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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2020
Spirit possession is not a phenomenon confined ONLY to the Budya people of Mutoko, it encompasses the whole of Africa and abroad. Many scholars have thus written on spirit possession among the Shona people, for example Michael. Bourdillon (1987), Michael Gelfand (1965), Hubert Bucher (1980) and others. Bourdillon presents some ritual descriptions of a spirit medium (shave) in Chapter 9 of his book. Bucher (1980:9) writes about the ‘Churches of Spirits’ and strives to show the power of the spirit as found in the society, especially among chiefs and leaders of the African Independent Churches AICs. He classifies the spirits into lion (mhondoro), ancestral (midzimu) and alien (shave). Gelfand (1965) describes the role played by the spirits in general.
It is Bourdillon's anthropological observations of the positive social functions of spirit possession of an individual in Shona society that is of great interest to my study. Bourdillon is cited by Bucher (1980:94) as noting that the possession cults provide Shona women with an opportunity to express, under the protection of the dissociated trance state, inclinations which they would not normally be allowed to manifest in public. This positive aspect of possession is sharply contrasted with the definition of possession by Ter Haar:
Western possession beliefs generally consider spirit possession to be involuntary, a harmful experience which should be avoided if possible. In common speech, this negative attitude is reflected in a way people refer to someone as being ‘possessed’ meaning in a hysterical state, acting as though mad, and in general having taken leave of one's senses.
This negative and Western understanding of possession does not have any meaningful contributions to my study in so far as it does not portray any liberation elements for women in spirit possession. I therefore give little attention to it.
However, there are notable theological perspectives on possession which have relevance to the African experience. Hastings, for example, acknowledges the reality of the African metaphysical world of ‘unexplained illness and misfortune, of spirit possession and fears of bewitchment …’ (in Pauw 1988:25). (Ter Haar (1992:117)
It should be noted, however, that the phenomenon of spirit possession, which is positively acknowledged as ‘possessing power’ in African traditional religion, is widely regarded as ‘victimisation by evil spirits’ in many Christian circles.
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