff 1993) than a religious experience. Here we are paraphrasing Comaroff and Comaroff’s (1993: xx) question. Adultery, unpaid debts, insulting, and offending are the main alleged reasons for someone being sold to talimbi. It is however possible, if you offend a talimbi, that they can take you directly. ‘Puissance ni [from talimbi] a tourné zo ni carrément la’ explains Raphael (December 2006). ‘Occult economy’ may be taken, according to Comaroff and Comaroff, “to connote the deployment of magical means for material ends or, more expansively, the conjuring of wealth by resort to inherently mysterious techniques, techniques whose principles of operation are neither transparent nor explicable in conventional terms” (1999: 297). For more analyses of discourses on morality and immorality of people and witchcraft see Englund (1996). The virtue of ‘bricolage’ as a linguistic model, according to André Mary (2005: 283), was to stimulate reflection on the relations between metaphors and concepts which seemed to have a great deal to do with the elaboration of intellectual tools. ‘Bricolage’ is thus the intellectual capacity to operate from a reper-

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toire of elements whose composition is heterogeneous and limited in order to produce a new composition.

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Part III New Spiritualities Challenging the Body/Soul Divide

7 When Soma Encounters the Spiritual Bodily Praxes of Performed Religiosity in Contemporary Greece Eugenia Roussou

It was a warm afternoon in August, towards the end of my ethnographic research on the island of Crete. I was having one of my last field site strolls around the town of Rethymno when a shop window, filled with evil eye amulets and decorative items, caught my attention and drew me into the shop. The owner, a friendly Rethymniot woman, greeted me, and we began to talk about the evil eye. During our conversation Elena,1 an Orthodox Christian adherent and a strong believer in the evil eye, narrated an incident that, as she explained, had changed the way in which she perceived the relationship between the somatic and the spiritual. One early evening, as she was walking around the streets of her hometown, she bumped into an old Cretan man who was sitting on a pavement, smoking a cigarette. She recognized this man as her grandfather – who, however, had died several years before. He was wearing his usual clothes, smoking his usual cigarette, and, as Elena put it, looked very much alive. He did not talk to her, and she was too stunned to ask him who he was. She just returned home, unable to believe that she had not imagined the whole thing, and did not reveal what had happened to any member of her family. More than twenty years passed. It was only a couple of years before the day I met her that she discussed that childhood incident with her two brothers; only to discover that they too had seen their grandfather on that same day, each of them in another part of Rethymno, dressed in those same clothes, smoking that same cigarette. As Elena admitted to me, it was that familial discussion which convinced her about the physicality of her experience. What her brothers and she had seen was not a figment of their imagination. On the contrary, they

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had perceived their grandfather’s somatic presence, while engaging in a close encounter with his spirit. They had seen his body and his soul simultaneously. Elena went on to clarify that every time she feels the evil eye on her body, and then has it removed by her mother via religious praying and ritualized somatic action, she has the same sensation of bodily communicating with the spiritual ‘just like when I saw my grandfather’s soul’. When an individual carries envy, meanness and general bad feelings in her2 soul, she holds the power to transmit the evil eye (mati) to her fellow human beings. This emotional broadcast occurs during everyday sensory communication. Gazing, gossiping, hearing, smelling, tasting: the engagement of the senses, while people interact with one another, results in evil eye affliction (matiasma). It is followed by a state of bodily distress, where the afflicted person experiences the effects, in the form of ill-health symptoms, on her body, spirit and soul. And it is removed via a ritual healing process (ksematiasma) which, with the aid of religious symbolism, is predominantly performed by lay specialists. From the summer of 2005 to the winter of 2006 I directed my anthropological attention towards the practice of the Greek evil eye3. Bourdieu (1990) has established that individuals become powerful players in the social arena through their practice: an action which is not necessarily conscious or intentional, but a product of the feel for the social game (Bourdieu 1990: 22). Adopting Bourdieu’s concept of ‘practice’ throughout my current analysis, I argue that people in Rethymno and Thessaloniki practise the evil eye by becoming engaged with it – albeit not necessarily intentionally or consciously – in multiple ways. Rethymniots and Thessalonikans cast, embody and heal the evil eye. They perform, believe, perceive and talk about it. They devise their own and follow Orthodox Christian– and ‘New Age’–inspired4 routes, where Orthodoxy – the state religion of Greece – and its church5 interacts, and blends with nondoctrinal paths of religiosity. And, as Elena’s case shows, in practising the evil eye, they act towards the collapse of the boundaries between spiritual belief and embodied perception, while bringing body, soul and spirit closely together into a reciprocal interaction. The present chapter focuses on the creativity with which people in contemporary Greece somatically encounter the spiritual. I argue that such an encounter is far from antithetical. Furthermore, it is not just confined to an interaction between body and soul. Instead, it takes place through a threefold communication between body (soma), soul (psyche) and spirit (pneuma). The main part of the chapter is divided into three levels of analysis. I begin by examining the body-soul-spirit relationship in the context of Greek Orthodoxy, where special attention is paid to the important role gender, and the female body in particular, plays in this context. I then proceed to offer a detailed account of how the tripartite relationship is negotiated in the evil eye practice via both Orthodox and non-Orthodox pathways. Finally, belief and perception seal the discussion, by stripping

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the relationship between the somatic and the spiritual of its often perceived antithetical nature, edging it instead towards a creative rapport.

Soma, Psyche and Pneuma The idea that human beings are composed of body, soul and spirit – rather than of body and soul alone – originates from Paul’s blessing in 1 Thessalonians 5:23: ‘May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Murphy 2006: 2). The Greek Orthodox Fathers mostly followed Paul’s threefold schema. For them, soma, ‘the physical or material aspect of man’s nature’, psyche, ‘the life-force that causes the body to be something that feels and perceives’, and pneuma, the force ‘through which man apprehends God and enters into communion with him’, were strictly interdependent (Ware 1999: 47–48). Sometimes, the Fathers described human nature as being the unity of body and soul alone. However, as Lossky (2005: 127) maintains, such an interpretive diversion is simply one of terminology, since the followers of the twofold schema recognized the significance of the spirit, which they regarded as the most superior aspect of the soul. ‘The threefold scheme of body, soul and spirit is more precise and more illuminating, particularly in our own age when the soul and the spirit are often confused’ (Ware 1999: 48). Rethymniots and Thessalonikans often employ this ‘confusion’, treating soul and spirit as almost one and the same. For them, psyche is mainly the source of feelings, and pneuma is mainly the source of spiritual and mental intellect. Both psyche and pneuma are thus associated with emotions and thoughts, and are considered to be closer to the spiritual sphere of our cosmos. Soma is not just the natural temple of psyche and pneuma: it transcends the physical aspect of human nature and perceives the spiritual; a spiritual, which is not necessarily related to God, devil or Orthodoxy. My informants’ act of negotiating the soma, psyche and pneuma interconnection does not derive from an Orthodox doctrinal influence; it occurs during their everyday praxes of performed religiosity. But before I explain further their approach towards the somatic and the spiritual, the relationship between the two in the ‘official’ field of Orthodoxy needs to be clarified.

Orthodox Embodiments According to the Greek Constitution, ‘the prevailing religion of Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ, under the autocephalous Church of Greece’ (Alivizatos 1999: 25). Of course, the religious identity of Greeks is far from monolithic: other religious traditions coexist

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with Orthodoxy in the twenty-first-century Greece. And, as my research has shown, Greeks pluralize their religiosity in everyday practice, where Orthodox and non-Christian spiritual activities are synthesized. Still, the ‘official’ religion of Greece remains that of Orthodox Christianity, and even nonreligious Rethymniots and Thessalonikans have characterized themselves as at least nominally Orthodox. It is a fact that the former archbishop of Greece, Christodoulos, who has now passed away but who at the time of my fieldwork was the current archbishop of the Church of Greece, brought more disbelievers closer to the Church, and opened the Orthodox Christian door to a new bodily code. He would routinely urge young people to go to church wearing their jeans, their earrings, and their piercings. And by giving bodily freedom to current or potential religious adherents, he simultaneously freed the path that would lead towards an easier communication with the spiritual. Despite such a development, the rigidity of the Church in regard to how Greeks should embody their religion remains. In the official circles of Orthodox Christianity, the body, soul and spirit threefold schema, so popular with the Greek Fathers, becomes twofold and dichotomized. The body is presented as acting in opposition to the soul. The idea that the body raises passions and sinful behaviours appears strong. Consequently, according to the advocates of such a viewpoint, predominantly priests, the soul is tempted to deviate from God and perform the ‘original sin’ all over again. Christians must steer away from embodied pleasures and seek salvation, while disengaging from the somatic and seeking the way back to their spiritual home and their Creator (Ruether 2002: 42).6 And it is women’s bodies that are primarily accused of raising temptation and preventing the soul from reaching the spiritual.

Women, Religion and the Body During church liturgies, women must always sit on the left-hand side of the church, whereas men sit on the right. This segregation aims to move the female and male body away from one another, and to do away with the possibility of physical temptation or sinful thoughts. It also holds a particular symbolism. Women can be associated with Eve and the lefthand side, and are supposed to be closer to the devil, whereas men can be associated with Adam, the right-hand side, and are purportedly closer to God (Du Boulay 1986: 140). The position gendered embodied selves occupy in church is thus determined by potential spiritual implications. Women are also supposed to wear skirts when going to church. During my fieldwork, I saw many women, especially in Thessaloniki, who attended Sunday liturgies in trousers. Such a dress code is permissible nowadays – especially since Christodoulos’s act of loosening the doctrinal Church boundaries. Still, many of my female Rethymniot and Thessalonikan informants referred to numerous instances where Orthodox priests

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have scolded little girls who, according to them, have not dressed ‘appropriately’ for a church liturgy. As an elderly female Rethymniot put it, with an evident irony in her voice: ‘Priests shout at little girls who “dare” to wear trousers instead of skirts. But when it comes to women who wear skirts up to their bums, they do not have the guts to say anything. They just seem to enjoy the sight of naked flesh’. But perhaps the most serious taboo has to do with the menstruating body. The belief that the female body is ritually impure during menstruation is old, dating back to the third century (Ware 1997: 98). This belief is still popular in the contemporary Greek Orthodox Christian context: women must not kiss the icons, receive Holy Communion, or even attend a liturgy, when they have their period. And as the following story, told by Maria, shows, they are prevented from learning how to heal someone from the evil eye: I always wanted to learn how to do the ksematiasma (anti–evil eye ritual healing). And I kept telling her, ‘Grandma, you have to teach me’. ‘Okay I will’, she kept promising. Years passed by. One day I ask her: ‘When are you going to teach me?’ We sit down, and she says that it is no longer possible because I have already menstruated. At the end, she wrote the prayer down for me. But I never used it, exactly because we did not go through the formality of the process.

The ksematiasma prayer is considered by lay people as a sacred, Orthodox Christian prayer. If a woman wants to reveal it to another woman, she usually has to find a man, who then serves as a medium in the transmission process. An intergender intervention (woman-man-woman) is thus required; otherwise the effectiveness of the prayer will be lost. But the lack of a mediating man was not the only and most important reason why Maria refused to use the prayer, and why her grandmother strongly hesitated to reveal it. If the latter had made the revelation before Maria’s first menstruation, no Eve-related evilness or other possible forms of spiritual danger would be posed, since Maria would not yet have acquired the status of a fully-female embodied self. But Maria had menstruated; she had ‘officially’ and bodily become a woman who, raised as a Christian, carried the symbolic qualities of an ‘Eve’ inside her. The taboo stereotypically attached to menstruating female bodies rests on the assumption that they are carriers of symbolic dirt and impurity (see Douglas 1966). Drawing on her research in a small town of southern Portugal, Lawrence (1988: 131) observed that, during their menstruation, women may endanger others and cause misfortune because of their condition, without necessarily acting consciously. When Greek women have their period, the prospect of transmitting the evil eye to others drastically increases. In most cases, however, this is not an intentional malicious act. It derives from the spiritual – and not essentially evil – power a menstruating woman is believed to possess.

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As Buckley and Gottlieb (1988: 7) contend: ‘Many menstrual taboos, rather than protecting society from a universally ascribed feminine evil, explicitly protect the perceived creative spirituality of menstruous women from the influence of others in a more neutral state, as well as protecting the latter in turn from the potent, positive spiritual force ascribed to such women’. The menstruating female soma can be spiritually positive and creative. It can be associated with sacred Christian female figures, such as Mary Magdalene (Fedele 2006) and the Virgin (Dubisch 1995). In the end, it can be seen to cooperate with the spiritual and transmit a not-alwaysevil eye. Menstruating or not, the Greek female body holds spiritual importance. ‘Women light the oil lamp or candle in front of the family icons, and guard the house against pollution and the evil eye’ (Dubisch 1995: 211). They can be possessed by the spirit of a saint of the Greek Orthodox Church, as Danforth (1989) demonstrates in his study of Anastenaria, a ritual where women and men in a northern Greek village become spiritually possessed by Saint Constantine. And, as Seremetakis’s (1991) thorough ethnographic account of female lamenting in Mani shows, women can use their bodies to create a sacred space of their own; a space, the entrance to which is refused to the male religious authority of the priest. When it comes to the evil eye, female somata (bodies) play an equally crucial role: they are spiritually active and religiously challenging. Yet, it is both Rethymniot and Thessalonikan women and men that are immersed in the practice. Perhaps differently, but as cultural equals, female and male individuals participate in Orthodox Christianity and the Church, and in everyday religious and spiritual activities. And, through practising the evil eye, they manage their gendered selves, while taking care of their bodily and spiritual cosmos.

Vaskania: Possessed by D/evil Vaskania is the ‘official’ term that is used in the context of Greek Orthodox Christianity to define the evil eye. It etymologically derives from the ancient Greek verb vaskaino, which means ‘to look at someone with envy’. According to the official ecclesiastic texts and the Fathers of the Greek Orthodox Church, vaskania is a demonic energy, connected with the evilness of the devil, and can result in serious personal damage (Dickie 1995; Hristodoulou 2003: 66). And, as a Thessalonikan woman argues: ‘I think that vaskania has to entail evil. Otherwise, why call a priest to bless you against vaskania?’ The Orthodox Church, its priests and its religious devotees can show tolerance towards mati (evil eye) and matiasma (evil eye affliction), namely, the most commonly used terms in reference to the evil eye. Yet, it is vaskania they recognize as the evil eye phenomenon. In the words of Father Ioannis, a Thessalonikan priest: ‘Vaskania is pro-

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voked by satanic powers; it is the devil’s work’. Or as a young woman told me: ‘Look, my mum, who is quite religious, accepts what the Orthodox Church accepts, namely, that vaskania exists. There is this special prayer which the priest reads in order to get rid of this thing’. When it comes to vaskania, a distinction appears to exist between ‘doctrinal’ and ‘practical/ local’ religion, that is, between ‘a religion as textual, theological percept of official church, and the one as practiced at a particular time and place as part of a given community’ (Stewart 1991: 11). Vaskania seems to belong to the doctrinal part, and mati to practical religion. But vaskania is practical too. It is not only perceived and practised by the official church representatives. Lay people utilize it rhetorically and do not make a sharp, or usually any, distinction between vaskania and mati. They cover vaskania with Christian symbolism, however. It is this name that is appropriated by the Orthodox Church and its priests, after all. According to the official ecclesiastic approach then, the devil and other demonic forces are responsible for sending the evil eye to possess people’s bodies. ‘If we regard the evil eye as devilish’, a female Thessalonikan has stated, ‘then the devil possesses our body’. The devil is regarded as the personification of evil in the context of the Orthodox Christian tradition (Stewart 1991: 141). Every form of evil, evil eye included, which touches Orthodox grounds, is attributed by the Church to the power of the devil. It is the devil who, by taking the evil eye form, possesses people’s bodies. As some priests and devoted Christian informants have explained, the devil and other demonic forces try to use the evil eye for their benefit. They attempt to take advantage of an everyday belief, in order to contaminate and steal human souls. In practice, however, my informants, Orthodox devotees included, have not actually complained of soul loss, after being victims of what is characterized by them as a ‘devilish evil eye’. When demons possess Roman Catholics in Sri Lanka, they attack their bodies and minds, not their souls. As a result, Sri Lankans become physically and mentally ill. Their souls, however, are safe (Stirrat 1977: 138). The souls of Orthodox Rethymniots and Thessalonikans appear to be as ‘safe’ as their bodies and their spirits are. If evil eye possession is equivalent to possession by the devil, then the latter does not directly aim to attack and possess their souls alone. He affects people’s bodies, spirits and souls.

Energetic Somata: Channelling Spirituality ‘From what I can understand, the evil eye is like a mini demonic possession. People get sick, not from natural causes, like a cold or a virus or something, but from other reasons. Or maybe it is these electromagnetic waves we were talking about earlier’. Giannis, a Rethymniot in his thirties, manages to capture the ambiguity of possession in the evil eye prac-

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tice. Matiasma can be a form of possession by demons. At the same time, it can be the result of energy exchange, due to a broadcast of ‘electromagnetic waves’: a possession caused by human beings. Ranging from atheists to religious Orthodox adherents, Rethymniot and Thessalonikan men and women share the belief that the evil eye occurs when one has her body possessed by someone else’s ‘energy’ (energeia). ‘People’s negative energy often influences me. You feel that there is something negative about a person and, by being in close touch with him, you become negative and moody, or you get a headache. And, do not forget, moodiness and headaches are the basic symptoms of matiasma’. The above words come from Eva, a woman in Thessaloniki. She is an evil eye ritual healer, and a nondevout Orthodox Christian. She believes that negative energy invades her body, spirit and soul when she becomes evil eyed, when she sits in close proximity to people who are evil eyed, or when she has any contact with individuals who carry negative feelings in their soul. Energeia, and the way in which it is communicated between people, seems to be for Eva, and for the majority of the Greeks I have spoken to both in Crete and northern Greece, the principal reason why the evil eye is present in their lives. As Mina says: I usually avoid thinking bad of others. But I became really angry with this particular person. For all the bad things he did to me, I strongly wished he would fail in all aspects of his life. I believe that this curse came back to me. I think that if you cannot manipulate the negative energy you want to send, then don’t do it. Since then, I try to avoid any bad thoughts because I feel I can send negative energy. And it can come back to me, like a boomerang. Or it can reach its destination, in which case I will regret sending it anyway, since I honestly do not want to do any harm.

Channelling usually refers to ‘the use of altered states of consciousness to contact spirits – or to experience spiritual energy captured from other times and dimensions’ (Brown 1997: viii). Mina’s channelling seems somewhat distant from such a definition. Energy exchange in the evil eye context does constitute a form of channelling, however. A spiritual field of intercommunicating energies triggers the evil eye, and people’s bodies, spirits and souls are possessed by its energetic power. Mina and Eva are not strong religious disciples. Yet, they both define themselves as Orthodox believers. Mina and Eva are two amongst a large number of Rethymniots and Thessalonikans who are both Christian and evil eye practitioners, and, at the same time, open to ideas of energy channelling and ‘New Age’ spirituality. These are predominantly younger women and men, aging between twenty-five and forty-five years of age, who have graduated from university and are of middle-class background. Yet, older informants of mine, especially women who are devoted to Orthodoxy, are also keen on accepting energy channelling as part of their evil eye discourse and their lives in general, by talking about the continuous exchange of electromag-

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netic waves between people. Consequently, the rigidity between Orthodoxy and ‘New Age’ spirituality and, furthermore, between the somatic and the spiritual, is decisively weakened. ‘The purpose of channeling – and by extension, other forms of New Age spirituality – is to bring together elements of life ripped apart by Western civilization: science and religion, body and soul, culture and nature, male and female, reason and intuition, thought and matter’ (Brown 1997: 48). Energy channelling retains a close affinity with ‘New Age’ spirituality. Channelling is crucial in the evil eye practice, which, consequently, appears to share essential common ground with ‘New Age’ spirituality. My informants leave what they mean by ‘energy’ open. Namely, energy broadcast can be attributed to both demonic beings and human beings. One thing is certain: evil eye energy affects people’s bodies, spirits and souls.

Afflictions Eleftheria, a woman in Thessaloniki, has emphasized the intensity with which she experiences the evil eye. She feels as if she is possessed by a foreign power, a perceptual state where she has no control over her body, feelings, thoughts and actions. ‘It is like someone penetrating your being, as if you somatically hold someone else’s negative energy’. In Hofriyat, a village in the northern Sudan studied by Boddy (1988), people are possessed by zairan, or zar spirits. Zairan belong to a class of beings that are known as jinns and are considered to be natural beings, though of a different nature than the human one since zar spirits are not confined within the boundaries of the physical world (Boddy 1988: 10). The Hofriyati who are possessed by zar spirits share a similar symptomatology with the Rethymniots and Thessalonikans who are possessed by the evil eye. ‘Apathy and boredom, insomnia, anorexia, and inflamed soul – glossed as excessive worry’ (Boddy 1988: 13), which have been observed among the Hofriyati, are symptoms that my informants also frequently experience. And, as in the Sudanese case, the evil eye type of possession is spiritual, while simultaneously belonging to the physical world. Sofia, a Thessalonikan woman, describes the way in which she experiences the evil eye on her self: I feel as if I am not present here. If you ask me to perform a task I will not be able to understand what you are talking about. It feels like I am one step behind. It is as if I have entered another dimension from which I observe the present one. As if I cannot observe the present. As if I cannot be here. The phone rings, I answer, I listen to what they say, but I do not remember anything.

Sofia refers to a somatic and spiritual absence, to a bodily state where her perception, her spirit, her feelings, and her will for action are all lost. The evil eye attacks people’s perception. An evil-eyed person enters another

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dimension, as Sofia indicates, a state of embodied and spiritual isolation both from others and from oneself. One’s own body feels different and alien. Soul and spirit seem to be absent from it. This absence is depicted in one of the most popular evil eye symptoms: kommara. ‘I feel very tired. I want to lie down. My levels of energy drop. I feel like my body is “cut” from the rest of the world. My soul becomes heavy. And my spirit weakens’. This is how Manolis, a Rethymniot man, defines kommara. Niki in Thessaloniki feels similarly: I am in a very bad mood and I know it is mati, I can feel it. I have this weird headache that includes dizziness, shivers, and a sense of catatonia; all at the same time. I cannot move. I feel so tired. I have kommara; my feet are ‘cut’. This is something that automatically weakens your spirit and your soul. It changes your sense of time. Your body feels so weird, and you cannot focus. Strange, very strange.

