Monsters and caricatures: spirit

possession in Tana Toraja

Di mi tri Tsint jilonis University of Edinburgh

Focusing on a specific healing ritual, this article explores the efficacy of spirit possession in Tana
Toraja. Framed in terms of indigenous exegesis, this exploration centres on the link between spirit
possession and death, which manifests an intrinsic connection between spirit possession and
sacrifice. In articulating this connection, the article foregrounds the body of the healer and attempts
to explicate its ‘monstrous’ potency.

This article is about spirit possession as a healing ritual among the Sa’dan Toraja of
South Sulawesi (Indonesia).1 Spirit possession is described as ‘playing with the spirits’
(sipaningo deata) or, more suggestively, as a ‘little death’ (lupu’-lupu’ dena’2). This game
or death is intimately associated with trance (kandeatan, ‘seized by the spirits’), in
which, according to my Toraja friends and informants, you ‘lose consciousness’
(limpu), you ‘forget’ (tang mengkilala), and your body is ‘taken over by spirits’ (diala
deata). In fact, in the ethnographic context of the Sa’dan Toraja, trance and spirit
possession seem to be interchangable (see Coville 1989; Crystal & Yamashita 1987;
Nooy-Palm 1986: 121-44; Zerner 1981); possession always involves trance and trance is
always framed in terms of possession. Trance, seen as a ‘temporary transformation of
normal consciousness which may involve dissociation and amnesia’ (Hollan & Wellen-
kamp 1994: 131), is intimately linked to spirit possession insofar as such transformations
are attributed to the spirits’ ‘presence and power’ (Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994: 123-32).
Of course, trance and spirit possession are frequently associated with rituals in which
healing for particular types of illness is sought. However, as Andrew Strathern puts it,

The character of such healing and its precise link with trance or possession have been difficult to
establish in cross-cultural terms. We are faced here with an old and familiar problem: how to move
from specific ethnographic accounts to generalizations about such accounts – or, indeed, whether to
attempt such a move at all (1996: 153).

I emphasize this problem because conflating spirit possession with trance may well be
of limited use for cross-cultural comparison (Tarabout 1999: 9-30). Throughout the

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world, there are numerous afflictions framed in terms of possession which do not
involve any change of mental state on the part of the person affected (illness, for
instance, is very often interpreted in this way, see Lewis 2003: 25; for a very different
example, concerning the incarnation of an Indian deity, see Harper 1957); similarly,
trance-like states can occur, for example during religious devotions, without being seen
as having been caused by spirit possession (e.g. the ‘boiling energy’ of the !Kung, see
Katz 1982; or, the ‘deafness’ of deprived bachelors amongst the Abelam of New Guinea,
see Lewis 2003: 36). Furthermore, spirit possession without trance as well as trance
without possession can easily be found in a single region (Tarabout 1999: 9-30).
Undoubtedly, difficulties associated with cross-cultural comparison are not unique
to spirit possession. In the case of shamanism, we are still debating whether the term
‘shaman’ should be restricted to its origins with the Tungu and related Siberian peoples
or applied to a much broader category of spiritual practitioners (Kehoe 2000; Perrin
1995). Furthermore, however spirit possession and shamanism might be defined, we are
still uncertain as to their intrinsic value or their relationship with other forms of
‘mystical’ agency like sorcery and witchcraft (Atkinson 1992; Taussig 1987).
Beyond the tyranny of definitions, it is still not clear how we should deal with the
old, ‘big’ questions embedded in the quest for an understanding of these phenomena.
Do terms such as shamanism or spirit possession point to a universal human experi-
ence that they, albeit inadequately, capture? Is a comprehensive theory of religious
experience possible? Is there such an experience at all, or should shamanism
and spirit possession be grouped with everyday practices like weaving, hunting, and
cooking?
Of course, these questions have been reframed in rather different terms recently.
Over the last twenty years the ethnographic study of spirit possession and shamanism
has been intimately associated with ‘the body’ or, rather, with ‘embodiment’. Often,
this focus on embodiment has been combined with an interest in power and the
‘politics of religion’ to bring notions like ‘hegemony’ and ‘resistance’ to the fore (e.g.
Boddy 1989; Comaroff 1985; Lambek 1993). Nevertheless, for reasons which will
become apparent by the end of my discussion, I would like to avoid the notion of
‘embodiment’. Furthermore, as my purpose in this article is to discuss the particu-
larities of my ethnography, I shall leave the question of cross-cultural comparison
aside until the very end.

The patient, the healer, and trance

Although I witnessed several healing rituals involving possession, I shall concentrate on
a single one, providing a brief description of its protagonists and focusing on the kinds
of problems it raises.
The healing ritual took place in a small village near the town of Rantepao in 1989.
Apart from the ubiquitous anthropologist, it was witnessed by the immediate family
of the patient, some of their friends, and a few neighbours. I was accompanied by Ne’
Dena’ from the area of Makale, who is the ‘highest’ rice priest (to menani, ‘the one
who sings [the rice]’ wearing imitation buffalo horns) in the central valley of Tana
Toraja. Subsequently, his commentary was extensively discussed with traditional
priests and ordinary people in the area of Buntao’, where I did most of my fieldwork.
Particularly valuable information was supplied by Ne’ Kuli’ (to minaa, ‘the one who
knows’) and Ne’ Baru (to dolo, ‘the one who enters the rice fields first’; another kind
of rice priest).3

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It is important to emphasize that I chose this specific example because of the healer
involved in it. What lies at the centre of my discussion is the efficacy of this particular
healer, and every time that I refer to spirit possession in Tana Toraja, what I intend is the
kind of possession in which this healer is involved; a healer whose efficacy is framed in
terms which make her unique in Tana Toraja.4 Furthermore, this possession fore-
grounded aluk to dolo (‘the ways of the ancestors’), the traditional religion of the Sa’dan
Toraja, in terms of its quest and of the ritual articulation of its efficacy. Aluk to dolo is
organized through a set of oppositions, the most important of which is east and west.
‘The rituals on the side of the rising sun’ (aluk rampe matallo) comprise the rites for the
living, the gods, and the deified ancestors while ‘the rituals on the side of the setting sun’
(aluk rampe matampu’) include the rites for the dead and the non-deified ancestors.
The possession ritual that I shall describe belongs in the rituals of the east; these, under
the influence of Christianity, have been disappearing fast. Indeed, although aluk to dolo
has been officially recognized by the Indonesian government since 1969, the vast major-
ity of the Toraja have converted to Christianity and many traditional practices have
been abandoned (Adams 1988).
As far as the specific focus of my discussion is concerned, the most important effect
of these changes seems to be the possibility of a disjunction between trance and spirit
possession. Although I never met one, I heard of Christians who had achieved trance
through fasting and prayer (but cf. Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994: 132). More generally,
Christian notions of sin and atonement seem to be changing traditional perceptions of
illness and cure (Hollan & Wellenkamp 1994: 210-12). However, although these changes
deserve much more attention, the focus of the present article is on ‘the old ways’.

