One of the most important phenomena that unite both religious and artistic culture is a complex of unusual mental states of a person, which can be grasped by such concepts as trance, inspiration, embracing, obsession.

They cover a very wide range of cultural patterns, beliefs and practices. Various religious communities, churches, organizations, movements in various ways describe, interpret and evaluate specific cases of such conditions, their variants and modifications differently. In this journal, we discuss several aspects of ideas and practices related to the concepts of “trance”, “obsession”, «spirit-posses-sion» and close to them “inspiration”, “bliss”, “sacred madness”, “ecstasy”, etc., or otherwise involved in different genres of performing arts. The introduction contains a number of hypotheses about their essence and the mechanism of their manifestation. Our main task is to designate areas of intersection of unusual states of mind and their manifestations in religion and art.

The present report is devoted to obsession and trance studied through first-hand ethnographical data. Geographically, the focus of the current study was one of European regions, namely Sardinia with its mountainous area of Barbagia. Due to the lack research into these phenomena in the region the author makes use of her own field data as well as terms introduced by Erika Bourguignon and Iosif Jordania and tries to approach the issue from the perspective of cultural anthropology rather than psychology and psychiatry, looking at these phenomena with no reference to Christianity, but as something based on local beliefs, mindset, rites and rituals. The current study analyses three traditional phenomena: the circle dance, the marching of carnival revelers in one of the local villages and the entry into the trance of shepherds, which are the predominant socio-cultural strata of the population of the region and the main “keepers” of tradition and local culture. The research revealed, in particular, that up to the present day one must retain ancient religious foundations in order to be able to get into the state of trance and obsession.

Abstract. Research of the so called «possession» is not limited by beliefs and practices of interaction with supernatural forces (either divine or demonic). There are mystic traditions adepts of which take efforts to adopt qualities and identities alien to him in his «normal» state. Gola-ghat’s Ram-rasiks whose tradition I would define as based on «poetical mysticism» focus on visualization of their «true» feminine nature. Their sadhana allows the to approach the beloved Deity in form of a dark-skin boy Rama as well as to get involved in different types of relationships with him including the most secret erotic ones. The article hereunder is based on the author’s field work in Ayodhya and includes his translations of the tradition’s preceptors and poets’ works from Avadhi and Hindi.

Pentecostalism by its nature is prone to ecstasy, because it emphasizes the Holy Spirit that means in practice the cult of spontaneity, ecstatic manifestations, and worship performance. Pentecostals as revivalists believe that the Holy Spirit leads humans to repentance and to turn to God. Emotional revivals accompanied by collective ecstasy had been taken by Pentecostalism and «enriched» with ecstatic manifestations like «holy laughter», «holy anger», etc. The Holy Spirit plays an important role in glossolalia, ecstatic prayer language; the new convert receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit (the laying on of hands during that a person first begins to «speak in tongues»). The Holy Spirit accompanies the Christian further manifesting himself in various miracles, «anointing» (special charisma), and spiritual gifts, among that the gift of prophecy stands out. The prophetic ministry is accompanied by visions and vivid performances. A special place is occupied by the expressive struggle with evil spirits - through exorcism, prayer and actions against “territorial spirits”, and also (in the Word of Faith movement) - through oral confession of faith. In general, in Pentecostal practice, «controlled ecstasy» frequently occurs when a person reproduces ecstatic manifestations (cries, falls, laugh, etc.) as ritual, according to a some pattern. Such practices «gather» Pentecostals into a specific community that always open to exit supernatural into life through miracles, visions, and opposition to evil spirits.

Healing «by faith» is known in all Christian denominations, just as fairly frequent conviction that illness and the intervention of evil spirits are linked. However, healing as is and as one of the main dogmatic points is only in Pentecostalism (and especially in its third wave, Neocharismatism). Healing in Pentecostalism is based on two principles: first, the position that Christ saved not only the spirit, but also the soul and body of humans, and second, the idea of a Christian as a winner who successfully overcome life difficulties. The second principle is related to the “spiritual war”: some Neoharismatists believe that the main (or only) cause of illness is the intervention of evil spirits. Healing requires the repentance and the proclamation of the Name of Christ that is considered to be sacred and self-sufficient in this concept - by the patient himself or a healer evangelist to expel the demon. In the Word of Faith, one of the Neocharismatic directions, special emphasis is placed on the oral proclamation of one’s healing. Radical Pentecostal healers opposed medicine, but in general, Pentecostals adopt medicine methods, insisting that God heals.

