Exorcism: A device of differentiation in Burmese Buddhism

Abstract

In Burma, exorcism is readily observable as a healing practice, and appears as a relatively well-bound domain ensconced into the larger and manifold Burmese Buddhist esoterism known as the weikza path. In this article, exorcism will be examined to unveil what he does to the Burmese religion. Particularly, manifestation of nefarious beings provoked by specialists in their patients during séances, through supposedly erratic movement is opposed to spirit possession’s dances as exorcism to adorcism (de Heusch). It is argued that bodily behaviour is used by exorcist as a way to demonstrate whose spiritual beings’ worship should be abandoned by patients undertaking the exorcist cure and by weikza followers.

Introduction

Exorcism, as a ritual practice aiming at extracting evil and nefarious influences from people, places, or communities is all pervasive around the world. However, as a concept of religious anthropology, it has a well-recognized Christian origin (Charuty, 2010). In anthropology, de Heusch (1971) has systematized its use in framing its opposition to the reverse process of adorcism in a system of transformation expounding the various ways to conceive of human attitudes towards other non-human beings. ¹ Revisiting his analysis in La Transe …, this author contends that the processes of adorcism and exorcism constitute two opposite forms of possession (de Heusch, 2006: 30). However, in this chapter, I reserve ‘possession’ for the relationship between human and spiritual entities characterizing positive spirit possession, that is adorcism.

In Burma, exorcism is readily observable as a healing practice, both historically and in contemporary society, and in all strands of life. Nevertheless, one can hardly find a Burmese word which translates as ‘exorcism’ or ‘exorcist’ as such. Spiro (1996 [1967]) provided the first ethnographic description of Burmese exorcism in a rural context. ² In his writing, the exorcist is labelled a ‘master of the higher path’ (ahtelan hsaya / ahteklan hsaya; Spiro, 1996 [1967]: 174), that is, a lay member of a congregation pertaining to the Burmese Buddhist esoterism known as the weikza path. Robinne (2000) readily used the term ‘exorcist’ when dealing with ‘esoteric squares’ (in) as exorcistic practice, only mentioning offhand that this specialist may be a monk, a master of the higher path or a tattooist (Robinne, 2000: 159). While these categories are not mutually exclusive – a monk may also be a master of the higher path which is what qualifies him to practice exorcism through tattooing, among other techniques – their redundancy and lack of specificity says something about the difficulty to name, in the Burmese language, the ritual specialist acting as an exorcist.

This difficulty to name the specialist in charge of exorcism, in combination with his relative low profile in his social milieu, may relate to what Rozenberg (2014) wrote about the identity of the Burmese exorcist – ‘powerful yet powerless, powerless yet powerful’ in that he does not have a power of his own but is instead the channel of his spiritual master’s powers. Similarly, Kapferer (1991 [1983]) argues about the kind of exorcism he analyses in Buddhist Sri Lanka that exorcists do not embody themselves the powers to transform.

More generally, the difficulty to translate exorcism may have to do with the fact that the anthropological use of the term actually conceals what it is really about. According to Charuty (2010), exorcism delineates conflictual religious formations, ³ a relative delineation that works on moving grounds as demonstrated by de Certeau (1970) in La possession de Loudun. In the Burmese case, this function of discriminating opposed moral sides from the Buddhist point of view is expressed through the Burmese wording of ‘master of the higher path’ (ahteklan hsaya) that points to the expected moral qualification of the Burmese exorcist usually belonging to a Buddhist esoteric congregation (gaing). In this article, I analyse Burmese exorcism less from a phenomenological (Rozenberg, 2014) or performance studies (Kapferer, 1991 [1983]) perspective than from a sociological one with the aim to demonstrate how exorcism delineates between religious formations.

In her research on the Arakanese therapeutic field, Coderey (2014) observes that, in these Western margins of Burma, the healers dealing with ‘non-ordinary sickness’ (payawga), or ‘instigated ill’ according to Rozenberg’s (2014) translation, ⁴ are ‘hybrid’ practitioners who both accumulate a number of mundane practices and trainings (astrology, divination, Indigenous remedies, etc.) and display close relationships with the esoteric field or weikza path (weikza lan). However, in case of serious aggression, only masters of the higher path who are initiated into a specific organization (gaing) of the weikza path may operate against instigators (meihsa). If a human agency is suspected, it is unescapably assigned to the ‘lower path’ (auklan) or to a witchcraft attack through this operation.

