The Gods at Play - Vertigo and Possession in Muria Religion Alfred Gell

The Gods at Play: Vertigo and Possession in Muria Religion
Author(s): Alfred Gell

Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 219-248
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2801669
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THE GODS AT PLAY: VERTIGO AND
POSSESSION IN MURIA RELIGION*
ALFRED GELL
Australian National University
Vertigo is a most significant element in the religious practices of the Muria, a tribal people
of Central India. This paper tries to account for the pursuit of religious vertigo in dance,
swinging, and possession trance, as a means of achieving a state of 'deautomatised' or dis-
embedded sensori-motor integration, and altered state of consciousness which is also, by
implication, the Muria divinities' own. First, the article provides some background on ritual
swinging in India, before moving on to an ethnographic account of 'the assault on the
equilibrium sense' in Muria ritual practices. Riding and swinging emerge as characteristically
divine activities. The article concludes with an account of possession trance and proposes a
'vestibular' theory of trance induction. Finally, some comparative suggestions are advanced
concerning Muria trance behaviour and similar behaviour seen in cases of severe childhood
autism. It is argued that both may be related to the disruption of vestibular modulation of
input-output relations in the central nervous system.
Introduction: On a swing at Alor

Verrier Elwin's The Muria and their ghotul is embellished with a plate showing
the Siraha's swing at Alor (I 947: P1. 35). From two elegantly carved, inwards
leaning posts, is suspended a wooden seat, into which are set a number of sharp
nails, as if it were a bed of nails in miniature. Studying this arresting image, we
are struck by the coincidence of opposites it seems to embody, since the Alor
swing would appear to serve as an instrument of pleasure and torture
simultaneously, evoking both the ascetic practice of self-mortification, and the
secular enjoyment of a universal childish pastime. We are able to infer that the
swing is employed in a ritual context, despite the fact that no further reference
is made to the swing in Elwin's book, because we have been told that the Siraha
is a medium who prophesies at festivals. But despite the esoteric context and
sheer decorativeness of the Alor swing, it is, and remains, a swing, and clearly
cognate with the stark, clanking, functional iron swings which indulgent
municipalities the world over erect for the greater delight of schoolchildren.
What is a swing doing in the forecourt of a village temple? How can a
swing become a means to religious awareness? This might seem an unduly
narrow topic for a lengthy essay, but I believe it has ramifications which
extend deep into anthropologically unknown territory, to the point of
enabling us to sketch out what may be the neuropsychological foundations of
very widespread religious practices. Such biological considerations, however,
may be reserved until a much later stage, since there is a great deal to be said
within a more narrowly ethnographic framework, concerning Muria
'swinging' and allied ritual techniques, including possession trances. And it is
* The Curl Prize Essay for 1978.
Man (N.S.) 15, 219-48.
220 ALFRED GELL
of considerable interest to describe these techniques since they are part and
parcel of a tradition in Indian religion which is both ancient and widespread.'
The separateness of the Muria as a 'tribal' group, from the mainstream of
Hindu culture, has not prevented them from absorbing many elements of
Hindu tradition; in the next section I will situate the Alor swing in its pan-
Indian context. My prime objective, however, is not so much to arrive at a
better understanding of ritual swinging as an isolated institution, but to
interpret it as a particular case of what may be a far more general mode of
religious awareness. In the following section I take up the theme of equilibrium
play in Muria religion, together with an abbreviated account of secular
vertigo.2 The final section proposes a possible neuropsychological mechanism
underlying possession and allied behaviour.
The swing in the Hindu tradition

In India, the ritual use of swings is by no means confined to Bastar District
(Madhya Pradesh) where the Muria live. They are part of an ancient tradition.
Keith (I970: 3 5 i) describes the vedic ritual of Mahavrata, whereby the priest,
swinging to and fro, strengthened the sun at the season of the winter solstice.
In a play dating from C. A.D. 900 we find a clear reference to the festivals at
which the Gods are ritually 'swung' which have persisted to the present day
(Lanman I90i). In a survey dating originally from I927 Bose dealt
comprehensively with ancient and modern swing-festivals in India, where
they commonly occur as part of the Spring Festival (Holi) (Bose I967: ch. 5).
He is of the opinion that although now associated with the figure of Krishna,
these ceremonies are not of Brahminical origin. I lack the space to reproduce
any details of recent accounts of swing-festivals, but they may be said to fall
into two classes which correspond to the two apparently contradictory 'aspects'
of the Alor swing with which I began, i.e. pleasure and self-mortification.
'Pleasurable' swinging is often associated with Krishna, and is not different
from purely secular swinging except that it is performed (by women and
children) on ritual occasions. An excellent example of this kind of ritual
swinging is the tij festival described by 0. Lewis (I958: 205) for the Delhi
region. This spring-time swinging from the boughs of trees is implicitly erotic,
and its religious significance, in so far as it has any, is confined to permitting a
temporary relaxation of the normal constraints on young women making
merry in public, i.e. the celebration of feminine (fertile) disorder. Very
different, and coming from quite the other end of the religious spectrum, are
the kinds of 'mortificatory' swinging practised, for instance, in honour of
Shiva during the Bengal festival of Carak (Chattopadhyaya I96I: 5 I sqq.).
Adult male devotees swing over a fiery pit, and are subsequently swung round
a tall pole from which they are suspended by hooks, nowadays inserted into a
belt they wear, but which anciently used to pierce their flesh. Photographs and
descriptions of 'hook-swinging' in south India and Ceylon are to be found in
Hocart (I927) and Thurston (I906: ch. io).
Hook-swinging is comparable, in most respects, with other forms of
ALFRED GELL 221
religious self-mortification such as flagellation with chains, piercing the body

with skewers, fire-walking and so on. But it always involves, I believe, a strong
element of identification with the God, who is also conceptualised as a being
who 'swings' and who is often swung, in effigy, in the course of the rites. Bose
gives accounts of these God-swinging rituals from many parts of India, and it
would be reasonable to assume that the activities of the swinging devotees are
modelled on those of the divinities themselves. This is certainly borne out in
the case of the Muria as we shall see (Bose I967: 59 sqq. and for further
references Walker I968, Frazer I923 and for a magnificent parallel from Siam,
Quarich Wales I93 I).
Despite the divergent forms which ritual swinging takes, whether as a
devotional ordeal, a semi-secular sport for young girls, or a form of homage
paid to the idols of the Gods, I think we can perceive a thread of continuity
running through the surface texture of diversity. All swinging relates to the
experience of vertiginous play, and has to do with the pervasive relation which
exists between bodily equilibrium and disequilibrium and states of conscious-
ness. In all swinging, there is an element of self-surrender to a loss of individual
equilibrium, and the contexts in which ritual swinging is found, despite their
overt disparity, are all such as to make one suspect that this loss of equilibrium
is capable of being invested with religious significance. Gentle rockings induce
ease and peaceful repose, recalling the rockings of the baby's cradle (which
incidentally is calledjhula in Hindi, the same word as for 'swing') while more
vigorous motions of the swing induce exhilaration, terror, or ecstasy. In
confronting the problem of ritual swinging, we should recognise that the
swing is an artefact whose use is the modification of mental states. In what
follows I will attempt to enlarge our understanding of ritual swinging not by
concentrating narrowly on swinging as such, but by pursuing the theme of the
'techniques du corps' (Mauss I950) associated with the pursuit of vertigo in their
total cultural context. For, despite the widespread occurrence of ritual swinging
in India, the institution never attains to such a degree of elaboration where it
might be profitable to seek to explain it as a thing in itself. The neglect the Alor
swing receives in Elwin's text is not, perhaps, so unjustified in terms of its
intrinsic importance. But the Alor swing has, nonetheless, great value as an
indicator of a certain style of religious awareness, which must be understood
in general terms if it is to be understood at all. Where the Muria are concerned,
it is.immediately apparent that the use of the swing by possessed mediums is
but one of a large class of linked ritual institutions, all of which seem to involve
an assault, in some way, on the equilibrium sense. The final significance of the
Alor swing is that it points us in the direction of vertigo.
Vertigo in Muria religion
(i) Generalities
The Muria recognise three main classes of divinity, each of whose cult is in
the hands of a different class of specialist. (i) The cult of the divinity yayalmutte
is associated with the Bastar 'state' Goddess Danteshwari Mata, the localised
222 ALFRED GELL
'refraction' of whom is worsh