The patient
The patient was a middle-aged woman with children in their twenties and thirties.
Suffering from painful headaches and recurrent fever, she described her condition as
feeling that her eyes were about to ‘exit’ from her head. She also spoke about ‘loss of
memory’ and ‘confusion’. Apparently, she would find herself in the middle of the market
without knowing how she got there. Every now and then, she could not remember the
name of her husband and failed to recognize her neighbours. She, like the rest of her
family, was Christian, but one of her neighbours, who still practised aluk to dolo,
convinced her to invite the traditional healer and helped arrange the healing ceremony.
The woman’s condition was described by Ne’ Dena’ as soyang sumanga’na (‘her
vitality is fleeing’). As amongst the neighbouring Bugis, where it is known as sumange’,
sumanga’ ‘is the vital energy that makes people effective, conscious, and healthy. It
enlivens humans and it animates the otherwise inanimate substance of our visible
bodies’ (Errington 1983: 548). The fleeing of sumanga’ is thought to lead to a loss of
consciousness, weakness, and death. Sumanga’ is thought ‘to move from right to left’
(lalan kanan) in the body and to enable a person to remain ‘cool’ (masakke). Never-
theless, as its connection with the body is tenuous, anything from a mild shock to anger
can cause it to get lost and ‘wander with no purpose’ (sumalong-malong). Like those
associated with spirit possession, the effects of soyang sumanga’ can be described in
terms of losing consciousness and forgetting. However, I never heard of them being
described as ‘little death’; indeed, as I shall be suggesting, ‘little death’ implies an
over-abundance rather than a loss of vitality. In this case, the patient’s body was not
‘cool’, although no reason was given for this symptom. With her vitality fleeing, she was
in need of the healer’s attention.

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The healer
Within aluk to dolo, a priestess known as to burake traditionally officiates in the largest
of the Toraja rituals (ma’totumbang, ‘to leap’). The to burake is famous in the ethno-
graphic literature for being both ‘male and female’ (muane sia baine) (Nooy-Palm 1979:
282-9; Tammu & van der Veen 1972: 118; Wilcox 1989 [1949]: 279). Although English-
speaking Toraja render this as ‘hermaphroditic’, it is difficult to describe exactly what
muane sia baine means. In many areas of Tana Toraja, people suggest that it describes
a condition wherein the upper half of the body is female while the lower is male
(Nooy-Palm 1979: 283). In Buntao’ such a person was said to be ‘a woman on the left
side and a man on the right’ (kairinna baine na kananna muane). A similar idea was
sometimes expressed in terms of front and back, with the front male and the back
female (tingayona muane, boko’na baine). Whatever the particular description, the
essential characteristic attributed to the body of a to burake was always the same; as Ne’
Dena’ put it, it has ‘no contents’ (tae’ issina), it is ‘empty’ (lo’bang).
However, there are no to burake left and the ritual of ma’totumbang (also known as
bua’ kasalle) has not been performed for over eighty years. Nevertheless, as Toraja
perceive their rituals as a sequence which has to be completed (Tsintjilonis 1993), there
have been a few recent attempts to bring together people from different areas who can
share the cost and celebrate the ma’totumbang one last time. If such a celebration takes
place, according to Ne’ Dena’, the healer whom I am about to describe might officiate
as to burake. In other words, s/he is already considered as ‘half-man, half-woman’ and
is an unofficial, in the sense of not having been ritually initiated, to burake.
If a proper initiation were to take place, the healer would be presented by the ritual
authorities with a little clapper drum known as garapung which makes a clattering
sound when its two beaded strings click against the drumhead. Using the garapung, a to
burake can summon the ‘spirits’ (deata). In fact, the garapung is the best illustration of
a to burake’s exceptional nature. Although the body of a to burake is described as empty,
this emptiness is not co-extensive with nothingness. In fact, as both Ne’ Kuli’ and Ne’
Dena’ insisted, this body is ‘empty but full’ (lo’bang apa ponno). They likened this
empty fullness to the empty fullness of a garapung – there is nothing inside it but, at the
same time, it appears to be ‘solid’ and ‘full’.5 More than that, the beads are described as
the ‘liver’ (ate) of the drum and are on the outside of the body (as is the liver of the to
burake, which is, in fact, the garapung itself). Like the garapung, the body of a to burake
is a very strange body indeed; it is not only a body which is ‘empty but full’, but also one
with its ‘vital organs on the outside’ (salianan tu pa’kaleanna).
The name of this un-initiated to burake is Rompis, and she was 21 years old when we
first met. She had acquired the beginnings of her healing knowledge when she was
about 14. Up until that time, as she put it, she ‘looked like a man but felt like a woman’
(rupanna rupa muane apa pa’kaleanna baine), whereas now, although everyone char-
acterized Rompis as ‘more’ of a woman than a man, she joked that she ‘looks like a
woman but feels like a man’ (rupanna rupa baine apa pa’kaleanna muane).6 This is how
she described what happened when she was 14: suddenly, while she was looking for
vegetables to feed the family pig, she went blind. When she regained her vision, she ‘lost
consciousness’ (limpu) and her ‘breath’ (penaa). When she was found, she was taken
back to the house and treated as a corpse. After one night of death, she regained
consciousness but remained very ill. Apart from drinking ‘sugary water’ (wai di gollai),
she could not eat anything for months. Throughout this time, she behaved as if she
were crazy and her family came close to shackling her. However, after seeking advice

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from the local ritual authorities (to bara’, ‘the great ones’), they eventually realized what
was happening and, little by little, she regained her health. This involved her family
setting apart her spoon, fork, plate, sleeping mat, and so on, so that no one else would
use them. As soon as she was healthy enough, she asked the to bara’ for permission to
call the spirits. After a pig was sacrificed under their guidance, this permission was
granted. From that time, she began dressing as a woman, grew her hair long, and started
working as a healer.
Over the years, she has come to recognize certain symptoms and associate them with
specific cures. However, if the cure is not working or if she does not recognize the
symptoms, she needs to go into trance. What follows is a brief description of what
happened during the trance that I observed.7