This could be generalized to all of Burma, where performers of what the ethnographer will identify as exorcism are very generally styled as ‘master of the higher path’ or ‘master from a congregation’ (gaing hsaya; a less respectful alternative). ⁵ Conversely, in Burma, exorcism can be taken as emblematic of the weikza phenomenon, as stated by Rozenberg (2014: 188). In fact, as a practice, exorcism is rather homogeneous across the country, displaying stable beliefs, practices, and interpretations non-withstanding idiosyncratic variations. From the observations of Spiro (1996 [1967]) in 1960s rural Burma, to those of Rozenberg (2014, 2016, 2018) in contemporary Mandalay, the second most urbanized region in the country, and my own in contemporary Yangon (2013, 2014, 2017, 2018), the same constant features may be recognized. This is not surprising given that the practice usually depends on membership in specific esoteric congregations (gaing), which operate in close watch of each other. Their history may be traced by the oral memory of their leaders and their key tenets may be recorded in usually easily found manuals. ⁶ Entering such an organization generally requires undergoing a formalized initiation process, which insures that the original tenets and practices are rigorously transmitted among the members. However, this has not precluded variations, segmentations, and developments to occur.

In Burma, notwithstanding its lack of scholarly attention, exorcism thus appears as a relatively well-bound domain of practice embedded within the larger and manifold Buddhist esoterism known as the weikza path (weikza lan). This dimension of Burmese Buddhism has experienced a new wave of popularity since the 1990s, when the rigorous political control of Ne Win’s one-party regime (1962–1988) over alternative religious practices was eased. It has recently been reconsidered in Burmese studies with the publication of Champions of Buddhism, an edited book (Brac de la Perrière et al., 2014) which express the diversity and actual pervasiveness of this path. ⁷ In order to understand the meaning of exorcism in the Burmese religion, it is worth locating weikza practices in the overall religious field.

Buddhism of the Theravāda brand is hegemonic in Burma ⁸ and is understood as composed of at least two contrasted main paths, the monastic and the lay ones. The weikza path is an interstitial one in this configuration and is named after figures mainly representing lay-religious virtuoso known as experts in various mundane ‘knowledges’ (weikza from the Pali vijjā) or disciplines such as astrology, alchemy, esoteric squares, and the science of remedies. Those knowledges have been progressively expelled from the monastic curriculum due to the nineteenth-century Sangha reforms. ⁹ As a result, they are supposed to be the monopoly of lay specialists who combine virtuosity in these practices with rigorous religious observances such as respect for a number of Buddhist precepts and the regular exercises in meditation – thamatha (Pali samathā) or wipathana (Pali vipassanā) for some of them. The unique trait of Arakanese healers combining mundane disciplinary practices and religious intensive ones as noted by Coderey (2014) is thus a characteristic of the whole weikza path throughout Burma.

Those who dedicate themselves to this path are believed to acquire special powers such as ubiquity and prolonged life. Their followers may regard these practitioners as having become accomplished weikza, that is to have escaped from their ‘life cycle’ (thandaya, Pali samsarā) and withdrawn into another ontological plane from where they can rescue humans in this world, and more particularly Buddhists. Weikza thus designate both the religious virtuoso engaged in this path and the non-empirical beings resulting from this virtuosity of which 84.000 are hypothetically counted. Some of them have also become the focus of cults whose charismatic leaders (bodaw and medaw) claim to be directly linked to some preeminent weikza whose perfection and powers they can extend to protect their followers and the Buddhist dispensation in Burma. Those said to have been well versed in medical matters are considered the originators and protective benevolent figures of the main healing congregations in which most exorcist activities take place. They have also left to their disciples the root medicines from which all the remedies used by the organization healers are produced. ¹⁰ It is through their congregation founder-weikza’s powers to cure that the Burmese exorcists operate.

As a specific kind of practice pertaining to the weikza path, exorcism thus belongs to a space located at the intersection of the lay and monastic paths and this is why Rozenberg (2014) states that we (as analysts) face a categorization problem which ‘requires the delineation of a new category within a commonly admitted typology of religious orientations’ (monastic vs lay orientations; p. 190). However, I would add that this sitting at the juncture of lay and monastic paths places exorcism at a strategic point in the religious field, as a marker of classificatory processing. More concretely, this is a place authorizing its inhabitants, the masters of the higher path (ahteklan hsaya), to exercise a disciplinary power over lay practices and views, something that as upholders of the Buddha’s monastic way of life monks should in theory not do in Theravāda Buddhism because they are not supposed to be involved in the mundane realm (lawki). In this article, it is this specific place and power that I shall examine. ¹¹

There is, however, also a second level of categorization to consider: exorcism as a ritual process opposed to adorcism or positive spirit possession. Exorcism and adorcism foster opposite attitudes towards other than human kinds of beings, forming a transformative system as expounded by de Heusch (1971) in his structuralist approach. As a process of extraction and suppression of various kinds of beings or influences, either dangerous or malevolent, exorcism does contrast with positive spirit possession practice. Indeed, rather than to expel malevolent beings, adorcism involves worshipping potentially benevolent beings by way of their fixation in ritual objects and representations and by inviting them to manifest themselves particularly through embodiment in their mediums.