Goddess cult are known as
'caste' Hindus, or from among the Muria (Gond) population. The visible
'vehicles' representing the Goddess and her offspring take the form of lat, long
bamboo poles with flags attached, as well as permanent wooden images, peg-
like in form, set into the floor of the temple. The Goddess and related divinities
can also reveal themselves by possessing individuals and speaking through
them. Such a medium (siraha) is not necessarily a pujari. Ritual swinging is
confined to mediums who are possessed by yayalmutte as I will describe.
(2) The large class of purely Muria village-cum-clan divinities are known
as pen and are lodged in separate temples known as rawr. The human
intermediaries of the village divinities are mediums (lesk). The hereditary
village medium associated with a pre-eminent village God is the mur lesk or
vadder, but he is likely to be only one of a number of men who will be subject
to possession by an assortment of divinities on a more contingent basis. Such
a medium may perform curing ceremonies which involve possession as well
as becoming possessed in the course of religious festivals. Other mediums-
generally younger men-will only become possessed during festivals.
The 'vehicles' of the village divinities take two forms, distinguishable from
those of the state Goddess refractions. These are (a) kolang-short wooden
poles decorated with plumes and bells, and (b) the anga or 'log-god'
constructions which I will describe in detail below.
(3) The cult of tallurmutte, the earth Goddess is in the hands of the gaita, the
hereditary Muria village priest. The Earth Goddess has no temple and no
movable vehicles, being associated with stone cairns in the forest. Possession
behaviour plays no part in the cult of tallurmutte. In what follows I am
exclusively concerned with the cult of the pen and yayalmutte and no more
need be said about tallurmutte in this connexion.
(ii) Festivals
There is no need to go into further details regarding Muria theology at this
point. Suffice to say that the divinities are thought to be supernatural, but
otherwise generally similar to human beings and to go through essentially the
same life-experiences as human beings do. The pen is born to certain parents,
grows up, marries, reproduces (sometimes out of wedlock in the case of
susceptible young goddesses) and may eventually die. Divinities are not
morally perfect, and their behaviour inspires indignation as well as awe. The
motives of the divinities in sending misfortunes or demanding extra sacrifices
are the essentially human ones of jealousy or caprice. And the divinities like to
enjoy themselves and participate in social occasions here in the middle world,
called by the Muria manjapur 'the place of laughter' or fun-land. The essential
humanity and sociability of the divinities is perfectly brought out by the name
given to the major Muria religious festival which occurs during the dry season
(May-June). The festival is called pen karsana 'the divine games' (literally:
'God-playing'). The divinities come to visit the village, animating the images
and vehicles in the village temples, and inspiring the mediums.
ALFRED GELL 223
The festival lasts fourteen days in all and during this period no work may be
done in the fields. The Muria are not without a work ethic of their own, but
at this time they devote their energies totally to dancing, drinking and
travelling from place to place for the purposes of enjoyment. Nightly, there are
dances held at the ghotul (the village dormitory for the young of both sexes) at
which the whole village will be present as well as visitors from elsewhere-
and also the divinities who dance along with the populace. Such a night dance,
if the occasion is a big one, may be attended by five hundred or more dancers,
magnificently decked out, some of whom may have walked for considerable
distances in order to attend.
The atmosphere of the night dance and the subsequent day of 'Divine
Games' is extremely impressive, not to say magical. In what follows, I will
abstract only certain elements for detailed discussion-in particular, the dances
with the log-god or anga, and the behaviour of the possessed mediums-but
it must be stressed that these take place only against a background of total
communal participation in the ritual occasion. The very notion of 'possession'
as it applies to religious virtuosi, the mediums into whom the divinity enters
and through whom the divinity speaks, is only a heightened and individualised
form of the transformation that affects the community as a whole during the
festival time. This is particularly apparent in connexion with Muria singing
and dancing, which never feature solos, but which draw on the combined
resources of massed bodies of performers acting as far as possible in complete
unanimity. Not only is the individuality of the dancer or singer de-emphasised,
but the long drawn-out, hypnotic character of the dance seems intentionally
designed to take the performers to a point at which a combination of fatigue,
over-breathing and auditory stress must cause them to experience themselves
and their situation in non-normal ways. The form of the dance is also
significant. Muria generally dance line abreast, or in a large circle, and very
frequently with linked hands and arms around the waist or shoulder. The line
of dancers is a single unit which has to think and move as one. There is no need
to dwell at length on the possible effects of this dance style on the body image
of the individual dancer in the line. Anyone with experience of the more
antiquated style of western ballroom dancing will be quite familiar with the
sensation of a subtle shift in the line of 'inside' and 'outside'. What is, I think,
characteristic of Muria dancing is the emphasis it places on symmetrical as
opposed to complementary movements between partners in the dance, and the
absence of expressive or solo elements. And this reflects, I would argue, the
instrumental role of the dance in Muria culture as a device for inducing non-
normal psychological states in the performers, rather than as a means for
communicating symbolic statements mimetically.
Muria religion is, of course, much more than a technology of 'altered states
of consciousness'. It is a belief system, a theodicy, and at the same time the
intricate genealogical and alliance relationships between the various clan and
village divinities are both a charter for practical social relationships and a
compendium of indigenous historical traditions. Without wishing to deny for
a moment that Muria religion is in the highest degree sociologically relevant,
the present essay is devoted to examining it from a psychological and aesthetic
224 ALFRED GELL
perspective, rather than pursuing the correspondences between it and its social
milieu. Muria religion is not, in fact, particularly rich in 'symbolic' elements,
mirroring so faithfully as it does, the stream of events in 'manjapur' (the
everyday world), and would not appear conducive to the kind of 'crypto-
analytic' approach which I have been tempted to employ elsewhere (cf. Gell
I975). Though I shall have something to say about certain symbolic elements
in Muria ritual (e.g., horses), the primary objective of this essay is the
understanding of states of mind, or modes of religious awareness, rather than
the decoding of covert symbols. The Muria, in participating in major religious
festivals, seek, and derive, physical, emotional and aesthetic satisfaction from
the performance, which alone would be sufficient to explain the persistence of
the religious institutions of which they are part. Even if a psychological
account of ritual leaves unanswered basic questions having to do with the
institutional framework of religious life and its grounding in social relations,
it opens up a series of not intrinsically less significant problems concerning the
psychic and indeed ultimately physiological mediation of institutional forms.
We may conclude that although the Divine Games are based on a set of
theological beliefs, and correspond to certain implicit sociological necessities,
they are, for participants, primarily relevant as an occasion for actively
pursuing and achieving certain special experiential states which perhaps border
on ecstasy, though always submitting them to the collective discipline of a
dance style which is military in its precision, if not in its metaphors. For the
laity, so to speak, there is only the collective abandon which sweeps through
the long lines of dancers: for the virtuosi, it is otherwise, and physical
autonomy is conceded, not to the next dancer in the line, but to an invisible
presence. It is to this surrender, this vertigo, that I will now turn.
(iii) The 'log-gods' (anga)

The anga is a quadrangular framework of two thick poles of dense wood
(mango, in the instances known to me) joined by lighter cross-pieces.3 In
addition, there is a forward projecting 'head' piece, roughly carved into the
likeness of a horse, which, given the rarity of horses in Muria country, we may
gloss as a strange, high-prestige beast, associated with authority and religious
power. The anga is blackened with smoke and repeated oilings, and is further
decorated with silver bands, feather plumes, bells and suchlike. I have made no
trial of lifting an anga but I estimate that one must weigh in the vicinity of
eighty to one hundred pounds.
The way in which these images are used during the 'Divine Games' brings
out very forcibly the centrality of the idea of an 'assault on the equilibrium
sense' in Muria religion. Once offerings have been made to them, the anga
begin to 'play'. Supported on the shoulders of two, or sometimes four youths
from the ghotul dormitory, the anga is stood in the dance-plaza, facing the band
of musicians who, on these occasions are provided by the ganda (Weaver) caste.
Ganda drumming is both loud and rapid, and quickly establishes a mood of
excitement and dissociation.4 While the ganda musicians concentrate on their
ALFRED GELL 225
art, the anga-carrying youths gaze outwards with vague, expectant expressions.
After a minute or so, the anga begins to sway back and forth perceptibly. One
should perhaps say that it is the youths who sway, rather than the anga, but that
would be to traduce the extraordinary verisimilitude of the illusion given to
the audience, and I believe the youths as well, that it is the anga which is the
active partner, and that the youths are no more than passive supports. Elwin's
admirable photograph of an anga in action (Plate XXXVI) is captioned,
appropriately, 'The Anga asserts its will', which is precisely the impression one
receives.
In order to understand how this impression originates, it is necessary to
visualise the anga as an inverted pendulum mounted on springy supports (the
youths) which has a natural tendency to convert upwards (supporting)
impulses into various kinds of lateral and twisting oscillatory motions, storing
kinetic energy and subsequently releasing it in perhaps unforeseeable ways.
The youths are not, as separate individuals, simply supporting a constant
proportion of the total weight of the anga; they are in continuous, but largely
involuntary interaction with one another via pushes, pulls and tilting
movements initiated by the other carriers, multiplied by the inertial properties
of the anga itself. To begin with these movements are only slight, and cancel
each other out; but as the dance continues, a pattern seems to be established, a
rhythmicity which is 'unwilled' and which seems to-which indeed does-
originate in the animate mass of the anga. Before long, the anga, seeming to
have taken control entirely, launches off into a whirling and plunging dance
of the utmost ferocity. The dancers, not in trance, are nonetheless possessed.
They are 'outside themselves' because their physical equilibrium, their centre
of gravity, is now lodged in the ponderous, but at the same time, sensitive
structure of the God. The path of the anga in space is the outcome of an
infinitely complex play of forces, an equation in which the contribution of this
or that individual is indistinguishable, and what the youths have lost of
individual autonomy, the anga has gained.
The anga dance is a prime example of the assault on the equilibrium sense in
Muria religion. What needs to be emphasised, I think, is the way in which the
divinity which invests the anga is not present simply as an idea, something
merely represented by the image, but as a tangible physical quantity perceived
somesthetically rather than intellectually constructed. Muria realise the
divinity via proximal rather than distal perceptual channels, as a force acting
directly on and through the body. The anga, one notes, does not correspond
visually to the imagined form of the divinity; in so far as the pen are considered
to have forms which can be visualised at all, they are human, yet the anga
shows us a vaguely horse-like creature. The divinity inhabits the anga, animates
it, but is not visually imitated by it. We are accustomed to the idea that those
possessed by spirits or divinities are the 'horses'5 of the spirits (I. M. Lewis
I97I: 58); here, the total assemblage of anga plus carriers is such a 'horse' and
the divinity is the invisible presence which spurs this assemblage into action.
Or, more precisely, the divinity is present not 'in' the anga but in the kinetic
forces which are generated during the dancing.
And these forces are not without a definite form of their own. If we return
226 ALFRED GELL
to a consideration of the assemblage of the anga plus the carriers, we can

