substance as a sacrifice (areca nut being a regular substitute for a body in tantric
rites), and absorbs the life’s energies of the god in their stead. Some performers
indeed referred to the system of inner vessels or na ̄d.isknown to tantric physiol-
ogy, along which this energy is conducted through the body.
Completing these rites, and tying on a headband representing the tradition’s
gurus along with a frontlet, the dancer comes before the main shrine and begins
to sing the to ̄r
̄
r
̄amsongs of the deity. The first of these songs is significant, for it
is the invocation, the vara-vil.i(literally “call to come”), addressed to the deity.
Rather like the a ̄va ̄hanaor invocation of a standard temple pu ̄ja, it summons the
god into one’s presence, but like the tantric variety of ritual to which it is akin,
the site of that divine presence is one’s own body–mind complex. This becomes
clearer in the progression of the main to ̄r
̄
r
̄amsongs that are then sung by the
dancer and his support troupe.
In archaic or sometimes Sanskritized varieties of Malayalam, these to ̄r
̄
r
̄am
songs variously recount in fixed compositions for each specific god its biograph-
ical life and deeds (often as a former human being), its origins and migrations in
terms of the various locales and shrines where it was established (culminating
with the place of current performance), and poetic descriptions of its costumed
appearance, or imaginative enhancements built on the same. All of these themes
converge in their common performative purpose, in that they work to recreate
the actual presence of the deity in the body and person of dancer, through ver-
bally repeating the highlights of its genesis and development as a person, and
then ritually indexing these to the current context and bodily site of possessed
enactment. This is the very force of the word, to ̄r
̄
r
̄am, where the root meaning
is “to seem” or “appear,” but with a transitive force of agency and effective cre-
ativity that lacks any simple English equivalent (unless we perhaps conjoin the
separate physical and mental significations of our word, conceive).
This transformative trajectory culminates in a final song of actual possession
(ur
̄
accal to ̄r
̄r
̄am), which may narratively conclude with the death and apotheo-
sis of the now divine protagonist, whom the dancer now becomes. Ritually, this
culmination of the song is signified by the performer receiving a mirror into
which he peers (figure 14.1). The force of this act is universally acknowledged
by performers, as in the following explanation:
When he looks into the mirror, the conception will arise, “This is not my form –
this is the actual form of the goddess that I am seeing”... The act here is the seeing
of the sacred face by the sacred face, a divine occasion in which they are fused
through seeing each other.The songs and rituals that bring on the possession state are basically the same
for the preliminary to ̄r
̄
r
̄amorvel.l.a ̄t.t.amof the god as for the full teyyamform.
The latter, more elaborate teyyamrituals are always done by the same dancer
consecrated for the preliminary rites, generally the next day. The costuming for
the full form, which takes place in the make-up room, is generally quite elabo-
rate and complex, the facial make-up alone taking sometimes several hours to
the teyyam tradition of kerala 315