Once downtown Newark when I was doing a jesus trip, I happened to stumble into a botanica along with one of my jesus freaky friends. We tried to "witness" to the young woman behind the counter and she said, "Don't you understand? I can't escape this. I was born into it." We were escorted to the door and we quickly agreed that the woman was demon possessed as like jesus trippers are prone to do.
In the nursing home I worked at, there was a frail short old lady who had a screaming voice and could curse like a trooper. She scratched, bit, and kicked which didn't help to alleviate her infamy any. We all said to each other that she was "possessed."
In the first case, the only "possession" was the possession of feeling stuck [even if the lady at the botanica didn't want to be a jesus freak, it was clear she wanted out and could not find her way out]. In the second the "possession" was whatever was going on in that poor old woman's brain.
We don't go 'round talking bout heavenly possession tho I spose some of the more ecstatic religious adherents would beg to differ-- practitioners of Santaria "riding the head," the "fire in the head" of some shamans,"channeling" of various entities [whether internal or from incarnate spirits flying around dieing to speak to seekers in seances], those who jibber-jabber in the nonsense syllables we know as "tongues."
Thus, "possession" can be viewed as the experience of specially being singled out by alien energies in order to be the recipient of culturally determined symptoms or perhaps the victimization of those who gave up their choices in life or those being slew by neurological [I throw psychiatric into the neuro-category also] processes.
Life-changing? I thought my life was changed cuz I was jesus-tripping, though I was a rather unhappy jesus freak. Tongues, church, and reading the christian book didn't translate into any real changes for me-- other than perhaps having some oddball friends, and fighting with churchfolk over the idea that I was not going to give up dancing, playing cards, or rocknroll.
sapphoq on life
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