Kommara semantically derives from the Greek verb kovo, which means ‘to cut’. Thessalonikans and Rethymniots use the term as a way to describe the variety of feelings the evil eye inflicts upon them. They feel as if their somatic and spiritual self is ‘cut’ from the rest of the world. Kommara signifies that, by feeling somatically and spiritually cut, one is also cut from any form of social activity. Having to deal with a body, soul and spirit that are possessed by the evil eye, people experience social disconnection and isolation. Sleepiness, extreme tiredness, stillness, lack of energy, a weak spirit and a heavy soul are included in kommara and contribute to the feeling of a numbed soma, psyche and pneuma. According to Desjarlais (1996), the Yolmo Sherpa in Nepal suffer from spirit loss, and, as a result, they experience a variety of symptoms: bodily heaviness, lack of energy and of appetite, inability to talk and socialize, troubles in sleeping and proneness to illness. In addition to these, they lose the sense of kinaesthetic attentiveness, or ‘presence’: when their spirit is lost, so is their sense of (bodily and spiritual) presence (Desjarlais 1996: 144, 145). And, as happens with my Greek informants, Yolmo people lose their bla – their spirit – and become socially, bodily and spiritually absent. The evil eye spiritual affliction is somatically expressed in the form of an illness.7 The evil eye power shows its presence by possessing the human body. The outcome of the imposed bodily distress varies. Headaches, dizziness, stomach upsets, eye-related problems, somatic weakness, perceptive awkwardness; in combination or as stand-alone inflictions, these constitute the most commonly developed symptoms one experiences when possessed by the evil eye. At the same time, my informants suffer from a sense of spirit and soul loss. But not in the Christian sense; that is, people in Rethymno and Thessaloniki do not think that the devil is stealing their soul and spirit through the evil eye, resulting in the blocking of the road to heaven. The devil might be one source of possession; the negative en-

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ergy of a human being might be another. But what my informants feel as spirit and soul loss is the sense of kommara: the experience of someone else occupying the centre of their feelings and spiritual intellect, numbing their sensations and bodies, and preventing their spirits from lifting up. In order for their body, spirit and soul to become repossessed, namely, by them, the performance of the ksematiasma healing is required.

Ksematiasma: A Therapeutic Encounter with the Sacred I put water inside a small coffee cup. I cross it three times, in the name of Holy Trinity, you see. Then, with my finger, I take oil from the kantili (oil lamp), which I have already removed from the ikonostasi (icon altar).8 While silently saying a prayer, I drop oil into the water. If the person is evil eyed, the oil drops directly to the bottom of the cup and dissolves. If not, it stays on the surface. I do this seven times. Then I cross his forehead and I give him to drink three times.

There are a few other ways of performing the ksematiasma, yet the one with the water and oil, described above by an older female healer in Thessaloniki, constitutes the most popular practice. Favret-Saada (1980: 97) observes that in France ‘exorcists make a sharp distinction between spells and demonic possession: only the latter is of interest to the clergy’. The same stands for the anti–evil eye performance. Since the Orthodox Christian Church attributes the evil eye to demonic forces, the healing from it must come from an ‘official’ ecclesiastic source. However, it is rare for someone to go to a priest and have the evil eye removed from her body. The majority of Greeks visit evil eye healers, who use Christian symbolism,9 and recite religious prayers,10 in order to ritually remove the evil eye from the body of the afflicted individuals. When someone tells me that he feels strange and he feels kommara, that he has the evil eye and all, I feel it. It is like I receive a wave which he casts. I feel an unbelievable heaviness on my forehead, and I want to yawn. I say my prayer. And when I take a big breath I feel I have absorbed his evil eye, I have healed him.

As a Thessalonikan ksematiastra reveals above, the healer absorbs what the evil-eyed person feels; this is how healing is achieved. Spiritual channelling causes the evil eye. The channelling of positive energy and religious sacredness through Christian praying leads to its removal. Since the eighteenth century, when new discoveries about electricity were made, performances of Christian healing have been infused with the idea of a flowing divine energy and the ways in which it relates to Christ (Porterfield 2005: 163). Religious healing, therefore, has to do with the evocation of energy, and ‘this is shared between Christian and New Age discourses of healing’ (Csordas 1994: 54).

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‘Whenever I had the ksematiasma done for me, my mind would just travel around: to a boy who teased me at school, to a friend who did not call. And I felt so guilty. I knew I had to focus my thoughts on God and not on my friends. Otherwise, the ritual would not be right’. Just like Mirto, the majority of Rethymniots and Thessalonikans feel that ksematiasma brings them closer to the divine; that it opens a conduit between them and the sacred world. When they stand opposite the healer and listen to her praying murmur, they feel the need to recite a prayer themselves in order to come closer to God and to other spiritual powers. By constructing a ‘sacred reality’ (Danforth 1989: 55), the path to an efficacious healing appears to them unhindered. In his research about the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a religious movement that began in 1967 and was initiated by junior faculty and graduate students at Catholic universities, Csordas writes that ‘essential to the Charismatic healing is a concept of the person as a tripartite composite of body, mind, and spirit’ (Csordas 1994: 39). As in the case of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the evil eye therapeutic system requires the combination of healing genres into a ‘pneumopsychosomatic synthesis’ (1994: 40). Pneuma, psyche and soma encounter each other before and during the ksematiasma. Their interaction leads to the habituation of a charismatic world and the creation of a ‘sacred self’, through healing (1994: 24). The spirit, the soul and the body return from their cultural ostracism. Presence is reclaimed.

Belief as Perception ‘The distinction between “this world” and a “beyond” is widespread, but it is not universal. It is this distinction between two modes of existence that leads to a distinction between two ways of apprehending what exists: perception and knowledge on the one side, belief on the other’ (Pouillon 1982: 2). The usual predetermined representation when it comes to the evil eye rests on the assumption that there are two segments of cosmos: the physical, which is bodily perceived; and the spiritual, which is believed. The evil eye is usually placed in the second cosmos. Nevertheless, such a spatial bipolarity makes no sense. Perception and belief share a complementarity, not a rupture. The evil eye has not only cracked the symbolic fence that allegedly separates the embodied from the spiritual world. It has knocked the fence down. At the beginning of the article I narrated the experience of Elena, who somatically perceived her grandfather’s soul and spirit, and who, through the evil eye, has embodied the spiritual ever since. ‘Through our bodies we see, feel, hear, perceive, touch, smell, and we hold our everyday worlds’ (McGuire 1990: 285). Perception, given the involvement of sensory organs, is attained through embodied attendance. Elena has characterized

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her experience with her grandfather as ‘spiritual’ and ‘supernatural’. At the same time, she has insisted upon the embodiment of her belief. As she has said herself, she saw her grandfather’s soul. And she has claimed that the evil eye practice works in the same way: spiritual energies correspond with the body, and people become evil eyed and are subsequently healed. The evil eye is sensed by the bodily organs. It is physically experienced. And it is perceived through spiritual communication. Seremetakis (1994: 39) argues that ‘the sensorial is not only embraced by the body as an internal power, but it also spreads out there, and can invade the body as a perceptual experience’. In the process of debating whether the evil eye should be considered as somatically sensed and/or spiritually perceived, Rethymniots and Thessalonikans have continually talked about belief: belief in the evil eye, belief in God, belief in spiritual forces, belief in energy exchange. My informants have not only talked to me about their beliefs, but have also described how they perceive their beliefs and act them out in practice. They have shown how the evil eye inhabits an embodied space, a ‘location where human experience takes on material form’ (Low and Lawrence-Zuñiga 2003: 2), and how it populates a spiritual space too. According to Pouillon, the Hadjerai people of the African country of Chad believe in the existence of invisible spirits, the margay, like they believe in their own existence. The anthropologist then goes on to correct himself: ‘or rather, they don’t believe in it: this existence is simply a fact of experience’ (1982: 7). To draw an analytic parallel, those who believe in the evil eye believe in it as they believe in their own being; those who do not, simply believe in the evil eye’s nonexistence. Yet, it is not random that individuals who have experienced the power of the evil eye are in most cases the ones who actually believe and recognize its existence. Evil eye belief is not only ‘learned’ (Severi 2007: 30). It is also practised through the action and activation of sensory experiences, bodily sensations, and perceptual correspondences. And by doing so, it renders the belief-versusperception, the somatic-versus-spiritual, and the body-versus-spirit and soul dichotomizations obsolete.

Epilogue: The Somatic and the Spiritual in Creative Interaction Creativity is an ‘activity that produces something new through the recombination and transformation of existing cultural practices or forms’ (Liep 2001: 2). It emerges from specific people who reshape their sociocultural settings in particular historical moments (Rosaldo, Lavie and Narayan 1993: 6). In the preceding pages, I have attempted to demonstrate the creative manner with which individuals in Rethymno and Thessaloniki practise the evil eye, perform their religiosity and, ultimately, approach the relationship between (their) body, soul and spirit. Rethymniots and Thes-

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salonikans have entered a process of bringing Orthodox Christianity and ‘New Age’ spirituality closer together and, in doing so, they have begun to reshape their everyday religiosity. Through practising the evil eye, they challenge the dichotomized stereotype that seems to stubbornly pursue the somatic and the spiritual. Namely, they show that the body is not a brute fact of nature that only belongs to the physically perceptual sphere of our cosmos. On the contrary, it carries spirituality and sacredness; it is ‘spirited’ (Murphy 2006: ix). And they also illustrate that the spirit and the soul are not a spiritually privileged domain which only the Orthodox ecclesiastic official representatives can handle; lay people can vigorously and productively deal with the spiritual too. ‘Let us be careful not to separate body and spirit. We can emphasize one or the other, but to split them apart is false to what it means to be a human being. Life is in the body; we cannot separate body and spirit and live’ (Raitt 1995: 106). People in Crete and northern Greece ‘inhabit’ their bodies so that these become (spiritually) ‘habituated’ (ScheperHughes 1994: 232). They employ their senses and emotions. They believe. They perceive. They practise. During their everyday religious and spiritual restlessness, my informants vibrantly engage with the spiritual and the somatic. By spiritually perceiving and somatically believing the evil eye, they transcend the obstacles that stand between body, soul and spirit. They prove the need to go back and rechallenge our commonly held idea of natural perception; and reconsider what ‘being-in-the-world’ (Ingold 2000: 168) really means. After all, it is mati that permeates spiritual and bodily spaces, invading both, destroying their boundaries and bringing them together under a cultural mutuality of perceptual coexistence.

Notes Ruy Blanes and Anna Fedele deserve special thanks for organizing the EASA panel and subsequently placing the topic of this book under a refreshed anthropological spotlight, and for their careful reading and commenting upon earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful to Charles Stewart for his valuable insights and thorough remarks and to Devorah Romanek and Diana Espirito Santo for their scrupulous reading of the text. 1. The real names of my informants have been replaced by pseudonyms. 2. The female gender is grammatically used to identify both women and men, throughout the present text. No insinuation that the evil practitioners are mostly women is intended. This is a choice of personal writing style, in an attempt to move away from the male-centred ‘he’ which has been popularly employed to represent both the male and the female gender. 3. Fieldwork was divided between Rethymno, a town on the island of Crete, and Thessaloniki, the second largest city of Greece. It was conducted for the needs of my doctoral thesis, which focuses on the creative and pluralized ways with

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

which people in contemporary Greece handle their religiosity through the evil eye practice. ‘New Age’ is a vague category. It appears to be an unbounded field of spiritual pursuits, which can involve a large variety of practices, and it is hence difficult to define. Heelas (1996) argues that the New Age Movement is mostly about individuality and the spiritual development of the self, and so does Brown (1997: vii) who defines ‘New Age’ as ‘a diffuse social movement of people committed to pushing the boundaries of the self and bringing spirituality into everyday life’. Shimazono (1999) proposes the term ‘New Spirituality Movements and Culture’ instead of ‘New Age’. As he explains, ‘many people in these movements consider that they belong to a New Age of “spirituality” that is to follow the age of “religion” as it comes to an end. “Spirituality” in a broad sense implies religiousness, but it does not mean organized religion or doctrine’ (Shimazono 1999: 125). Although many of my informants recognize their participation in a ‘New Age’ spirituality, they do not define themselves as ‘New Agers’. Consequently, in the article I use the term ‘New Age’ with its etic sense. And I follow Shimazono’s approach, perceiving as ‘New Age spirituality’ those practices of religiosity which deviate from the Orthodox Christian doctrine, and which my informants employ in order to develop their self and get in touch with the spiritual in non-Orthodox ways. I am using the ‘church’ in its noncapitalized form to refer to the actual church building, and the mass/ liturgy. The ‘Church’ in its capitalized form signifies the doctrinal organ of Orthodox Christianity and the religious ideology that is embedded in it; yet, it does also include the ‘church’ in its signifieds, since the religious ideology cannot be separated from its material and liturgical designations. Christian monasticism, for instance, actively practises a separation between body and soul (Asad 1993: 139–40). Yet, the separation is not a ‘privilege’ of the Christian forms of monasticism only. In Buddhist monastic training, for instance, as Collins (1997: 185, 188) observes, the absolute spiritual goal is nirvana, the ultimate achievement of a bodiless existence. Kleinman (1980: 72) has famously argued for a distinction between disease, the ‘malfunctioning of biological and/or psychological processes’, and illness, the ‘psychosocial experience and meaning of perceived disease’. Although he later came to rethink the issue and consequently changed his mind about his initial statement, his dichotomized medical schema of the biological and the medically accurate versus the symbolic and the medically malfunctioning is still popular. By referring to the evil eye symptomatology as ‘illness’, I definitely do not follow an illness versus disease binarism. Instead, I use the term ‘illness’ to indicate both the biological and the sociocultural aspects of the symptoms of illness that my informants experience. In almost every Greek household, people, whether religiously devout or not, dedicate a corner in the house to create a family altar, an ikonostasi, which is usually filled with Christian icons and an oil lamp. This altar is supposed to protect the household from evil forces and the devil, and it is the place where members of the family go to pray and/or establish a form of communication with the sacred. Numbers three – signifying the Holy Trinity – and seven – denoting the seven sacraments – are repetitively used: the ksematiastra (healer) recites the prayer

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either three or seven times, she crosses the sufferer’s forehead three times, and the latter has to drink the ingredients used three times. In Rethymno I was told that ksematiasma is much more effective if it is performed by three women named Maria: a symbolic connection with the Virgin Mary is present. Furthermore, oil is used because, to quote a middle-aged Thessalonikan, ‘Christ sat below the olive tree, he prayed in an olive field, and oil is sacred because we use it in Church’. And water, according to another healer, is important ‘because we cannot live without it, it is a natural element of nature and of the human organism, and important for baptism’. For a thorough account as far as the Christian symbolism of the evil eye is concerned, see Stewart 1991: 195–243. 10. A ksematiastra does not normally reveal the prayer she recites during the healing. But all the ritual healers I have spoken to have insisted upon the fact that they only use ‘Christian words’. Apart from these secret prayers, the Creed and Saint Basil’s and Saint Kyprianos’s exorcistic prayers against magic and vaskania are the most popular choices in the performance of ksematiasma.

Bibliography Alivizatos, N. 1999. ‘A New Role for the Greek Church?’ Journal of Modern Greek Studies 17: 23–40. Asad, T. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Boddy, J. 1988. ‘Spirits and Selves in Northern Sudan: The Cultural Therapeutics of Possession and Trance’, American Ethnologist 15(1): 4–27. Bourdieu, P. 1990. In Other Words: Towards a Reflexive Sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Brown, F. M. 1997. The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Buckley, T. and A. Gottlieb. 1988. ‘A Critical Appraisal of Theories of Menstrual Symbolism’, in T. Buckley and A. Gottlieb (eds), Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 3–50. Collins, Steven. 1997. ‘The Body in Therava¯da Buddhist Monasticism’, in S. Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 185–204. Csordas, T. 1994. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Danforth, L. 1989. Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Desjarlais, R. 1996. ‘Presence’, in C. Laderman and M. Roseman (eds), The Performance of Healing. New York: Routledge, pp. 143–64. Dickie, M. 1995. ‘The Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye’, in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Magic. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, pp. 9–34.

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Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dubisch, J. 1995. In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Du Boulay, J. 1986. ‘Women – Images of Their Nature and Destiny in Rural Greece’, in J. Dubisch (ed.), Gender and Power in Rural Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 139–68. Favret-Saada, J. 1980. Deadly Words. Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fedele, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Blood, Sacred Body: Learning to Honour Their Body and Blood: Pilgrims on the Path of Mary Magdalene’, Periferia 5, http://www .periferia.name. Accessed 20 August 2008. Heelas, P. 1996. The New Age Movement. The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Hristodoulou, T. 2003. Eksorkismoi, Eksorkistes kai Vaskania. Athens: Omologia. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Kleinman, Arthur. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context Culture. Berkeley: California University Press. Lawrence, D. 1988. ‘Menstrual Politics: Women and Pigs in Rural Portugal’, in T. Buckley and A. Gottlieb (eds), Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 117–36. Liep, J. 2001. ‘Introduction’, in J. Liep (ed.), Locating Cultural Creativity. London: Pluto Press, pp. 1–13. Lossky, V. 2005. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, repr. ed. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Low, M. Setha and D. Lawrence-Zuñiga. 2003. ‘Locating Culture’, in S. M. Low and D. Lawrence-Zuñiga (eds), The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–47. McGuire, M. 1990. ‘Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the Human Body in the Social Sciences of Religion’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29(3): 283–97. Murphy, N. 2006. Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porterfield, A. 2005. Healing in the History of Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pouillon, J. 1982. ‘Remarks on the Verb “To Believe”’, in M. Izard and P. Smith (eds), Between Belief and Transgression: Structuralist Essays in Religion, History and Myth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–8. Raitt, J. 1995. ‘Christianity, Inc.’, in M. Tilley and S. Ross (eds), Broken and Whole: Essays on Religion and the Body. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, pp. 99–113. Rosaldo, R., S. Lavie and K. Narayan. 1993. ‘Introduction: Creativity in Anthropology’, in S. Lavie, K. Narayan and R. Rosaldo (eds), Creativity/Anthropology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–8. Ruether, R. R. 2002. ‘Re-evaluating the Body in Eco-feminism’, in R. Ammicht and E. Tamez (eds), The Body and Religion. London: SCM Press, pp. 41–49.

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Scheper-Hughes, N. 1994. ‘Embodied Knowledge: Thinking with the Body in Critical Medical Anthropology’, in R. Borofsky (ed.), Assessing Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 229–42. Seremetakis, C. N. 1994. ‘The Memory of the Senses, Part II: Still Acts’, in C. N. Seremetakis (ed.), The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 23–44. ———. 1991. The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Severi, C. 2007. ‘Learning to Believe: A Preliminary Approach’, in D. Berliner and R. Sarró (eds). Learning Religion: Anthropological Approaches. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 21–30. Shimazono, S. 1999. ‘“New Age Movement” or “New Spirituality Movements and Culture”?’ Social Compass 46(2): 121–34. Stewart, C. 1991. Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stirrat, R. L. 1977. ‘Demonic Possession in Roman Catholic Sri Lanka’, Journal of Anthropological Research 33(2): 133–157. Ware, K. 1999. The Orthodox Way, rev ed. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. ———. 1997. ‘“My Helper and My Enemy”: the Body in Greek Christianity’, in S. Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 90–110.

8 Reenchanted Bodies The Significance of the Spiritual Dimension in Danish Healing Rituals Ann Ostenfeld-Rosenthal

Recently, Western countries are placing an increasing importance of a holistic view on illness and healing.1 The addition of a new dimension to the biopsychosocial explanation of illness is proposed: the spiritual.2 This may be seen as a reflection of the general tendency at the level of everyday lived experience, including a growing interest in spirituality and changing notions of body and soul/spirit. This tendency is also reflected in my study of spiritual healing and patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS)3 on which this essay is based. This essay will address the following questions: What is the role of the body in the construction of the spiritual experiences of the patients? How do patients conceptually link body and soul/spirit? What do their spiritual experiences mean in relation to a healing process? And how should we conceptualise such experiences? With a point of departure in patients’ and healers’ notions of body and soul/spirit,4 illness and healing on the one hand, and the embodied spiritual experiences of the patients on the other hand, I want to argue that when spiritual experiences are bodily sensed and take on a personal meaning, it opens a possibility for ‘religious sceptics’5 to believe in the existence of a spiritual world which, in turn, plays an important role in relation to the healing process. Closely related, in this article I not only address the body-soul dichotomy, but also another and related conceptual pair of apparent oppositions: the sacred-profane to demonstrate the necessity of overcoming these dichotomies in order to understand individuals’ ‘lived religion’ or spirituality. As a point of departure, I will briefly deal with the dichotomies in a historical perspective. In a short paragraph on the concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ I position myself in the discussion as these concepts are

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contested. Following is an account of the patients’ and healers’ holistic, New Age–inspired6 notions of human nature and thus of body and soul, the sacred and the profane. A presentation of the accounts of four informants’ embodied spiritual experiences is followed by a paragraph in which I attempt to comprehend the role of the body in the construction of these experiences, and how they contribute to transformation and healing. In conclusion, a suggestion: to understand individuals’ ‘lived religion’ and embodied spiritual experiences, we must do away with the dichotomies of the body-soul and the sacred-profane.

