The Book of the Zār and Ethiopian Spirit-Possession Traditions

Record summary

Zār refers to spirit-possession traditions documented in Ethiopia and neighbouring regions, involving ritual specialists, music, trance, diagnosis, and negotiated relationships with possessing beings. Early written documentation is uneven, but eighteenth-century travel and missionary materials provide leads for tracing how observers interpreted the practice. It matters for comparison with dissociation, culturally patterned trance, and healing performance. Researchers must avoid treating the category as uniform: terminology, gender roles, ritual forms, and local cosmologies vary, while much modern ethnography postdates the requested period.