Book
Heart drum: spirit possession in the communities of Belize
Cubola Productions • Belize • Published In 1986 • Pages:
By: Foster, Byron.
Abstract
This work is focused primarily on one single aspect of Garifuna religion, that of spirit possession. It endeavors to show how spirit possession functions not only as an expressive symbolic action in itself, but also as a means of linking the living with the ancestral dead, and from a slightly different standpoint, as a performance of ethnicity. The first part of the source presents a brief socio-historical background on the Garifuna and discusses the attitudes of United States and European churches toward Garifuna ritual. The source continues with a study of the possession-illnesses or afflictions that are believed to have been caused by possession by the ancestral spirits, their diagnosis by the spirit mediums (or shamans), and their eventual treatment through the DUGU rituals. The source concludes with a discussion of spirit possession in the light of current prevailing theories on the subject and with comparative data on other societies.
- HRAF PubDate
- 2005
- Region
- Middle America and the Caribbean
- Sub Region
- Central America
- Document Type
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- Analyst
- John Beierle ; 1989-1991
- Field Date
- 1977-1979
- Coverage Date
- 1977-1979
- Coverage Place
- Hopkins, Belize
- Notes
- [by] Byron Foster
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 50)
- LCCN
- 89111773
- LCSH
- Garifuna (Caribbean people)