Trance
As soon as the patient was seated, Rompis prepared food offerings to the spirits and, in
a whisper, invited them ‘to come and eat’. Described by her as ‘sweet’, these offerings
consisted of an extraordinary array of items, including cooked and uncooked rice, boiled
and raw eggs,a cube of palm sugar,pieces of sugar cane,a pineapple,fresh coconuts,water,
bloodwort, and citrus leaves. These were arranged on plates and combined with objects,
including shiny stones and a small knife, described as balo’ (‘magical’).
According to Ne’ Dena’, Rompis’s combination of offerings was unique and
somewhat strange, although there was some similarity between her array and the food
which would be offered to young functionaries during the ma’totumbang ritual. As
sweet offerings and coconuts are associated in Buntao’ with headhunting and death
(Tsintjilonis 2000a), Ne’ Kuli’s bafflement was even more pronounced. The offerings
were also strange because some of the food, for example pineapples and sugar, is not
offered to spirits on any other occasion. The simultaneous presence of both raw and
cooked food contributed to the ‘baffling’ (tanda mangnga) nature of the offerings.
Within the rituals of the east, uncooked food is usually reserved for spirits which are
known as ampu padang (‘earth owners’) and cannot be mixed with any other offerings.
Thus, priests like Ne’ Dena’ and Ne’ Kuli’ considered Rompis’s mélange deeply para-
doxical because it seemed to invoke spirits from realms which should be kept apart.
Furthermore, they were unable to identify the spirits fed by Rompis (neither, in fact,
could Rompis). According to Rompis, the offerings were intimately linked with her
body (tanda kale, ‘body signs’), and everything had to be sweet because sweetness was
what she had craved during her initial illness.
As soon as the offerings were made, Rompis sat down, covered her face with her long
hair, and started moving in a monotonous fashion from right to left. After a few
minutes she started shaking and, eventually, with a loud cry she leaped up and started
dancing. While she danced I saw her use a small knife to cut her tongue and scrape the
skin on top of her head. I also saw her run a lit bamboo torch over her face and bare
arms, as well as beat herself on the forehead and legs with a heavy bamboo stick.
Throughout this time she either shouted or spoke so quickly that no one, according to
those present, could understand anything she was saying.
Noisy and intense, the trance lasted about an hour. Eventually, Rompis lowered
herself before the patient, whose temples and crown she then started to massage.
Mixing a little betel nut with some of her own blood, she ‘blew’ (dipamurru’) the
substance onto the face, stomach, and feet of the patient; this was combined with an
action described as ‘sucking’ (dimimmokki). As she did this, Rompis had tears in her

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eyes and she seemed to be in some pain. As the process came towards its end, she
calmed down a little, and focused on massaging the patient so as to ‘make the veins
meet’ (ma’ura’-ura’).
Rompis’s own description of what happened went something like this: as soon as the
spirits arrived, they tasted the food and they liked it. Then they started ‘pulling’ her in
different directions. After that, she felt confused,‘hot and sweaty’, but could not remem-
ber anything else; everything ‘went dark’. She was not sure how many spirits came and
could not describe their appearance. She was certain, though, that they did not look
‘foreign’ (like the spirits in some trance rituals do) and her initial impression was one
of colours – yellow and red. Despite my questions and a number of suggestions from
Ne’ Dena’, she could not remember anything else.
Both at the time and on other occasions, I discussed the possible identity of these
enigmatic spirits with ritual functionaries and ordinary people. However, apart from
the fact that they could ‘come forth from everywhere’ (ombo’ apa-apa), there was little
agreement. Within the traditional religion, each cosmic realm is associated with par-
ticular spirits; there are spirits in the sky, on the earth, inside the earth, in the east, the
west, and so on. While some of these spirits are localized (in anything from mountains
to rivers), others roam more freely. There are spirits with distinct biographies which
govern their own realms, and there are realms full of spirits that no one can name. In
addition, as there are spirits of fertility and increase, there are spirits of illness and
decrease. While the origins and efficacy of some of these spirits are chronicled in the
myths of creation and ritual invocations or chants, others remain an enigma. According
to my Toraja friends, apart from those associated with death, any of these spirits could
be involved. Thus, just like the offerings they received, the actual spirits remained
ambiguous and enigmatic.
During the trance, the patient looked confused and somewhat frightened. She did
not lose consciousness but, as she put it: ‘I thought I was going to die’. As Rompis
explained later, she suffered from sosso’ (‘to get smaller’), which, she explained, was
what happens to cloth when it shrinks. The reasons were unclear. Rompis mentioned
‘worries’ about the family. Unfortunately, no one was prepared to add anything and my
impression was that some of those present were not happy to be involved in the cure.
Nevertheless, although I did not have the opportunity to check with the patient,
Rompis insisted that her cure had worked.8
The actual curing process was discussed both at the time and on other occasions.
According to Ne’ Dena’, Rompis, during possession, was filled with sumanga’, and this
vitality was transferred to the patient, ‘fortifying her blood’ (di pasita’pa tu rara). On
another occasion, Ne’ Dena’ produced a slightly different explanation, suggesting that
Rompis, before filling with sumanga’, filled her body with the patient’s illness. I encoun-
tered the same explanation in Buntao’, and indeed, according to Ne’ Kuli’, this process
can be seen as a kind of marriage (rampanan kapa’). With the healer marrying the illness
in order to expel it, it is tempting to suggest that Rompis is more of a man when the
patient is a woman, and more of a woman when the patient is a man. However, no one
framed the efficacy of the cure in these terms. In a third explanation, Ne’ Kuli’ said that
Rompis ‘gave birth anew’ (dibanglai’) to the patient by ‘calling’ her sumanga’.

Dis-embodiment, death, sacrifice

I would like to re-frame the drama that I have described above in a more theoretical
manner in order to emphasize some important themes. My re-framing will be in

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contrast to what I perceive as the dominant approach in the anthropological study of

spirit possession today. Michael Lambek’s quote from his work on possession among
the Malagasy speakers of Mayotte, an island off eastern Africa, exemplifies this
approach:

Possession is constituted by a practice and politics of voice rather than of text, of speaking rather than
reading, of body rather than intellect ... possession finds the source of its authority in the embodiment
of knowledge. A medium acquires and lays claim to knowledge by the public fact and personal
experience of trance and by the coherence of his or her performance (1993: 306).