In Burma, exorcism and adorcism both prevail in parallel. They are located in two distinct domains of practice, namely the weikza path (weikza lan) and the spirit path (nat lan), according to the different protective beings who govern them (weikza and nat). Adorcism is exemplified in the Thirty-seven Lords’ pantheon, a collective of tutelary spirits (nat) that are conceived of, ontologically, as the remains of violent death and have been united as spirits of possession under the aegis of Burmese kingship. The pantheon survived the suppression of the latter by British colonial authorities in 1885 thanks to the agency of spirit mediums (natkadaw; Brac de la Perrière, 2006). These ritual specialists organize Thirty-seven Lords’ possession séances in their clients’ name – when they are required to do so. They invite spirits to appear at these occasions by ‘entering’ their bodies (nat win-) and ‘dancing’ through them (nat ka-), thus enabling the devotees to interact with embodied spirits.

In Burma, these dances are understood as bodily behaviour characteristic of this kind of positive possession – adorcism – as opposed to exorcism. They are deemed emblematic of spirit worship – the nat ‘path’ (nat lan) – in contrast to exorcism which is emblematic of the weikza ‘path’ (weikza lan). ¹² In this sense, beyond differences in attitudes from humans towards spiritual beings, both paths could be said to signal disparities within this multitude of beings inhabiting the Burmese ‘other’ world, discriminating those who should be expelled because possibly harmful from those who deserve to be worshipped in order to benefit from their protective potential. Actually, although there is a pantheon of spirits of possession – the Thirty-seven Lords – there is no such identified collective serving as the object of exorcism. There is rather a mass of non-empirical beings liable of exorcism only known by descriptive generic terms such as ghosts, spirits, witches, and ogres. ¹³

Furthermore, even the pantheon of spirit possession is subject to change, and the fact that this pantheon is the object of a positive cult of Burmese Buddhists does not mean that it is excluded from the target of exorcists. In fact, the two paths are disconnected if not competing on this matter: exorcists have the upper hand in this game as those able to depopulate the body of spirits of possession, while spirit mediums may react in appropriating protective beings from the weikza path, as we shall see. These processes of mutual and constant evaluation by competing paths have been very active recently, revealing how exorcism works as a tool of differentiation, located at the crossroads of two categorization processes.

The framework of exorcism as a public and regulated one

I will limit myself to the description of plain exorcism rituals to better understand what exorcism does and how it works. By plain exorcism, I mean séances fully devoted to healing ailments and unfortune when there is suspicion that the trouble or instigated illness (payawga) is provoked by a wicked being or a malevolent intention (meihsa according to the Buddhist idiom). ¹⁴

Spiro’s (1996 [1967]: 174–204) ethnography of a plain exorcism remains the first detailed one, only matched in its empirical richness by Rozenberg (2014, 2016) whose careful attention supports new analysis. Spiro witnessed the exorcism he described in a rural context, where the healing séance was held at the patient house in presence of his family and numerous village onlookers. In his account, he insists on the public dimension of the event, and how group participation provides emotional, cultural (interpretative), social, and instrumental supports (Spiro, 1996 [1967]: 195–197). It is also a necessity to guarantee that the malicious being affecting the victim is truly confronted.

Spiro notes that the master of the higher path who first runs the séance does belong to an organization from the weikza path, but he does not detail which one as if irrelevant. However, according to Rozenberg’s observations and my own, this makes a difference. Indeed, the kind of séances we both studied are urban ones held at the exorcist’s home, where successive patients taken by close relatives wait to be examined, in a situation resembling medical consultation. In both cases, the exorcist acts as a member of a specific congregation ¹⁵ and the full name of the organization (whether Shweyingyaw or Manaw Seittokpad in our examples) is inscribed on a public banner exposed for the scrutiny of all. Membership in a gaing actually makes a difference since it is this congregational frame that guarantees the integrity of the exorcism process and the fact that it is performed according to the authorizing techniques, rituals, and control of the organization and its lineages of initiation.