The Body/Soul–Sacred/Profane Dichotomies To try to understand people’s relation to or engagement with the sacred has been at the heart of anthropology since the beginning of the discipline. Classical sociology of religion held religious experience to belong to the realm of the sacred in contrast to profane everyday society. Although Emile Durkheim’s (1995 [1912]) claim of the universality of this dichotomy has been criticised of being a product of European religious thought, what interested him was exactly the dialectic between these two realms. Likewise, Mircea Eliade defined the sacred as a mode of attending to or engaging with the world. With his definition of religion as a system of symbols, Clifford Geertz also conceived of the sacred as articulated in a world of social relations (Geertz 1973). The intimate relation between the sacred and society and culture has thus been thoroughly investigated. However, in a recent and relevant book, ‘Lived Religion. Faith and Practice in Everyday Life’ (2008), the American anthropologist Meredith McGuire questions the way religion and the sacred have been studied by sociologists. Her main argument is that by studying religion from the perspective of organised religion (Christianity), a socially constructed and Eurocentric perspective, sociology has misapprehended the meaning of lived religion to ordinary people and perhaps especially to people in Western societies. As a point of departure, McGuire traces the process of ‘contested meanings and definitional boundaries’ on what in Europe in the Middle Ages she considers accepted Christian belief and practice. This process – also referred to as the Long Reformation – took place in Europe and the Americas roughly between 1400–1700 (McGuire 2008: 22). As these processes dealt with exactly the above-mentioned dichotomies, and they are central for my argument, I will dwell on this topic for a while. According to McGuire one of the goals of the Protestant and Catholic Reformation movements was to limit the realm of the sacred to spaces defined by the religious authorities and thus to control the possibility of lay people to ‘tap’ into sacred powers (2008: 32). At the same time, this implied a separation between magic and religion, the process of disenchantment described by Weber. According to him, modern life is associated

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with disenchantment in the form of secularism and the stripping away of myth, superstition and magic (Weber 1958). For medieval lay people, though, a boundary between magic and religion did not exist: they used ritual and magic for all sorts of purposes in everyday life. Thus, before the Long Reformation, lay people had direct access to the realm of the sacred without clerical mediation (McGuire 2008: 33–35). Furthermore, along with the Long Reformation’s changing definitions of religion, an elimination of the ways in which people used to involve their bodies in religious practice and experience took place. Examples of such embodied spiritual practices could be the ritual preparing, serving and eating of food, different kinds of work (especially artistic work) and making music together (McGuire 2008: 104–15). This process of eliminating the body from religious practice and experience, I think, contributed together with Descartes to the separation of body and soul. The medieval sense of sacred space, then, was that it was almost ubiquitous and highly accessible to everyone. This ‘familiarity with the sacred’ constituted a world where bodily sensations and experience of the sacred – ‘experiential spirituality’ – were likely to be more important for individual religious conviction than religious belief (McGuire 2008: 93–95). As will be shown, this applies to my material as well: the sacred becomes realistic via the bodily experiences of the MUS patients. That is, to them the body is essential in the construction of their spiritual experiences. Further, exactly the questions of access to sacred power and the disenchantment idea of a separation between body and soul are central to the ‘religious sceptics’ in their rejection of being religious. Another consequence of the focus of sociology and anthropology on organised religion and belief is that the meaning of the sacred to individuals has been given less attention. Perhaps this was, among other things, what Clifford Geertz was aiming at with his formulation, ‘acts to establish long-lasting moods and motivations’ (1973), but as his interests were mainly at the level of culture, it was not taken any further in relation to the individual. With her focus on individuals’ lived religion, McGuire is an exception, and so is the American anthropologist, Thomas Csordas, another influential scholar on the subject. He defines the sacred as an existential encounter with otherness, and this otherness is a touchstone of our humanity. A touchstone, because it defines us by what we are not; and of primary importance for my questions: this sense of otherness is phenomenologically grounded in our embodiment.7 This brings me closer to the body-soul issue. The concept of ‘embodiment’ has lately taken a prominent position in the social sciences. It is based on the phenomenological assumption that bodily perception is the fundamental approach to the world of human beings. ‘Embodiment’ or ‘the socially informed body’ (Bourdieu 1977) was part of Pierre Bourdieu’s effort to do away with the Cartesian dualism. Thus, the socially informed body engages the whole body with all its senses, emotions and conscious-

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ness. And it works not only with the traditional five senses; also the sense of duty, the sense of reason, the sense of beauty, the sense of the sacred, the sense of healing, etc. lies on the backbone (Bourdieu 1977: 124) – an understanding of the relation between the body and the sacred/the soul very similar to Csordas’s. You may say, then, that the socially informed mindful body (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987) with all its senses – e.g., the sense of the sacred and the soul – is an integrated whole. In the following pages I will draw on this understanding of the integration of body/ soul/sacred. Equally, it has implications for understanding the relation between spirituality and healing.

Religion or Spirituality? As ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ are contested concepts, and as the distinction is important to my informants, I will add a few words to this discussion. The majority of the MUS patients I have interviewed are very unambiguous in their opinion of religion vs. spirituality: They explicitly reject that they are religious and believe very wholeheartedly in their newly found spiritual insight, which for many of them has come in connection with their search for a diagnosis, meaning and healing. The reasons for rejecting religion are very conspicuous, too: In their opinion, much of the trouble of history and the world is due to organised religion’s search for power, use of violence and insistence on possessing the truth and access to divine power. As one woman eloquently expressed the difference: ‘Religion is spirituality contaminated by power and hierarchy’. However, we should not uncritically accept emic opinion. So how should we consider ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’? Arguing that we are in the midst of a ‘spiritual revolution’, a turn from religion to spirituality, sociologist of religion Paul Heelas makes a clearcut distinction between religion and spirituality. Religion, he says, has come to be seen as that which is institutionalised, involving established ways of believing, regulated and transmitted by religious authorities – that which is associated with the formal, dogmatic and hierarchical. In opposition, spirituality has to do with the personal, interior, existential – one’s experienced relationship with the sacred and the knowledge deriving from such experiences. At heart, he says, spirituality can be conceived of as a ‘spirituality of life’. Originating in the New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and because of its ‘turn to life’, this spirituality is spreading also within the spheres of institutionalised, traditional religion and is becoming mainstream (Heelas 2002). Especially, with its emphasis on the personally experienced relationship with the sacred – an egalitarian access to the divine or a chance to ‘tap’ into sacred power – Heelas’s distinction is similar to my informants’.

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McGuire is more reluctant to distinguish between the concepts. She uses the term spirituality to describe ‘the everyday ways ordinary people attend to their spiritual lives’. Her main term, lived religion, is ‘made up of diverse, complex, and ever-changing mixtures of beliefs and practices, as well as relationships, experiences, and commitments – also practices of many people belonging to organised religious societies’ (McGuire 2008: 185), and her main argument is that to understand modern religious lives we should try to ‘grasp the complexity, diversity, and fluidity of real individuals’ religion-as-practised, in the context of their everyday lives’(McGuire 2008:c213). To my mind, her concept of lived religion is similar to Heelas’s concept of spirituality. However, in itself being a rejection of a sharp and unproductive distinction, it is broader and more inclusive. A quotation from Roof illustrates this apparent dilemma: More than any other, it is the experiential face of religion that takes on current prominence: in story after story the quest is for something more than doctrine, creed, or institution, although these are usually involved. What is sought after has to do more with feelings, with awareness of innermost realities, with intimations of the sacred – what amounts to the very pulse of lived religion (Roof 1999, in Heelas 2002: 366).

The distinction, then, is perhaps not between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’, but between organised and lived religion. Consequently, I will use the terms lived religion and spirituality as synonyms, but, trying to be loyal to my informants, giving more weight to the term spirituality.

Holism and Reenchanted Notions of Body, Self and Soul, Sacred-Profane, Spiritual-Material The majority of the MUS patients and healers I interviewed view the human person, illness and healing in a truly holistic perspective. As I will demonstrate below, to them body, mind, emotions and spirit are strongly connected aspects of a person. And the spiritual dimension – for many the real and eternal source of power and health – is deeply meaningful to them in their perhaps life-long healing process. These holistic concepts of body and soul, illness and healing originate among other things from the New Age movement. Thus, similar to what other anthropologists studying complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) generally agree,8 my material shows that the biomedical core model of the body – the physical, mechanical body – is being challenged, although not replaced. In the following, I will describe MUS patients’ and healers’ concepts of body and soul, illness and healing.

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Concepts of Human Nature Danish healers can roughly be categorised into five categories: 1) Multitradition or New Age–inspired healers drawing on several spiritual/religious or philosophical traditions or healing schools. 2) Reiki healers. Healers drawing on the teachings of a Japanese monk, Mikao Usui. 3) Shamanistic healers or neoshamans drawing on so-called shamanistic cosmologies and practices from all over the world and adapted to modern Western society. 4) Religious charismatic healers. They are especially performing in Evangelical contexts as collective healing meetings. 5) Spontaneous healers. They are self-taught and have spontaneously discovered their healing powers.9 Patients seeking spiritual healers are sometimes acquainted with the healers’ ‘universe’, sometimes not; if not they usually become familiar with these concepts during the course of treatment.10 Their concepts of human nature are fundamental to understanding concepts of body and soul, illness and healing. The basic idea is that everything consists of energy of different frequencies. The initial cause and source of all life forms is understood as an energy field. Depending on differences in belief and tradition, this energy field has different names: the Energy, the Source, God, the Great Spirit, Chi, the Universe, Divine Power, Reiki, etc. As the fundamental source of nature and the whole universe, this energy is also the source of all human existence: human beings are basically of divine nature. At the same time, we have an individuated spirit, a higher Self that at various levels of vibrations manifests itself via different energy bodies: the physical body, the ether body, the mental body and the astral body, including mind, thought and emotions. According to the ‘healers’ universe’, then, the higher Self and the soul are synonyms.11 With our essentially divine nature, we as human beings are also co-creators of our own existence. This is essential in relation to understanding the concepts of illness and healing: as a co-creator you are also co-responsible for your existence. In continuation of the individuated and eternal higher Self, the idea of reincarnation is another common idea. From this perspective, the body is only a tool for your higher Self or soul to experience and learn from a physical existence. For example, talking about the causes of illness, one healer explains: Illness, health and healing must be considered holistically – they are part of the same whole. We become ill because there is an imbalance in the mind or the soul, which manifests itself as a physical imbalance or disease in the body … there are the spiritual imbalances, the imbalances of the soul or the higher Self. I think you can bring with you imbalances from previous lives. I think it’s pos-

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sible for an old fear or sorrow to be ‘left over’ in the soul, which you may bring into this life. If you did not manage to deal with it in your past life, you have to do it in this life. And so imbalances will arise.

A basic metaphor of health is the concept of ‘balance’. A healthy person is in balance at all levels: the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. Likewise, a balance has to exist between these levels: a bodymind-spirit balance. Thus, the energy must flow freely at all levels and in each of the human bodies. The free flow of energy ensures that the whole body is constantly supplied with energy, which is crucial to maintaining good health. Finally, health and balance involves contact to one’s real source of power, to one’s spiritual aspect, i.e., the soul. Ensuing from this picture of a healthy person, the cause of illness is basically some kind of imbalance, a lack of contact with the Energy or blocked energy, stagnated or undersupplied areas of the body. In line with some Eastern traditions, in the healers’ universe the body is supplied with energy through seven centres or ‘chakras’. Each chakra or part of the body is related to different physical, psychological and social issues, e.g., the root chakra represents the lower part of the body (legs, feet), and the immune system, and is related to basic survival: family, work, home, economy, i.e., to social relations. Human beings, then, are not only body and mind, but also spirit. As emerges, the patients and the healers from my study hold a genuine holistic view: We as human beings – and thus health, illness and healing as well – are to be viewed in a larger social, cultural, psychological and spiritual context. Also, they unproblematically link body and soul: They are not different phenomena belonging to antagonistic spheres of existence, but rather expressions of the same being at different levels. That is, in this universe the disenchanted bodies of Western religion and of biomedicine are reenchanted (Comaroff 1994). An illuminating example of concepts of body and the spiritual dimension is given by Karin. At a seminar, she learnt to ‘sieve’ herself. The exercise consisted in drawing an imaginary sieve through the body from head to feet three times and with still smaller holes in the sieve: First the physical body was cleansed, then the emotional body, and finally the mental body. Karin explains: It was one of the experiences that really challenged my rational thought, because in order to do it I had to accept the principle that everything consists of energy. It was like surrendering to a new paradigm. I remember it very clearly, because it really was a ground-breaking experience: Actually I left the Newtonian worldview and accepted the quantum-physical worldview.

As mentioned, these concepts of human nature are holistic at a very fundamental level. As a result, the healing and the spiritual, psychological and social process of self-development are mutually exclusive for many of my

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informants. For example, a healer may often ask her client: ‘What do you think your body is trying to tell you?’ In the universe of the healers, the body is conceptualised as an ‘intelligent’ partner, a subject with its own ‘language’, and the clients’ experience of the healing is rooted in the body. The suffering body is believed to make sense in relation to your selfprocess, to teach you a lesson you have to learn in this life, to constitute the clue to the process of self-development, which is one of the primary goals in the healers’ universe. Accordingly, the lack of a thoroughgoing holism is the most serious critique of biomedicine from the MUS patients. As a woman suffering from severe, chronic migraines told me when explaining the poor-quality acupuncture performed by her general practitioner (GP): ‘He did not seem to have any understanding that there is more to it than merely sticking needles into body points’.12 My informants thus hold profound holistic – you may even say reenchanted – images of health and healing that are very different from the physically dominated images of biomedicine, and which are similar to McGuire’s informants: So central in their lives were their understandings of how emotions, bodies, social relationships, and spiritual lives are interrelated that holism shaped their key criteria for evaluating and selecting options for health care and religious affiliation (McGuire 2008:145).

In sum, body and soul are understood as expressions of the same being at different levels of vibrations. Body and soul are of the same nature and the spiritual dimension, therefore, an integrated part of peoples’ life-world. Consequently, in this context bodily experience of encounters with spiritual beings are likely to make these persuasive, and as four MUS patients’ accounts of bodily experiences of encounters with the sacred will show the body seems to be intertwined with the sacred.

Encounters with the Sacred Karin is an occupational therapist in her late forties. For a year and a half she regularly consulted her GP with symptoms ranging from headache, fatigue, abdominal pain and dizziness to arrhythmia and visual disturbances. Like a typical MUS patient she went through numerous examinations, but with no result. Until she, as she expresses it, had a breakdown and went on disability because of stress, burn-out and depression. She was referred to a psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressants. However, Karin was reluctant to use ‘happy pills’ and wanted to discontinue her treatment. Feeling that she had to move on, she began searching for alternative treatment. After having consulted a nutritional therapist, she saw a Body Self Development healer. Not realising it, she had her first healing, which lead her to a training course in healing and self-development. At

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this seminar, she learnt about the body-mind-spirit connection and the healers’ concepts of health, illness and healing. One day, as she was sitting alone in her cottage having severe back pain, she had a powerful spiritual experience: I was meditating and feeling awful. I sensed something happening behind me. I had a clear feeling of someone moving and I opened my eyes. And then, I simply felt and could see in my head how a full-size angel was standing behind me putting the hands on my shoulders. Then I broke down. I felt this completely blessed peace and was almost literally able to lean back, feeling that someone was holding me … that was really convincing. I am not religious, but because of my spiritual experiences I cannot deny the existence of something spiritual, the Power of the Universe. I don’t use the word ‘God’ … Via the spiritual I find hope, insight, and purpose in life, which helps me move on. This spiritual consciousness arose from healing and the training course. Because of my own spiritual experiences and because it was communicated in a meaningful way, I have had to accept it.

Other informants have had powerful spiritual experiences, too. Maria, a kindergarten teacher, forty-four years old, has chronic pelvic joint pain. She had one such experience at a healing workshop: I fell asleep crying and praying that if a higher Power exists, then please, prove your existence to me and help me! At night, I woke up, the room was illuminated, and a male figure was standing at the end of my bed. It was Jesus – I had no doubt … my whole body vibrated, I was in ecstasy … Then I felt the energy shaking my body … and then I fell asleep. The next morning I woke up and felt totally purified. My pain had almost disappeared and I was really in high spirits, felt that my whole body had been completely put together. And then there were these flows I feel inside of me … I simply sensed its presence in my body … It was a very powerful experience … You know, it really got to me … I turned humble.

Martin is self-employed, trading Christmas trees as well as hunting estates in Sweden. He’s fifty-one years old, and has chronic whiplash after a car accident. He says: The healing has been good for my depressive moods. But, there is another thing of great value to my life: I have met a helper. One that I talk to. I have become religious. The religions I know of don’t mean anything to me. So, I’m not religious in a traditional way, but I have a clear feeling that there is a helper when I ask for help. It is a huge white-headed eagle. I met it in a shamanistic workshop. It often takes me for a ride when I meditate … I don’t believe in an alien existence making experiments with us, but there is something. I also believe in life after death … I didn’t know I knew. My healer Ella ‘woke’ me up … And if something is wrong, I say to the eagle: You just have to help me get past this hurdle … and then I get help.

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Finally, there is Sarah. She is teaching Danish to immigrants and refugees. She’s fifty-three years old, and has chronic whiplash after a car accident: I have been trying very hard to find the meaning in all of this … During the first year after my accident I had many spiritual visions, and during healing sessions I have had some very strong spiritual experiences. For example, I have met my personal counsellor and I have found myself in the arms of a wonderful angel-like being … My life has simply taken a new direction. I don’t refer to it as being religious. By way of the spiritual, I have found a foothold that nothing else has been able to give me.

I will now go on to try to understand the role of the body in the construction of these embodied spiritual experiences and what they mean in relation to healing.

Bodily Sensed Encounters with the Sacred and Healing How, then, are we to understand the role of the body in the construction of the spiritual experiences of the patients, and what do these experiences mean in relation to a healing process? All four patients speak of how their subjective bodily experiences of contact with the spiritual world made them realistic and convincing. As Karin explains: ‘Because of my own spiritual experiences … I had to accept it’. That is, to the patients the body was the crucial entity through which the construction of the spiritual experiences took place. This is in line with McGuire when she says, ‘Bodily sensations produce a confirmation that what one is experiencing is real, not just imaginary’ (2008: 102). Contrary to common Western, especially religious, ideas of having to transcend the limitations of the material body in order to be spiritual, she argues that spirituality, and thus experiences of the sacred, fully involves peoples’ real bodies, not just their minds or spirits. Human bodies matter because the practices of lived religion involve people’s bodies, as well as their minds and spirits (2008: 97–98). Moreover, the bodily sensed spiritual experiences of Karin, Maria, Martin and Sarah take place profoundly interwoven with their personal illness narrative. Karin’s experience of the angel putting his hands on her shoulders and Maria’s experiences of the encounter with Jesus took place in a situation of despair, like an ultimate call for help to the powers above. Martin’s and Sarah’s experiences of, respectively, meeting the white-headed eagle and the personal counsellors and an angel-like being took place in a shamanistic workshop and in healing situations – situations in which they were dealing with their life and suffering. As mentioned, closely related to the idea of being co-creator of your life is the idea of suffering as a potential for personal growth, because it is related to your life task. This means that suffering is not arbitrary. Suffering is a chance for you to stop and ask yourself: Why did I fall ill? And why exactly now? What is the meaning

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of my illness? In order to learn from the suffering so you can change your life in a more vigorous direction, you must discover the meaning of the suffering. Thus, Karin, Maria, Martin and Sarah conceive of their suffering as deeply meaningful, as a way to learn a lesson of life. Hence, their bodily experiences of the sacred are interwoven with their life and suffering and take on a personal meaning at an existential level. For all of them, because of the intimate relation to their own life these subjective, bodily sensations became decisive for their belief in the reality of sacred beings and generally, in Karin’s words, that ‘there is something greater than me’. Finally, in continuation of the idea of the Energy as origin to all life and therefore accessible to everyone, patients and healers in my study conceive of the sacred as ubiquitous. This idea of an egalitarian access to divine power, which to them is a real and viable source of power, without organisational mediation is especially meaningful to these religious sceptics (sceptical to hierarchy and monopoly of the truth) and it supports their belief that as Martin puts it, ‘There is something’. Now, do the spiritual experiences of my informants and their ensuing beliefs in a spirit world play a role in relation to healing, and if so, how? In his monograph on charismatic healing in the United States, Csordas tries to understand how what he refers to as ‘imaginal performances’ are able to influence the patients’ life-world, and why experiences of a spiritual world may have a healing effect. An imaginal performance is a guided visualisation – often of meeting spiritual beings – which in combination with the patients’ self-process over time is interwoven with her life-world ‘into a single phenomenological fabric’ (Csordas 1994: 152). The magical omnipotence of the person in a liminal situation – as, e.g., Maria’s experiences of Jesus’ light and energy shaking her body or Martin’s encounter with the eagle – says anthropologist Galina Lindquist, is extended to be true of everyday reality and in many cases initiates a transformation of self and self-biography in everyday life (1997: 90) and, thus, a process of healing. The four accounts of contact with a spirit world are not guided in Csordas’s terms, although certainly evoked by a liminal situation, but spontaneous self-experienced encounters with spirit beings, and as their accounts testify, these experiences and ensuing beliefs are interwoven with their life world and become part of a more or less life-long healing process. As Maria explains: I come from a family in which spiritual topics are totally taboo. But, the spiritual dimension has played a central role in my healing. It has given me peace in relation to all that is happening around me … It has given me peace, because I never feel alone … I feel secure knowing that there is support and guidance for me. I believe there is a God … I have finally given in to that belief. Whether His name is Allah, Buddha or whatever has no importance at all. A wholeness greater than me is essential.

