ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how ritual, both verbal and non-verbal, involved in spiritualism helps women to accept a traditionally feminine role, which they frequently find frustrating and difficult. For a large number of women at least, spiritualism is a response to conflict-ridden situations with men. These relationships and the conflicts which they generate are reflected in various conditions of affliction within spiritualist meetings. Robin Horton’s describes the spirits as announcing their arrival through the appearance of some physical disability such as persistent abdominal pains or chronic limb pains. These physical ailments are thought to be remedied ‘through the acceptance of marital relationships with water spirits and subsequent submission to being possessed by them’. The chapter suggests that the extreme form which spiritualism takes in many primitive societies, its necessary connection with illness, is symptomatic of a severe gap between male and female worlds.