Incidently, in the cases presented by Rozenberg and I, the ritual expert is a monk, although monks are not supposed to practice exorcism according to Theravadā monastic rule. ¹⁶ However, a number of exorcist congregation members are monks and do practice exorcism, even in their monastery, without being censured and disciplined by their religious administration. ¹⁷ But when they perform an exorcism, monks do so as masters of the higher path, not in their capacity as monks. Still, it may well be that their monastic status paradoxically contributes to their success as exorcists, because their supposed rigorous adherence to Buddhist values may let them be seen as more powerful than lay exorcists.

It is also the case that the specific power attributed to the Buddha’s words when read by monks or lay people, or even when inscribed on various materials, is used in exorcistic circumstances as a powerful protection. Buddhism is essential to the fight against evil because it is considered morally higher and thus capable of keeping the morally wicked at bay.

While Shweyingyaw initiation may be granted according to a number of levels by any fully initiated exorcist, as noted by Rozenberg (2014: 194), in Manaw Seittokpad’s case the ‘gift of knowledge’ (pinnya pay-) is a collective affair performed in full assembly at the organization headquarter pagoda, by the senior members, as soon as initiates advance higher than the third out of nine degrees. ¹⁸ This procedure involves the registration of the newly initiated in a book kept in the founder’s family house, and the handing over of a membership card with a serial number that indicates seniority and rank. This method seems specific to the Manaw Seittokpad congregation and is meant to guarantee the brand of exorcism and to prevent the splitting of the organization.

The first three degrees may be performed by all initiated masters at their place or at a convenient location at regularly recurring dates. It requires a specific temporary ritual setting which marks out a space protected from nefarious influences by the congregation’s protective entities. ¹⁹ In this space, Manaw Seittokpad ‘knowledge’ is transmitted through the ritual tattooing of esoteric designs with ink made out of congregation medicine. This occurs only after the initiate has been verified as clean of any pollution by their master that is after the exorcistic process has been completed. This two steps sequence of purification involving the expelling of potential malevolence followed by reinforcing the spiritual protections is intrinsic to every exorcistic processes, whether ritually simple or complex, directed at a person or a community.

An exorcized patient is expected to undergo the first degrees of the congregation initiation to get strong enough protection against repeated spiritual annoyances, but not all the patients will take up the role of exorcist. Conversely, the granting of ‘knowledge’ even to the higher degrees is not sufficient to become an exorcist. It requires further training under the supervision of an accomplished master who will at some point authorize his disciple to start an independent practice.

Finally, belonging to a congregation is central in the making of the exorcist’s credentials because it serves as a structure of control over the exorcistic process, regardless of each organization’s unique rules and procedures. If the congregational context of the exorcistic séance was not openly discussed in the case related by Spiro, it might have been because local community members handled this control over the process on their own. In any case, publicity is a necessary feature of any exorcism’s ritual process, whether it is insured by the presence of main representants of the local community or by the presence of close relatives and of a community of patients and peer exorcists. ²⁰ Belonging to a recognized organization also authorizes specialists to operate much beyond their own local circle and outside the control of any local community.

The stereotypic ritual script of a Burmese exorcism

An exorcism, that is the process to free a patient from disturbing entities and influences, may be a long and painful experience. It is always a complex one. The process may spread over many months, from the decision to take the supposed victim of a spiritual attack to the exorcist consultation, to the examination of their disturbance and the identification of the culprit agency, and finally to the cure and the placing of the healed patient under the protection of congregation’s benevolent entities.

The process starts with the first consultation of an exorcist, under the shelter of his Buddha’s shrine, which aims at determining if the patient suffers from a malicious aggression and which being is possibly the culprit. This already involves to place the patient under the protection of the congregation’s protective agencies, that are the exorcist congregation lineage founders weikza. This is done by administering congregation’s medication in different ways. Then comes the interrogation of the intrusive agency which is done through reading bodily reactions of the patient to the exorcist pressing questions using various techniques and addressed in an apparent random way to series of non-empirical beings. When the exorcist end-up with an explanation of the case and the identification of the intrusive agency, he orders the culprit to leave the patient’s body. Following this performative order, the patient is purified, and protected through various means such as clearing all the left-over pollution down their body with ritual leaves, reciting protective Buddhist verse over a glass of pure water given to drink, and providing more purgative medicine to ingest at home. At some point of this repetitive process, the exorcist may induce the manifestation of the wicked beings in the patient’s body, as a way of objectifying and distancing the affliction they are suffering from. When the patient is considered as clean of any malevolent influences, they may be initiated during special tattooing sessions of the exorcist using the organization’s medicinal ink, which grants them the protection of the congregation’s weikza.