perceive, in the pattern of steadily intensifying oscillations to which it is
subject, a positive-feedback situation in which compensatory movements,
initiated by the carriers in order to stabilise the assemblage, tend inexorably to
contribute to the overall instability of the system. This corresponds to the
destructive 'hunting' oscillation in cybernetic systems (Wiener I948: I4;
Bateson I958: 288). The element of over-compensation is contributed by the
pendulum effect of the heavy anga which converts vertical stabilising
movements into unpredictable sideways and rotary shifts in the overall
equilibrium. Because the carriers have inadequate feedback (as individuals)
adequately to predict the effects of their actions, they tend to seek feedback by
attuning themselves to the 'will' of the assemblage as a whole. Letting it 'find
its own equilibrium', the youths 'push' when it pushes, they 'dive' when it
dives, and so forth, still further contributing to the positive feedback and the
intensification of the oscillatory movements which only come to an end when
the carriers tacitly accept the need to stop moving altogether lest total vertigo
engulf them all-at which point there is a lull in the dancing. It will be seen
that at the height of the dance the carriers' motor performances will have, for
them, a marked subjective quality of un-willed-ness, and at the same time they
will perceive the anga as 'imposing' itself on them, shaping their responses in
a very definite way by depriving them of the power to control their own
equilibrium except by responding as the anga demands. This is vividly
communicated to the audience as well, if only vicariously.
The anga dance is specifically oriented towards disrupting the normal sense
of self-possession on the part of the carriers. Divine intervention takes the form
of the creation of the 'gap' between the structures of intentionality which
underlie normal motor activities, and the consequences of the carriers' actions
as perceived by themselves. The dancers' equilibrium, instead of being
automatic and unthinking, has to be defined and preserved not simply in
relation to his body, his movements and intentions, but in relation to his
participation in the anga assemblage as a whole. In other words, vertigo
threatens intentionality, and the structures of intentionality underlie our sense
of 'self'. I will return to this theme in connexion with possession later on.
(iv) The Divine poles andflags

The assault on the equilibrium sense is not restricted to the anga and their
dance. Other divinities are lodged in vehicles which have similar though less
dramatic properties. Notable in this connexion are the long bamboo poles (lat)
decorated with bells and flags. These are 'danced' at pen karsana in somewhat
the same manner as the anga images, balanced on the shoulders of one or more
carriers. Any person who has attempted to walk or run while balancing a
twenty-foot length of springy bamboo over the shoulders, will have no
difficulty in understanding the mechanism embodied in this particular vehicle
of the divinity. The vibrating bamboo pole is a perfect image of the hunting
oscillation I spoke of earlier and it communicates its peculiar life to the carrier
ALFRED GELL 227
in a most sensible fashion,

him down into the earth. Like the anga, the bamboo pole contradicts the
normal state of integration which exists between actions and their consequences
in the external world, and moreover the length and vigorous motions of the
pole produce marked disturbances in normal bodily equilibrium. Such long
poles decorated with flags and plumes are also subject to friction from the air
and wind pressure as an additional complicating influence.
Little need be added here, except that it should be mentioned that the lat
poles and the sensations they communicate are possibly thematically related to
the experience of carrying heavy loads on flexible bamboo carrying-yokes
(kaveri) which is a basic experience for Muria males-wheeled transport being
little used in this area. Kaveri, of course, are much shorter and are specifically
designed to function as a suspension system which cushions the up-and-down
movements of the carrier's shoulder so that it is not communicated to the loads
attached to the ends of the yoke, which travels forwards in a straight line,
thereby minimising the effort needed on the carrier's part. The ergonomically
efficient use of the carrying-yoke requires a nice judgement as to the pace and
gait to be adopted by the carrier, which-and this is the important point
here-are determined in every instance by the springiness of the yoke and the
weight of the loads, and not by the carrier's whim. In other words, the yoke
imposes its 'will' on the carrier, who adjusts his gait as to some external
compulsion. Turning back to the divine poles, we see this situation in
magnified and exaggerated form. The pole is no longer a helpful tool to which
the body can be conveniently adjusted, but is the repository of an active spirit.
(v) Swings
I should, in order to preserve the chronological order of events, only
embark on a discussion of the swings having first outlined the trance induction
procedures, for it is only once they are possessed by a divinity that mediums
have recourse to the swing. But I discuss them here because in certain respects
the ritual swinging of the mediums reflects, in inverted form, the basic kinetic
schema of Muria religion as it emerged in the analysis of the anga dance. The
agna oscillates on the flexible support provided by the bodies of the carriers:
the swing, on the other hand, is itself a flexible support on which the medium
oscillates. Moreover, while the carriers are not 'possessed'-it is the anga which
is possessed in becoming the object-vehicle of the divinity-in the case of the
swing and the medium who rides on it this position is reversed. It is the body
of the medium not the swing which is the vehicle of the divinity, and the
swing is the oscillatory passive support (see figs. i & 2). The mechanics of
swing-use preserves the privileged position of the divinities as beings who ride:
at the same time it permits the role of 'rider' to be played by a human being
in a condition of temporary exaltation, as well as being conducive, as we shall
see, to the attainment of this 'divinised' status.
At a certain point in pen karsana, then, the possessed medium becomes a God
who rides on a swing. We may briefly pause here to inquire into the nature of
228 ALFRED GELL
this behaviour and ask questions as to its meaning. To what conception of the
divine is this activity (of swinging) appropriate? Muria swinging comprises
elements of both the mortificatory ritual swinging pattern described earlier
and also the secular-erotic or 'playfull' type of swinging. The medium who
swings has mortified his flesh prior to seating himself on the swing (see below)
but the swinging itself seems to be pleasurable and I did not see swings with
nails in the seat on the lines of the Alor example. The model for Muria
swinging seems to be the 'God-swinging' rituals in which images of the God,
or individuals representing the God temporarily, are swung as an act of ritual
FiGUREi. Medium on a swing.
ALFRED GELL 229
service. That the divinities

infer from the brass images
is paid inside the temple, even
in the plaza outside. These i
with images of divinities ri
and winged horses6 (see fig
standing, but these are nev
a study on the iconology of
position atop some mobile p
FIGU'RE 2.. A young Muria lesk. Th

became much more pronoun
230 ALFRED GELL
FIGURE 3. Divinities on a swing. Brass temple image collected in Narvayanpur, Bastar district.
divine status in Muria eyes. To swing, to ride, is to enjoy the vertiginous

