ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interpenetrations between sacrality and monstrosity in a village in Tamil Nadu, India. Minis are amoral fertility spirits which must be appeased to secure agricultural productivity. Muniswarar is a tutelary deity who guards against chaos and evil. Unlike in other related disciplines, the monsters that anthropologists grapple with are not simply art or artifacts. They not only haunt imaginations but also prowl the land. They are not just metaphors but are embodied ontological realities that are experienced viscerally, shape human behavior, and leave tangible traces. The chapter sketches the affinity between the sacred and the monstrous. It begins by scrutinizing the nature of the Mini spirits and the deity Muniswarar and outlining how they are not discrete entities but bleed into each other to form a spectrum of sacredness. It moves on to the questions of why and how gods can also be monsters.
