Multiple Voices and A Single Body: Spirits’ Embodiment, Speech, Discourse, and Historiography in an Old Ritual Community of Bhutan
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft September 1, 2024 Dendup Chophel
In a Bhutanese village with established religious pluralism, shamanic mediumship serves as both a formulaic, mimetic retention of history and an indeterminate, fluid improvisation. Mediums become sites for multisensory communicative dramas between ontologically distinct but relational spirits who negotiate their standing with the community. The phenomenal and phantasmal beings remain present in the village lifeworld, entangled in an ethics of care requiring dedication from both spirits and community. The paper unpacks the poetics, poiesis, and politics of metaphorical, cryptic, silent, and gestural codes through which charismatic mediums reinforce social order, examining how the lifeworld of Chungsekha village is lived, experienced, and discursively reconstructed through phantasmal and multisensory dialogues.