triumphs the Gods alone can know. We further recall that in the days of the
rajahs of Bastar, who were considered to be divine by the Murias, the rajah
made his public appearances mounted on an elephant, or in a vast elevated
juggernaut drawn by hundreds of men, or, more latterly, in a splendid cream
coloured Rolls coupe whose ruins are still to be seen outside the palace at
Jagdalpur. Temporal power and divine prestige are closely linked in Bastar,
whose traditional political arrangements invite many comparisons with the
'God-Kings' of neighbouring Orissa (cf. Mahapatra I976). And in a country
overwhelmingly without wheeled transport until quite recently, those who
move without effort are superior beings.
But in this effortless motion there is also a certain peril which ordinary
mortals, their feet planted on the earth, do not face. Elephants in motion sway
alarmingly, as anyone who has ever ridden on one will know. However docile
the creature may be, it is endowed with a will of its own, which it might
exercise in unforeseeable ways. But this is not so much of the essence as the fact
ALFRED GELL 23I
FIGURE 4. Divinities riding an elephant. Note the emphasis on the vertical. Brass temple image
collected in Narvayanpur.
that riding on an elephant, or a swing, or a horse, is a question of balance, of

maintaining bodily equilibrium in a situation in which the support on which
the body rests is continually tilting one way or the other. The skilled rider
learns to preserve an even distribution of weight around an axis passing
through the midline of the body, no matter how violently his mount capers
and rears. And in this maintenance of endangered equilibrium there is a
definite exhilaration, which other forms of locomotion do not provide.
Whence this exhilaration comes is still an obscure question. A recent
handbook of the physiology of the vestibular apparatus contains no elucidation
of the pleasures of this sense (Kornhtiber I 974), while a similar compilation of
play studies (Bruner et al. 1976) fails to mention equilibratory play, prominent
though this type of behaviour is among children. To my knowledge, the only
extensive discussion of the role of equilibratory play in cultural systems is
provided by Caillois (I96I). In his book Man, play and games, Caillois makes
many points which are very germane to the theme of this article. He has
232 ALFRED GELL
incisively demonstrated the close links between childhood dizzy-making

games (analogous instances to which are also found in the animal kingdom)
and certain religious practices and cultural forms (I96I: 23 sq., 6o, 62, 8I sq.).
It would be out of place here to summarise Caillois's brilliant and far-ranging
synthesis, but what deserves emphasis, I think, is his insight into the cognitive
implications of apparently innocuous play behaviour such as whirling around
on the spot, swinging, sliding and so forth-behaviour which is commonly
dismissed as purely 'motor' and hence uninteresting from a cognitive-aesthetic
standpoint.
Characteristic of play-and it is with playful activities that we are concerned
here, in seeking tQ understand the swinging of the mediums-is the way it
raises to the level of explicitness the performance of behavioural routines
which are, or will become, subliminal. It is activity engaged in for its own sake,
and it always takes place within a frame which isolates it from the context of
action performed with an ulterior end in view. Play is abstracted from the
stream of ongoing activities, and within the play-frame particular activities are
abstracted from their routine contexts and are focused on and so to speak
'savoured'. It is the simple and utterly automatic activity of balancing, which,
in the riding situation, is raised to this explicit level. The equilibrating skills
which are so much to the fore in riding ponies, or swinging on swings, or
playing on see-saws or roundabouts, are normally quite lost to awareness in
ordinary locomotor activity, for all that they are as crucial to their proper
performance. That there is more to these pastimes I would not deny-control
or dominance of the animal or play-device is clearly involved as well.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that swings, ponies and so forth give pleasure
because they provide situations in which the equilibratory activity of the body
during locomotion can be experienced in the absence of the motor activities
which locomotion normally requires. Mobile platforms are aids to what
might be called behavioural abstraction or bracketing. The motion aspect of
locomotion is carried by the support, while the rider is free to experience the
equilibratory aspect of motion in isolation. Generally, however, behavioural
abstraction is accompanied by an intensification of the normal demands that
are made on the behavioural routine which is being 'played'. The support is so
designed and manipulated that skill, courage and sang-froid are called for in its
management, and even if, as is the case with playground swings and well-
trained elephants, no real dangers are to be expected, the idea of danger is
usually present. In the case of equilibrium play, this is a natural consequence of
the fact that loss of equilibrium is associated from the very beginnings of our
motor experience with minor, and possibly even major, physical hurts. The
role of gravity in relation to human experience and cognition is a little-
explored topic (Strauss I973; Sobel I968).
Why should the Muria represent their divinities as engaging in equilibrium
play? That they should be represented as playing is understandable enough, at
a superficial level, given that the rituals at which they show themselves are
called 'the Divine Games'. But why have such playful Gods at all? I would
answer the question as follows: the Muria represent their divinities as
experiencing the world in the same modalities as the Muria employ when they
ALFRED GELL 23 3
seek to have access to them. Th

through engaging in certain activities involving the body, and in particular,
the equilibrium sense: when they represent their divinities through enactments
(as with the swinging of the mediums) or by icons (temple images of gods on
elephants, swings, horses, etc.), they do so in situations in which this same sense
modality is brought into play.
That the (imagined) activities of the divinities should reflect the nature of
the human activities in the course of which they are brought into being is
natural enough, especially in the context of a religious tradition which stresses
the psychic unity of men and divinities, and their coming together in the
course of possession trance. The possessed medium seated on his swing is not,
therefore, simply a human being performing the actions of a divinity, he is a
divinity performing the actions which render experience divine, which
abstract it and set it apart from mundane experience. Not only do mortals
achieve access to the divine by means of techniques of the body: it is as if the
divinities themselves must have recourse to such techniques in order to realise
themselves.
The ritual use of swings involves therefore the unification of a certain idea
of the divinities as beings who realise their essential nature via vertiginous play,
riding the plunging anga, animating the bamboo poles, swaying back and
forth on the swings-and a technique which is essentially human, for gaining
access to these divinities which also crucially involves the equilibrium sense.
But the latter part of this proposition remains unsubstantiated until we have
taken a closer look at the trance induction procedures themselves. To this topic
I will now turn.
(vi) Possession
There would appear to be two main avenues to the trance state, which we
might call the active and passive methods. The passive method is that of
meditation, the suppression of external stimuli, focusing on some meditative
object such as a mandala, and the use sometimes of relaxing drugs. This is not
the method seen among the Muria, and we should not perhaps say that they
were even 'in a trance state' at all, were our usage of that term based on the
examples of meditation- and drug-induced trances which have been subjected
to much recent study (Tart I968; Naranjo & Ornstein I97I). Much less is
known about the ecstatic, hyper-aroused trance state (Goodman I972), less
redolent of monastic seclusion and restraint than of the excesses of Voodoo and
Condomble (Metraux I959). Nonetheless, during the Divine Games (pen
karsana) many persons are seen to achieve an ecstatic state quite distinct from
their own normal behaviour, and from that of bystanders who do not fall into
the trance-prone category (women and children) or who do not happen to be
individually susceptible. Three psycho-physiological mechanisms have been
mentioned as possible causative factors in the induction of the hyper-aroused
trance state: (i) generalised 'sensory overload' (Cox I969: i IO, cited in Lex
I 976: 28 i); (ii) chemical changes in the body as a result of over-breathing; and
234 ALFRED GELL
(iii) the consequences of rhythmic stimulation by sound or light pulses at a