The question I would like to pose is whether Lambek’s formulation can be applied to
possession in Tana Toraja.
In a strangely literal echo of Lambek’s argument, my Toraja friends associate the
onset of possession with a loud cry which makes the voice of those possessed hoarse
and their words indistinct; in the case of Rompis’s possession no one could understand
what she was saying. This inarticulateness also characterizes the body of the possessed,
which behaves in extravagant, grotesque, and enigmatic ways, burning itself, cutting
itself, and so on. None the less, beyond the intrinsic ambiguity of the body and the
voice, Toraja possession, to return to Lambek’s argument, is intimately associated with
knowledge. Indeed, according to my informants, possession manifests the ‘dangerous
knowledge’ (kapaissanan) of how to cure; the acquisition of this knowledge depends on
the presence of the spirits.
Furthermore, the signs of the spirits and the intensity of the experience is open to a
process of interpretation and negotiation through which possession itself is validated
by those witnessing it. Once it was over, the ‘truth’ and ‘use’ of what we had all witnessed
were discussed and debated. None the less, in this case, the overall impression remained
one of bafflement and confusion.
Thus, replicating Lambek’s emphasis on the significance of ‘speaking’ and the ‘body’
rather than ‘reading’ and the ‘intellect’, it is clear that the safety of a ‘text’ which can be
read, initially by the participants themselves and eventually by a well-informed anthro-
pologist, is forever deferred. Just as in Mayotte, the authenticity and meaning of Toraja
possession are open to the ‘practice and politics’ of interpretation and negotiation. Of
course, in its emphasis on practice, Lambek’s formulation manifests what has become
almost an orthodoxy in recent ethnographies of spirit possession and shamanism.
Leaving behind the sterility of ‘texts’, these ethnographies place the focus on the quest
for a perspective on human activity which can facilitate an exploration of the dynamics
of social action, which are characterized by ambiguity, negotiation, and ambivalence
(Atkinson 1989; Boddy 1989; Comaroff 1985).
However, I find this emphasis on ‘practice and politics’, as well as the way in which
Lambek construes the indeterminacy of possession, very problematic. Firstly, by trans-
forming the questions he is asking into the answers he is providing, he appears to be
turning an empirical necessity into a theoretical virtue. Indeterminacy, the lack of a
‘text’, and the importance of negotiation, is used both as something that needs to be
explained and as something to ‘explain with’. Fusing theory and ethnography, Lambek
seems to offer a rather tautological explanation of possession in the Mayotte world –
that is, anthropological analysis is conflated with ethnographic description. More than
that, in the context of Tana Toraja, the negotiation and evaluation of a trance perfor-
mance almost never go beyond utter bafflement; the less one understands, the more

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authentic the performance. No one could elucidate the specific signs of spirit posses-
sion apart from relating them to the ‘extra-ordinary nature’ (senga’-senga’ garaganna)
of the healer herself. Hers was a strange body doing strange things! Indeed, one of
the most important characteristics attributed to Rompis was her ability to ‘baffle’
(dipomangnga) those around her.
Secondly, this bafflement should be seen as something more than the sort of avoid-
ance of explicit meaning and speech which is often associated with ritual efficacy
(Tambiah 1979; Valeri 1985). Insofar as possession displayed and manifested the potency
and authority of the spirits, Rompis’s conduct was all about the eclipse of personal
agency and volition. In this sense, the baffling nature of her words and actions is
reminiscent of the way in which ritual speech is said to transcend ‘particular circum-
stances or speakers’ (Keane 1997: 114) so as to augment the authority of the speaker by
associating his or her words with an external authority (see Bloch 1989; Kuipers 1990).
However, insofar as the spirits were not thought to speak through Rompis, their
authority was made present in the baffling spectacle of her body being ‘taken over’.
Nevertheless, the recognition of this presence depended on prior knowledge, more or
less formalized, of other rituals, other sacrificial offerings, other sacrifiers, and so on.
This is to suggest not that there is an ‘ur-text’ behind ritual but rather, as George puts
it, that there is ‘an ongoing history of prior ritual events and texts being recalled and put
in productive tension with the present’ (1996: 14). Engaging such recollection and prior
knowledge, my friends and informants were ‘reading’ Rompis’s trance, even though,
due to Rompis’s baffling efficacy (in itself a ‘sign’ of the spirits), this ‘reading’ was never
meant to make much sense.
A third problem stemming from Lambek’s formulation relates to the way in which it
underestimates the factuality of spirits. In this context, even those anthropologists who
explicitly try to resist such a reduction seem to fall victims to it. For instance, in the case
of Boddy and her work on Hofriyat possession (1989), ‘possession is an “allegory”. What
the possessed mediums “say” or act out in song and dance refers “allegorically” to social
factors such as gender, class and personal history. The medium-as-agent is more real than
thespirit-as-agent’(Nourse1996:426).Of course,oncespiritpossessionisframedinterms
of ‘practice and politics’, privileging the medium-as-agent may well be unavoidable.
Nevertheless, a fourth and far more important problem involves what lies at the very
centre of Lambek’s explanation. The ‘practice and politics’ he describes foreground the
importance of embodiment. Strathern, commenting on the very same quote, notes that
‘[e]mbodiment is what makes the knowledge experientially real; its producer, however,
has to objectify it in the personage of the spirit. There is, therefore, a dialectic of
objectification and embodiment’ (1996: 164). In this sense, spirit possession is first and
foremost a process of embodiment.
However, this emphasis on embodiment fails to capture the distinctive nature of
Toraja possession in one crucial respect. As Ne’ Kuli’ put it, ‘the spirits divide (mantaa)
the bodies [of those who are possessed]; the head is turned south, the feet are turned
east, [and] the spine is turned west’. In this way, the body is not re-aligned or
re-orientated, it is fragmented and ‘taken apart’ (dipasisarak-sarak) during possession,
with its fragments seen as being separated and ‘planted in a triangular fashion’ (titanan
tallu) from right to left. As the possession evolves, these fragments are described as
being spun from right to left in a movement depicted as liling pareso’ (‘stirring the
cooking pot’). When it is stirred like this, a body loses its relative ‘hardness’ and starts
to dissolve. Some of this hardness will never be recovered; embedded in a number of