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Or repeating Karin’s words: ‘Via the spiritual I find hope, insight and purpose in life, which helps me move on’. Patients with chronic illnesses often ask ‘Why me?’ questions calling for apparently irrational explanatory models like witchcraft or religious/ spiritual explanations. The previous accounts indicate that the healer as a spiritual counsellor fills in an existential and spiritual void in the lives of many religious sceptics in Denmark today and perhaps in other Western societies, too. The healer’s role as a spiritual counsellor is especially relevant in relation to existential crises, e.g., chronic illness’s breach of meaning and social life. Thus, my studies have showed that the MUS patients I have interviewed are not primarily looking for healers to cure their disease, but rather acknowledge the complex relations between the physical, emotional, existential and spiritual, and that what they seek is to be seen as whole persons and to have the healers meet a range of human needs such as care and support to find the meaning of their illness and to obtain inner peace. Writing about illness experience, the medical anthropologist Byron Good points out that without a shared cultural myth like, for example, the Dinka’s, which includes a spiritual world and spirit beings, medical and psychiatric care has failed to provide a successful symbolisation of the illness (1994: 130). Equally, the meaning of MUS patients’ illness has several components: a biological, a psychological and a social. But for Karin, Martin, Maria and Sarah the meaning was only completed by a spiritual layer of meaning. That is, in Good’s terms, their spiritual experiences and the ensuing belief in a spiritual world made the symbolisation of their suffering successful. At this point it may be relevant to say a few words on the healing of the MUS patients. But first I would like for a moment to reflect on the concept of ‘healing’. What is healing? Does it merely involve the disappearance of a person’s physical symptoms? Or does healing include other dimensions as well? Csordas has a suggestion: ‘The object of healing is not the elimination of a thing (an illness, a problem, a symptom, a disorder) but the transformation of a person, a self that is a bodily being’ (2002: 3). And he continues: ‘Healing is the creation of a sacred self. But the self is elusive, and a “thing: as the self does not exist. There are only “selfprocesses”’ (1994: 276). Or with psychiatrist and anthropologist Laurence Kirmayer’s words: ‘At the heart of any healing practice are metaphorical transformations of the quality of experience (from feeling ill to wellness) and the identity of the person (from afflicted to healed)’ (2004: 34). That is, they conceptualise healing as a process. Equally, although they generally report improvement of their symptoms, when my informants speak about their healing, it is in broader and holistic terms, in terms of process. All of which has made me conceive of spiritual healing – and perhaps healing in general – as a process: a physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual process; a process embracing all dimensions of human life; a

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transformation of self and ‘self-biography’ (Lindquist 1997) or gracefully expressed by Csordas: ‘Healing is like planting a seed’ (2002: 5). And the person planting the seed is the spiritual healer. She is a midwife to this process, a bricoleur working with secondary senses, intuition and association; with open and polysemic symbols halfway between percept and concept; with a certain amount of humanness and all-explaining total universes (Lévi-Strauss 1966). A significant point to be drawn from the four narratives is that the spiritual beings become part of the patients’ intersubjective world. That is, they are agents to communicate with, to ask for help and support; agents believed to in some indeterminate way be able to influence the patients’ lives. Accordingly, all four informants attach importance to the fact that they never feel alone; they talk about the importance of ‘somebody holding you’, about ‘peace, guide and support and getting a foothold’, about ‘hope, insight and meaning in order to get on’. In sum, experiences of ‘reenchanted bodies’ make it possible for religious sceptics to be able to believe in a spiritual reality with spirit beings. The belief in ‘something greater than yourself’, a ‘higher’ order in the apparent chaos of life, may be seen as the ‘finishing touch’ of the meaning of the suffering, perhaps being able to support the healing process and induce the hope and room for agency patients with chronic illnesses so badly need to find a navigable path as liminal persons.

Beyond Body-Soul, Sacred-Profane To my informants, spirituality and healing are interconnected and closely related to the idea of suffering as a meaningful part of their self-development process. Likewise, as expressed in the quotations, the body is a crucial entity of the experiences of the sacred: it is both conceptually and experientially intertwined with the soul and the sacred. To Karin, Maria, Martin and Sarah, the encounters with the spirit world and their bodily experiences of the sacred gave ultimate meaning to their suffering. These experiences were so convincing that the majority chose to follow a spiritual path. As Sarah said: During the last two healings, I experienced a field of light around and in my body. It was divine light; floating, bright, cleansing, good … In essence, I have regained faith in my soul. As long as I am on this Earth, I will not give up. I have regained confidence that a path exists, and I have decided to follow that path for the rest of my life.

So perhaps one may suggest at a general level that the body is always to some extent involved in the construction of sacred experiences. In the end, where does that leave us in relation to the body-soul, sacred-profane dichotomies? I think that if we are to get closer to compre-

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hending postmodern Westerners’ lived religion (and other peoples’ lived religion around the world), an understanding of their complex strategies to make sense of the challenges and sufferings of their lives and how this is associated with a spiritual dimension, we must continue along the lines sketched above, developing concepts of a mindful body with its sense of the sacred – beyond the body-soul, sacred-profane dichotomies.

Notes

1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

This paper is based on two studies: (1) a study of Danish spiritual healers and their concepts of health, illness and healing and (2) a study of patients with functional somatic symptoms and the working of spiritual healing. The first project was financed by Aase & Ejnar Danielsens’ Fund, Denmark, and the second by the same and the Centre of Knowledge and Research of Alternative Therapy, Denmark. I wish to thank both funds. I also wish to thank Meredith McGuire for useful comments and Susmi Ostenfeld-Rosenthal for proofreading the chapter. For example, a quick Google search on ‘holism’ and ‘complementary medicine’ shows 535,000 sites. Among many others Csordas 1994; McGuire 2008; O’Reilly 2004; O’Connell and Skevington 2005; Ostenfeld-Rosenthal 2006. Somatising conditions or functional disorders are recently defined as: complaints or physical symptoms for which no adequate physiological basis can be found (Fink, Rosendal and Toft 2003). Diagnosis is thus problematic and ambivalent. As a consequence, the reality of subjectively experienced symptoms of the patients is often misbelieved and unrecognised. This, in turn, leads to – as Norma Ware expresses it – a social course of illness taking the shape as changing positions along a ‘continuum of marginality’. Illness experiences in this process can be, for example, role constriction, delegitimisation, impoverishment and social isolation (Ware 1992) leading to what Ware, and before her, Byron Good talked of as an unmaking of their life world. Socially accepted suffering is one way to challenge the order of a person’s worldview and creates problems of meaning. In continuation, the misbelieved and unrecognised symptoms of MUS patients can be viewed as a ‘double’ disorder. One way of managing social liminality and uncertainty is a quest for meaning, and MUS patients with their double disorder are in special need of meaning and of a name of the source of suffering (Good 1994) to redesign and remake their life worlds (Ware 1999). This is why they are frequent users of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Although my informants use ‘spirit’, ‘soul’, and ‘higher Self’ synonymous in the following, I will use ‘soul’ in accordance with the title of the book. I will explain more in detail below. My study (Ostenfeld-Rosenthal 2006) on spiritual healing and MUS patients showed that the majority of the informants were what I call ‘religious sceptics’, i.e., sceptical in relation to the centralisation and institutionalisation of

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

power and monopoly on the meaning of religious belief and practice of organised religion. The label New Age is a contested term, and I have reflected at some length on whether to use it. For example, in an earlier publication (2005) I chose to categorise a group of healers inspired by New Age thoughts as ‘multitradition healers’ to avoid the term. However, I have chosen to stay with the term New Age in a modified way, e.g., New Age–inspired or New Age–oriented, because the beliefs of the patients and the healers bear resemblance to central features of New Age cosmology: (1) a strong focus on the self, (2) an infinitely flexible and multivalent universe and (3) a democratic and egalitarian universe (see e.g., Heelas 1996). Csordas 1994: 5. The phenomenological inspirations of the last decades have brought other exceptions, especially anthropologists, e.g., Jackson 1989; Lindquist 1997, 2006; Kapferer 1997; Tedlock 2005. Agdal 2005; Baer 2004; McGuire 1995, 2008; Johannessen 1994; Launsø 1995. This narrow focus of biomedicine on the physical body (and disease in opposition to illness) has been a general critique put forward by medical anthropologists. See e.g., Good 1994; Gordon 1988; Kleinman 1980; Rhodes 1990. The study (Ostenfeld-Rosenthal 2005) demonstrate that at a basic level the first three categories show a remarkable similarity concerning worldview, concepts of human nature, illness and healing, while the charismatic healers differ profoundly. The spontaneous healers in each of their individual ways bear a resemblance to one of the other categories. In the following I refer to healers from the first three categories. According to Csordas, one task of ‘the rhetoric of transformation’ in healing rituals is ‘predisposition’, meaning that the sufferer must be persuaded that healing is possible, and that the group’s claims are coherent (2002: 27). So to some degree, the healers’ concepts must make sense. As the individuated Spirit or higher Self in this ‘cosmology’ is considered the essence of a person, a person’s spiritual aspect I consider it as synonymous to the concept of ‘soul’ in contemporary Western culture. Accordingly, many of my informants use the concepts of spirit/soul/higher Self as synonyms. This GP must actually be a progressive one having learnt acupuncture, but does not acknowledge the holistic cosmology of Traditional Chinese medicine.

Bibliography Agdal, R. 2005. ‘Diverse and Changing Perceptions of the Body: Communicating Illness, Health, and Risk in an Age of Medical Pluralism’, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 11: 67–75. Baer, H. 2004. Toward an Integrative Medicine. Merging Alternative Therapies with Biomedicine. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Comaroff, J. 1994. ‘Epilogue. Defying Disenchantment: Reflections on Ritual, Power, and History’, in C. F. Keyes, L. Kendall and H. Hardacre (eds), Asian

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Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Csordas, T. 2002. Body / Meaning / Healing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 1994. The Sacred Self. A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Durkheim, E. 1995 (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press. Fink, P., M. Rosendal and T. Toft. 2003. Udredning og behandling af funktionelle lidelser i almen praksis: TERM-modellen. Copenhagen: Månedsskrift for Praktisk Lægegerning. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Good, B. 1994. Medicine, Rationality, and Experience. An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, D. 1988. ‘Tenacious Assumption in Western Medicine’, in M. Lock and D. Gordon (eds), Biomedicine Examined. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Heelas, P. 2002. ‘The Spiritual Revolution: From Religion to Spirituality’, in L. Woodhead, P. Fletcher, H. Kawanami and D. Smith (eds), Religions in the Modern World. London: Routledge. ———. 1996. The New Age Movement. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Jackson, M. 1989. Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Johannessen, H. 1994. ‘Alternative Therapies as Social, Cultural and Therapeutic Phenomena. A Call for New Lines of Thought’, in H. Johannessen and L. Launsø (eds), Studies in Alternative Therapy 1. INRAT. Odense: Odense University Press. Kapferer, B. 1997. The Feast of the Sorcerer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kirmayer, L. 2004. ‘The Cultural Diversity of Healing: Meaning, Metaphor and Mechanism’, British Medical Bulletin 69: 33–48. Kleinmann, A. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Launsø, L. 1994. ‘How to Kiss a Monster! Designs and Paradigms in Research on Alternative Therapy’, in H. Johannessen and L. Launsø (eds), Studies in Alternative Therapy 1. INRAT. Odense: Odense University Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966. The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Lindquist, G. 2006. Conjuring Hope:. Healing and Magic in Contemporary Russia. New York: Berghahn Books. ———. 1997. Shamanic Performances on the Urban Scene. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. McGuire, M. 2008. Lived Religion. Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1995. ‘Alternative Therapies: The Meaning of Bodies in Knowledge and Practice’, in H. Johannessen, S. G. Olesen and J. Østergård Andersen (eds), Studies in Alternative Therapy 2. INRAT. Odense: Odense University Press. O’Connell, K. A. and S. M. Skevington. 2005. ‘The Relevance of Spirituality, Religion and Personal Beliefs to Health-Related Quality of Life: Themes from Focus Groups in Britain’, British Journal of Health Psychology 10: 379–98.

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O’Reilly, M. L. 2004. ‘Spirituality and Mental Health Clients’, Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services 42(7): 44–53. Ostenfeld-Rosenthal, A. In press. ‘Energy Healing and the Placebo-Effect. An Anthropological Perspective on the Placebo Effect’, Anthropology and Medicine. ———. 2007. ‘Symbolsk healing ‘embodied’. Krop, mening og spiritualitet i danske helbredelsesritualer’, Tidsskrift for Forskning i sygdom og Samfund 6. ———. 2005. Healernes univers: Spirituel healing i Danmark: opfattelser af sygdom og helbredelse – et antropologisk pilotprojekt. Aarhus: Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, Aarhus University & Research Clinic of Functional Disorders, Aarhus University Hospital. Rhodes, L. A. 1990. ‘Studying Biomedicine as a Cultural System’, in T. M. Johnson and C. F. Sargent (eds) Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method. New York: Praeger. Scheper-Hughes, N. and M. Lock 1987. ‘The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology’, Medical Anthropological Quarterly 1: 6–41. Tedlock, B. 2005. ‘Toward a Theory of Divinatory Practice’, Keynote Lecture, 2 August, University of Copenhagen. Ware, N. C. 1992. ‘Suffering and the Social Construction of Illness: The Delegitimation of Illness Experience in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 6(4): 347–61. Weber, M. 1958. From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Winkelman, M. and P. M. Peek. 2004. Divination and Healing. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

9 The Struggle for Sovereignty The Interpretation of Bodily Experiences in Anthropology and among Mediumistic Healers in Germany Ehler Voss

The question of how to interpret the experiences we have during our first shamanic journeys was one of the main questions the participants of the weekend beginners course I joined were examining. The alternative seemed to be that the source of these experiences lies inside or outside the own Self. As one participant put it, ‘Do the spirits we meet really exist or are they just projections of my inner self?’ I was there as part of my ethnological PhD fieldwork concerning mediumistic healers in Germany. From 2005 to 2007 I followed the metaphor of ‘mediumistic healing’ and came in contact with about thirty healers who act in different ways as mediums for different entities to enable them to curatively affect help-seeking clients as well as with several hundred of their clients and followers (Voss 2011). Mediumistic healing in Germany is part of a larger and vivid scene generally associated with the term spiritual healing and can be divided into different, mostly transnational scenes, each of them with their own vocabulary, techniques, social organisation and ideas about mediumship. Specifically, it is possible to speak of people who mainly refer to themselves in a spiritistic tradition as a medium, others as shamans, while others practice Reiki and others Family Constellation. Nevertheless, many healers and followers often participate in different scenes and combine their practices in everyday life and thus a well-defined classification is often not easy.1 Even if contact with usually invisible entities such as gods, spirits, fairies, angels and so on is common for many people all over the world, healing through spirits and similar entities contradicts the hegemonic biomedical and psychological ideas of bodies, personhood and healing efficacy within

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Western societies. This results, among other things, in the exclusion of such practices within official health insurance systems. Nevertheless healing practices with the help of spirits are widespread in such societies, and even in Germany many people from all social classes are familiar with such practices. But the impression that such practices and corresponding worldviews seem not to suit Western societies can also be found within the scene of mediumistic healing, and as a result a kind of uncertainty often accompanies practitioners’ attitudes. In the discussion of mediumship, it is not only the emic discourse of the mediumistic healers that oscillates between finding the origin of such experiences inside and outside the Self, but it is also within the etic discourse about experiences in religious contexts that anthropologists mostly seem to find themselves faced with the decision whether they should argue for the one or the other of these options. On the one hand spirits, energies and similar things are seen as metaphors for social forces like abstract entities such as society, a social system or culture which affect or rather generate the Self, while on the other hand they are seen as having originated in the Self through projections of the unconscious or through the imagination. This discussion leads to old ontological and epistemological questions. Today it is common to trace back different dualisms which are established in Western societies to the Cartesian dualism of res extensa and res cogitans. Thus dichotomies such as body and soul, nature and culture, subject and object appear as Western ‘folk models’ which turn out to be an obstacle for anthropological research. First they impede the understanding of emic perspectives in other regions of the world, and second they lead to a scientific ideal of objectivity which does not correspond with the reality of research because it does not seem to be possible to make a clear distinction between subject and object (as well as similar oppositions) as it is claimed against the background of such an ideal. Even if there were many efforts to present alternatives to those kinds of dualisms, there is obviously still a need for discussion as, among other things, this collection shows. One of the reasons could be the complexity of problems which follow from questioning the classical subjectobject dichotomy. Reflecting on alternatives means reflecting not only on categories such as body and soul/mind or ownness and foreignness, but also on experience and the Self as well as the relationship between the Self and the Other. In anthropology one of these alternative approaches is the much-cited concept of embodiment proposed and elaborated by Thomas Csordas during the 1990s as a new paradigm for anthropology (Csordas 1990, 1993, 1994a, 1994b), which is also mentioned by the organisers of this volume in their introduction. In the following I will point out a weakness or rather an oddity of Csordas’s conception and argue for a phenomenology of otherness which deals with the category of a radical foreignness and the assumption of a foreignness of experience itself in the way it is worked out by the German

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philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels (b. 1934). To make his approach explicit using an ethnographic example, I will then turn to the interpretation of bodily experiences among mediumistic healers in Germany and suggest a way to go beyond the emic as well as etic entanglements in classical dualisms while discussing mediumistic practices.

Perception beyond Empiricism and Intellectualism – Maurice Merleau-Ponty Csordas tries to combine the approaches of Pierre Bourdieu and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The oddity of Csordas’s approach lies mainly in his interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception which Merleau-Ponty tried to work out beyond the classical subject-object dichotomy.2 In so doing, Merleau-Ponty rejects two ways of conceptualising perception, which he refers to as empiricism and intellectualism. Both approaches he accuses of maintaining the classical subject-object dichotomy. On the one hand there is empiricism, which regards the world as complete and given. In this conception, consciousness is also objectified. Thus perception is thought in the way that given objects affect the sense organs and that atomistic impulses are registered, assimilated and recomposed by the consciousness. In doing so the perspectivity of all perception is neglected. On the other hand there is intellectualism. Intellectualistic approaches also assume a complete given world and a consciousness (namely, Husserl’s transcendental ego) with the difference that all theses of empiricism are reversed. The empiristic terms receive the addition ‘consciousness of’ and the world merely exists for the constituent. Thus empiricism tends towards objectivism and intellectualism tends towards constructivism. Merleau-Ponty attempts a third way in relocating the object into the experience of the body (Leib, le corps propre). Due to its being-in-theworld, Merleau-Ponty indicates an indissoluble enmeshment of the perceiving body and the world. The body is oriented towards the world and involved in a dynamic process of constructing the world, which at the same time exists as an entity which always confronts a subject. In such a conception oppositions such as subject and object, inner and outer or ownness and foreignness entangle themselves in a process of mutual references which makes it impossible to get a clear analytical distinction between them.

Sacralisation of the Self – Thomas Csordas While in Merleau-Ponty’s conception subject and object incessantly cause each other, Csordas (1990) talks about objects emerging from a ‘process of self-objectification’. This he demonstrates with, among other things, the

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example of a healing ritual of Charismatics in the United States in which the participants are dispossessed and in which the demons leave the bodies accompanied by shrieking, coughing and vomiting. According to Csordas the participants do not in fact perceive demons, but rather they lose control of a specific thought, habit or emotion. It is the healer as a specialist in cultural objectification who defines a perception as triggered by possession or as an emotional problem. ‘When a thought or embodied image comes into consciousness suddenly, the Charismatic does not say “I had an insight”, but “That wasn’t from me, how could I have thought of that. It must be from the Lord”’ (Csordas 1990: 34). Csordas refers to Emile Durkheim for whom the sacred emerges through sacralisation of the society, and thus Durkheim would substitute the social for the sacred. Csordas instead points out the characteristic of human beings to sacralise parts of their own as something foreign. With such a conception, Csordas’s approach shows a crucial difference to the approach of Merleau-Ponty. While with Merleau-Ponty, subject and object and thus ownness and foreignness emerge through an incessant process of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion, Csordas instead seems to understand the Other as a mere unrecognised or negated part of the Self. The Other of the Self and thus foreignness is originated in the Self, and thus Self and other become identical. The question arises as to what the Other could be and if it could be reduced to a part of the Self. This is also the question Teresa Platz raises in her insightful essay on the anthropology of the body (2006: 98–100). But in her criticism of Csordas she also seems to follow too strongly Csordas’s interpretation of Merleau-Ponty that ‘perception began in the body and, through reflective thinking, ends in objects’ (Csordas 1993: 37; Platz 2006: 45). Formulation of this kind still remains evocative of those empiristic and intellectualistic theories of perception actually criticised by MerleauPonty (1966: 3–88), and it seems that the desired collapsing of dualities is in Csordas’s approach not always fully carried out.

Phenomenology of Foreignness – Bernhard Waldenfels The German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels also deals frequently with the question of the Other in terms of foreignness. In doing so he also often refers to Merleau-Ponty and his ‘phenomenology of perception’. A crucial aspect of Waldenfels’s writings is introducing the category of ‘radical foreignness’. Radical foreignness is characterised by the fact that it is not just an Other, which could be compared against the background of a third and general category (like table and bed as two different pieces of furniture: they are distinguishable due to a specific difference but they do not differ on their own). Instead ownness and foreignness emerge – as with Merleau-Ponty – from a simultaneous in- and exclusion; in other words: ‘Ownness emerges because something escapes from it. And that

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which escapes is that which we experience as foreign or rather foreignness. Ownness and foreignness are separated by a barrier and nobody can stand on both sides of the barrier at the same time’ (1997: 21).3 Radical foreignness is not to be confused with an ‘absolute foreignness’. Thus foreignness is not an object but a relationship. It appears through withdrawal, and we have no influence on its appearance. Because radical foreignness is something which withdraws, it remains absent. There is no foreignness in itself in the same way as there is no left in itself. Radical foreignness is something beyond order. Thus there are as many foreignnesses as there are orders because every order has its own foreignness. Foreignness beyond order appears in border phenomena such as ecstasy, sleep or death, all of which even break the normal order of space and time. Phenomena of radical foreignness not only question specific interpretations but also the possibility of interpretation in general. If foreignness were conceptualised as a kind of object, it would be something which is merely not yet known, not yet understood or not yet explained (which would be a relative foreignness) but without an inherent attribute. When foreignness is conceptualised as something beyond order, the question arises how experience, in which such exceedings take place, could be understood. Waldenfels tries to describe an alternative to common ways of talking about experience with the terms pathos and response. Pathos eludes the alternative of causality and intentionality, i.e., of objectivism and constructivism. Pathos does not mean that that which befalls us exists as something on its own, just as it does not mean that something is understood or interpreted as something. We respond to that what befalls us by referring to it in speaking and acting, by welcoming it or neglecting it. Waldenfels does not try to trace back one part of the experience to an act of spontaneous inner freedom and the other part to a causal effect from outside. Instead pathos and response have to be thought of together. Waldenfels talks of a ‘temporal diastase’, an original division of pathos and response, which are connected, but in a broken way. The chasm between pathos and response cannot be closed. What befalls us does not just give reason to think about it, it also forces one to think. Trying to separate pathos and response would lead in the one case to objectivism or rather fundamentalism (emphasising pathos) and in the other case to constructivism (emphasising response). Such a conception of experience as Waldenfels proposes it leads to a foreignness of experience itself and a foreignness of the Self itself. Corporality and foreignness are thus narrowly and inseparably connected. ‘Not all of that which belongs to me is at my disposal. We put forth our hands, quicken the pace, and look around, but we do not stop breathing and change our blood-pressure like switching to another program’ (2006: 82–83). On the roots of experience ‘where the things become what they are’ for example, perception is not an act of observation but it begins with attending to something which strikes us; furthermore every act is shaped by something which attracts or disgusts us. The place

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of pathos is neither the things nor the soul or the mind, but the body (or rather the Leib), which senses itself through sensing something and through being vulnerable in its being-in-the-world. Waldenfels claims: ‘The challenge of a radical foreignness which we are confronted with means that there is no world where we are completely at home and that there is no subject who is the master in his own house. But even up to now there has always been a question of how far we meet that challenge and how far we suppress it’ (1997: 17). Foreignness is always threatening because it questions one’s own order, and there are different ways in handling foreignness. On the one hand there is the possibility of encountering foreignness in a way of openness which accepts the foreign as foreign; on the other hand there is the possibility of extracting the thorn out of foreignness by excluding it or by normalising it through tracing back foreignness as having originated in one’s ownness. Against the background of the old and questionable dichotomy of ‘the West and the rest’, Waldenfels claims that in the West there is a tendency to annex the foreign as being a product of alienation of ownness.4 In such a tradition, all political, judicial and educational institutions in ‘the West’ are based on the imagination of a – at least potential – sovereign subject which does not have foreign aspects in its own self and thus is responsible for all its actions. And there are many examples in anthropological literature which could be used to affirm that such an imagination is not the only way human beings can understand their subjectivity; for example Schäfer (1999) describes how among the Batemi in Tanzania, identity becomes an ‘unutterable identity’ when the adolescents are clearly shown an irreducible difference within the Self. And keeping in mind the perspective of Bernhard Waldenfels’s outline of a phenomenology of foreignness, the conception of Csordas (briefly summarised above) also appears as one of the many ways of neglecting foreignness through normalising it as originally based in ownness, when he explains believers’ experiences as ‘sacralisation of the Self’.