frequency approximating to that of natural alpha brain rhythms (Neher I 962;
Sturtevant I 968). I would not discount any of these proposed mechanisms, but
it should be noted ad (i) not everybody goes into trance at pen karsana, though
all are subject, presumably, to the same conditions of 'sensory overload'; ad (ii)
that trance induction is a rapid procedure, too rapid to give rise to severe
hypoxia, and that mediums do not appear to breathe abnormally before,
during or after the trance session; and ad (iii) the same objections as ad (i) apply,
and moreover trances are routinely induced without rapid drumming, and,
indeed, without any music at all.
In addition to the possible effects of these mechanisms, I think we should
recognise that certain patterns of motor activity are capable, in and of
themselves, of producing alterations in consciousness, as well as being signs that
such an alteration in the normal state of consciousness has taken place. The
external indicators that a particular medium has been entered by a divinity are
certain motor patterns which produce changes in the medium's own internally
monitored self-world relationship, reinforcing his commitment to the schema
of possession. 'Ecstatic' behaviour by mediums is not simply random, but
comprises a technique for the manipulation of consciousness and sensory-motor
integration. It is necessary, therefore, to examine it in some detail.
The individuals whom I observed going into trance seemed to do so in
sequence of regular stages. To begin with, the body is held rigid, the neck
extended, and a slight trembling begins to become apparent, particularly
affecting the forearms and hands. The eyes stare fixedly but later the eyelids are
seen to flutter and droop. The trembling seems to be synchronous with the
music, if any, though it is also present if the medium is entering trance without
the assistance of drumming. At this stage, it is my impression that the medium
is consciously straining to achieve some abnormal mental state. Some youths,
though, are to all appearances unwilling subjects who cannot prevent
themselves from trembling when the drums are playing. All mediums assert,
of course, that they have been forcibly 'entered' by the divinity and that their
trances are not voluntarily induced. The initial trembling rises and falls in
intensity, now affecting the whole body, now dying away to a mere tremor.
At this stage, I also noted violent extensions of the limbs, especially the arms
and neck, which are strained upwards for brief periods, then held limp and
drooping. Often the neck is extended, and the head shaken rapidly from side
to side. Another frequent gesture is a violent yawning accompanied by staring
eyes and groans, followed by a trembling of the whole body and a swaying
motion. The muscles primarily involved during the induction stage are those
of the neck, the upper limbs and hands. Mediums may also kneel rather than
stand, while inducing trance. In this case, the medium will sway forwards and
backwards from the waist, while rapidly flexing and extending the forearm.
The medium pummels on the ground with his fists. The eyes may be closed
and the teeth clenched. This grimace is followed by staring upwards, open-
mouthed and rigid flexing of the fingers. Subsequently, the medium may
adopt a standing position.
It is only after these preliminaries that the medium will start to move about
ALFRED GELL 23 5
and begin to perform the leaps and sudden darting movements which are
indicative of the most extreme degree of possession. During this time, the
trembling and limb extensions continue, but there is greater variety of
movement. The medium dances in a frenzied, hopping style, quite unlike the
dance style adopted by men in non-possession contexts (which is measured and
serene). At this point, the medium may be handed lengths of barbed iron chain
with which he lashes his back and arms. Some mediums are clearly shamming
during this part of the performance, but others, equally clearly, are not. Bloody
welts are sometimes raised, and I recall the expression of amazement on a
medium's face when the thick stick with which he was belabouring himself
simply disintegrated in his hand. Even if displays of self-mortification are
theatrical in many instances (the flail being checked just at the moment of
impact) some degree of heightened tolerance for pain, or imperviousness to it,
is undoubtedly achieved, especially by the younger and more vigorous
mediums. The climax of the dance often takes the form of a sudden total
rigidification of the medium's whole body. He falls to the earth in a rigid,
contorted position. Those standing by come to his assistance and attempt to
bend and massage his stiffened limbs. Also seen are onsets of loss of normal
muscle tone, especially in the medium's neck and arms. The head rolls from
side to side in a doll-like fashion, and the arms dangle limply at the sides.
Sometimes this limpness is general and the medium lies prone on the earth for
a spell.
In between episodes of violent dancing, shaking and stretching, mediums
experience moments of relative calm, though some degree of tremor is
apparent at all times. During these 'rest' periods the mediums will embrace one
another, and may answer questions put to the divinity who is possessing them.
It is outside the scope of this article to deal at length with the verbal behaviour
of mediums, but in general it may be said that these question-and-answer
sessions are lacking in symbolic or mythopoeic elements and revolve round
the technicalities of Man/God relations (sacrifices, offerings, etc.). They are
conducted in a frequently acrimonious fashion, not unlike that seen in
mundane commercial or exchange transactions. Mediums will also, at this
stage, exchange tika-s (ritual dabs of pigment and oil placed on the forehead)
with one another and with members of the congregation. It is while the
medium is on a 'plateau'-between episodes of violent dancing-that he will
have recourse to the swing. Seating himself there is an indication to standers-by
that he wishes to be rocked back and forth. Thereafter-sessions on the swing
are not lengthy-he will either come out of trance or resume his dancing.
Another pattern of behaviour displayed by mediums at this stage is relevant to
my earlier remarks about the religious implications of 'riding'. When, as is the
case for example during dances held outside the village ghotul, the mediums are
surrounded by long chains of girls with linked arms performing ghotul dances,
the medium will leap onto the shoulders of the dancers, and ride upon them,
being carried back and forth as the chain moves this way and that. This
behaviour has obvious similarities not only with the resort to the swing, but
also to the anga riding on the shoulders of the young men.
Mediums come out of trance without much special behaviour. Generally,
236 ALFRED GELL
they blink their eyes and look

themselves in such surroundings. As already mentioned, they claim to have no
memory of their recent experiences, and will deny all responsibility for
anything they may have done or said.
How deep, how genuine, are Muria trances? Because of their violent,
episodic character, it would be unreasonable to expect Muria trances to be all
of a piece: and there are also many occasions for trance performances of a more
formal or perfunctory nature, as well as many mediums, some of whom are
talented actors and some of whom may be susceptible to altered states of
consciousness. The issue of genuineness cannot be resolved in any simple way.
What is notable, however, is the extent to which it is the young, inexperienced
mediums who manifest the most extreme behavioural aberrations, and who
appear the most dissociated, while the older, more experienced and indeed
more important mediums, frequently seem to be enacting a trance rather than
undergoing one. I would interpret this as evidence that while the trance
induction procedures effectively produce an altered state of consciousness in
inexperienced mediums, in some cases actually involuntarily, frequent
repetitions of the performance over a number of years results in the medium's
habituating to the induction procedures to such an extent that the cognitive
disturbances they produce are greatly decreased in intensity. But the issue of
trance depth is not one on which I am particularly concerned to focus attention.
What all Muria trances, genuine or not, have in common, is certain motor
patterns of behaviour, gestures and bodily techniques. I would suggest that
depending on the subject concerned, and the situation, these techniques may
result in alterations of a deeper or more superficial nature to conscious processes
and sensori-motor integration. I want to focus on these techniques, and what
mental processes they might conceivably affect.
Two elements are basic to trance induction: (i) modification of normal
posture and muscle tone (standing to attention rigidly, extension of the neck,
rigid flexing of the fingers and arms, staring and yawning); and (ii) voluntary
and later uncontrollable shaking and trembling, shaking of the head, rapid
movements of the forearms up and down, hand-flapping, dancing, leaping and
twirling in the air. Though (i) and (ii) might seem to be antithetical, they are
closely connected in that the maintenance of an unnaturally rigid posture
precedes and gives rise to trembling of the limbs, and that even while the
medium is dancing, thejerkiness of his movements and posturings are evidence
of his increased muscle tonus. We may venture a direct comparison here with
certain features that were identified earlier in relation to the anga dance, now
carried out on the plane of the body itself rather than in the context of the
assemblage of anga plus carriers. That is to say, the medium 'carries' his body-
his head and upper limbs particularly-as if they were foreign objects, either
unnaturally heavy, or, once they have started trembling, as if they were
endowed with a life of their own. The medium is also seen frequently to watch
his shaking or outstretched hands as if following their movements from afar.
In other words, as a preliminary interpretation, I would suggest that trance
is induced as a result of the maintenance of a certain rigid posture (as a
voluntary act) which, because of the increased muscle tonus, gives rise to
ALFRED GELL 237
trembling of the extremities and later shuddering affecting the whole body.
Though the root cause of these involuntary tremors is willed (i.e., the rigid
posture) they are not willed as particular manifestations of bodily activity, and
hence bring into being a 'gap' between intentions and experience which is the
thin end of the 'trance' wedge. The trembling is 'counteracted' not by
relaxation, but by attempts to stiffen the offending limbs, which amounts to
the application of positive feedback and results in still more pronounced
shuddering affecting the whole body. We may speculate that sustained tensing
of the musculature of the neck and upper thorax, in conjunction with optical
fixation, interferes with the coordination of voluntary movements by damping
the effectiveness of vestibular control processes. The neck musculature, the
oculo-motor system and the basal ganglia which coordinate 'smooth'
movements are all on one 'circuit' in the brain (Kornhuber I974: vol. II 58I
sqq.), and it is known (from studies of figure-skaters, for instance) that staring
fixedly in one direction decreases the involuntary eye-movements which are
neurological indicators of the activity of the vestibular control system which
regulates movement (Collins I966 cited in Collins I974). My suggestion
would be that the medium's posture during trance induction is such that it
generally interferes with the automatic regulation of movement, and tends to
produce various kinds of tremors and an accompanying subjective feeling of
strangeness. I will return to the discussion of 'deautomatisation'7 (which has
been utilised in connexion with the passive, meditative, trance state) later on
(Deikman I 966). What I would like to bring out here is the structural affinity
between the elements of this possible interpretation of ecstatic trance and what
I advanced earlier concerning the non-trance, but still extraordinary,
experiences of riding, swinging and so forth. These are also de-automatisations,
in that they raise to explicitness the equilibrating activities which are normally
embedded in motor activity. Swinging and riding make use of a physical
support whose independent activity permits the behavioural abstraction of
equilibratory skills: Muria trance is only more complex than this in that it is
the body itself, in its own semi-autonomous role as a vibrating, shuddering
entity that has been separated out, and divorced from its normal integral place
in consciousness. It has become a vehicle, a horse, and the rediscovery, across
the trance-gap between intention and experience (between rider and horse) of
its immanent rhythms, its inertial properties, its manipulability-the very
discoveries we make when learning to ride a horse or a bicycle-is the
vertiginous triumphs of the trance state and the origins of its religious
signification.
That there is more, a great deal more, to the trance state than the horse-and-
rider approach I have sketched in, I would be the first to concede; nonetheless,
I would like to enter a plea that some such interpretation be granted a place in
the spectrum of analytical models available to us in attempting to understand
these complex psycho-physical manifestations. Why I stress this aspect of
trance particularly is that it seems to be basic and thematic in the context of
Muria religion in particular. Within the field of Muria religious techniques,
there is a definite concentration on equilibrium threatened and preserved,
which spans the otherwise marked distinction between trance proper, where
238 ALFRED GELL
the body is the horse, the soul the rider, and the anga dance in which the god
is the invisible rider and the assemblage of youths plus wooden image, the
horse. It is only in the light of this model that we can see the unity which exists
between the modes whereby the Muria have access to the divinity, and the
mode of 'divinised' experience itself-the prevalence of vertigo.8
(vii) The Pujari making offerings