What the observer witnesses in one séance is often nothing but a single stage of the total process that ultimately will lead the cured person, and often their family, to adopt the congregation’s tenets and way of life, and to respect a number of Buddhist precepts. This total sequence constitutes what I have elsewhere analysed as a reformation of the Buddhist personhood or an ‘internal conversion’ according to Geertz’s phrase (Brac de la Perrière, 2017).

The classical opus: Ko Swe’s case

Spiro’s account of a 60-year-old rural exorcistic séance provides us with a useful point of reference in time and space allowing to understand some of the evolving classificatory process involved in exorcism. ²¹ In this case, the patient, a 32-year-old man, Ko Swe (Kou Swe), has been seduced by an oktazaung (ouktazaung), the female guardian spirit of a pagoda’s treasure-trove (Spiro, 1996 [1967]: 165). This kind of ambiguous being is known to take the form of seductive women in order to attract people so they may take on the role of guardians of the Buddhist sanctuary, which would also cause their death. Ko Swe fell in love with an oktazaung, who has lured him. Since then, he is not the same and suffers a lot. Finally, he tells his story to a local master of the higher path and a séance is organized at his home to separate his ‘soul’ from the luring spirit. ²²

The séance occurs in the main room of the house, under the Buddha’s image shelf. The exorcist sits with his back to the altar and has laid down a piece of white fabric on the floor, in front of him, with offerings and lighted candles for the entities to stay. Ko Swe sits in front of him and the shrine, backed by his family and a number of villagers. Acting as would an officiant of a Buddhist event, the exorcist starts with Buddhist prayers before next asking Buddhist divinities for their help and then bestowing upon the patient the potent protection of the congregation’s tutelar entities. ²³ To achieve this, the exorcist burns an esoteric drawing (in) of the Buddha and mixes the ashes with water that he sprinkles over the patient and gives him to ingest. Then, the exorcist enunciates the exorcistic order to leave (ameindaw pyan, similar to an official act), by which all the possibly afflicting entities are commanded to exit the patient’s body.

However, the command is not effective as demonstrated by Ko Swe’s reaction. He sobs and this is interpreted by the exorcist as the response of the oktazaung. The exorcist thus proceeds to interrogate the spirit about her intentions, whose answers are deciphered by looking to see whether the patient’s fingers are separating or not. This soon evolves into a vehement argument in which the exorcist stresses the difference of ‘species’ (amyo) between the Buddhist victim, as a ‘human’ (lu) and the malevolent instigator, as a mere ‘animal’ (kaung) that cannot possibly practice religion. Because of this ‘species’ difference, the malign entity should leave the patient’s body (Spiro, 1996 [1967]: 179).

Classifying the oktazaung as a kaung is striking here because in other contexts, as a pagoda-guardian, she is instead addressed with the title Medaw (Lady) and qualified as a ‘noble being’ (pa). The ritual process of the exorcism, however, reframes the moral standing of the intrusive agent as one that should be expelled from the patient despite the fact that in other places, the same entity could be an object of worship. It is in fact standard in Burmese Buddhism that afflicting entities are qualified as ‘animals’ in exorcistic situations.

While submitting to this vigorous interrogation, the oktazaung further manifests herself through Ko Swe’s breakdown in seemingly erratic movements that people around him help to control. She now expresses herself through her victim’s voice, saying that she will come back to ‘marry’ him in 2 months. In this situation, it goes without saying that this would provoke his death. Highly ranked villagers present in the room discuss these developments together, concluding that the exorcist is not strong enough to deal with the case. Together with Ko Swe’s family, they decide to leave to fetch a more efficacious master of the higher path. As a result, a second, more conclusive séance will take place on the same night at Ko Swe’s home, to be followed by still another one 2 weeks later.

In Ko Swe’s case, the public is thus there to assist the exorcist and to evaluate the process. The patient plays his part through his mere presence, being the passive object of the rituals, but also as an active agent who pays homage to the Buddhist entities and embodies the wicked being with which the exorcist struggles. The patient’s body becomes the site of a confrontation between good and evil powers who respond to the exorcist’s ritual action. The exorcist’s function is to invite the Buddhist congregation powers in charge of the expelling to come and to take action. Spiro insists on the importance of the trust placed in the specialist by the villagers; the latter actually fetch two different exorcists consecutively in the same night following their loss of faith in the first one, demonstrating that the exorcist field is a highly competitive one.