Losing and Reinstalling Sovereignty – Mediumistic Healers in Germany Human beings who refer to themselves in contemporary Germany as a medium for different kinds of entities seem to be predestined for finding arguments against the thesis that in Western culture normalising foreignness as having originated in ownness is the one and only way of living. And indeed listening to them, the world mostly appears as full of different kinds of entities such as gods, spirits, fairies, angels, aliens and so on, which affect human beings and influence their lives through ‘possession’ or ‘guidance’ that bring out doubts as to whether subjects could be seen in this discourse as sovereign and identical with one’s own.

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According to Waldenfels (1997: 44) foreignness always has an ambivalent character. On the one hand it is threatening because it questions the familiar order, and on the other hand it is alluring because it promises the possibility of different and eventually better orders and ways of perceiving. Thus foreignness is also a source for transformation because without something beyond order there would be stagnancy (1997: 84). In the biographical reconstructions of the mediumistic healers I talked with, experiences often play a crucial role which could be interpreted as experiences of radical foreignness. Foreignness often appears surprisingly as an extraordinary and uncontrollable foreignness which often exceeds the limits of interpretability. Sometimes it appears threatening and sometime alluring. Regina, a forty-year-old shamanic practitioner, reports having extraordinary or rather ‘strange bodily perceptions’ when she was young such as ‘seeing colours’. That was the reason her parents looked for a doctor, yet the doctor did not find anything pathological. When she was a young woman she took part in a spiritistic séance, during which she became familiar with the practice of table lifting. On the one hand it appeared very attractive to her, but when she perceived a movement within the wood she was frightened and stopped such kinds of practices. After this experience she often saw wrinkles on her freshly made bed, and she permanently had the impression that somebody was around her and that deceased persons wanted to contact her. Although she had already heard of spiritistic mediums and such topics interested her very much, the threatening aspect of her perceptions predominated. She had the feeling it could backfire. ‘I felt quite uneasy and tried to avoid such impressions by reading and listening to loud music and many other sensations. But it did not work. I felt that it came closer and closer and it was absolutely impossible to classify those experiences’. She also reported of a kind of effect a patient had on her when she was working nights as a nurse in a psychiatric clinic. She said she felt inundated with pictures which were obviously connected to that man’s life. Also this resulted in a defensive reaction: ‘Then I thought I should quit working nights. If I continue working the night shift, I would become more and more sensitive. And I thought: If you don’t take care, who knows where this will end’. When she came into contact with shamanic practices during her education as alternative practitioner, she said she learned to find a way to interpret and to handle her experiences. Another example is Erika, a woman in her fifties who calls herself an angel medium. She also reports uninterpretable and ambivalent experiences. She said she was a thirty-eight-year-old ‘everyday entrepreneur’ when she laid in bed and ‘suddenly all channels were open – overnight and without preparation. Simultaneously I was clairvoyant, clairaudient and clairsensitive’. She said she was not able to understand what was going on, and it took two years for her to bounce back from this ‘spiritual accident’ and recover. Even when she talks of ‘cosmic orgasms’ which were not comparable with ordinary orgasms during sexual intercourse, she em-

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phasised the ambivalence of those experiences: ‘Spiritual enlightenment is no bed of roses, and it is difficult to continue your life’. Both talk of forces which influence them in their actions, and they refer to these forces as impersonal energies or personified mainly as angels, ascended masters or power animals. While Regina is convinced of the existence of external entities and says due to her experiences on shamanic journeys, ‘Maybe like the old shamans, I really believe in spirits’, Erika is not that sure concerning this matter. Although she said that all her actions would be guided by divine energy which flows through her, and although she often refers to different angels and so-called ascended masters, she talks of 100 per cent responsibility of everyone for his or her own life. In her argumentation this is rooted in the fact that God and the Self are the same. Regina also speaks about 100 per cent responsibility for her life as do many others. In these cases the argumentation is rooted in the spiritistic tradition which separates the body from the soul and which conceptualises the soul as an undividable entity which has removed itself from the nearness to God. Through an ongoing process of new reincarnations the soul has to detect its own divinity and thus at the end of this learning process will at some point find its way back to God. In all those conceptions of 100 per cent responsibility, the outer appears as mirror of the inner. As a result, everything that happens in life (people you meet, accidents you have, illnesses you get and so on) is a message to yourself about what you did right or wrong in life. Thus, all entities conceptualised as entities outside of the Self become a helpful instrument for the Self in its process of development towards more self-consciousness. The appearance of foreignness is thus guided by the Self, consciously or unconsciously. It therefore does not matter whether the spirits are conceptualised as ‘real’ or as imagination. Through the metaphor of the mirror of the inner self, the spiritual beings lose their autonomy in the way that they act as guided by an autonomous Self – regardless their possible externality. In this way foreignness loses its arbitrariness, its thorn and its threatening nature. Thus in the discourse of the mediumistic healers in Germany, the Western autonomous subject which knows foreignness only as something having originated in ownness is reinstalled.

Inside, Outside or In-Between – Conclusion In this essay the discussion about the subject-object dichotomy has led to the question of the Self and the non-Self, their relation to each other and thus to the category of radical foreignness as it is presented by Bernhard Waldenfels in reference to Maurice Merlau-Ponty. Against this background it has become apparent that among mediumistic healers in Germany as well as in anthropological literature, the alternative of interpreting bodily experiences seems to oscillate between finding their origin

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inside or outside the self. Even some phenomenological approaches in anthropology – like the famous concept of embodiment by Thomas Csordas – which actually aim to conceptualise experiences beyond dichotomies such as inner and outer or the Self and the Other tend to entangle themselves in such dichotomies and tend to trace back experiences of otherness as having originated in the Self. As an alternative to Csordas’s approach, this essay introduces Bernhard Waldenfels’s phenomenology of foreignness which offers a position in between the alternatives of externalising or internalising the origin of experiences. Keeping Waldenfels’s approach in mind, the question of how people respond to appearances of radical foreignness turns out to be an interesting and central question for comparison in anthropological research. Dealing with such a category spreads new light on human behaviour, and not only in religious contexts. The paradoxes in the discourse of mediumistic healers in Germany, as for example when they move between interpretations of bodily experiences as having originated in the Self or outside the Self, become understandable as different ways of dealing with foreignness. And the near domination of the interpretation as having originated in the Self could force the argument that Western culture tends to neglect radical foreignness. But in the paradoxes of the healers’ discourse, in which contradictory opinions about the origin of bodily experiences are often present, radical foreignness nevertheless could be discovered, because according to Waldenfels and the impurity of all categories, even rationality is affected by radical foreignness: ‘Where paradoxes are absent, rationality sleeps’ (1999: 151).

Notes 1. In the anthropological literature regarding the anthropologist’s own society, the legitimacy of emic usages of specific terms for self-description is often discussed. Especially concerning the term shamanism it is common to deny inhabitants of Western societies the right to refer to themselves as shamans. In this case usually a pejorative distinction is drawn between ‘traditional’ (implied ‘real’) shamans and ‘neo-’ (implied ‘unreal’) shamans (e.g., Jakobson 1999; Johansen 2001). Against the background of historical reconstructions of the term shamanism, e.g., by Ronald Hutton (1999) or Kocku von Stuckrad (2003), which work out the complex interferences between science and religion and in so doing show the influences anthropology has on the development of the term’s meaning, it can be argued that nowadays doing anthropological research in the field of shamanism means being confronted with a creation of one’s own discipline which grew out of control (cf. Voss 2006, 2008). Thus the interesting and one and only way for current anthropology to deal adequately with the term is not to judge the people of anthropological

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interest by asking who is a ‘real’ shaman – in other words, who is allowed to use the term for self-description – but by questioning how and why people use the term shamanism and in which way they refer to themselves as shamans. The same should of course be applied to all other mentioned terms used for self-description as well. 2. However, Csordas’s interpretation of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus also bears problematic aspects. At least it could tend to lead to a misunderstanding to describe habitus as Csordas does as the ‘psychologically internalised content of the behavioral environment’ (Csordas 1990: 11) since Bourdieu emphasises that there is no knowledge separable from the body. Thus the body is not a thing through which something else expresses itself. Instead, ‘What the body has learned is not possessed as a kind of retrievable knowledge, rather one is that embodied knowledge’ (Bourdieu 1987: 135). 3. All English-language citations of German-language references have been translated by Ehler Voss. 4. Similar diagnoses can be found in the work of other authors as well. For example, for Max Weber (1991 [1920]: 207) rationalisation means ‘the ability to control through calculation’, and the development of industrialised societies is for him characterised by a ‘desire for controlling the world’. The German anthropologist Hans Peter Duerr (1985: 201) claims that every culture borders their own civilisation from the encircling wilderness, whereas ‘our own’ culture in opposition to ‘archaic’ cultures tries to shift the boundary posts more and more into the wilderness. The Japanese anthropologist Akira Okazaki (1986) confronts the modern idea of an individual, which is identical with its ownness, with the widespread idea of a dividual as a collage of ownness and foreignness, whose parts appear in a game of masks.

Bibliography Bourdieu, P. 1987. Sozialer Sinn. Kritik der theoretischen Vernunft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1982. Die feinen Unterschiede. Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1976. Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis auf der ethnologischen Grundlage der kabylischen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Csordas, T. J. 1994a. ‘The Body as Representation and Being in the World’, in T. J. Csordas (ed.), Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–23. ———. 1994b. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1993. ‘Somatic Modes of Attention’, Cultural Anthropology 8(2): 135–56. ———. 1990. ‘Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology’, Ethos 18(1): 5–47. Duerr, H. P. 1985. Traumzeit. Über die Grenze zwischen Wildnis und Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hutton, R. 1999. Shamans. Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London: Hambledon.

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Jakobsen, M. D.1999. Shamanism. Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. Oxford: Berghahn. Johansen, U. 2001. ‘Shamanism and Neoshamanism: What is the Difference?’ in H. P. Francfort and R. N. Hamayon (eds). The Concept of Shamanism: Uses and Abuses. Budapest: Akadémia Kiadó, pp. 297–303. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1966. Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Okazaki, A. 1986. ‘Man’s Shadow and Man of Shadow: Gamk Experience of the Self and the Deed’, in M. Tomikawa (ed), Sudan Sahel Studies 2. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Africa and Asia, pp. 139–206. Platz, T. 2006. Anthropologie des Körpers. Vom Körper als Objekt zum Leib als Subjekt von Kultur. Berlin: Weißensee Verlag. Schäfer, A. 1999. Unsagbare Identität: Das Andere als Grenze in der Selbstthematiserung der Batemi (Sonjo). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Stuckrad, K. von. 2003. Schamanismus und Esoterik: Kultur- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. Leuven: Peeters. Voss, E. 2011. Mediales Heilen in Deutschland. Eine Ethnographie. Berlin: Reimer (in press). ———. 2008. ‘Von Schamanen und schamanisch Tätigen. Peinlichkeit und ihre Vermeidung im Kontext des modernen westlichen Schamanismus’, in M. Münzel and B. Streck (eds), Ethnologische Religionsästhetik: Beiträge eines Workshops auf der Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde in Halle (Saale) 2005. Marburg: Curupira, pp. 131–43. ———. 2006. ‘Anthropologizing the Search for Health: Modern Western Shamanism in Everyday Life’, Paper presented at the 4th Biennial Conference of the European Network of Medical Anthropology at Home: ‘Coming Home: From Biomedicine to Everyday Health Issues’, 16–18 March 2006, University of Helsinki, Seili, Finland. Waldenfels, B. 2006. Grundmotive einer Phänomenologie des Fremden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1999. Vielstimmigkeit der Rede: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 4. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1998. Grenzen der Normalisierung: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1997. Topographie des Fremden: Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1987. Ordnung im Zwielicht. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Weber, M. 1991 (1920). Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen. Konfuzianismus und Taoismus. Schriften 1915 - 1920, Abt. I/19. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

10 Transforming Musical Soul into Bodily Practice Tone Eurythmy, Anthroposophy and Underlying Structures Andrew Spiegel and Silke Sponheuer

Introduction A distinctive feature in the practice of anthroposophy – a philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925)1 that undergirds the pedagogical principles used contemporarily in Waldorf/Steiner schools, of which there are now over nine hundred worldwide – is the development and performance of eurythmy, and its use as a practical artistic expressive form in those schools.2 As a performed art form, eurythmy has the intention to make musical and spoken sound visible (as distinct from audible) in and through human bodily movement. Underlying that intention, moreover, is an anthroposophical understanding of the cosmos that associates diverse cosmic, astronomical, earthly and indeed human and other biological structures one with another, and that works towards consciously creating structural transformations to enable humans to experience those structures sensually and thereby as felt phenomena, and not only to imagine or conceptualise them intellectually. Steiner explicitly saw eurythmy as a means to express the embodiment of the human soul in its relationship with the human spirit and thus to enable and make manifest experience of the interwoven intersections of body, soul and spirit. That is the reason for his explaining, in 1924, ‘In a eurythmy performance, the whole body must have become soul’ (Steiner 1984a: 238) and that each eurythmist’s ‘performance really becomes the self-understood expression of the life of soul’ (1984b: 10). Moreover, talking about eurythmy in 1923, he explained that ‘the art of Eurythmy could

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only grow up out of the soil of Anthroposophy; could only receive its inspiration through a purely Anthroposophical conception’ (Steiner 2005: 174).3 Steiner described his philosophy, developed subsequent to his break from the Theosophical Society in 1910, by the term anthroposophy – a term understood to refer to ‘a cognitive method, which, taking as the starting point the spiritual nature of man, investigates the spiritual nature of the world’ (Ellenberger 1970: 685 in Storr 1997: 67).4 Following Goethe’s Romantic Naturphilosophie, Steiner advocated an holistic, phenomenological understanding of nature through subjective interaction with it, rather than one based on its analytical dissection. He sought to develop a science that might use the experiential human capacities of soul and spirit to comprehend the spiritual in all of nature and the cosmos (including the human being). Steiner thus aimed to utilise and develop modern scientific methods for investigating the spirituality of the world and cosmos (Mazzone 1999: 28), and to do so through application of human soul qualities and their related spirituality. Given that goal, anthroposophy is not a conventional religion although its ideas do form part of the basis for the religious practices of the Christian Community, an international association of autonomous but linked religious congregations that is also described as ‘Movement for Religious Renewal’. The first Christian Community congregation was established in 1922 (http://www.thechristiancommunity.org/about.htm; http://www .aswc.org.za/chcommunity.html; both accessed 15 June 2009), and, while Steiner supported its founding, he also explicitly distinguished it from anthroposophy and the general anthroposophical movement, seeing the new religious movement as an institution for ‘those people who are at first unable [individually] to set out directly along the path to the Anthroposophical Movement. The spiritual path for them must be sought by forming communities in which heart and soul and spirit work together’ (1922). Furthermore, and although anthroposophists strive to distance themselves and their philosophy from New Age protagonists, aspects of anthroposophy have, in recent years, been taken up by some New Age religious movements (Hanegraaff 1996: 9–10). Moreover, anthroposophy is itself very much a spiritual movement that works with insights from Western esoteric traditions about intersections between spirit, soul and body in each human being, but one that also goes on to apply those insights to the world at large rather than remaining purely esoteric.5 From an anthroposophical perspective, each human constitutes a singular albeit threefold being comprising an intersection of three interwoven qualities: (1) spirit which comprises a quasi-divine characteristic and capacity to manifest divine energy through consciousness and ability thereby to recognise – what Kant (2001: 192) referred to as the ‘animating principle of the mind … [that] sets the mental powers into motion’; (2) soul constituting an emotional depth quality whereby each human experiences life and internalises those experience (Sardello 1999: xv) and (3) body, a physical organism with sensory capacities.

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Figure 10.1. The threefold spirit-soul-body relationship. Figure by Conor Ralphs.

Steiner’s indications for eurythmy grew from his intention to manifest human experience of spirit and soul through bodily movement and thereby to develop anthroposophical understanding about that threefoldness of spirit, soul and body, and also about • relationships between cosmic structures and behaviour, on one hand, and human social and ideational structures and behaviour on the other;6 • the world that associates tones, pitch and other sound-related phenomena with both cosmic processes and human soul experiences and • the ways such human soul experiences are corporeally performable. Our chapter considers how, through application of such understanding, eurythmists seek to create means to manifest those associated sounds, and especially their related soul (mood) experiences, and how they manifest them in relatively formalised human bodily movements that constitute a form of dance that are undertaken in order visually to embody musical sounds and the soul experiences understood to be associated with them.7 We do that to allow reflection on anthroposophical understandings of the holistic threefoldness of each human being and of the relationship between body and soul that it is eurythmy’s concern to manifest through moments of intersection of those two with spirit. We begin by outlining how a selection of associations of sound with soul and body movement are understood and put into effect in the practice of musical eurythmy, today more commonly known as tone eurythmy:

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what Steiner (1998: 1) called ‘visible singing’. We do that to demonstrate how musical structures are seen eurythmically (and musically) to be associated with particular human moods or emotions, and to explain how eurythmists consciously transform those in turn into choreographies and into particular performed gestures and movements that are themselves understood as structural reflections or transformations of the soul moods and emotions they enact. One reason for our providing these explanations is to raise questions about conventional anthropological structuralist analyses that regard structural transformation as processes involving shifts between deep structures of which actors are themselves either unaware or, at most, recognise only dimly. We show that for eurythmists, as indeed for all anthroposophical thinkers, the idea of structural transformation is one with which they work constantly, and one that, when structures are seen to lie deep below the surface, requires surfacing them through transforming them so that they are experienced as human phenomena. Our material thus provides an example of explicit consciousness of a human capacity to effect structural transformations in and of themselves. We argue that that process is not commonly featured in or described by structuralist analyses precisely because the structures conventionally subject to such analysis are understood to be so deeply imbedded that they are inaccessible to human discursive consciousness – and indeed to the agency of those who subscribe to the principles that structuralists analyse. According to most structuralist analysis, those principles structure ordinary people’s lives and cosmologies, albeit at an unconscious level that structuralist analysis claims to penetrate and uncover (Deliège 2004: 27). Such ordinary people are thus conventionally regarded as not understanding those principles as structures. Since eurythmists, and anthroposophists, appear to be an exception, we consider why that should be and revisit the point that, from an anthroposophical perspective, whilst soul and body might be conceptually distinguishable, they are also understood to be intensely interjoined one with another and with spirit too. We then conclude with some brief comments about the extent to which anthroposophical understanding of the relationship between spirit, body and soul resonates with notions such as of habitus (Mauss 1979[1950]; Bourdieu 1977) and practical consciousness (Giddens 1984), and how that in turn suggests that Steiner’s ideas might be seen as a precursor to contemporary poststructuralist thinking. Before we proceed, a brief methodological and contextualising note is apposite. Our chapter draws on work that Silke Sponheuer, a practising eurythmist and founding director of Cape Town’s Kairos Eurythmy Training programme, has undertaken as part of a graduate programme in dance (choreography). It draws on particular aspects of her dissertation (Sponheuer 2009) which was cosupervised by an innovative choreographer of African dance, Eduard Greyling, and Andrew Spiegel, a social anthropologist with a research interest in Waldorf pedagogy and related

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concerns – an interest which has also taken him briefly into participant observation in a eurythmy class led, among others, by Sponheuer. Our descriptions relating to music and eurythmy take their impulse from Sponheuer, while the commentary on structuralist analysis constitutes Spiegel’s overlay.8 In one respect the chapter is a collaboration between a graduate student and her supervisor; in another respect it constitutes a collaboration between an anthropological researcher and his expert fieldwork interlocutor and teacher.