I was originally persuaded that it might be fruitful to look at Muria religion
from the point of view adopted here by an incident which I observed while
attending pen karsana at Mahimagwari. We should not think of the leisurely
and meticulous duties of the hereditary priesthood (the gaitas and pujaris
described earlier) as sharing many features with the ecstatic aspect of the cult
of the pen and yayalmutte. Yet even here elements of the pursuit of vertigo can
be seen to intrude. The specific instance I have in mind is the etiquette which
governs the foot-position adopted by the pujari when making offerings to the
vehicles of the divinities. The pujari (a Gond) makes an offering to the anga,
koli, etc. by, so to speak, 'drawing a circle' in the air over the image which is
being venerated with his cupped hands, which hold the incense-burner, the
liquor for libations, or rice-offerings as the case may be. I was much struck by
the trembling of the pujari's hands as he performed this 'encircling' gesture,
which is accompanied by bending and straightening of the knees. This
unwonted trembling ceased to be mysterious only when I noticed the curious
way in which the pujari's feet were positioned. Instead of being placed side by
side in the conventional manner, the pujari's feet were aligned fore-and-aft,
with the Achilles tendon of the fore foot clamped tightly between the big toe
and the adjoining toe of the rear foot, while both feet were angled in, so that
the net effect was that the pujari was precariously balanced on a knife-edge
consisting of the outer margins of the two feet while he was performing his
complicated bending and stretching movements involving a changing
distribution of weight. Here is explanation enough of the trembling of the
pujari's cupped hands. But it is pertinent to ask why this position, of all the
possible ones, should be enjoined on him. The pujari is in the presence of the
divinity, for all he is not possessed, and in the trembling that affects him we are
surely meant to discover the influence of the divinities to whom he is making
his offerings. For what else is the divinity but a certain trembling, a certain
vertiginous intoxication? The pujari's hands reproduce, in miniature, the
'hunting' oscillation which drives the anga through its whirling dance, and
racks the bodies of the ecstatic mediums. Where there arises the 'gap' between
intention and experience, a dislocation of input-output relations in conscious-
ness, we are in the presence of divinity in its raw state. The pujari's foot
position, apparently a trivial detail, complicates the wrangle with gravity
which is part of the human condition, and in so doing instils a tincture of
divinity into the simple act of 'making an offering'-a compact with the
powers which express themselves in vertigo.
ALFRED GELL 239
(viii) Secular vertigo

For lack of space, I cannot here describe the ramifications of secular vertigo
among the Muria. But let me briefly state only a few of the most salient facts.
Muria socialisation practices, and childhood games emphasise violent rocking,
swinging, jiggling up and down, and balancing to a marked degree. A
quintessential Muria childhood amusement is the 'drunkenness game'. This
consists of the child's whirling around on the spot till he becomes dizzy,
whereupon crying 'I'm drunk, I'm drunk' he staggers about and eventually
topples over. The immense popularity of this and other vertiginous games such
as swinging in trees, testifies to a profound cultural preoccupation with
dizziness, which pervades subsequent religious experience. We would also
include under this rubric the employment of alchohol in Muria secular and
religious life, where it plays a role akin to the use of hallucinogenic drugs in
certain other religious traditions. But-here is the vital difference-it is not
hallucinations, but specifically vestibular and kinaesthetic illusions which are
the dominant feature in Muria drug use. For Muria, the primordial 'non-
normal' experience, in play, in secular pleasure-seeking and in religious ecstasy,
is the dislocation of the structures of body-world-self intentionality.
Postscript: trance and autism

In this postscript I would like to return to the concept of'deautomatisation'
in relation to possession and other altered states of consciousness. Deikman, the
originator of the term, argued that by 'reinvesting actions and percepts
[normally carried on un-reflectively] with attention' the subject engaged in
passive meditation experiences a heightening of awareness (I966). Such an
individual is not simply aware of his world, but is aware of his awareness, of
what is involved in terms of mental processes. One way of imagining this is to
see deautomatisation as the insertion of an extra segment in the subject/world
feedback chain (fig. 5). Unreflective mental activity is supplemented and
perhaps even bypassed by mental processes under voluntary control. This is
facilitated if the 'world' of which the subject is aware is devoid of novelty and
distractions, and is pervaded with repetitive, self-generated stimuli (e.g. the
reiterated syllable om - am - om ... ).
Ornstein (Naranjo & Ornstein I97I) speaks of a 'recycling' of psychic
subroutines in meditative trance. Distractions from the environment, and
anything in the way of preoccupation with a matter-of-fact task are suppressed,
so that perceptual activity is abstracted from its normal accompaniments in the
stream of consciousness and becomes graspable in itself, both as an activity of
the subject and as a relation with a newly discovered world. This disembedding
of perception as a mental discipline is akin to the abstractions on a behavioural
level that I spoke of earlier in discussing equilibrium play. That is to say, it is
not only through stillness and withdrawal that restructurings of cognition and
self-world relations can be achieved, but also through many more active
techniques, some involving highly skilled play activities (the Zen archery
approach: Herrigel I959) and others the kind of violent physical activity such
as the ritual behaviour discussed in this article.
240 ALFRED GELL
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CL:
ALFRED GELL 24I
But however diverse the techniques involved, ranging from 'just sitting'
through to the more active conceptual experimentation of the Husserlain
epoche, through to trance, possession and ecstasy, I believe they all point in the
same direction. They are all means to the deautomatisation of experience
which is otherwise embedded and lost within functional routines, and hence
may be considered to be essentially playful.
In conclusion, I should like to mention one possible line of research, which
may in future enable us to gain a more specific understanding of the psychology
of 'deautomatisation' as it applies to the ecstatic trance, of the kind described
in the body of this article. This is the suggestion that the equilibrium sense, or
more precisely the brain mechanisms which among other things are responsible
for monitoring bodily equilibrium, are actually profoundly important in the
establishment and maintenance of normal self/world relations, and that it is
consequently no mere happenstance that it is precisely these mental functions
that the trance induction procedures described earlier seem designed to disrupt.
My interest in the cognitive role of the vestibular system (the brain mechanisms
concerned) was aroused initially by a series of brilliant papers on the problem
of infantile autism, by an American neurobiologist and clinician, Edward M.
Ornitz (1970; I97I; I973). The reader will probably have no difficulty in
appreciating the reasons for my becoming suddenly so interested in an
apparently extraneous topic, from the following collage of direct quotations
from a review article on 'Childhood autism' by the author in question:
His mannerisms are complex and ritualistic, and while they clearly do not have the appearance
of seizure discharges or involuntary movements, they are stereotyped and do not appear to be
entirely voluntary. His deviant motility may involve only the hands, the lower extremities
or the trunk and the entire body. He may wiggle his fingers, flap his hands, walk on his toes,
rock, sway and whirl. He engages in excessive body rocking, swaying, head-banging and
often rolls his head from side to side, and he may whirl around for many minutes. He will run
in circles on his toes, whirl and make staccato-like lunging and darting movements and
vigorously flap his hands. This hand flapping involves a rapid and untiring flexion and
extension of the fingers and an alternating pronation and supination of the forearm. His
lunging and darting is terminated by sudden stops. He arches his back and hyperextends his
neck, maintaining this uncomfortable position for brief periods. There are episodes of intense
staring. He may ignore new persons and features of his environment and walk into persons
and objects as if he did not see them. His head-banging may develop into self-mutilation.
Painful stimuli are ignored and he may not notice cuts and bruises. He may react to being
picked up by becoming completely limp or rigid. Responsive smiling does not occur. He
remains aloof, emotionally detached and his communication appears to be characterised by
loose tangential thinking. His fantasies are bizarre and confused with reality ... (Ornitz
I973).
It will be seen that this could very well be a description of a Muria lesk in
action. While not every one of these behaviours is to be seen in every Muria
trance, I have seen every one of them at some time or other. Of course, it
should be clearly borne in mind that Ornitz is writing about mentally
disturbed children, and the most severely affected ones at that, while the Muria
medium is adult, and generally speaking in good mental and physical health.
But the fact remains that in so far as one can use language to describe behaviour
at all, the language needed to describe the common behaviour of a severely
handicapped autistic child, and the language needed to describe the temporary
242 ALFRED GELL
aberrations of a medium in ecstatic trance, is substantially the same. We are