The exorcistic consultation

Ko Swe’s séance is particular in that the diagnostic of his ailment, an attack by an oktazaung, has already been decided before it starts. In most urban cases observed, patients are brought to the exorcist consultation because of a suspicion of an aggression by or through a malevolent spirit without knowing which one. It is also common that the affected person’s entourage, those who take them to the exorcist, have a precise idea of what has happened and they are active in the first part of the séance when the history and details of the case are discussed. No such discussion occurred in Ko Swe’s séance, however. The matter was already settled and the interpretation of his ailment had reached a consensus.

The description of a consultation in a contemporary urban context will complement Spiro’s 60-year old rural case study and observations. The Zeyatheiddi abbot is a member of the Manaw Seittokpad congregation. He runs a small monastery in the Shwenaban monastic zone in Yangon where he holds daily exorcistic consultations assisted by younger exorcist apprentices. ²⁴ Visitors arrive continuously accompanied by close relatives or friends and they wait in the main room where the abbot cures his patients, next to his Buddha shrine.

Each consultation starts with an informal conversation, asking the name and day of birth of the patient, which determines the astrological configuration at birth, and what has brought them there. The day of birth of the patient will be used by the exorcist to refer to them from this point on, in all the interactions with other than human beings, thus situating the person in the overall cosmos. ²⁵ They sit on the floor, facing the monk and the Buddha. Congregation medicine diluted with some water is smeared on their head and given to them to drink.

The examination procedure then begins, conducted by the exorcist who tests for the presence of all sorts of ghosts or spirits by examining the patient’s bodily reactions to his pressing questions: either he looks at whether the fingers of both hands are separating from each other, if the head bows towards joint hands or if the seated person – then having turned their back to the Buddha’s shrine – can lift their stretched legs from the floor. These responses indicate if his guesses are correct. He may also use pricking tools such as a stylet soaked in congregation medicine that he pushes on various points of the body where he suspects a malevolent being to reside, following the symptoms.

This process of examination and interrogation may be long and painful, and varies depending on whether the exorcist is meeting the patient for the first time or whether the case is already known to him from previous consultations. In the first instance, he may apply diagnostic procedures for all sorts of beings able to afflict people, directly or not, according to a seemingly random list of generic beings that he threatens to harass until they leave their victim’s body. In addition, he may look for better identified spirits, such as the home-guardian spirit (eindwin) or specialists (astrologers, sorcerers, or specialists of the nat) who could in theory have been hired by jealous neighbours, colleagues, or relatives to perform spiritual attacks.

As demonstrated by Rozenberg (2016) in his detailed analysis of healing rituals, what he calls the ‘maïeutic’ of exorcism brings together two agencies with a body (the patient and the exorcist), and two agencies without a body (the malevolent beings and the weikza), whose actualization and performance, all depend on each other. While proceeding through the consultation, the exorcist does not address so much the patient as the suspected nefarious beings (meihsa). Indeed, the ones suffering from his vigorous interrogation are the intrusive entities whose agency is responsible for the patient’s condition, and made visible through the patient’s bodily gestures. The examination setting allows for a patient’s quasi objectification: their body serves to expose evil presence under the pressure of congregation weikza’s medicine or powers as mediated and deployed by the exorcist. However, patients retain a degree of subjectivity, as they are aware of their supposed non-voluntary movements which allow them to dissociate from their body and to get aware of what has happened to them.

The manifestation of the evil

While observing consultations of Manaw Seittokpad exorcists, either those of the Zeyatheiddi abbot in his monastery, or those of the congregation leader, U Aye Lwin, at home, or even those held every Saturday by a senior healer, U Aung Bo, at an obscure pagoda in downtown Yangon, concealed from passer bys in the midst of a dense monastic area, it was not uncommon that I came across what could be described, at first approximation, as an episode of ‘demoniac possession’.

Interestingly, these episodes occurred more readily when the process of exorcism was already started in previous séances and the relationship between the healer and the patient well established. It happened when the identification of the meihsa had already been settled and when the exorcist proceeded to interact with the malevolent agency. It often seemed to me that it happened when the exorcist needed to demonstrate his ability to master evil powers and the wickedness of the beings he was able to make appear, in front of both the foreign observer and the audience, provoking this manifestation of the evil in a way reminiscent of Charcot’s late-nineteenth century exhibition of hysteria.

