Yi shamanic rites of personal, familial, and social healing
Chinese Yi families celebrate seasonal sacrificial healing rites which both engage the spirits and stimulate cathartic human activity through poetic chants and simple symbolic gestures. The family joins the officiant as the healing agents. Personal healing procedures reflect an awareness of empirica...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Molnar & Kelemen Oriental Publ.
2010
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| In: |
Shaman
Year: 2010, Volume: 18, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 69-86 |
| Further subjects: | B
Healing, Spiritual
B Shamanism B Psychology and religion B China B Ritual B Girard, René, , 1923-2015 B Sacrifice B Yi (Chinese people) |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Chinese Yi families celebrate seasonal sacrificial healing rites which both engage the spirits and stimulate cathartic human activity through poetic chants and simple symbolic gestures. The family joins the officiant as the healing agents. Personal healing procedures reflect an awareness of empirical, psychological, social, and spiritual forces at work in the patient’s condition and cure. They bolster self-assurance within one’s family, spiritual culture, and natural surroundings. They take place within rites to purge the family of threats from other family’s curses, imagined as an infectious threat and a quasi-material force to be fought. In line with Rene Girard’s theory of sacrifice, the rites also purge society itself by deflecting violent tendencies onto scapegoat animals and an imagined spirit battle. Gods represented by ‘spirit branches’ lead the battle. The rite may end by symbolically inviting family members to cleanse themselves of their own misunderstandings. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Shaman
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