entitled to assume, at least initially, that this is not solely a fact about language.
Are there some underlying features in common between trance and autism?
Before proffering my suggestions as to this intriguing possibility, I must enter
some very necessary qualifications. I have nothing to add to the currently
existing scientific theories as to the causes of infantile autism. This distressing
condition, whose very existence as a separate syndrome has been disputed, is
one which is being studied by numerous workers in the fields of medicine and
psychiatry, using many different approaches to a problem which has many
different aspects (cf. Wing I966, Rutter I97I for general surveys). In what
follows, I have singled out one particular theoretical approach, which is
concerned with one aspect of a very complex whole, because it is of particular
interest to me as an anthropologist. The 'vestibular dysfunction' approach to
autism necessarily stands or falls on the basis of its adequacy in accounting for
the whole spectrum of clinical observations of autistic children, and on the
evidence of experiments designed to test it. I have no competence in such
matters, which lie quite outside my province. Similarly, the views about the
trance state put forward here must be justified, if at all, by direct investigation,
and the existence of certain analogies between the behavioural characteristics
of autistic children and mediums proves nothing by itself, even if it does
suggest certain structural affinities.
I have-argued that the ecstatic trance combines an assault on the equilibrium

sense, with a re-structuring of self/world relationships. The 'equilibrium sense'
consists of the gravity and movement sensing organs in the inner ear
(semicircular canals etc., in the 'vestibule' whence the word 'vestibular') which
are connected to a number of sites in the central nervous system, which
together comprise the vestibular system. The vestibular system does not merely
monitor equilibrium; it is closely keyed in with the control of the eye-muscles
(oculovestibular system) and also with the reflex control of the muscles of the
head, neck and upper body, and the control of posture. It is possible that the
vestibular system may have a more general role which has to do with what is
called 'input/output modulation' i.e. integrating the activity of the input
(sensory) parts of the brain with the activity of the brain as an output (effector)
organ, initiating bodily actions. Very schematically, this might be depicted as
in figure 6.
intentions (output) intentions
SUBJECT WORLD
experiences (input) experiences
VESTIBULAR
SYSTEM
FIGURE 6.
ALFRED GELL 243
The function of input/output modulation is to ensure a proper balance or

adjustment between these two complementary aspects of the over-all
functioning of the central nervous system; when there is a burst of output
from the brain (effector activity) the vestibular system metaphorically 'reduces
the volume' of the input channels into the brain, and conversely, when the
brain is processing an intense stream of input from the senses, the vestibular
system dampens output from the effector systems. This adjustment is what is
meant by 'modulation'. It is suggested, therefore, that the vestibular system is
involved in the monitoring of bodily movements and eye movements, and in
the integration of perceptual and motor activity. Teuber (I966, cited in Ornitz
I97I) proposes that a vestibular mechanism'. . . shunts, directly and centrally,
the motor pathways of the forebrain in order to reset and prepare ... the
sensory system for those changes that result from normal execution of intended
movement'. Such a mechanism not only enables'... the capacity to maintain
perceptual constancies of size and direction during self-induced changes of
posture ...' but also provides for the comparison of'... the outcome of
impending actions against the "intent"'. Any alteration effected to input-
output modulation is simultaneously an alteration of the normal sense of 'self'
in that it is through input-output modulation that differentiation is possible
between externally generated stimuli and those generated endogenously by
the subject-for instance differentiation between changes in the retinal image
due to eye movements versus those resulting from external causes.
We are now in a position to grasp the broad outline of Ornitz's theory
concerning vestibular malfunction in autistic children, which he has proposed
as an explanation of patterns of stereotyped movements which characterise the
severely autistic child. Ornitz argues that these symptoms are a consequence of
a deepseated maturational defect in the ability to coordinate sensory input and
motor output such that severe confusions arise in the realms of language,
object, and personal relations. Some of the evidence for central vestibular
deficit in autistic children comes from studies which have shown up
abnormalities in the eye-movements of autistic children who have been rapidly
rotated in a special chair. In normal subjects this produces an onset of a side-to-
side flicking of the eyeballs (nystagmus), a vestibular response par excellence,
but this effect is reduced in the case of autistic children. Furthermore, sleep
studies have shown that while autistic children do not differ from normal
controls in the overall amount of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, the rapid
eye movement component of their REM sleep is less differentiated, less distinct
from the normal sleep pattern, than in age matched controls. A less
differentiated excitatory pattern in REM sleep in the autistic child (fewer eye
movements) appears to be accompanied by a less differentiated inhibitory
pattern as well, in that while normally the auditory evoked response (the
measured strength of the signal passing from the ear to the brain, evoked by a
stimulus-a click-of constant loudness) is markedly decreased in REM sleep,
this effect is less pronounced in the autistic child. It will be seen that both of
these abnormalities have to do with the modulation of motor output and
sensory input, and that the autistic child may be developmentally delayed in
these respects. There is reason to think that these are both vestibular effects;
244 ALFRED GELL
Ornitz quotes the experimental findings of Pompeiano and his colleagues, who
have shown that:
... in the experimental animal ... all of the phasic excitatory and inhibitory events involving
motility and perception during the ocular activity of REM sleep are mediated by and depend
on the integrity of central vestibular mechanisms (Ornitz I97I :62. Pompeiano reviews this
work in Pompeiano I974).
These findings, and others, lead Ornitz to postulate that autistic children suffer
from a deep-seated 'failure of the normal homeostatic regulation' of sensory
input and motor output (Ornitz I97I). But why, in this case do they produce
the behaviour they do? It is possible to interpret a great deal of their behaviour,
particularly the stereotyped rockings, hand-flappings, etc., as the only means
they have of providing themselves with intelligible proprioceptive feedback.
Or-and here I am departing from what Ornitz says or would no doubt wish
to say-this is their way of bridging the 'gap' between themselves as the locus
of efferent intentions and afferent experiences. This is the very 'gap' I spoke of
earlier in connexion with the trance state. The autistic child has to bridge this
'gap' by means of feedback provided by stereotyped behaviour because
automatic sensori-motor integration is in his case lacking or deficient. Making
use of the same diagrammatic conventions as before, one might depict the
situation of the autistic child as follows (figure 7, versus the normal situation
shown in figure 6).
stereotyped
> movements -
SUBJECT j I WORLD
... proprioceptive .
feedback
FIGURE 7.
The nub of my argument, therefore, is that the

between the postulated 'constructed' feedback replacing automatic vestibular
modulation of input/output relations in Ornitz's model of the autistic child's
predicament, and the voluntary disembedding of motor and perceptual
functions, and bypassing of automatic regulation, in trance induction, often by
means of stereotyped repetitive behaviours of a rather analogous kind. The
corresponding schema for the Muria lesk might therefore be as in figure 8 (cf.
figure 5).
trance induction
-* stereotyped >
movements
SUBJECT WORLD
deautomatised
feedback
FIGURE 8.
ALFRED GELL 245
That is to say, there are two ways of achieving input-output modulation;