Associations of Musical Elements/Structures with Human Emotions, and Their Eurythmic Representations Tone eurythmists work directly with musical scores and with musicians who perform those scores by musically sounding them. Eurythmists thereby create choreographies and eurythmy performances of those same pieces of scripted music that musicians sound in their performances. In most instances the music pieces selected are relatively short: classical solo pieces or pieces of chamber music, although whole symphonies too are choreographed and performed: one stage-eurythmy group based at the Anthroposophical Society’s Goetheanum headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland, biennially produces and tours Europe with a eurythmical symphony. The process of creating a tone-eurythmy choreography and performance requires intense study of the score and of the aurally sounded versions of that score (that is, as performed on musical instruments) in order to create a visible set of individual bodily movements that play out the elements of the music as seen in the score. Crucially it also requires performing an overall feeling or impression of the intention of the whole music piece. That in turn means interpreting the whole composition in order to reveal the composer’s soul intention through the performer’s soul expression, much as might be the case in a very well executed aurally sounded performance. In order to describe the associations of particular musical elements and structures with both human emotions and eurythmical movements, however, requires that we have, for heuristic purposes, to unpack those elements from the whole of which they are, and indeed intentionally should be seamlessly just part. We make this point because no eurythmy performance, as indeed no musical performance, would ever be so disaggregated into its elements. As Schönberg (1994: 7; added emphasis) has said: ‘tones, harmonies, rhythms are the parts that, if correctly joined, make up the musical result’. By undertaking what might be called a deconstruction of music and its performance, we are in a sense following the principles of much structuralist analysis, since it too has disaggregated and dissembled whole myths and stories, as well as whole sets of social relations, in order to understand how the principles underlying them come to be transformed

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from one context to another. In so doing, structuralist analysis tends too to break the overall message of the analysed piece. We begin with the opening bars of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major, a piece of music which Sponheuer has choreographed and directed in performance. We use this only as a short example to illustrate what occurs when a musical score (or a part of such a score) is transposed into eurythmy performance. What one sees and indeed hears here is the first introduction of a theme that is repeated six times and in diverse ways through the whole quintet movement, thus stressing its thematic character. One also here sees and hears a series of individual notes at different pitches and of longer or shorter duration that are played by two violins, a viola, a cello and, in the seventh and eighth only, by a clarinet. Looking at just the very first set of scored notes (in bar one) (see illustration 10.2), we see that they call for the four string instruments each to intone a minim-length note. Looking at the image of the eurythmy performance as that first half bar begins, we see those same notes being intoned through bodily gestures by four eurythmists, each of them adopting a quite formal gesture that represents the particular note for their respective instrument, and each gesturally beginning to intone the note even before the aurally discernible sounding begins.

Illustration 10.1. Opening bars of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major KV581.

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Illustration 10.2. First half of bar one of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major KV581 and image of eurythmical performance of same. Photo by Catherine Hornby.

Now consider bar eight (see illustration 10.3) at which point the clarinet has already come in and only the second violin and the viola are scored to accompany it; and note the gestures of the various eurythmists at that point. Note in particular how in bar eight the first violin (line 2) and cello (line 5) performers are quiet and almost still while the second violin and viola (lines 3 and 4 respectively) are relatively active and the clarinet is very active. Illustration 10.3. Bars seven and eight of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major KV581 and sequential images of eurythmical performance of same. Photos by Catherine Hornby.

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What we are stressing in considering these snapshot examples is some basic artistically expressed gestures whereby notes are eurythmically intoned. Yet none of this offers insight into how or why those gestures have come to represent particular moods or emotions, how those in turn are understood to be associated with specific musical elements, nor indeed how eurythmists link them one with another to create the kind of diachronic and moving picture that one expects from a performed piece of music, whether in an aurally sounded or in a bodily moved performance. We thus now move on to show how musical structures are seen eurythmically to be associated with particular human soul moods or emotions, that way in turn to be able to show how those are gestured eurythmically. Musicians often describe particular musical forms or structures as manifestations of specific soul moods or emotions. Eurythmists do the same – in their case in order to stylise the gesture combinations they use in their efforts to create embodied intonements of music. Such associations are made for a large variety of the structural elements found in music. For reasons of space we focus here on just three illustrative examples salient for tone eurythmy: pitch, tone as represented by notes and the distinction between major and minor.

Pitch In synthesising the results of sixteen studies that examined how people explain the relation between musical elements and emotions, Gabrielsson and Lindström (2001: 235–41) found a persistent association of qualities such as happiness, gracefulness, excitement and triumph with ascending pitch, and of sadness, dignity and solemnity with descending pitch. Similarly, Zuckerkandl (1976: 90) suggested an association of relative warmth and brightness marking the distinction between pitches – implicitly greater warmth and brightness being associated with higher pitch. Music psychologist Sloboda (1990: 62), writing on music, language and meaning, suggested that ‘movements away from the tonic, particularly upwards [in pitch], are suitable for expressing outgoing emotions, whilst movements towards the tonic [therefore downwards in pitch] signify rest or repose. Feld’s (1990) elucidation of Kaluli weeping songs reveals a similar descending pitch. Such ideas parallel Steiner’s (1998 [1924]) indication to eurythmists to associate ascending pitch with qualities of lightness and therefore with outward radiating bodily activity, and to associate descending pitch with qualities of darkening and therefore with interiorising gestures. In practice, eurythmists express those emotive qualities by relating high- and low-pitched sounds to each other through respectively upward and downward arm movements, implying that lightness is found stretched up above while darkness is found compressed down below. Following Steiner (1998: 32, 125) and as can be seen in illustration 10.4, eurythmists not only move their arms through the vertical axis in order

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to express pitch. They also direct their hands in those movements: fingers extended albeit not quite taut and facing outwards as the arms are moved upwards gesturally represents increasingly higher pitch and a sense of outward radiation as is understood to be associated with happiness and lightness; hands rounded and facing inwards as the arms are moved downwards gesturally represents increasingly lower pitch and a sense of inwardness and reflection associated with melancholy or dark despondency.

Illustration 10.4. Eurythmy gestures for musical shifts from lower to higher pitches (multiple exposure). Photo by Conor Ralphs.

Tones as Represented by Notes and Gestures Illustration 10.2 showed a set of quite formal gestures representing the particular tones that each eurythmist performed for their respective instruments. These tones (or notes in the score) are part of the A-major scale. Each tone is represented eurythmically by a particular gesture specific to that tone. Thus, as is shown in illustration 10.5, the tone/note A is rep-

Illustration 10.5. Eurythmy gestures for the three tones comprising the A-major chord – all set in the octave stretching across the standard middle C in ‘concert pitch’. Left image: tone/note ‘A’ (54 degrees from body-axis plane); middle image: tone/note ‘C#’ (parallel to body-axis plane); right image: tone/note ‘E’ (72 degrees from body-axis plane). Photos by Conor Ralphs.

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resented by the arms being placed at 54 degrees from a plane running through the upright axis of the performer’s body and extending directly to the front and back. Similarly C sharp is represented by the arms being parallel to that upright body-axis plane (in this instance the sharp is represented by the hands bent upwards), and E by the arms being placed at 72 degrees from that plane. Looking again at the image in illustration 10.2, we can see the first violin in the forefront left performing E (72 degrees) and the second violin (forefront right) performing C-sharp.9 Diversity of combination of pitch and tone can be seen within the dynamic movements of the four string-instrument performers in the first five bars of the Mozart clarinet quintet, and particularly within the quite rapid movements of the performer representing the clarinet in bars seven and eight, where the score requires a run of twenty-three quickly sounded notes (including quavers and semi-quavers) ranging in pitch for the clarinet from the clarinet’s G below middle C up to its A over two octaves higher and then down the scale again.10 Importantly, however, the gestures flow one into another, just as in aurally sounded music the intoned sounds flow into one another rather than being performed in sharp staccato. As indicated earlier, eurythmists also gesture tones at their respective pitches in a way that tends briefly to precede the anticipated aurally sounded version and also to continue as if fading in an echo after it.

Majors and Minors Much as higher pitches are understood to represent a soul mood that is quite distinct from that associated with lower pitches, so are major harmonies and minor harmonies understood musically to represent distinct, polar emotional qualities and their expression. They include joy, light, clarity, energy, merriness, confidence, expansion and even triumph for majors; and sorrow, warmth, softness, fear, dreaminess, contraction and despair for minors (see Cooke 1962: 50). To these we can add associations of minors with quietness or stillness (Turner and Huron 2008). Music psychologists have also established that there is a common sense of such emotional/soul distinctions between the qualities of majors and minors amongst especially children. Sloboda (2005: 217) reports on an experiment by Kastner and Crowder (1990: 196ff) that found that children as young as three years of age mapped major and minor chords within a ‘happy– sad’ continuum. Sloboda (2005: 220) reports also on another experiment, conducted by Gabrielsson and Juslin (1996), where a wider range of musical elements than just major and minor harmonies were considered. That study sought associations between each of four particular moods (happiness, sadness, seriousness and excitement) and diverse musical elements. Like Kastner and Crowder (1990), it concluded that major and minor were respectively associated with happiness and sadness. Gabrielsson and

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Illustration 10.6. Gestures for major and minor. Left image: major chord gesture; right image: minor chord gesture. Photos by Conor Ralphs.

Lindström (2001: 229) too have reported finding a binary set of associations of major-happy and minor-sad, in that case where listeners were played exemplary chords and also where they were asked to comment on the moods suggested by recorded musical performances. Musically, all major and minor chords are played by intoning a combination of the tonic of the particular chord plus the third and the fifth noted tones (in the case of the minor it is a minor third). This means that all three tones have also to be intoned bodily by a eurythmist performing such a chord. Moreover, the outgoing mood of the major is represented by what eurythmists describe as radiating gestures (illustration 10.6). In contrast, the inward mood associated with a minor chord is performed by contracting, containing gestures.11

Structures, Their Transformations and Consciousness The examples above demonstrate how tone eurythmists associate particular soul moods or emotions with specific musical elements, and with the structures of which those elements are part. The examples also show how eurythmists work consciously to transform those musical elements and structures from their scripted and aurally sounded forms into body movements that are themselves formally structured in terms of how they are understood to represent their associated soul moods. The examples show

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further how eurythmists do this in similar but differently formed ways from how aural sound-performing musicians do it. In his introduction to the first volume of Mythologiques, Lévi-Strauss (1970: 14) argued that in his ‘search for a middle way between aesthetic perception [as in myths] and the exercise of logical thought [he found] inspiration in music, which has always practiced it [that is, that middle way]’. He continued by reflecting, as he had done earlier (1968: 212–13), on the challenges raised by using linear narrative description to consider a myth which, like a piece of music, must be experienced in its wholeness and not read like a text in linear narrative form – even though myth is narrated and music is scored and performed in linear forms through time. A primary goal of musical eurythmy is precisely to perform and have an audience experience the wholeness of a piece of music, what musicians describe as the composer’s intention, and not simply the separate components of a performance. Moreover, that process, as indicated earlier, requires eurythmists consciously to transform the structures of aurally sounded and scripted music into bodily movement so as to make such intention manifest. For those reasons we turned to Lévi-Strauss for means to explain the relationship eurythmists understand to exist between music and eurythmy, and we now discuss that relationship drawing on LéviStrauss’s (1978) culinary triangle to provide a conceptual model.12 Adapting Lévi-Strauss’s culinary triangle, we show below how tone eurythmists understand the relationship between aurally sounded and bodily performed music, which they regard as structural transformations of one another and indeed of scripted music too – transformations that they consciously work to create. It is precisely because of that perceived relation between aurally sounded and corporeally moved musical structure, and the fact that both are understood to reveal the soul moods that are imbedded in any piece of music, that tone eurythmists always work closely with regular musicians when creating a eurythmy performance and indeed when performing it – eurythmy is never performed to recorded music. Eurythmists understand that the soul moods said to saturate each piece of music need to be transformed from what is imbedded in the script/score into both aurally sounded and bodily moved performance structures, and that doing that in collaboration enhances the extent to which those Figure 10.2. Lévi-Strauss’s (1978: 490) soul moods can be conveyed in culinary triangle. Figure by Raoul Spiegel performance precisely because and Andrew Spiegel.

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the aurally sounded and bodily moved performances are transformations of one another as much as they are each transformations of the score. Lévi-Strauss’s (1978) famous culinary triangle provided an important summary statement of the ways that a structuralist analysis of food and its preparation can be seen in terms of a kind of transformational grammar of the culturally structured meanings of cooking for all human society. For Lévi-Strauss, raw food is transformed into either cooked or rotten food through the media respectively of air (through smoking it) or water (through boiling it). Equally, however, water is a medium that transforms raw food into rotten food, while fire transforms it into roasted food which can be seen – according to Lévi-Strauss (1978) – as a form of raw food since it has been exposed to very limited air and to no water at all.13 Lévi-Strauss’s argument about such transformations allows us to understand the transformative relation between diverse myths about food and its preparation. Yet of import for our present argument is that all these transformations – other than that from raw into rotten – are produced by human intervention. Yet none of that intervention can be understood to have been undertaken by actors who have an explicit consciousness that it will bring about a structural change/transformation. While cooking (whether roasting, smoking or boiling) foodstuffs is an activity that many humans of course undertake, conventional structuralist analyses treat that activity as, at most, a functional one that is also consistent with a set of culturally constructed but subliminal binaries. It does not see the activity as something undertaken by actors who consider their efforts as intending to effect structural transformations. Such analysis does not consider that such actors might consciously be intervening to bridge a cultural divide between nature and culture, or indeed between different cultural forms/structures. It is almost always only the external analyst who sees it that way and who then presents a structuralist explanation in terms of the principles of structural transformation, which means that the actors are effectively regarded as cultural dupes who simply obey the whispered commands of their culture (Eckersley 2006: 253). Just as those who cook food produce structural transformations, eurythmists too actively engage in processes that produce such transformations. In this instance they are transformations of musical scores as well as musically sounded performances into bodily moved performances of the musical elements that the scores and aural soundings represent, and of the soul moods understood to lie behind and within them. Following Pythagorean-Platonic and ancient Eastern ideas about the conception of the world in terms of sounds and vibrations – often referred to as the ‘music of the spheres’ and now, by contemporary musicologists, as ‘speculative music’ (Muller 2006: 90) – eurythmists understand all music to be soul and spirit filled. In other words, eurythmists interpret music synechdochically as the world’s soul harmony of which audible music is an outer reflection that is thus imbued by soul (Godwin 1987: 29). Inter-

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estingly, a similar idea about the composition of music among the Kaluli people (Papua New Guinea) is presented by Feld (1990: 165ff) when he reports that ‘Kaluli say that all music composition starts with the melody “outside” or “around”; it is “in the air”’. Feld’s comment that vocalisation comes only after that melody has been sung ‘“inside” one’s head … the sensation of having a song in mind’ (1990: 166) resonates with statements from various composers that they too ‘hear’ what they compose, in its wholeness, even before they score it (Mozart in Ghiselin 1952: 44–45; Beethoven in Cook 1990: 114). Given these ideas, the soul moods of music are deeper-level structures than the scripted musical score itself, implying that a musical score represents a transformation of those deep cosmic structures. For aural and eurythmical performers the practical transformation to embody those soul moods is respectively to render those deep-level structures audible and visible, a set of transformations that can be represented by an adaptation of the culinary triangle model. Figure 10.3 indicates how eurythmists understand the relation between scripted, aurally sounded and bodily performed music, or what might otherwise be described as the relation between music (or a piece of music) itself and its performance by musicians and by eurythmists. What figure 10.3 shows is that the ‘raw’ version of music (the music and soul moods imbedded in a script or score14) is transformed through an auditory medium into sounded music and through a visualisable body-movement medium into eurythmically embodied (visual) music. Moreover, just as the culinary triangle represents smoked and boiled food as transformations of one another, so does the eurythmical musical triangle enable one to recognise how Figure 10.3. Eurythmical musical triangle. aurally sounded and Figure by Raoul Spiegel and Andrew Spiegel. bodily moved music are transformations of one another – both are transformations of the scored music, but through different media, and both are therefore transformations of each other in that they are differently structured modes of representing the soul moods that inhere in and suffuse through the music. In this instance, moreover, the transformations must be understood to be consciously effected by the musicians and eurythmists, through their working explicitly not simply to make music audible or visible but also to transform the soul mood structures represented in musical scripts/scores

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into aurally sounded and gestured structures, albeit through different media. Both accomplished musicians and eurythmists do this so that they can reveal the various soul moods that they understand saturate and are imbedded in the elements, and especially the whole of a composition. Eurythmists in particular explicitly recognise their practice in precisely those terms. They describe as structured all of what they draw on and they describe as structurally transforming all of what they do. That they describe their actions thus suggests that what we have here is an example of discursive human consciousness working towards explicitly effecting structural transformations in and of themselves, rather than doing so only implicitly. Such exercise of discursive human consciousness, with its capacity to manifest divine energy through ability to recognise constraint and opportunity, demonstrates, for eurythmists qua anthroposophists, the role of spirit in integrating soul and body. We represent this idea in figure 4 where we superimpose our diagrammatic representation of the threefoldness of spirit-soul-body (figure 10.1) onto our adapted culinary triangle (figure 10.3). We do that in order graphically to show how anthroposophically and eurythmically the embodiment of musical script, whether audibly or – more significantly here – in movement requires permeation of spirit (consciousness). In other words, the transformations of soul moods, as encapsulated in a score, into sounded and moved music cannot occur without consciousness (spirit) having been applied.

Figure 10.4. Eurythmical transformation in terms of threefold spirit-soul-body relationship. Figure by Conor Ralphs.

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Why should we find in eurythmy practice an example where, contrary to most structuralist analytical preconceptions, actors are explicitly conscious of and intentionally undertake actions precisely to effect structural transformations? One answer is that most anthropological structuralist analyses have been blinded to the possibility that actors might themselves understand deep structures and their transformations. If that is the case it is probably because, as Feld (1990: 163ff) implies in relation to nonliterate people and their supposed lack of musical theory, structuralist analysts have been trapped by the idea that the kinds of structures that undergird myths and the rules for social behaviour are, like the structures of language, so deeply imbedded below the surface of social relations and mythical stories that they cannot be recognised by ordinary actors, or indeed even by ritual and other such specialists in the populations whose members subscribe to those myths and social rules. Rather, they are assumed to need an outside expert to recognise them. Such an approach assumes a rather superior attitude that only etic analysis is able to dig sufficiently below the surface to recognise underlying structures and that it is only through comparative analysis of a variety of their manifestations in myth etc. that one can recognise such structural transformations. Such an attitude corresponds with the condescending assumption that structuralist analysis constitutes scientific study of a kind not accessible to ordinary people and conducted by experts only. The case of eurythmy – as that of Kaluli musical theory (Feld 1990) – shows that that is not always true. A second answer as to why eurythmists work consciously and discursively to create structural transformations derives from the fact that, as we pointed out at the outset, eurythmy is an art form that takes it primary impulses from Steiner’s anthroposophy. Steiner was himself intensely modernist. He sought to understand the cosmos in structuralist terms that would enable humans to understand and indeed phenomenologically experience the complex webs of synechdochical interrelationships between all aspects and levels of the natural world. Most especially, he wanted to develop a means to understand each individual human’s role in the world and how we can and do effect change to the very structures that surround us. Setting him apart from most other modern scientific thinkers of his period, however, was Steiner’s commitment to using that same modern scientific structuralist analysis to understand how what others might call the supernatural world is also interrelated with the natural world, how it affects humans both socially and individually, and also how it is affected by human action and intervention. This intention to regard the supernatural as understandable in scientific terms and thereby accessible experientially was also one of reasons for Steiner’s break from theosophy, and it remains fundamental to anthroposophy (Mazzone 1999: 28). Precisely because anthroposophists see the supernatural as part of the natural world of which humans are integrally part they describe that

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world as ‘supersensible’ rather than supernatural. For them it is a world that exists in reality, yet in a realm inaccessible to conventional human senses. More recently this understanding has been similarly described by others working in the field of art. Thus Minette Mans (2007: 1457) describes ‘spirituality as an immaterial reality and being open to the possibility of connecting with intangible forces and one’s inner self’. Similarly, Boyce-Tillman (2007: 1410) defines spirituality as ‘the ability to transport the experiencer to a different time/space dimension – to move from the everyday reality to a world other than the commonplace’. That other world is nonetheless understood to be one that influences human action and that is in turn influenced by such action in a kind of dialectical theurgical process. That is why anthroposophists seek to make sense of the supersensible world through finding means to experience it phenomenologically. It is also why eurythmists seek consciously to express corporeally the soul moods suffusing through music – explicitly to transform them from an inaccessible realm of inchoate supersensible reality to a realm of directly visible, bodily sensed reality. Moreover, it is why eurythmists work in a discursively conscious manner to transform the structures and structural elements of music, along with the structures of their assumedly imbedded soul moods, into corporeal movement. They do so to make possible an explicit sensing of those structures and moods that is not simply through the audible, but also through the visible and – for the performers – through the body itself. A third answer to the question as to why eurythmists consciously seek to transform structures builds on the second. It relates again to a more general anthroposophical impulse: in this instance to encourage and stimulate the development of individual consciousness to a level where each person both lives in and transforms the world. Ideally, from such a perspective, each modern individual should have been given the opportunity to develop the capacity both to recognise the structures that constrain social and spiritual life, and to work towards modifying those structures through individual human agency (what anthroposophists describe as individual consciousness or spirit),15 but always with awareness that all other individuals are also spiritual beings and that social relationships are crucially important – in both the earthly and the spiritual world. What this in turn signals is anthroposophy’s rejection of the dualism of soul and body that has permeated Cartesian and indeed post-ninthcentury Christian thinking, in favour of a threefold concept of the human being as a singular whole constituted by an interweaving of spirit, soul and body. By implication, then, the practice of eurythmy enables the transformation of soul moods, as suffused in music, into bodily movement, but only through consciousness – that is through involvement of the spirit. In other words, it is only through application of the spiritual faculty consciously to recognise the common structural principles in music and in bodily movement that eurythmical transformations of music

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into bodily movement are made possible. Moreover, it is for that reason that tone eurythmy’s practice requires that eurythmists should be able simultaneously (1) to know the music they are performing; (2) to expect and be ready for changes that occur in that music, so that (3) they can both move accordingly and, importantly, anticipate new movements that such musical changes require, even before they are sounded aurally by accompanying musicians.16 Significantly, that requirement is an analogy for how to live in terms of anthroposophical principles: (1) to be able to know and understand the structures that constrain social and spiritual life, including those embodied in one’s associates and their behaviour; (2) to be ready, consistently, to recognise and indeed anticipate changes in how those constraints affect oneself and those around one; and (3) to be ready and able to adjust one’s life pattern to accommodate those constraints whilst also thereby effecting change in the ways they are structured as constraints. By working consciously to effect structural transformations between the three structures of music and its soul moods, aurally sounded music and eurythmically performed (visible bodily sounded) music, eurythmy analogically acts to facilitate the development of individual human consciousness, thereby to enable people to understand and be able to transform social, cultural and indeed spiritual structures even as they in turn influence human lives.17 In that sense, what we see here is a kind of precursor to Giddens’s (1984) conception of the processes of structuration which came from his efforts to find means to close the analytical gap between structure and agency and thereby to recognise the extent to which the two dynamically influence and affect one another. Yet one could argue that it goes beyond that point – precisely because it offers more than just an analytical model. It facilitates understanding of processes that constitute what Giddens (1984) called structuration that can lead to human agency restructuring social and cultural constraints. It also aims to enable individuals: • to work actively towards being alive to the historical dynamic of those structures even as they are constrained by them; • to be conscious of the potential of individual human agency to accommodate to and also to transform those dynamic structures; • most importantly, to be prepared actively to engage in such transformative efforts whenever they are deemed necessary and • to do the above in full awareness (discursively held) that they are each part of a social collectivity. What we have described and argued is reflected in the fact that tone-eurythmy performers are expected always to place themselves consciously at the very cusp of musical change, always listening out for and indeed anticipating shifts in the soul moods of the music they perform. They do this precisely to be able to respond actively to those mood changes, that way

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to transform them and indeed to take charge of them as the mood changes affect their performances. Read in conjunction with the point made at the outset that eurythmy is quintessentially anthroposophical, and thus seeing eurythmical practice as analogous of anthroposophy’s general approach to life, one can thus conclude that anthroposophy’s efforts to facilitate the development of human consciousness build on that same notion of consciously placing oneself on the cusp – in this instance so that one is able to read social-cultural structural constraints and anticipate structural change in order to know how to transform behaviour both to accommodate those structures as they change and to know how to transform or at least restructure them and their constraining influences. Moreover, competent eurythmists need, to phrase it in Giddens’s (1984) terms, to be discursively conscious of the reasons for their actions, and also simultaneously practically conscious of how to behave in ways that enable them to act corporeally in order to embody the changing moods they sense are imbedded in music, and that they must therefore enact. Similarly, anthroposophy aims to enable individuals to mobilise spirit, thus raising all their actions and their reasons for undertaking them to the level of discursive consciousness, whilst simultaneously having and demonstrating a bodily capacity to ‘know how to get on’ in a sense that might be described as intuitive, as a manifestation of practical consciousness or as a reflection of habitus as explicated by Mauss (1979 [1950]: 101) which he described as ‘techniques and work of collective and individual practical reason’. Such capacities are learned consciously (including through imitation) in much the same way that anthroposophy would have individuals activate spirit in the process of learning to live practically in the world.18 If that is the case, as indeed it seems to us it is, then it seems that Steiner’s work constitutes an as-yet-unrecognised precursor to contemporary poststructuralist analytical models, one that has – probably because of his concerns with the occult – been ignored by most mainstream analysts, yet one that had as its goal to understand the relationship of agency to structure and to know consciously how to act agentively to effect structural change.

