168. performance
The same informant, however, recalled a case of what he considered to be a valid,
spontaneous possession. During ajagratato which four different singing parties had
been invited, a young woman started to “play.” She had always been a devotee of Devi
but had recently been married into a family that ate meat and drank liquor. During her
possession, she was tested by a leader from one of the singing groups, who put lighted
incense under her nose and struck her with a metal bar. She did not flinch. She spoke as
Deviand ordered all people who were drunk to leave thejagrata.After this, the young
woman was so drained that she had to remain in bed for two months. As for her in-laws,
they were so shaken by the experience that they became vegetarians and teetotalers.^13
Hinduism does not draw a clear dividing line between divine and human; gods
can become humans, and humans can become gods. There are numerous forms of
worship of deified humans, such as ancestors, heroes, gurus, satis, yogis, siddhs, and
naths. Similarly, certain women who are regularly possessed are worshipped as
Matas or living goddesses, as manifestations ofFerajvali. Such a woman is said to
embody the fakti of the Goddess during her possession—that is, to become a human
icon. But the sanctity of the possession experience also carries over into her normal
life, and she gradually becomes a religious specialist and the object of worship.
Is it the Mother who possesses, or is it the Mother who is possessed? To answer
exclusively one way or another would presuppose a dualistic mind-set that is foreign
to Hindu ways of thinking about the Goddess and fakti. Fakti is not an object or an
entity; it is an all-pervasive force. It can be present in greater or lesser degrees; it can
move around and become manifest in various forms. Indeed, it is this very fluidity
of identity among the myriad forms of the Goddess and between divine and human
beings that is so essential to understanding the phenomenon of Goddess possession.
NOTES
Material for this essay is taken from my book Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess
of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993) and from more recent research I have conducted on village women healers in the
Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, India. Fieldwork was funded by Fulbright-Hays re-
search fellowships in 1982–1983 and 1991.
- Manuel Moreno, “God ’s Forceful Call: Possession as a Divine Strategy,” in Gods
of Flesh, Gods of Stone: The Embodiment of Divinity in India, ed. Norman Cutler,
Joanne Waghorne, and Vasudha Narayanan (Chambersburg, PA: Anima Books, 1985),
103–20. For a recent study that makes excellent use of this approach in a context outside
India, see Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1991).