Thus, on 23 September 2007, at the Zeyatheiddi consultation, there arrives a fat woman already known by the exorcist-abbot. Patients have been following each other all the afternoon long, but the monk finishes the case he is dealing with to make place for her in front of the Buddha’s shrine. He asks for the reason of her visit. She explains she has difficulties breathing. Commenting that the cure is not over, the exorcist starts the interrogation process also explaining, in the meanwhile, that ‘the beast is big’ (kaung gyi-) meaning that the case is serious. While applying his stylet on various parts of the patient’s body, making her twist seemingly in pain and throwing out her tongue towards the public and me, the exorcist comments that ‘this is the ghost’ (kewa) from which the woman has already been cured. However, ‘something is left’ in her body that he proceeds to identify through a reading of the patient’s bodily reactions to his queries: ‘Is that a spirit (nat)?’ Yes, ‘The house guardian (eindwin)?’ Yes, ‘Is this made by a medium (natkadaw)?’ No, ‘Is this your action?’ Yes. After which a reticent voice comes out of the patient and mutters, ‘I love her (chet-)’. What is understood from this sequence of questions and answers, according to the exorcist, is that the Burmese regular cult to the house guardian spirit (eindwin Min Mahagiri, a member of the Thirty-seven Lords pantheon) has been continued even after the woman has been exorcized from the ghost and that this guardian spirit is the cause of her continued trouble and suffering. It is therefore decided that she has to avoid house guardian spirit rituals and she is given congregation medicine to enable this.

It then seems to me that in this case, the abbot, who was familiar with this patient, took the opportunity to have the intrusive invisible being appear through her body to make it real to me and other onlookers. However, as expounded by Rozenberg (2016: 27), for an exorcist to make evil present through patient’s body is also, first, a way to make the patients cognizant of the malicious being affecting them in what he calls a ‘reflexive trance’ in order that they may gain distance from it. It is a cathartic event that the exorcist manages to produce as part of the healing process. Compared to Ko Swe’s breakdown related by Spiro, in which the manifestation of evil signals that the exorcist is not potent enough to deal with the case, the display of wicked beings’ presence in a patient’s body usually takes the form of an exorcist’s demonstration of his potency or rather of his congregation protective figures’ potency, at least in this urban contemporary context.

What sits in an exorcism?

But there is more in this episode. By making the familiar house guardian spirit (eindwin) appear as a wicked agency, the exorcist also reveals to the public the potential malevolence of a spirit usually conceived as protective and belonging to the well-known spirit possession pantheon of the Thirty-seven Lords. That implies that the exorcist is in a position to reorganize the cosmogonic order through his exorcistic action and to expose it by the manifestation of evil in the patient’s body.

Indeed, an important aspect of an exorcism’s efficiency resides in its capacity to re-order the Burmese Buddhist cosmos through re-assessing the moral standing of invisible other than humans inhabiting it, on top of already received categorization. As a matter of fact, back in the 1960s, oktazaung were a commonly feared category of beings. However, as pagoda treasure-trove guardians, they were and still are infused with a Buddhist aura that makes them easy to turn into an object of devotion. In regard to this moral ambivalence, Spiro (1996 [1967]) mentioned that they ‘fall somewhere between nats and ghosts’ (p. 165). While an oktazaung is the object of exorcism in Ko Swe’s case, in the contemporary era, some oktazaung are better known as thaik-naga, that are spiritual ophidian beings similarly linked to pagoda treasure guardianship and able to take the appearance of a seductive woman for a while. Nowadays, they are often treated as object of pious devotion and even adorcism.

At the same time, the Manaw Seittokpad exorcistic cure requires patients to eventually abandon all previous devotion to spirits. This includes the traditional cult of the house guardian spirit (eindwin Min Mahagiri) whose shrine, composed of a coconut offering, adorns the main post of most Burmese houses, together with specific tutelar spirits that may be worshipped at home, all belonging to the Thirty-seven Lords possession pantheon. Following a patient’s exorcism, their house needs to be ‘cleaned’ (than shin-) of all shrines or cultic artefacts other than the Buddha’s altar. This cleansing ritual constitutes an exorcism of the house that the healer must perform otherwise the cured patient will again be aggressed by these spirits.

Compared to Ko Swe’s case in which the healer asks provocatively to the house and the village guardian spirits, during the phase of interaction with other than human beings, why they have not protected the victim from the oktazaung attack (Spiro, 1996 [1967]: 179), the new situation is striking. Once a patient has been healed and placed under the protection of Manaw Seittokpad weikza, otherwise protective tutelary and domestic spirits have been turned into dangerous aggressive spirits that must be expelled. This suggests a radical moral rearrangement of the spiritual cosmologic order in the exorcistic context; while traditional spirits of the Thirty-seven Lords are targets of purification in the Manaw Seittokpad congregation context, most preeminent oktazaung have nowadays become the focus of cults styled by Foxeus (2017, 2018) as prosperity cults.