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objects (like the knife and the bloodwort leaves) and other bodies (mostly that of the
patient’s), it will be left behind even after the spirits depart. This is perceived as an
irreversible loss, a ‘small death’.
Thus, rather than embodiment, spirit possession in Tana Toraja is a process of
dis-embodiment, dis-articulation, even dis-carnation. This dis-embodiment is often
depicted in terms of ‘overflowing’ insofar as, during possession, the body of the healer
was said to ‘overflow with its own juice’ (wai pa’kaleanna lempan). Through this
overflowing, little by little, Rompis was thought to become dry and empty or, as Ne’
Kuli’ put it, to ‘rot [like a fruit]’ (tilana-lana). However, rather than a loss of sumanga’,
this reduction is associated with its exact opposite, an over-abundance of vitality and
ripeness. According to Ne’ Kuli’, Rompis was ‘full’ (ponno) of sumanga’, ‘fat’ (malompo)
with ‘riches’ and ‘fortune’, ‘ripe’ (matasak) and ‘over-laden’ (mara’pe; like a tree with too
much fruit). It is this over-abundance that gave rise to overflowing and ‘little death’.
Thus, in order to grasp the efficacy of spirit possession, we need to grasp it as
dis-embodiment.
In work like Lambek’s, anything from trauma and the violation of bodily boundaries
to anorexia and death are bound to become examples of embodiment. In this way,
exploring the limits of corporeality becomes impossible; be it in pain, possession, or
death, the body’s de-creation is nothing more than an embodied performance. Hence,
more than grasping the efficacy of spirit possession as dis-embodiment, we need to
grasp this dis-embodiment in Tana Toraja. We need to explicate its articulation within
the specific ritual.
The most important characteristic of this articulation is the similarity that it creates
between spirit possession and sacrifice. The way in which the possessed body is taken
apart by the spirits is exactly the same way a sacrificial animal (like a water-buffalo or
a pig) is killed. Like the body of the healer during possession, an animal is ‘divided’ and
‘taken apart’; its feet are turned east, its head is turned south, and so on. Furthermore,
before they are ‘stirred’, just like the fragments of the body in possession, its various
parts are ‘planted in a triangular fashion’. From this point of view, spirit possession is a
kind of sacrifice. We thus need to engage with the logic of sacrifice to make sense of the
healer’s fate during possession.

Coded and non-coded bodies

Although it is a kind of sacrifice, there is a crucial difference between the sacrifice of an
animal and the sacrifice involved in spirit possession. In the former case, I would
suggest, what is sacrificed is a coded body, while in the latter, what is sacrificed is an
indeterminate, proliferating, non-coded body. It is the articulation of this difference
that will help us delineate the efficacy of spirit possession.
First of all, what is a coded body? In Tana Toraja, there is an intimate link between
sacrifice and the person for whom it is performed, the sacrifier. Traditional Toraja
society is divided into ‘true humans’ (tau tongan) and slaves (kaunan), while true
humans are themselves subdivided into nobles and commoners. These divisions, which
are further complicated by age and gender, are thought to involve different forms of
embodiment and to reflect the intrinsic inequality between particular forms of human-
ity, their ‘true kind’ (rupa tongan); a truth which is embodied and manifested in
different types of body (see Tsintjilonis 1997).
This embodied diversity finds its clearest expression in different sacrificial require-
ments. In terms of the traditional hierarchy, specific combinations of sacrifices and

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particular sacrificial animals are thought to represent distinct kinds of humanity:

water-buffaloes are associated with nobles, pigs with commoners, and hens with slaves.
These associations are meant to reflect respective concentrations of embodied
sumanga’ so that, for example, the bodies of nobles and buffaloes are similar in terms
of vitality (Tsintjilonis 2004b: 435-6). In this sense, there is ‘buffalo sacrifice’, there is ‘pig
sacrifice’, and there is ‘chicken sacrifice’. In the case of ‘buffalo sacrifice’, it is not only the
actual animal that represents the sacrifier. The parts of its flesh and bone, which will be
placed on a banana leaf in order to be offered to the spirits that the sacrifice is meant
to invoke, are always described as ‘body-signs’ (tanda kale) and are thought to ‘stem
from the [sacrifier’s] body’ (ombo’ ri kale). Sacrificial offerings re-present, in the
sense of actualizing, the ‘true kind’ of the person for whom the sacrifice is performed.
Indeed, the various rituals and the sacrifices they demand are also known as ‘body-
measurements’ (sukaran kale).
Thus, whatever the sacrifice, there is an intimate link between the various offerings
and the body of the sacrifier. By utilizing different kinds and cuts of meat, a set of
sacrificial offerings is both a sign and a material instantiation of the way in which
particular bodies are arranged and constituted. Instantiating a body in this way, these
signs manifest one’s ‘true kind’ (Tsintjilonis 1995; 2000b). Thus, recasting the body in
the flesh of animals, the various sacrificial offerings represent signs taking hold of the
body in a despotic fashion. Through the close association of nobles with water-
buffaloes or slaves with hens, a particular characteristic (the extreme vitality and
serenity of a noble: mawatang; the flighty, constantly agitated or weak nature of a slave:
masia’) assimilates a whole body, coding it to the point where only its ‘true’ meaning
becomes apparent. In this sense, both as re-presentation and actualization, sacrifice
reduces the delineation of a body to a single signification which overwhelms, takes over,
its coded instantiation.
However, this is very different from what happens during spirit possession. In the
case of Rompis, what was offered, even though still linked to her body, was nothing but
a ‘baffling sign’ (tanda mangnga; Ne’ Dena’), a ‘meaningless’ (tae’ patunna; Ne’ Kuli’,
Ne’ Dena’) collection of things, some associated with spirits of the sky, some with
spirits of the earth, some with spirits inside the earth, and some with no apparent
meaning at all. More than that, there were substances which should have been kept
apart. As Ne’ Dena’ put it, the only connection between the various offerings was
Rompis herself; they were ‘skewered with her hair’ (dilelen beluakna).
In their confusing multiplicity, the offerings were thought to manifest the ‘sources’
(ulu) of Rompis’s efficacy, which stemmed from a very special ‘blessing’ (were’) which
‘comes forth from everything’ (ombo’ diomai sangga maritik). To echo Ne’ Dena’, just
like were’ comes forth from everything, the offerings themselves ‘come forth from
everywhere’ (ombo’ apa-apa). This blessing is what the spirits accord to Rompis, and
through it she ‘can relate to everything’.9 From this point of view, as Ne’ Dena’ sug-
gested, trance could be seen as a kind of cenesthesia (siumpu’ pa’pesa’ding, ‘sense
relatedness’) through which Rompis could ‘feel’ (nasa’dingan) and ‘know’ (natandai)
everything. As the internal perception of our own bodies, cenesthesia is usually asso-
ciated with body consciousness or a kind of internal contact (Starobinski 1989: 353). In
the case of Rompis, however, this perception appears to unfold outwards creating
a ‘connection’ (kasiumpuran) between her body and the bodies of others (especially
the patient’s); she was said ‘to know all their thoughts’ (natandai tu mintu’ lalan
pa’inawanna) and ‘to feel all their feelings’ (nasa’dingan mintu’ pa’pesadingna). Indeed,