either automatically, via a short cycle of feedback loops internal to the
functioning of the CNS and possibly localised in the vestibular system, or
secondly, in situations in which this short cycle of feedback is either not
efficient or has somehow been put under suspension, by means of long cycles
of feedback passing through the subject and the environment (including the
body and its supports) and back again, laboriously constructed via repetitive
behaviours, auto-stimulation and, incidentally, at the verbal level by echolalia,
which is very marked among autistic children. A curious inverted symmetry
exists between these postulated long and short cycles of feedback such that the
very kinds of behaviour which are used to establish the long cycle of
'deautornatised' feedback are those which tend to throw the short cycle out of
kilter. Take whirling around on the spot, for instance. The autistic child must
be attempting by this means to establish some category relationship between
his intense physical exertion and a whirling, whizzing world-and can
presumably keep it up for longer in that the oculovestibular responses which
produce vertigo in normal persons are somewhat lacking in his case. The
normal child on the other hand-the Muria child playing the drunkenness
game-will employ this behaviour in order to knock out normal vestibular
regulation of input-output relations, in order to discover a new kind of self-
hood-the deautomatised, drunken or even ecstatic self. We also see instances
of the autistic child using self-induced oscillations of parts of the body,
particularly the forearms and hands, in exact parallel to similar movement on
the part of mediums, to establish long cycles of feedback via proprioceptions
of these quasi-independent 'hunting' oscillations. The medium, I argued earlier,
constructs a new, ecstatic self by attuning himself to rhythmicities which seem
to originate in something other than an act of will on his part; the hunting
oscillation of his limbs at first contradicts the normal integration of intention
and experience, input and output, but following this rupture in motor-
perceptual integration, reintegration is effected at a new level. It is at this
similarly 'deautomatised' level, I would argue, that the autistic child is
attempting to construct an intelligible schema of motor-perceptual relation-
ships, though in his case this is because ordinary automatic integration does not
function properly.
In other words, the medium, starting from a secure base in reality as
mediated by automatic input-output modulation in the CNS, voluntarily gets
himself into a situation in which this integration is to some degree contradicted,
and reintegrated at a higher level via long cycles of feedback from
proprioception (thereby achieving a restructuring of self-world relationships
which is invested with religious meaning). The autistic child, either
permanently or at some crucial developmental stage, lacking this secure base
in automatically mediated reality, produces a great deal of the same behaviour
because this is his only way of 'making sense out of sensation' (Ornitz I970)
and the only kind of integration he can achieve. In a sense, the contrast between
the medium and the autistic child could not be more extreme despite the
similarity in certain of their patterns of behaviour. The medium's objective is
the attainment of some kind of secondary, deautomatised reality encapsulated
246 ALFRED GELL
within primordial reality, w

reality, pursues the same cou
he can only be rescued, some
Here I rest the case for a 'vestibular' theory of trance. There are grave
objections to it, to which I can find no easy answers. For instance, the autistic
child's stereotypes, and indeed the medium's, are largely identical to those
produced by normal babies and toddlers at moments of excitement, which
would suggest a quite different interpretation of this behaviour. And there is
the fundamental objection that I personally have no direct experience with
autistic children, and cannot therefore assert with any degree of confidence
that there are not profound and striking visible differences between their
behaviour and that of the mediums I observed, which would rule my
interpretation out of court.
Despite these difficulties, I may perhaps be permitted to conclude with a plea
for greater consideration to be given to certain mental processes, particularly
those involving the vestibular apparatus and the equilibrium sense, which may
be crucially involved in the establishment of stable self-world relationships.
While I would not minimise the significance of recent neuro-scientific findings
with the obvious 'social' or 'cognitive' implications (e.g., relating to the limbic
system and emotionality, or hemispherical lateralisation) there does seem to be
a huge area which is at present mainly the concern of neuroanatomists and
neurophysiologists, to do with interconnexions between sensory systems and
motor systems in various parts of the brain, which potentially might be very
significant in understanding human behaviour and thinking in its full cultural
context. This is surely the direction in which Ornitz's work points, and I hope
that I have been able to suggest that there might be pay-offs in anthropological
terms in the form of a better understanding of those consciousness-altering
techniques that involve special motor behaviour, posture control and so forth.
Brain, mind and body are inseparable, and Mauss's great project for the global
study of les techniques du corps will only really come to fruition when we know
a great deal more about the brain.
In this developing understanding, I suspect that the vestibular apparatus may
play a key role. I do not base this assertion on the known facts concerning
input-output modulation but on more general intuitive grounds. We live, in
some very basic way, through the equilibrium sense, which, though it lacks
direct representation in consciousness on a par with the other senses, may
perhaps be the hidden hand behind all of them. We are entirely accustomed to
the idea that babies appreciate being rocked, that children adore swings and
roundabouts and will use the most expensive beds and sofas as trampolines
given a chance, that they progress to ponies and dirt-bikes and skateboards, and
some even to free-fall parachuting, yet no body of theory corresponds to the
actual prominence of equilibrium play, nor has any analysis been attempted of
just what 'lonely impulse of delight' drove Yeats's airman to seek his fate
among the clouds. I believe that the connexion between input-output
modulation, the equilibrium sense, and the basic reality sense, will not turn out
to be an illusory one.
ALFRED GELL 247
NOTES
I undertook fieldwork among the Muria from June I976 to May I977 assisted by the
Australian National University (SGS) both financially and by a grant of research leave. I was
accompanied in the field by Simeran Gell, who has been able to correct, as the result of
subsequent and more detailed research, many errors contained in an earlier draft of this essay. I
also gratefully acknowledge the essential contributions made to the germination of this essay by
Peter Reynolds and Richard Barz. I am, of course, wholly responsible for remaining errors and
confusions.
1 Elsewhere in Asia an association between swinging and trance states, spirit possession etc.,
is also apparent. Cf. e.g. Schebesta I928:25I and plate facing p. 26I.
2 It needs to be said here that by 'vertigo' I do not mean only the unpleasant sensations of
dizziness and disorientation, but also to a variety of pleasurable or thrilling states as well. Giddy
pursuits like mountaineering and hang-gliding etc., are not monopolised by maniacs but are also
followed by quite reasonable people on pleasure bent. Vertiginous sports correspond, in Caillois's
scheme of categories of play, to the category ilynx, as opposed to agon (contests) and alea (games
of hazard). (Cf. Callois I 96 I, chapter i.)
3 Simeran Gell reports (pers. comm.) that the two poles on either side of the anga are opposed
as dadabhai (lineal kin) to saga (allies/affines). The word anga we may reasonably surmise is
identical to the form anna found in related Dravidian languages with the meaning 'elder
brother'. In present-day Muria Gondi we find the Indo-European dada replacing anna (anga) for
elder brother, while the feminine ange is retained for elder brother's wife (Burrows & Emeneau
196I; Tyler I969:487 sqq.).
4 Neher I962; Sturtevant I968. 'Dissociation' is to be understood here as a modification of
mood, or an increased suggestibility, rather than as a grossly apparent physiological change. For
criticism of the Neher theory see Jackson I968 and Rouget in Blacking I977.
5 The Muria, when speaking of the arrival of the pen refer to his/her 'riding' into the village
kodate reina. The medium's position when possessed, e.g. when dancing or answering questions
in the persona of the divinity, does indeed resemble that of a child riding an imaginary hobby-
horse, the arms held up before the chest as if grasping the reins, and the whole body bobbing up
and down in a rider-like way.
6 It is significant that the ritual use of swings and the employment of temple images of
swinging Gods or Gods mounted on royal elephants is exclusively confined to the cult of
Yayalmutte, the 'state' Bastar Goddess, and her refractions, as opposed to the use of the anga
images exclusively for local clan divinities. The structural polarity between the swing and the
anga corresponds to the basic sociological opposition in Muria life between the state (hierarchy)
and the village (equality).
7 The word deautomatisation will perhaps offend some ears. But there is no word in the
language of earlier or more elegant coinage which means the same thing. Deikman's paper is a
recognised landmark in the history of the study of altered states of consciousness, and his word
for 'the undoing of automatic psychic processes' will presumably remain current as long as these
matters continue to be under investigation.
8 Some Muria villages have a festival which is devoted to dancing on stilts in honour of the
village Goddess (Elwin I 947 :65 I sqq.). Here again we find the assault on the equilibrium sense
being invested with religious meaning, as well as the idea of'sacralisation by elevation'.
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The Gods at Play - Vertigo and Possession in Muria Religion Alfred Gell

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The Gods at Play - Vertigo and Possession in Muria Religion Alfred Gell

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The Gods at Play: Vertigo and Possession in Muria Religion

Author(s): Alfred Gell

Australian National University

Introduction: On a swing at Alor

The swing in the Hindu tradition

religious self-mortification such as flagellation with chains, piercing the body

Vertigo in Muria religion

'refraction' of whom is worsh

(iii) The 'log-gods' (anga)

to a consideration of the assemblage of the anga plus the carriers, we can

(iv) The Divine poles andflags

in a most sensible fashion,

FiGUREi. Medium on a swing.

service. That the divinities

FIGU'RE 2.. A young Muria lesk. Th

divine status in Muria eyes. To swing, to ride, is to enjoy the vertiginous

that riding on an elephant, or a swing, or a horse, is a question of balance, of

incisively demonstrated the close links between childhood dizzy-making

seek to have access to them. Th

(iii) the consequences of rhythmic stimulation by sound or light pulses at a

they blink their eyes and look

(vii) The Pujari making offerings

(viii) Secular vertigo

Postscript: trance and autism

aberrations of a medium in ecstatic trance, is substantially the same. We are

I have-argued that the ecstatic trance combines an assault on the equilibrium

intentions (output) intentions

The function of input/output modulation is to ensure a proper balance or

The nub of my argument, therefore, is that the

That is to say, there are two ways of achieving input-output modulation;

within primordial reality, w

Bateson, G. I958. Naven (2nd edn). Stanford: Univ. Press.

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