Notes 1. Rudolf Steiner was born in Austria and studied natural science, mathematics and philosophy in Vienna. His Weimar doctoral thesis (1892), entitled Truth and Knowledge, built upon his work editing Goethe’s writings, and was the basis of his own later scientific, literary and philosophical scholarship. From soon after 1900 he developed his earlier philosophical principles into an approach for the methodical research of psychological and especially spiritual and supersensible phenomena. During that time he became active in the Theosophical Society, but later broke away and, in 1913, founded the Anthropo-

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

sophical Society out of which he initiated holistic approaches in medicine, therapies for disabled persons, education, science, economics, agriculture, architecture, drama and eurythmy. Eurythmy is also taught to help students understand how to work in concert with others while recognising their own individual spaces (social as much as spatial). Following Sagarin (2003) we avoid the reifying term ‘Waldorf Education’. In what appears to be a typographical error, an online source, accessed 18 August 2008 (http://wn.rsarchive.org/Eurhythmy/19230826p01.html), uses the word ‘soul’ rather than ‘soil’. But the German original (Steiner 1968: 24) uses the word Boden, which translates as soil not as soul. The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to provide an institutional base for esotericism in nineteenth-century Western society. Its goals were to form the core of a hoped-for universal brotherhood of students of philosophy, religions and science who would also study the laws of nature, among them the psychic abilities of humans (Faivre 2000: 4; 27). Steiner’s split from the Theosophical Society was primarily because he rejected the Theosophists’ claim that Christ had been reincarnated, maintaining that the Christ’s incarnation represented a single unique and unrepeatable moment in human and cosmic evolution (Steiner 2007: 64). Steiner’s determination to develop modern scientific methods to come to terms with the spiritual (supersensible) world (Mazzone 1999: 28) also differed from the Theosophists’ approach. Examples of such application beyond Waldorf Schools include biodynamic farming, architecture, anthroposophical medicine, the Camphill Villages movement and ethical banking. According to Steiner (1983: 40), the relation between the ratios of musical intervals and those of planetary movements showed that the spiritual home of music is the planets. The anthroposophical understanding of such relationships is similar to the kabbalistic theurgical notion that ‘human activity is capable of exerting influence on the realms beyond it’ (Fine 1992: 121) just as those realms exert influence on human activity. Eurythmy tends to emphasise upper rather than lower body activity to communicate music visibly through bodily activity, though choreographies do involve movement around a stage. More of the formalised movements associated with particular sounds are, however, performed through upper body – especially arm – movements, rather than through the lower body, which nonetheless is very active. We concentrate here on associations between human soul moods and sound/music structures without considering relationships to cosmic structures. That said, we note that Steiner developed the idea of tone eurythmy during the same weeks in 1915 that he was choreographing three eurythmy performances of cosmic structures. We are grateful for the assistance of Karl Geggus who produced the video and other eurythmy imagery that were part of the EASA conference presentation of the chapter; Paula Spiegel and Ingrid Salzman for assistance with musical terminology; Nelson Fredsell, Raoul Spiegel and especially Conor Ralphs for assistance with diagrams and imagery; and Ruy Blanes, Anna Fedele and other participants in the conference workshop for their suggestions and guidance. Any errors or omissions remain our own.

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9. The gestures are modified to indicate pitch and dynamic. 10. These are notated for an A-clarinet, meaning that they are notated three semitones lower in pitch from a score that is notated according to concert pitch which is what one would see in the score for all instruments other than those, such as the A-clarinet, B-flat trumpet or E-flat soprano cornet, that are described as transposing instruments. This is significant because, for eurythmy, each tone at each pitch level is associated with a particular gesture (although in relative terms relating to pitch). There is an incomplete analogy here with the way each tone at each pitch level vibrates at its own particular frequency (e.g., the A above middle C in concert pitch – the left image in illustration 10.5 – vibrates at a frequency of 440Hz; middle C at 261.62557Hz; etc.). For eurythmy, however, the gestures are in relative terms. If a piece includes As in a range of five octaves, the pitch gestures will be different from those for a piece with As in a range of just three octaves, although the tone gesture (i.e., the angle from body-axis plane) will not change from 54 degrees. In other words, while pitch gestures are performed in relational terms, tone gestures are performed eurythmically in absolute terms. Eurythmists transpose into concert pitch any scores not so scripted. 11. A similar experience is reported by Sheets-Johnstone (1999: 266) from her kinetic research when she says that ‘all emotions resolve themselves into extensional or contractive movement’. 12. Further reasons for our use here of Lévi-Straussian structuralism are as follows. The chapter is a collaborative work by an anthropologist, Spiegel, and a eurythmist, Sponheuer, who has also been Spiegel’s fieldwork interlocuter since he has an anthropological interest in eurythmy as part of an ethnographic study of Waldorf schools and the influence of anthroposophical ideas in the pedagogy used there. He has also been co-supervisor of Sponheuer’s (2009) masters dissertation in Dance. Whilst doing fieldwork amongst eurythmists, Spiegel has heard repeated reference to music and eurythmy as structure, and to transformations of such structures. The words have resonated for him with Lévi-Strauss’s work and analysis, and have drawn him towards applying it to his own work. In addition, during the supervision process he introduced Sponheuer to aspects of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism and ideas about transformation. When he presented her with the culinary triangle model, Sponheuer, as eurythmist, quickly suggested reworking it into the revised model of figure 10.3. A while later, as anthroposophist as well as eurythmist, she further reworked it into the model of figure 10.4. That in turn provided Spiegel, as anthropologist, with insight into anthroposophical understandings of the spiritbody-soul relationship. It also became a model that Sponheuer has used both in her dissertation (2009) and when teaching aspirant eurythmists, thereby exemplifying what Giddens (1984) describes as a double hermeneutic. 13. Of course this begs questions about the process of microwaving raw foods, which might be seen as a form of roasting when it does not involve water, and boiling when it does. 14. A score is, however, itself hardly ‘raw’, since it is the product of a human composer’s soul mood that has been transformed by the composer’s intervention into a score; it cannot thus be seen as wholly ‘natural’. But, to return to the food analogy, raw food is itself almost always a product of human intervention. A living animal has first to be slaughtered (or hunted and slaughtered)

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15. 16.

17.

18.

before parts of it become raw food; a vegetable, grain or fruit has first to be harvested (and, in the case of grain) threshed before it becomes a raw food. This is the ideal towards which teachers in Waldorf/Steiner Schools are supposed to aspire. It is noteworthy how, even before the sounding of a piece of music, one can see the eurythmists actually moving the music – anticipating the sounded music as if echoing its theme even before it has been heard. Interestingly, this idea, from Steiner’s early twentieth-century philosophy, is one that – if one excludes his concern with the occult as scientifically observable and understandable – seems to have been present in the work of his pragmatist peers such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey (Hanegraaff 1996: 493), and also in the slightly later work of George Herbert Mead. These epistemological links are, however, issues for a separate study. Mauss regarded habitus as comprising dispositions that people develop in response to particular practical considerations, that they learn through education and imitation and that ‘vary especially between societies, educations, proprieties and fashions’ (1979: 101). This is a somewhat different use of the term from Bourdieu’s (1977) use. The later use has become particularly popular, partly, it seems, because it can be used to rehearse old ideas about cultural uniformity within named societies (Spiegel 1997: 12). That use of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus is because he saw it as constituting dispositions that are persistent and durable almost to the point of permanence and, as Csordas (2002: 62–63) has pointed out, that also constitute a system which resides in what might seem to be a collective unconscious (also see Asad 1993: 75–77; Strathern 1996: 9–14). Mauss’s earlier use of the term appears to have been sufficiently flexible to accommodate dialectical relationships between ideas and behaviours, although that may simply be because he did not develop it to any extent.

Bibliography Asad, T. 1993 Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boyce-Tillman, J. 2007. ‘Spirituality in the Musical Experience’, in L. Belser (ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (Part 2). Dordrecht: Springer. Cook, N. 1990. Music, Imagination and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cooke, D. 1962. The Language of Music. London: Oxford University Press. Cornell, D. 2008. Moral Images of Freedom: A Future for Critical Theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Csordas, T. 2002. Body/Meaning/Healing. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Deliège, R. 2004. Lévi-Strauss Today: An Introduction to Structural Anthropology. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

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Eckersley, R. 2006. ‘Is Modern Western Culture a Health Hazard?’ International Journal of Epidemiology 35: 252–58. Ellenberger, H. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic Books. Faivre, A. 2000. Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism. Albany: State University of New York Press. Feld, S.. 1990. Sound and Sentiment. Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Fine, L. 1992. ‘Purifying the Body in the Name of the Soul: The Problem of the Body in Sixteenth-century Kabbalah,’ in H. Eilberg-Schwartz (ed.), People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gabrielsson, A. and P. Juslin. 1996. ‘Emotional Expression in Music Performance’, Psychology of Music 24(1): 68-91. Gabrielsson, A. and E. Lindström. 2001. ‘The Influence of Musical Structure on Emotional Expression’, in P. Juslin and J. Sloboda (eds), Music Emotion. New York: Oxford University Press. Ghiselin, B. 1952. The Creative Process. Berkeley: University of California Press. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Godwin, J. 1987. Harmonies of Heaven and Earth. Rochester, VA: Inner Traditions International Ltd. Hanegraaff, W. J. 1996. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: Brill. Kant, I. 2001. Critique of the Power of Judgement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kastner, M. P. and R. Crowder. 1990. ‘Perception of the Major/minor Distinction: IV. Emotional Connotations in Young Children’, Music Perception 8(2): 189–202. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1978. The Origin of Table Manners. London: Jonathan Cape. ———. 1970. The Raw and the Cooked. London: Jonathan Cape. ———. 1968. Structural Anthropology. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Cape. Mans, M. 2007. ‘Dance for Spiritual Efficacy in Africa,’ in L. Bresler (ed.), International Handbook of Research in Arts Education (Part 2). Dordrecht: Springer. Mauss, M. 1979 (1950). ‘Techniques of the Body,’ in Sociology and Psychology: Essays. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mazzone, A. 1999. ‘Waldorf Teacher Education: The Implications for Teacher Education of Rudolf Steiner’s Educational Philosophy and its Practice in Waldorf Schools,’ PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide. Muller, L. 2006. ‘Music and Metaphor and Mediator: Creating an Integrative Paradigm for Education’, PhD Thesis, University of Cape Town. Sagarin, S. K. 2003. ‘Introduction,’ in What Is Waldorf Education: Three Lectures by Rudolf Steiner. Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks. Sardello, R. 1999. ‘Introduction,’ in A Psychology of Body, Soul and Spirit: Lectures by Rudolf Steiner. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press. Schönberg, A. 1994. Coherence, Counterpoint, Instrumentation, Instruction in Form. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Sheets-Johnstone, M. 1999 ‘Emotion and Movement: A Beginning Empirical Phenomenological Analysis of Their Relationship,’ in R. Nuñez and W. J.

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Freeman (eds), Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion. Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic. Sloboda, J. 2005. Exploring the Musical Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1990. The Musical Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spiegel, A. 1997. ‘Continuities, Culture and the Commonplace: Searching for a New Ethnographic Approach in South Africa,’ in P. McAllister (ed.), Culture and the Commonplace. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Sponheuer, S. 2009. ‘Music Made Visible in Time and Space: Concepts of Simultaneity in Tone-Eurythmy Choreography’. MMus (Dance) Dissertation, University of Cape Town. Steiner, R. 2007. ‘Freemasonry’ and Ritual Work. Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks / Anthroposophic Press. ———. 2005 (1923). ‘Eurythmy: What Is It and How Did It Come Into Being?’ in Eurythmy as Visible Speech. Weobley, UK: Anastasi Ltd. ———. 1998 (1924). Eurythmy as Visible Singing. Translated by Allan Stott. Stourbridge, UK: Anderida Music Trust. ———. 1984a (1924). ‘In Eurythmy the Entire Body Must Become Soul. Lecture 15’, in Eurythmy as Visible Speech. London: Rudolf Steiner Press. ———. 1984b (1924). ‘Speech Eurythmy Course: Report in the “News Sheet”’, in Eurythmy as Visible Speech. London: Rudolf Steiner Press. ———. 1983. The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press. ———. 1968 .‘Eurythmie, was sie ist und wie sie enstanden ist,’ in Eurythmie als sichtbare Sprache. Dornach: Verlag der Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung. ———. 1923. ‘A Lecture on Eurythmy.’ Lecture delivered at Penmaenmawr, 26 August 1923. GA0279 in Rudolf Steiner Archive. http://wn.rsarchive.org/ Eurhythmy/19230826p01.html. Accessed 18 August 2008. ———. 1922. ‘The Relation of the Movement for Religious Renewal to the Anthroposophical Movement. Lecture delivered at Dornach, 30 Dec 1922,’ in The Spiritual Communion of Mankind – Published in Man and the World of the Stars 1963 http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/RelMov_index.html. Accessed 15 June 2009. Storr, A. 1997. Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus. London: Harper Collins. Strathern, A. 1996 Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Turner, B. and D. Huron. 2008. ‘A Comparison of Dynamics and Major- and Minor-Key Works’, Empirical Musicology Review 3(2): 64–68. https://kb.osu .edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/31941/1/EMR000047a_Turner_Huron.pdf. Accessed 17 August 2008. Zuckerkandl, V. 1976. Man the Musician. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Notes on Contributors

Giovanna Bacchiddu received her doctorate in social anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of a number of articles on religion, sociality and kinship in Apiao, Chiloé, Chile. She is currently working on a project on transnational adoption, investigating perceptions of relatedness and identity amongst Chilean children adopted by Italian parents. Katia Ballacchino obtained her PhD in ethnology and ethno-anthropology from the University ‘Sapienza’ in Rome. She is currently Adjunct Professor at the University of Molise. Her main research topics are: secondgeneration immigrants in Italy; social and cultural mediation; visual ethnography; and popular traditions and the inventory of the intangible cultural heritage in the South of Italy. She is author of several publications about these topics. Ruy Llera Blanes, anthropologist, is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Anthropology Department). He specializes in the anthropology of religion, having previously worked with Pentecostal movements in Southern Europe. He is currently working with African prophetic movements, discussing issues of knowledge, transmission, memory, rationalism, leadership and charisma. Aleksandra Cimpric, anthropologist, is a PhD student at the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille I) and a member of CEMAf (Centre d’Etudes des Mondes Africains). She is doing a research work in Central African Republic on the transformation of symbolic representations related to water, namely, talimbi witchcraft. Her work is largely concerned with the imagery of occult forces in everyday life of Central African population, as well as violence as a result of witchcraft accusations. Her current interests

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include also Christianity and new religious movements, violence, juridical anthropology and identities in contemporary Central African Republic. Keith Egan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where he received his PhD in anthropology in 2007. He is currently researching the construction of gender, faith and belonging among Irish pilgrims at Catholic shrines in Europe. Anna Fedele explores in her work the intersections of gender and religion, the importance of corporeality in religious contexts, and ritual creativity. She has done extensive fieldwork on alternative pilgrimages to French shrines and is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA) of the Lisbon University Institute and a research fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris. Kim E. Knibbe is an anthropologist and sociologist of religion and works as assistant professor at the University of Groningen. The research on which her contribution is based was carried out at the VU University in Amsterdam within an international research project titled ‘transnational Nigerian-initiated churches, networks and believers in three northern countries in Europe’. This project was initiated by the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (see http://www.glopent.net). She has done research on religion and spirituality in the Netherlands, Nigeria and the Philippines. Ann Maria Ostenfeld-Rosenthal, Phd, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research includes the following keywords: spiritual healing, functional disorders, placebo, health and spirituality, doctor-patient relationship, Denmark, ritual, social change, popular religion, pilgrimages, gender, identity, regionalism and Spain. João Rickli completed his PhD research in 2010 at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, with a scholarship from the Brazilian Ministry of Education. He investigated Dutch Protestant missionary and diaconal initiatives in Brazil. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the VU University in Amsterdam. Eugenia Roussou, anthropologist, is a postdoctoral researcher at CRIA/ FCSH, New University of Lisbon. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Greece on the subjects of religion, ritual performativity and material

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manifestations of belief. She is currently working on the influence of alternative spiritualities in contemporary Portuguese religioisity. Andrew Spiegel is associate professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town where he has taught for over thirty years, ten of them as head of department. He has published on a wide variety of southern African topics, most recently on racism, on the concept of tradition and its uses in the southern African context, on the challenges of teaching social anthropology in a South African context and, in collaboration with a civil engineer and an environmentalist, on the social implications of drainage problems in informal settlements. Silke Sponheuer is a practising eurythmist who trained and worked for seventeen years at the Hamburg Eurythmy School. She has been director of the Kairos Eurythmy Training programme in Cape Town for fifteen years and has choreographed and directed various stage eurythmy performances. In 2009 she was awarded a master’s degree in dance (choreography – with distinction) by the University of Cape Town. Ehler Voss has studied anthropology, philosophy and German language and literature. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and is currently researching 19th century European spiritism at the University of Siegen, Germany.