Thus, just as if oktazaung appear to be ambivalent beings who can evoke responses of either exorcism or adorcism depending upon the context, so are traditional spirits belonging to the Thirty-seven Lords possession pantheon similarly regarded as ambivalent entities, depending on the context. The decision to expel various spiritual beings from a person ultimately is determined during the exorcist consultation which thus functions as a tool for differentiating and re-classifying the moral and cosmological status of various figures within the crowd of spiritual beings.

Forms of embodiment of the spiritual and differentiation in the religious field

In this regard, bodily and behavioural manifestations of evil witnessed in exorcistic rituals also appear very different from positive or adorcistic possession as observed in the context of Thirty-seven Lords spirit possession séances. Rozenberg duly remarks that both ‘possessions’ differ, but without detailing in what ways they do besides the implicit important circumstance that the possessed individual is a patient in one case, and a medium in the other. This however only lays the analytic ground for distinguishing between the exorcism and adorcistic possession as divergent but entangled processes.

I have already outlined the differences in the ritual settings between these two kinds of ritual events (Brac de la Perrière, 2014). The ritual setting of an exorcism is a sober affair occurring while sitting in a house, without much paraphernalia involved. Nat possession, however, is an eye-catching event, usually organized as a 3 days affair, in a dedicated ceremonial pavilion (natkana), which is heavily adorned with spirit statues, flowers and food offerings and requiring an orchestra continuously playing specific tunes devised to invite the spirits to dance through their embodied mediums. But, in addition, a definitively distinctive aspect of these different manifestations of spiritual beings is the bodily behaviour they arouse in those people who take part in these events. In the case of exorcism, the seated body twists on itself, with a throwing out of tongues and a rolling of eyes, in an attempt for the trapped wicked being to circumvent the ordeal. In the case of nat possession, the standing body bursts out in dancings and jumpings of a released and exulting spirit.

Nothing could better characterize the contrast between exorcism and adorcism than these diverging forms of spiritual agency and embodiment, with chaotic, physically constrained and erratic movement contrasted with graceful, exuberant, and flowing movement. They deserve to be carefully discriminated according to their specific ritual contexts. The contrast highlighted here could be further complexified if we looked at these forms in other intermediate ritual settings such as possession of devotees by thaik-naga in their specific cult locations rather than during Thirty-seven Lords spirit possession séances (Brac de la Perrière, 2022; Foxeus, 2018) or inspired possession of weikza cult leaders (Brac de la Perrière, 2014). However, this simplified, stereotypic contrast, as represented earlier, already enables us to recognize that the use of the single label of ‘possession’ to describe both exorcism and adorcism standard bodily behaviours may be misleading.

In sum, the manifestation of the wickedness in the curse of exorcism differs from the embodiment of spirits in ceremonies to the Thirty-seven Lords as is evident in each ritual’s distinctive bodily demeanours, ritual settings, and moral positionalities of their main agents and functionalities. In particular, the exhibition of an intrusive entity in the subject of exorcism requires the intervention of the ritual specialist, the exorcist, and is characterized by its volatility; also, the patient remains cognizant of what happens which allows him to take distance from his ailment thus objectified. By contrast, nat spirit mediums do not need any ritual specialist to call on their spirits to whom they have been linked for life through various rituals; they are able to convene them when needed for ritual purpose. However, they are not supposed to remember what happens when their spirits visit them. What is more is that there is no positive identification with the attacking entity in exorcism, where this is the case for adorcistic possession by a nat.

To conclude, forms of representation in exorcism and adorcism are standardized and culturally significant: together with the different settings in which they occur, they immediately convey to the audience whether the non-human being should be expelled or shown cultic devotion. Or, in de Heusch phrasing, whether the otherwise invisible being – and thus un-determinate – commands exorcistic or adorcistic attitudes from humans. Displaying the evil through the body of an affected patient is a way for masters of the higher path to reveal to the public that these beings are not worth of worship and should be expelled from their practices. That means that, with regard to the many non-human entities inhabiting the Burmese spiritual world, there is no decisive attribution to the exorcist undertaking but rather that the ritual setting and bodily behaviours involved entail the qualification of agencies for exorcism. In this sense, by the way of exorcism, masters of the higher path may be said to foster a moral and cosmological differentiation across the spiritual world according to the Buddhist values that they advocate.