Moroccan Gnawa Spirit-Encounter Traditions

Record summary

Gnawa lila ceremonies involve music, trance, invocation of named spirits or mluk, and narratives of affliction, visitation, and healing. Ethnographic and musicological work published during or about the 1970s and 1980s provides identifiable material for comparing recurring figures, sensory cues, collective witnessing, and the boundary between apparition report and possession ritual. These are living religious and therapeutic traditions, not necessarily claims of visual ghosts. Researchers should identify the locality and ceremony described in each source, since practices vary among Gnawa communities.