Finding a Place for Possession, Divination, and Trance within the Historical Perspective

Summary

The review examines four publications from 2008–2010 to explore how studies of possession, divination, and trance relate to historical methods. It critiques the anxiety surrounding the integration of these phenomena into historical research, suggesting that a narrow scholarly mentality contributes to this issue. The article calls for alternative approaches to studying religious history to allow for a more unbiased examination of these irregular phenomena.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this review article four publications from 2008–2010 are examined to assess the interplay between studies of possession, divination, and trance and historical method. The article avoids discussing the research in these works done from a purely anthropological or ethnographic stance, but focuses on the thematics of historiography. It does so by analysing the framing devices used in the predominantly historical research in the edition edited by Amar Annus and the monograph of Sarah Iles Johnston. Drawing these issues forward to the second set of texts, this article continues by looking at ways in which the seemingly a‐historical phenomena of divination, trance, and possession, can be accounted for historically. The article agrees with many of the commentators in these editions that the prevailing anxiety over the integration of history and divination and other “irregular” phenomena is generated by a narrow and sometimes ineffective scholarly mentality. This article concludes that alternative ways of making history must be considered if religious history seeks to claim an unbiased and less anxious approach to the study of phenomena that have hitherto eluded its processes.