The article discusses the original area of Georgian traditional religious culture - the institution of kadagi (prophet). The research is based on the materials of the mountainous regions of Eastern Georgia. A special development of the institution of kadagi received in Khevsureti. Kadagi (male or female) was called a person, who according to the folk religious belief, was specially chosen by a deity from the community in order to inform people of his/her will. Kada-gi informed people about the reasons of the deity’s discontent and about how to mitigate the wrath of the deity, kadagi predicted the future (illness, death, harvest, weather), revived the forgotten religious rituals, adjusted social and daily problems. There were observed two forms of prophecy - prophecy at the sanctuary and in the home. Of particular interest is djvart ena - the language of deity. According to popular belief it was the sacred language of deities by which kadagi told the people the commandments of the deity.

Shamanic rite as a complex phenomenon requires interdisciplinary study from the point of view of different scientific disciplines (like as Ethnography, Religious studies, Philology, Art, Psychology and other sciences). As a syncretic phenomenon of early art, shamanic ritual combines different types of art — music, poetry, theater, pantomime, dance, arts and crafts. This article discusses the musical aspect of the shaman ritual in the ritual’s context that takes into account the ideological significance of music in the ritual, because the music plays an important role in the transfer of the sacred content of the ritual. The article is based on the author’s field materials (Nganasan shaman rituals by Tubiaku Kosterkin and by Diulsymiaku Kosterkin, which were recorded in 1989 and 1990), scientific literature. The article discusses in detail the techniques of musical expressiveness in the rite, through which the shaman embodies the images of his spirit assistants, as well as creating an ecstatic atmosphere of the ritual. It is recognizable by hearing some melodies-leitmotivs of main shamanic helper-spirits (these leitmotivs are musical markers attached to each of shamanic helper-spirits); onomatopoeic signals imitating the voices of the zoomorphic helper-spirits of the shaman (animals and birds); ritual musical instruments and phonoinstruments (a drum with a drumstick, shaman staff, shaman’s costume pendants etc.); polyphonic texture of ritual singing, built on the principle of responsoria (a solo singing shaman alternates with an ensemble singing of shaman assistants). In conclusion, the article emphasizes the sacred role of music in the shaman rite. The music is a mediator between the supernatural and the real worlds, it helps for shaman performs his ritual function (shaman’s transformation into supernatural beings due to the sound of shaman songs, onomatopoeia, instrumental ringing).

In 1910 in Russia, two ideas were simultaneously conceived and developed: one of the «Rite of Spring» and the other, less known, of the ballet, «Alaley and Leyla». The former was staged in Sergey Diaghilev’s enterprise in Paris, 1913, whereas the idea for the latter came from the theatre director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, supported by the director of the Imperial theatres in Petersburg and a wealthy patron, Mikhail Tereshchenko. The scripts for both ballet were compiled with participation of the writer Aleksey Remizov, a connoisseur of the ancient Russian mythology. Diaghilev’s group started working on the «Rite of Spring» almost simultaneously with Meyerhold’s team, in the spring of 1910 and, until 1912, the two groups worked in parallel. While writing the script for Meyerhold, Remizov consulted Diaghilev about ancient Slavic mythology, and Michel Fokine was choreographer for both of them. In the circumstances, it was impossible for both groups to keep their work secret and mutual influences were unavoidable. The genre of ballet-mystery contributed towards the ‘sacred mystery theatre’ which was in part conceived as neo-rituals for the revival of Christianity at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The central ritual in the Kumaon region (Uttarakhand, India) is the jagar ceremony, which is based on communication with a deity or a spirit through a medium in trance. The vocabulary denoting the basic concepts of jagar is in many ways similar in Kumaon and Nepal. Since the cult itself is characterized by strong regional variability, the words associated with it are rather difficult to interpret and etymologically analyze. But the analysis of cult vocabulary is important, because on the base of it conclusions about diachronic typology of the ceremony can be drawn.

The article presents materials of the ritual drama Modon Kam among the Rajbansi of North Bengal. The action performed during the feast of Chaitra Sankranti (mid-April) includes the performance of the narrator, musicians and young men, dressed as “dancers” of the history of the god Kama (his incineration by Shiva and subsequent revival in the form invisible to people), and then a kind of presentation on the harvested rice a field with a demonstration of elements of military art, acrobatics, everyday sketches; there is always a jester involved. Both parts of the ritual involve the achievement of ecstatic states.

The personal story of instant and short experience of spirit-possession, happened due to a moment of condolence, empathy and wish to help to a possessed friend. It reveals the technical aspects of possession as a certain psychological virus, as well as possible ways to keep the resistance.