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according to Ne’ Kuli’, this kind of connection extends to the cosmos as a whole:
Rompis could ‘feel what is in the sky, the earth, and beneath the earth’. In this fashion,
Rompis knew and felt ‘everything’ (mintu’).
It is this ‘everything’ that was instantiated and actualized in the offerings that she
prepared. They signified too many things and nothing at the same time. They could not
be de-coded. In Buntao’, this confusing surplus of meaning is even more pronounced.
According to Ne’ Baru, the last Buntao’ to burake (Tumba’ Tana) would incorporate in
her offerings even sticks and stones picked up from the path to her destination. There
are also stories about such offerings ‘arriving by themselves’ (sae kalena).
Thus, in the case of spirit possession, the re-presentational meaning of the sacrificial
offerings accumulates without decoding itself. Possession seems to create a common-
ality between things and people, but all signification is lost. An enigmatic connection is
created between the body of the healer, the various offerings, and different aspects of
the cosmos. This connection, however, cannot be traced back to a single meaningful
source. The only possible explanation goes back to the hermaphroditic body of the to
burake, a ‘baffling’ body which swallows up all signs in a vortex of meaning. Hence, in
spirit possession, sacrifice as re-presentation or instantiation manifests the disappear-
ance of coded instantiation and the emergence of a non-coded body, a patchwork of
things which in their plenitude fail to integrate.

Caricatures and monsters

The different ways in which coded and non-coded bodies are sacrificially re-presented
and instantiated could be framed in terms of a contrast between ‘caricatures’ and
‘monsters’. José Gil, discussing metamorphosis and the body, writes that

caricature is like a cultural monster, the monster is like a caricature of nature. The first presents the
despotic sign monopolizing the body, infecting it like an illness. The second shows nature – the body –
setting itself up as a signifier without the help of (and against) culture: it signifies too many things and
nothing at the same time (1998: 154).

In the case of caricatures, there is too much ‘culture’; in the case of monsters, there is
too much ‘nature’.
Gil uses examples such as ‘the hermaphrodite having two sexes coexisting in the
same body’ (1998: 154) or ‘the extraterrestrial alien whose incredible size ... eclipses any
articulation’ (1998: 154) in order to show how such signification works. Caricatures
represent ‘signs taking hold of the body under cultural conditions – a particular trait
(like “character”) absorbing the whole body where only its meaning can emerge’ (1998:
154), whereas, on the contrary, monsters manifest ‘the tendency for the signifying
function to evaporate in favour of the presence of the non-“coded” body, the invading,
amorphous or proliferating body’ (1998: 154). In the former case, culture, by coding the
body, pervades nature. In the latter case, nature irrupts through the un-coded body into
the middle of culture.
Of course, we need to be careful how we use the notions of nature and culture. None
the less, it is possible to construe the Toraja notion of sumanga’ as a ‘nature’ which, in
its ‘overflowing’ and un-coded form instantiated in Rompis’s sacrificial offerings and
actualized in the efficacy of her overall performance, is made present within the coded
world of ‘culture’. Although all forms of life are embodiments of sumanga’, sumanga’
itself remains elusive and invisible; it can be lost and wander with no purpose and,

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unless it is embodied, is bound to ebb away (Tsintjilonis 1999). In this sense, sumanga’
can be seen as an example of nature as ‘an inner essence or vital energy or force outside
human control’ (Ellen 1996: 111). From this point of view, the aim of Toraja rituals is
nothing more than to control and direct the flow of vitality upon which all life depends;
on ‘the side of the setting sun’, the rites of death dis-embody sumanga’ and return it to
the cosmos, while on ‘the side of the rising sun’ the rites of life purify sumanga’ and ‘call
it’ back in order to re-embody it and replenish somatic life (Tsintjilonis 2000a). With
her ‘little death’, Rompis short-circuits this process. Through her ‘overflowing’, she
replenishes the vitality of the patient via the ‘little death’ of her own, proliferating,
un-coded body.
Here a coded body is linked with the realm of order and control, a congealed cultural
realm offering stability yet plagued by paucity, while the un-coded body is linked with
the realm of immanence and potentiality, a flowing natural realm offering regeneration
and plenty but plagued by instability (Tsintjilonis 2004b). What lies at the heart of
Toraja spirit possession is the sacrificial instantiation of a monstrous body of plenitude
and excess which overflows with its own juice, just like it overflows with meaning. This
excess is represented and actualized in Rompis’s sacrificial offerings, her power to
‘baffle’, the fragmentation of her body, and the efficacy of the cure as a whole.
The logic of caricatures and the logic of monsters are not parts of an idiom which
the Toraja utilize to order, in a conceptual fashion, their engagement with the world.
These are practical logics through which they engage with it. The non-coded body of
the healer is what allows her to tap into the plenitude of sumanga’ by transcending the
limitations of stability and paucity characteristic of the coded realm of the body of the
patient.
Furthermore, each realm seems to involve a distinct type of experience. In the stable
world of coded bodies, words designating sensual experience seem to refer to the act of
experience itself: one ‘feels hot’ (malassu), for example. However, in the case of the
non-coded body instantiated in possession, words designating sensual experience
appear to designate the experienced object itself: one does not ‘feel hot’ but ‘feels the
hotness of fire’ (malassu susi api). Along these lines, according to Ne’ Dena’, Rompis ‘felt’
the sharpness of iron, the hardness of bamboo, and so on. It is as if, during possession,
the body spreads outwards and dissolves into the very things it senses and perceives. This
dissolution, echoing, perhaps, what Seremetakis has described as the ‘corporate com-
munication between the person and the world’ (1994a: 6), shows Rompis as embedded
in ‘a dispersed surround’ (1994b: 129) of things, depths, and surfaces.