Subject Index

Apiao (Chile), 23–42 Appadurai, Arjun, xviii, 45, 71, 81–82, 97, 101 Asad, Talal, x, xiv, xxii (n.3), 147 (n.6), 200 (n.18) Anthroposophy, xx–xxi, 179–181, 194–195–197, 198 (n.6) anthroposophical movement, 180, 198 (n.5) anthroposophists, 182, 193–195, 199 (n.12) Bangui (Central African Republic), 109–130 Belief, xi–xx, xxii (n.9), 4, 24–25, 37, 39 (n.2), 44, 46, 50, 53, 79, 93, 96, 110, 112–113, 121, 124 (n.1), 125 (n.3), 134, 137, 139, 144–145, 152–153, 155–156, 161–163, 165 (n.5, n.6) as perception, xi, xiv–xv, 98, 103, 110–113, 122–123, 134, 141, 144–146, 153 170–174, 190 devotion, xvii, 4, 33–34, 50–51, 57–59, 60 (n.11) faith, xi, xiv–xv, 29, 50, 55, 70, 76, 88 (n.1) transcendence, 4, 57, 79 Blavatsky, Helena-Petrovna, 198 (n.4) Boddy, Janice, xiii, xxii (n.2, 5), 141 Body and gender, xiii, 134, 136–138, 146 (n.2) anthropological approaches to, xi–xvi, xxii (n.3), 20 (n.16),

24–25, 43–45, 51, 57–59, 94–95, 98–99, 110–113, 115, 155, 169, 171, 173, 177 (n.2) bodily deformation, 52 bodily experience, xiv–xv, xx, xxi (n.1), 26, 44, 79, 118, 133–134, 141–145, 151–153, 158, 160–163, 168–170, 174–176, 181, 190, 195 bodily movement, 5, 46–47, 52, 54, 61 (n.21), 83, 92, 116, 181–183, 190, 192, 195–196, 198 (n.7), 199 (n.11) body politics, xi–xiii, 44, 51, 58, 104 bodily pollution, xiii, 138 bodily practices, 93–94, 99–101, 105 bodily sociality, xii, 26 body as space, xvii, 12, 46, 145–146 body as consciousness, 98 body and soul dichotomy, xi–xiii, xv, xviii. xix–xxi, 24–26, 34–35, 43, 57–58, 93, 95, 102, 104, 110, 136, 145, 147 (n.6), 151, 152–154, 163–164, 169, 173, 181 body of Christ, x, 70, 76–77, 79 body-soul-spirit, 134 body theories, xi–xvi, xxii (n.3), 43–44, 57–59, 59 (n.7), 88 (n.2), 165 (n.8) corporeality, xi–xvi, xviii, xxi (n.1), 9, 37, 44, 51, 54, 57–58, 60 (n.14), 70, 79

Subject Index ◆ 207

individual and collective, xvii, 44, 55, 59, 1 (n.27) marked body, 51–57 menstruating, 137–138 metaphor of the body, x, xi, 56, 69–71, 74–81, 89 (n.5), 157 mindful bodies, xii, 16, 154, 164 multidimensional body, 123–124 perceptions of the body (see Perception) power of the body (see Power) purification, 11, 58 re-enchantment of the body, 151–167 re-formed body, xii, 94 religious conceptions of, xi social body, the, xiv, 25, 58 spiritualising the body, x, 79 suffering body, the, xi, xiv, 10, 15, 47, 53, 61 (n.20), 158 symbolic interpretations of, xiii, 111 techniques du corps, xii, 44, 59, 70, 89 (n.4), 111, 197 theatralisation of the body, 47, 52, 54, 57 thinking with the body, xix, xxi, 111, 171 Bourdieu, Pierre, xii, xix, 44, 54, 70, 89 (n.4), 95–97, 111,134, 153–154, 170, 177 (n.2), 182, 200 (n.18) Brown, Michael F., xxi, 140–141, 147 (n.4) Cannell, Fenella, xvii, 24, 58, 61 Cannibalism, xviii, 110, 113–114, 117, 125 (n.5) Charisma, xv, 15, 39 (n.8), 95–96, 104–105, 144, 165, 171 charismatic healing, 144, 156, 161, 165 (n.9), 171 Christian, William A., xiv, xviii, 31, 39 (n.1), 40 (n.14) Christianity, xvi–xvii, xix, 40 (n.14), 24, 88 (n.1), 94, 99–101, 104, 136, 138, 146, 147 (n.5), 152 Amerindian, xvii, 24, 38 Calvinism, 71, 88 (n.2), 89 (n.7) Catholic, x, xvi–xviii, 3–22, 23–42, 43–66

Charismatic, xv, 94–96, 101, 104–105, 144, 156, 161, 171 Christian Community, xvii, 5, 28, 76–78, 87, 180 Global diaconates, 69–74, 77–79, 81–83, 85–87, 88 (n.1) Marianism, xviii, 10, 60 (n.12) Orthodox, xix, 133–140, 143, 146, 147 (n.4, n. 5) passion (of Christ), 47, 50–51 Pentecostalism, x, xv, xviii, 91–108 pilgrimage (see Pilgrimage) Protestantism, xviii, 16, 23, 40 (n.12), 69–90, 152 saints (see Saints) Claverie, Elisabeth, xviii–xiv Cognition, 16, 44, 180 cognitive anthropology, xiii–xiv Cohen, Emma, xiv, 120 Comaroff, John and Jean, xiv, 93, 105, 110, 113, 122, 126 (n.22, 23, 26), 157 Connerton, Paul, 54 Consciousness, 16, 18 (n.5), 98, 112, 121, 170–171, 175, 180, 189.191, 195–196 as spirit, 159 body as consciousness (see Body) discursive consciousness, 18 (n.5), 182, 193, 197 practical consciousness, 182, 197 Crete (Greece), xix, 133, 140, 146 (n.3) Csordas, Thomas, xii, xv, xx, 5, 14–15, 18 (n.2), 44, 59 (n.2), 61 (n.26), 97, 99, 101, 143–144, 153–154, 161– 164 (n.2), 165 (n.7), 169–171, 173, 176–177 (n.2), 200 (n.18) Dance, x, 23, 35, 40 (n.12), 45–48, 54, 70, 181–182, 199 (n.12) cueca, 33, 35, 37 eurythmy, xx, 179, 181–197, 198 (n.1, 2, 7, 8), 199 (n.10, 12) De Martino, Ernesto, 53, 58, 61 (n.19) Denmark, 151–167 Desjarlais, Robert, 7, 97, 142 Devil, xviii, 96–97, 104, 135, 136, 138–139, 142 d/evil, 138–139

208 ◆ Subject Index

Discipline, xii–xiv, 10–11, 70 Douglas, Mary, xii–xiii, 44, 111, 124 (n.1), 126 (n.18), 137 Dubisch, Jill, xviii, 8–9, 138 Economy, 124, 125 (n.5), xviii–xix, 40 (n.13), 55, 99–100, 104–105 accumulation of wealth, 110, 113, 121 occult economies, 122, 126 (n.26) Embodiment, x–xii, 44, 58, 88 (n.2), 93–94, 95–99, 102–104, 111, 135–138, 145, 180, 193 embodiment theory, xi–xii, xv, 44, 59 (n.2), 97, 153, 169, 176 philosophical approaches to, 85, 97, 153 Emotion, 8, 12, 18 (n.6), 33–34, 44–45, 50, 53, 55–59, 61 (n.27), 70, 77–79, 99, 110, 134–135, 146, 153, 155–158, 162, 171, 180, 182, 183–189, 199 (n.11) theory of, xii Energy, xx–xxi, 138, 141–145, 156–161, 175, 180, 188, 193 channelling, 139–143 Engelke, Matthew, xv Ethnography incorporation as, 43–44, 48 methodology, xii, 43, 182 Eucharist, x, 3 Eurythmy, xx, 179–202 eurythmy gestures, 182, 184–189, 193, 199 (n.9, 10) music eurythmy, 179, 181–189–192, 194–197, 198 (n.6, 7, 8), 199 (n.12), 200 (n.16) tone eurythmy, 180, 183–184, 186– 190, 196, 198 (n.7), 199 (n.10) Evans–Pritchard, E.E., xiii, 109, 112–113, 122, 126 (n.18) Evil, xix, 96, 114, 120, 124 (n.1) evil eye, xvi, xix, xxi, 133–146, 147 (n.3), 148 (n.9) Exchange, 23–25, 28–29, 31, 38, 40 (n.16), 47, 121, 140, 145 gifts, xiv, 15, 23, 29, 36, 76, 78, 89 (n.9), 95 negotiation, xvii, xix, 31–33, 38, 94, 96, 104–105 pact, 29, 36

reciprocity, 36, 38, 58, 134 Experience, x–xvi, xxi (n.1), 6–7, 9–10, 13–17, 18 (n.5), 19 (n.10), 25, 28, 30, 36,44, 47, 50, 58, 70–71, 78, 81–82, 85–88, 94, 95, 97–99, 104–105, 110–114, 119–123, 145, 147 (n.7), 151–154, 169–170, 172–176, 181 and immediacy, 4–5, 8, 14, 17, 53, 81, 111 and struggle, 4–7, 13, 15, 17, 18 (n.5) life–projects, 4, 17 Feld, Steven, 186, 192, 194 Foreignness, 169–176, 177 (n.4) absolute foreignness, 172 neglecting foreignness, 176 radical foreignness, 169–176 Foucault, Michel, xii, 16, 44, 51, 58, 60 (n.13) Frey, Nancy, xxii (n.10), 4–5, 10–11, 18 (n.4) Geertz, Clifford, xv, 4, 70, 77, 89 (n.5), 152–153 Gell, Alfred, xvii, 20 (n.16), 25–26, 29, 39 (n.3) Geography, 12, 16, 85, 90 (n.12), 94, 101, 103 geography of conversion, 94 localisation, locality, xviii, 8, 39 (n.6), 40 (n.10), 45, 54, 71, 81–87 mapmaking/mapping, xviii, 70–71, 75, 81–88 moral geography, 16 religious geography, 10, 103 Germany, 168–178 Geschiere, Peter, xix, 109–110, 112–113, 121–122, 124 (n.1) Giddens, Anthony, 182, 196–197, 199 (n.12) Globalisation, xix, 18 (n.2), 82, 90 (n.12), 97, 101, 104–105, 121 Good, Byron, 162, 164 (n.3), 165 (n.8) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 180, 183, 197 (n.1) Habitus, xi–xii, xix, xxii (n.4), 4, 44, 70, 95–99, 104–105, 111, 177 (n.2), 192, 197, 200 (n.18)

Subject Index ◆ 209

habitus of the saved soul, xix, 91–108 Healing, xv, xx, 5, 8, 12, 18 (n.6), 95, 97, 134, 143–144, 151–152, 154–163, 165 (n.9, 10), 168–171 and Christian symbolism, 143, 148 (n.9) charismatic, xv, 95, 144, 156, 161, 165 (n.9), 171 mediumistic, xx, 168–178 multi–tradition, 156, 165 (n.6) phenomenology of, xv reiki, 156, 168 shamanic, 174–175 Heelas, Paul, xx, 147 (n.4), 154–155, 165 (n.6) Hierarchy, xx, 57, 72, 154, 161 Holism, 155–158, 164 (n.1) Holy Ghost, x, xv, 102–103 Illness, 13, 109, 122, 142, 147 (n.7), 151, 155–163, 164 (n.3), 165 (n.8, 9) narrativisation, 160 somatism, xvii, 15, 18 (n.6), 44–45, 133–135, 146. 164 (n.3) violent somatism, 48 Ingold, Tim, 71, 82–83, 87, 146 Intonement, 186 Invisibility, x, xiii, xvii, 45, 109, 113– 114, 118, 120, 122, 124, 145, 168 occult, 109–110, 112–113, 115–116, 117, 119–123, 124 (n.1, 2), 125 (n.26), 197, 200 (n.17) vs. visibility, 111 Jackson, Michael, xxii (n.7), 10, 16, 20 (n.17), 97, 106 (n.2), 111, 117, 165 (n.7) Language, 15, 57, 61 (n.24), 77–78, 81, 93, 114, 158, 186, 194 metaphor (see Body, body metaphor) narrative, 5–6, 12, 18 (n.5), 19 (n.9), 28, 39 (n.8), 69, 104, 160, 163, 190 Lévi–Strauss, Claude, 111, 163, 190, 191, 199 (n.12) Lindquist, Galina, xxii (n.9), 161, 163, 165 (n.7)

Lock, Margaret, xii, 44, 61 (n.26), 104, 154 Luhrmann, Tanya M., xxii (n.11) Magic, 109, 112, 120, 124 (n.1), 125 (n.13), 126 (n.26), 148 (n.10), 152–153, 161 Mauss, Marcel, xii, 59, 70, 89 (n.4), 111, 116, 182, 197, 200 (n.18) Margry, Peter Jan, 8–9 McGuire, Meredith, xviii, xx, 144, 152–155, 158, 160, 164 (n.2), 165 (n.8) Mediums, xx, 137, 169–170, 173–174, 191–192 mediumistic healing, xx–xxi, 169–178 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 54, 58, 61 (n.24), 170–171 Meyer, Birgit, xv, xviii, 71, 78, 95 Mind, xv, 18 (n.5), 25, 59, 87, 110, 120–121, 139, 144, 155–160, 169, 173, 180 Miracles, 23, 25–26, 28–29, 30, 34, 45, 98–99, 105 Mission, xvi, xviii, 40 (n.12), 69–90, 92–97, 100–105, 112, 114 missionary encounters, 70, 85, 89 (n.3), 93, 97 missionary performance, 69–90 Mobility, xi, xv–xvi, xviii–xix, 7, 12 Modernity, xx, 4, 9, 44, 82 enchantment/disentchantment/ re-enchantment, 153 rejection of modernity, 4 Movement, 5, 8, 18 (n.5), 52, 54, 61 (n.21), 83, 116, 179, 193 bodily movement (see Body) walking, xiv, 3–22 Music, 18 (n.5), 33–35, 45–48, 179–202 music of the spheres, 191 musical pitch, 181, 184, 186–187, 188, 199 (n.9, 10) musical tone, 186, 188 musical triangle, 192 visible music, 179, 182, 190–191, 195–196, 198 (n.7) Neopaganism, xxi, xxii (n.11)

210 ◆ Subject Index

New Age, xvi, xix, xxi, xxii (n.11), 134, 140–141, 143, 146, 147 (n.4), 154–155, 165 (n.6), 180 Nola (Italy), 43–66 Passion, 44–48, 50–52, 54–55, 57–59, 61 (n.27), 155 Perception, xi, xiv–xv, 54, 81, 98, 103, 110–113, 123, 134, 141, 144–146, 170–174 aesthetic perception, 190 and movement, 54 belief and perception (see Belief) bodily perception, 110–113 123, 134, 153 Performance, xiii, xviii, 40 (n.10), 44, 46, 51, 56, 60 (n.15), 69–71, 81, 87, 143, 180, 190 bodily performance, xviii, 44, 186, 190–191 imaginal performance, 161 musical performance, 33, 180, 183–184, 189, 191–192, 198 (n.7) ritual performance, xviii, 40 (n.10), 46, 48, 84, 86 performance of healing, 143, 148 (n.10) performance of mission, 77, 81–82, 87 Person, xi, 9, 13, 15, 25, 37, 44, 59, 95, 110, 112, 114, 118, 122, 125 (n.8), 144, 155, 162–163, 165 (n.11) Hommes-caïmans, 115, 117–119, 123, 125 (n.10, n.16), 126 (n.19) inter-personality, 36, 175 personality, 12, 52, 97, 99–101, 103, 104, 110, 120, 123, 151, 154, 160, 164 (n.3) personhood, xii, 15, 18 (n.18), 31, 37, 44, 114, 122, 168 personification, x, 56, 139, 175 philosophies of personhood, xv Phenomenology, xii, xv, 81–82, 97–98, 106 (n.2), 153, 161, 165 (n.7), 171, 176, 194–195 phenomenology of locality, 81–82 phenomenology of otherness, xx, 169, 171, 173, 176

phenomenology of the body, 47 Pilgrimage, xi, xiv–xvi, xviii, xxii (n.10), 3–6, 8–9, 14, 60 (n.18) and pain, 10–11 and therapy, 10, 13, 15 medieval, 4–5, 17 pilgrimage experience, xi, 4, 7–9, 11–13, 17, 19 (n.8, n.11), 20 (n.14) pilgrimage ritual, 5, 9, 45 Santiago, Camino de, 3–22 secular, 5, 8–10, 19 (n.7) Poetics, 4–5, 8, 17, 18 (n.3) Politics, xix, 72, 99–101, 105, 110, 123, 173 political spirituality, 94 Possession, xiii–xiv, 61 (n.19), 70, 120, 139–143, 173 Pouillon, Jean, 144–145 Power, xii–xiii, 11, 32, 38, 40 (n.9), 43, 46–47, 51, 58, 81, 94–95, 99–105, 110, 113–114, 118, 121, 123, 140–141, 154, 165 (n.5), 180 bio-power, 44, 51 empowerment, 100–102, 112 occult power, 113, 115, 119–121, 123–124, 124 (n.1, n.2) power of the body, 111 sacred, xx, 26–27, 29–30, 32–33, 36–38, 39 (n.8), 45, 76, 100–101, 104, 115–116, 118–120, 123, 125 (n.3), 137, 139, 142, 144–145, 152–156, 159–161 Practice, xii, xv, 24, 134, 136, 145, 152, 162, 169, 180 bodily practices (see Body) community of, 53, 60 (n.17) regimes of, xiv religious, x–xii, xiv, xix–xx, 9–10, 25, 50, 53, 58, 70, 78, 86, 93–95, 100, 103–104, 124 (n.1), 141, 153, 155, 160, 165 (n.5) theory of, xii, 134 Presence, xiv–xv, 3, 13, 18 (n.6), 28, 54, 57, 74–81, 142, 144 Rapport, Nigel, 5, 18 (n.5) Religion ecstatic religion, xiii, 61 (n.19)

Subject Index ◆ 211

lived religion, xviii, 151–153, 156, 160, 164 religious agency, xi, xv religious creativity, xi, 134 religious experience, xiv–xv, xxi, xxii (n.7), 94, 99, 104–105, 110, 112, 126 (n.22), 152 religious learning, xiv religious mobility, xi, xv–xvi, xviii–xix religious pluralism, 136, 146 (n.3) religious power (see Power, sacred power) Religious Renewal, 144, 180 religious transmission, xiii–xiv, xix, 51, 57 religious vs. spiritual, 154–155, 159–160, 162, 164 (n.5), 180 Ritual, xiii–xiv, 5–6, 11–13, 19 (n.10), 27, 37, 44, 46, 48, 50–51, 53, 55–58, 60 (n.12, 14, 15, 16), 61 (n.21, 23), 69–71, 75, 77–78, 112–113, 117, 120, 126 (n.22) ceremonial machine, 45–46, 51, 55–56, 60 (n.11) feast, xvii, 45–50, 51–57, 60 (n.11, 12, 16) folklore, 55 Gigli, 43–66 hospitality rituals, 32–33, 40 (n.10) liminoid, 13, 15–16, 19 (n.10) novena, 23, 27–30, 32, 33–36, 37–38, 40 (n.10, 12) performance, xiii, 33, 35, 40 (n.10), 44, 46, 51, 56, 60 (n.15), 70–71, 77, 82, 86, 143, 148 (n.10), 198 (n.7) rites of passage, 13, 19 (n.10) ritual healing, xi, 134, 137, 140, 143, 148 (n.10), 151–167, 171 theatralization, 52 Saint, 23, 25–26, 51 saint devotion, xvii, 14, 23, 26, 28–38, 39 (n.1, 6, 7), 45–46, 48, 53, 60 (n.16), 139 Saint Anthony of Padua, 26–28, 39 (n.3, 5, 9), 40 (n.14)

Saint Paulinus of Nola, 45, 51–55, 60 (n.11) Saint Pio, 10 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, xii, 104, 146, 154 Secrecy, 118, 126 (n.18), 148 (n.10) secret societies, 117–119, 126 (n.18) Self, xii–xiii, xv, xx, 5, 11, 16, 147 (n.4), 155–158, 161–163, 165 (n.6), 168–173, 175–176, 195 autonomous self, 175 embodied self, 137 higher self, 156, 164 (n.4), 165 (n.11, 12) sacred self, 14–15, 142, 144, 162, 170–171, 173 self-consciousness, 18 (n.3), 175 self-development, 157–158, 163 Senses, xv, xviii, xx, 10, 13, 48, 69–70, 77–79, 99, 134, 145–146, 151, 153–154, 160–163, 170, 195 sensational forms, xviii, 70, 74–81, 86–87 supersensibility, 195, 197 (n.1) Shamanism, 38, 156, 160, 168, 175, 176 (n.1) modern Western shamanism, 156, 160, 176 (n.1) real and unreal shamans (177 (n.1) Sociality, xiii, xvii, 23–24, 37–38, 112 bodily sociality (see Body) Soul, x–xiii, xv–xxi, xxii (n.9), 8, 12, 19 (n.8), 44–45, 55, 57, 59 (n.7), 60 (n.15), 61 (n.25), 69–70, 85, 87, 93–96, 110, 113–114, 119–120, 123, 134–136, 139–146, 151, 155–158, 164 (n.4), 165 (n.11), 175, 179–183, 195, 198 (n.3) absence of, xiii as idiom, 11–12 body and soul dichotomy (see Body) expressions of the soul, 179 reincarnation, 156, 198 (n.4) soul as bridging device, xvii, 10–11 soul intention, 183 soul moods, 182, 186, 188–193, 195–196, 198 (n.7), 199 (n.14) succession of, xiii

212 ◆ Subject Index

suffering soul, xv, 10–12, 17 Space, 83, 145, 172, 195, 198 (n.2) body as space (see Body) sacred space, 27–28, 138, 153 Spirit, x, xix, xxi, 114, 120, 123, 125 (n.15), 134–136, 138, 142–143, 145–146, 152, 155–157, 161–163, 164 (n.4), 165 (n.11), 180–182, 193, 195, 197 spirit as consciousness, 159, 180, 193, 195 spirit possession, xiii–xiv, 120, 139–143, 173 spiritual counselling, 160, 162 spiritual embodiment, x–xii, 94, 118, 145 spiritual ingestion, 109, 124 Spiritism, 168, 174–175 Spirituality, xi–xii, xvii, xx, 8, 24, 54, 57–58, 138–141, 146, 151, 153–155, 160, 163, 180, 195 culture of spirituality, xxii (n.11) experiential spirituality, 153 New Age spirituality, 140–141, 146, 147 (n.4) political spirituality, 94 Steiner, Rudolph, xx, 179–182, 186, 194, 197 (n.1), 198 (n.4), 200 (n.17) Subjectivity, xii, xv, xxii (n.7), 44, 173 autonomous subject, 16, 44, 70, 78–79, 81, 86, 94, 101, 158, 173, 175 embodied subjects, 94, 160–161, 164 (n.3) individualisation, 25 intersubjectivity, 98, 163 perception (see Perception) subject-object dichotomy, 97–98, 169–171 Suffering, xv, 5, 10–11, 13, 15, 17, 47, 50, 52, 54, 61 (n.20), 160–161, 163–164, 164 (n.3) Christ’s suffering, 50

fatigue, 12, 15, 46–48, 50, 53, 56, 158 pain, xiv, 6, 10, 12–13, 15, 18 (n.6), 54, 158–159 suffering body (see ‘body’) suffering soul, 10–12 Structuralism, 182–183, 191, 194, 199 (n.12) poststructuralism, xii, xx structural analysis, 182, 184, 191, 194 structural elements, 9, 38, 186, 195 structural transformations, 90 (n.11), 179, 182, 190–191, 193–194, 196–197 Talimbi, 109–130 Tattoo, 49, 54, 61 (n.22) Theosophy, 194 Theosophical Society, 180, 198 (n.4) Thessaloniki (Greece), 133–150 Tonda, Joseph, 109–110, 113–114, 122, 125 (n.5, n.15) Toko, Simão, x Tradition, 6, 8–11, 44–46, 53–54, 60 (n.10), 156, 173, 176 (n.1) multitradition, 156, 165 Transnationalism, 97, 102, 105 Turner, Bryan, xii, 111, 114 Turner, Edith, 6, 8 Turner, Terence, 24–25 Turner, Victor, 6, 8, 13, 19 (n.10), 51, 58 Van Gennep, Arnold, 13 Waldenfels, Bernhard, xx, 170–176 Waldorf Waldorf schools, 179, 182, 198 (n.2, n.5), 199 (n.12), 200 (n.15) Weber, Max, 152–153, 177 (n.4) Williamsburg (New York), 46, 54, 60 (n.12) Witchcraft, xiii, xviii–xix, 98, 110–130 Zombie, 109, 113, 122, 124