As a scholar of Caribbean literature writes, again of the Vodou rites: "This experience of election [possession trance], its shock of communion, is not evidence of psychic disruption, or proof of pathology, but rather a result of the most intense discipline and study. Not everyone can be possessed, for not everyone can know how to respond to the demands and expectations of her god." So the ecstatic rites of these diaspora religions were not mad orgies, as whites often perceived them, but deliberately nurtured techniques of ecstasy, derived from ancient traditions.
~From Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbra Ehrenreich.
Possession by the gods is not in any way limited to the African dispora.
ReplyDeleteI am sure some of the Irish Catholics around while you were growing up could see an African ceremony and recognize the gods that were being called down and the rhythms that facilitated it .
In roughly the words of the song,"You say the gods are a myth then who is this I dancing with?"
We at "The Gods Are Bored" especially applaud the religions of the African diaspora.
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