Other monsters
Despite such tantalizing allusions, it is not clear how we should approach the mon-
strous body of the to burake. What exactly is a monster and how should we construe the
condition of ‘monsterhood’, particularly the kind of ‘monsterhood’ ascribed to human-
like monsters such as Rompis?
The ethnographic record is, of course, full of such monsters: among the Gusii of
Kenya, there are monsters who run naked at night and indulge in necrophagy (Pocock
1985: 45); among the Gisu of Uganda, there are monsters who can see in the dark and
who meet in the middle of the night to eat the corpses of those they have killed, stirring
their beer with human arms (Pocock 1985: 45). While the Gisu call these monsters
balosi, they are known as abarogi among the Gusii. As the reader will have guessed,
balosi and abarogi are nothing other than witches.

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Unfortunately, ethnographies of witchcraft are not helpful for my purposes. There is

a fundamental difference between the monstrous body of the to burake and the body of
an abarogi or a balosi. According to the ethnographic literature, these African monsters
are incarnations of evil and their monstrosity embodies and manifests their malice and
wickedness (Pocock 1985). Malice has nothing to do with Rompis.10
Malicious or not, monsters do not live only in Africa and they are not only witches.
Here is another example of a very European one: a monster who ‘would sit on the belly
of his victim and, in this fashion, masturbating, come on the dying body’ (Bataille 1991:
10). The name of this fifteenth-century monster was Gilles de Rais and he was to
become the model for the legendary Bluebeard. In the form of Jack the Ripper or Myra
Hindley, the Bluebeard (or, at least, our fascination with this kind of monster) is still
with us. Indeed, from the Marquis de Sade and Nietzsche, to Baudelaire, Artaud,
Bataille and Foucault, there is an extraordinary amount of literature focusing on
‘transgression’ (Jenks 2003). However, the quest of the to burake is not about trans-
gression; it is about transcendence and the instantiation of this transcendence.
More than anything else, the Toraja ethnography brings to mind the ‘sacred kings’ of
Africa such as the Nyim of the Kuba and the King of Lere (among the Moundang),
whom Luc de Heusch describes as ‘monstrous creatures’ (1989: 387). Within such
traditions of sacred royalty, the king’s body can be read ‘as a meshing of human space
and the space of the bush or forest in which the mysterious forces responsible for
fecundity dwell’ (de Heusch 1989: 393). The king does not transgress; he transcends and
instantiates this transcendence. In fact, he cannot transgress because his monstrous
body, ‘merging with the inhabited and cultivated territory, with all its richness, is also
symbolically a stranger to its law’ (1989: 393). For example, among the Moundang, the
King acquires numerous wives without paying any matrimonial compensation. He is
‘situated outside the circuit of exchanges ... and defined by a species of “extra-
territoriality” ’ (1989: 388).
Here we are back with Frazer and his notion of ‘divine kingship’ (1993: 264-83). Of
course, as de Heusch states, the body of the to burake ‘is not “divine” in the strict sense
of the word’, it is sacred; sacred as defined by Benvéniste: ‘august and accursed, worthy
of veneration and exciting horror’ (cited in de Heusch 1989: 393). It is a monstrous body.

Kenosis
In order to grasp the source of this sacredness, we need to grasp the essential charac-
teristic of its incarnation as empty or, rather, ‘empty but full’. This ‘empty fullness’ is
elsewhere known as kenosis. This is a Greek word which literally means ‘emptying’.
Kenosis has been used in Christian theology to describe the incarnation of Christ in yet
another monstrous body. As Baudinet puts it, the body of Christ ‘is empty of [God’s]
presence and full of His absence ... When the Word became flesh, divinity did not fill up
with matter nor did matter fill up with divinity’ (1989: 151). In this interplay of presence
and absence, the body of Christ emerges at or as the confluence of different realms, and
here the to burake’s monstrosity is similar to that of Christ’s. Neither is malicious nor
transgressive. Instead, they transcend and instantiate transcendence in monstrous
bodies which are ‘empty but full’.

Conclusion
Kenosis frames and constitutes the efficacy of the cure. Before it is a type of marriage,
a birth, or anything else, spirit possession is a kind of death or dis-embodiment.

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During possession, Rompis’s body unfolds and fragments. In this fragmentation, she
does not incorporate the world with its forces and energies; rather, she is incorpo-
rated in it. Her body is confounded with the realms and objects amongst which it
fragments; she can ‘relate to everything’ and ‘know everything’ because she is a part
of everything. However, when she is ‘put back together’ by the spirits, some of her
body is left behind. In this sense, spirit possession is a ‘little death’; a death articulated
as sacrifice.
To return to spirit possession and the comparative questions that I asked at the very
beginning, I would suggest that comparing the sacrificial re-presentation of Toraja
coded and un-coded bodies with Steve Bell’s caricatures (e.g. Margaret Thatcher with
her ‘Iron Hair’) or Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary (a collage of glitter, paint, and
paper cut-outs which depicts the Virgin Mary with a black face, a heavily patterned
torso, and an exposed breast made of dried elephant dung) might take us further than
a comparison focusing on religious experience or techniques of ecstasy. Thatcher’s
‘Iron Hair’ uses a particular trait (hair style) to code her body. Here, rather than excess,
meaning is characterized by a paucity which provides an impoverished clarity; unless
we grasp the specific connection between iron and hair, Thatcher’s depiction will
remain a mystery to us. A similar clarity characterizes the way in which various sacri-
ficial offerings represent the bodies of those who are not like Rompis in Tana Toraja. If
one knows the signifying connection between particular sets of sacrificial offerings and
‘true kinds’ (i.e. nobles, slaves, etc.), one will have no difficulty in grasping their
fundamental traits. However, like the sacrificial signs of Rompis, Ofili’s The Holy Virgin
Mary seems to resist interpretation through its excess of meaning. Is it the Holy Virgin?
Is it Africa? Is it a black Holy Virgin? Is it ‘Motherhood’ or ‘Fertility’? Just as with the
sacrificial offerings signifying Rompis, The Holy Virgin Mary’s excess is embedded in a
multitude of objects and substances – glitter, paint, paper cut-outs, elephant dung –
which do not belong together.
Caricatures signify by coding bodies (e.g. nobles as water-buffaloes); they speak of
and through ‘culture’. On the contrary, monsters, at least in the case of Toraja, instan-
tiate that which makes this code possible (sumanga’); they speak of and through
‘nature’. As Beckett said of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, monsters are not ‘about something’
but ‘that something itself ’ (1936: 14). However, this ‘something’ presents itself as the
dissolution of the very characteristic which enables caricatures to speak; a comparative
exploration of such an un-coding, whether in the form of overflowing or collage, and
its articulation with excess may enable us to move from specific contexts to useful
generalizations in a more fruitful manner.
Thus, rather than focusing on religion and its practice or politics, we may do better
with an anthropology of monsters and caricatures. In fact, in the context of Tana
Toraja, people become caricatures or monsters when they die. As I have shown else-
where (Tsintjilonis 2004a), mortuary sacrifices take apart the body of a particular
deceased and return its various parts to the cosmic domains from which they origi-
nated. Although bodies are disassembled, they do not cease to exist; they simply
disappear. Reconstituted in terms of the immaterial ‘essence’ (bombong) of each sac-
rificial animal, they are thought to be re-created in an invisible form which both
instantiates and reproduces their ‘true kind’. In this way, be they extraordinary like
Rompis or ordinary like everybody else, the spirits of the dead are re-membered
through the appropriate sacrifices, and it is in this form that they travel to the other
world and present themselves to their ancestors.

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NOTES
1
While Sa’dan (‘Water’) is the name of the river which runs through Tana Toraja (‘Land of the Toraja’), the
term ‘Toraja’ is thought to originate from the Buginese to ri aja (‘people from the interior’ or highlanders).
In the past, ‘Toraja’ was used by outsiders (lowlanders, missionaries, etc.) to describe the peoples inhabiting
the highlands of South and Central Sulawesi. Today, however, only the Sa’dan refer to themselves as ‘Toraja’.
Concentrating on traditional ritual practices, I have been working in Tana Toraja (mostly in the area of
Buntao’) over several years, initially spending twenty-one months there (1988-90) and returning on subse-
quent occasions for shorter visits.
2
Lupu’-lupu’ means ‘to lose consciousness’ and dena’ refers to a small rice-bird (a kind of sparrow) which,
when startled, collapses and appears to be dead.
3
Although most of this information originated in my first stint of fieldwork in Tana Toraja, it was extended
during subsequent visits. In the spring of 2005, I managed to re-unite with the healer, Ne’ Dena’, and a
number of people who had been present in 1989. Over a period of two weeks, I was able to discuss with them
my ethnographic materials.
4
Trance is involved in a number of different healing rituals. Ma’bugi’ (Crystal & Yamashita 1987; Nooy-Palm
1986: 139-44) and maro (Coville 1989; Nooy-Palm 1986: 121-39; Zerner 1981) are the most important. They are
usually carried out on behalf of a community or an ancestral house (tongkonan). Although in both cases
‘medicine specialists’ (to ma’dampi) are involved, the healer whom I shall describe does not see herself as to
ma’dampi – first and foremost, she is a to were’ (‘the one who is blessed’). It is this blessing that I shall explore.
5
Explaining this ‘empty fullness’ further, Ne’ Dena’ used two examples: ‘empty earth’ (lo’bang padang) and
‘fire’ (api). ‘Empty earth’ describes the time between the rice harvest and the planting of new seedlings;
although empty, such earth is described as full of bounty and fertility (lompo, ‘fatness’). In the case of fire, he
said that even though ‘it has no contents’, it burns.
6
This article concentrates on the Sa’dan Toraja, although there is a great deal of scope for comparison
between the to burake and similar figures. Amongst the Sa’dan Toraja’s closest neighbours, the Bugis, there is
the bissu (Andaya 2000; Hamonic 1975; Pelras 1996) and, as Nooy-Palm asserts, ‘[i]t is beyond doubt that
some connection exists’ (1979: 292) between the bissu and the to burake. Further information suggests the
existence of similar figures among the Makassarese further south (Chabot 1996; Nooy-Palm 1979: 292). The
term bissu can also be found in Mamasa and Pitu Ulunna Salu to the west of Tana Toraja (Nooy-Palm 1979:
285). Beyond South Sulawesi, there is a large number of what Boellstorff has called’ ‘ETPs’ or ‘ethnolocalized
professional homosexual and transvestite subject positions’ (2004: 162). Among them are the warok actors of
eastern Java. My main reason for not here attempting a comparison is the ambiguous position that Rompis
occupies: although she is thought of (and thinks of herself) as a to burake, she has not been initiated nor has
she ever taken part in one of the ‘traditional’ rituals linked with the to burake. Furthermore, within aluk to
dolo the to burake is not associated with the use of medicines (Nooy-Palm 1979: 293).
7
The Rompis whom I encountered in 2005 was a very different person from the one whom I first met in
1989. While everyone else in her family had converted to Christianity, she had converted to Islam in the late
1990s. Although she still practised her cures and went into trance, she was ‘frightened’ to talk about the spirits.
Islam made more sense to her than Christianity because many of the prohibitions associated with it (e.g. not
eating pork) are similar to those associated with her status within aluk to dolo.
8
By 2005 Rompis no longer recognized the term sosso’. Looking through photographs and my original notes,
she suggested that the patient had been suffering from bulaan (‘smallpox’). In the intervening years Rompis had
come to associate herself very closely with the spirit that brings smallpox (Puang Maruru’,‘the Righteous Lord’).
9
As far as I know, her actual offerings combined with her ‘hermaphroditic’ nature make Rompis unique.
Both in my own fieldwork and in the ethnographic literature, I never came across another healer whose
efficacy was framed in these terms.
10
Until it is contextualized in various ethnographic contexts, this malice is bound to remain indistinct.
However, my discussion is not really about witchcraft. I only want to emphasize that malice plays no part in
the case of Rompis.

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Monstres et caricatures : la possession par les esprits à Tana Toradja

Résumé

L’article, consacré à un rituel de guérison précis, explore l’efficacité de la possession par les esprits à
Tana Toradja. Encadrée par les termes de l’exégèse indigène, cette exploration est centrée sur le lien
entre la possession par les esprits et la mort, qui fait apparaître un lien intrinsèque entre possession et
sacrifice. En exposant ce lien, l’article met au premier plan le corps du guérisseur et tente d’expliquer sa
« monstrueuse » puissance.

Dimitri Tsintjilonis, currently a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, took his
Ph.D. at Oxford University. His special interests cover the anthropology of death, ritual and religion,
cosmology, and the body.

School of Social and Political Studies, Social Anthropology, The University of Edinburgh, Adam Ferguson
Building, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LL, UK. D.Tsintjilonis@ed.ac.uk

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 12, 551-567

© Royal Anthropological Institute 2006