Women Unleashed: A Recollection of Demonic Possession

The only time I’ve ever seen a person possessed by a “demon” was during a stint in Tanzania. I was in Dar es Salaam together with a shambling crew, composed mostly of friends, to shoot television footage in the finest residences as well as in the slums of the city; a project devoid of sense and future, which would have lost us quite a lot of money (also on the account of our ignorance of the local culture and mentality, at the time of accepting the assignment), but which had catapulted us into a dreamlike dimension.

One evening we were filming a concert in a nightclub — which I certainly could not locate now, since many streets in that city have no name. When the work was done, we had stayed for a drink.
At a given moment, something happened. The young girls on the dance floor took to courting the males with unrestrained mapouka. It had all happened in the space of a minute: an ordinary dance hall had suddenly turned into a menagerie of quivering buttocks, fiercely swaying hips and explicit simulations of copulation between women, during which one of the girls theatrically took on the male role and pretended to take the other from behind. All the athletic and handsome males had moved to the sides, and leaned on the handrails surrounding the dance floor, while the maidens tried to get their attention with pressing and gradually more obscene dances. On the sidelines of this orgiastic and flamboyant, exquisitely feminine enactment, which was almost innocent by virtue of a serene erotic nonchalance, we stood astonished, a group of white Westerners completely ignored by those present. That sensual spectacle ended as it had begun, without warning or perhaps following a signal we could not pick up on, and the girls went back to dancing in a more traditional way.

A few hours later, returning late at night in the minivan to the hotel, we stopped at an intersection because we heard screaming. Nearby was a woman writhing on the ground, arching her pelvis inhumanly, while a huddle of people had gathered all around. There were those who were trying to hold her down, comforting her and caressing her, but her writhing and screaming did not seem to abate. That frenzied wiggling, with her legs spreading and her chest flexing and curving, had a kind of impudent quality: a loss of inhibitory restraints that made the spectacle not certainly exciting, but rather unseemly.

One of our escorts, an impassive and indecipherable dark-skinned sixty-something man, whom everyone called “Uncle”, rolled down the car window and asked what was going on. He received back a few words in Swahili from one of the onlookers, rolled his window back up, and we set off again in silence as if nothing had happened. Later I asked our interpreter what Uncle and that man had said to each other on the street, and what had happened to the woman we had all seen in convulsive spasms. She was the victim of a spell, he told me, she was possessed by spirits; those people were waiting for the neighborhood shaman who would soon come to “take away” the demons.

That night, back in my room, catching sleep was impossible: the feeling that I had attended not one but two mysteries did not leave me. Somehow, in my mind, I sensed that there was, perfectly clear and undeniable, a connection between the girls seducing the males by feigning intercourse with each other, and the possessed woman uncontrollably screaming in the dust. I could not have said exactly what invisible thread connected the two experiences I had just had, but I knew it was there.

In the years that followed, I reflected on it often. Although the situation of women’s rights in Tanzania has improved over time, the society is still highly patriarchal, and gender discrimination, violence, abuse, and harassment of women is still widespread. What I had witnessed were two episodes in which transgression — namely that of the liberated female body — was instead permitted, as it was well regulated.

The obscene and unbecoming dance called mapouka (which also involved gender reversal, in the assumption of the male role to mimic intercourse) was possible insofar as it was sanctioned by the context: the confines of the discotheque, and the agreed-upon time limits. One thus danced only in that place, and for a specific time frame.

Similarly, the phenomenon of possession — which might at first glance appear to be an event of disruption of the social order — actually has precise cultural norms and functions. As Moreno Paulon writes,

no society seems to be unprepared for possession. If the spiritic onset can disrupt and mark the existence of an individual or a class of individuals, no cultural order is disrupted or comes into crisis when possession manifests itself in one of its members. Human cultures have developed a wide variety of conventions, such as well-established rituals and symbolic interpretations, that accompany and guide the episode. Often an elected group is instructed to categorize and manage the phenomenon: it cures a sick person where possession is considered the symptom of a pathology; it interprets the oracle when the possessed person is a bridge and his word a message from beyond; it exorcises the possessed person if a malevolent spirit is believed to have seized her body. But the idea that possession is necessarily related to “evil” and that it must be responded to by exorcism is only one among many cultural constructions in the world. Within the order of a society, a cult of possession can serve the most varied functions: it can confirm or rediscuss the balance of power between the sexes, consecrate a national identity, legitimize a ruling family, or even express class suffering, consolidate a moral system, direct political decisions, indicate marital alliances.

(M. Paulon, Sulla possessione spiritica, in AA.VV., Il diavolo in corpo, 2019, Meltemi)

Here then, in the span of one evening, I had witnessed two moments in which the female body expressed itself at once irregularly and regulatedly. The mapouka and the spirit possession, when considered in relation to a generally oppressed female condition, appear as “authorized rebellions”: escape valves, on the surface, but deep down devices of self-discipline, micro-techniques of control of the system, a bit like Carnival was the inversion of hierarchies approved by the hierarchies themselves.

Unleashed sexuality, free from the constraints of culture, is not permissible. It is the nightmare of any authority. On that torrid African night I attended not one, but two mysteries — which were perhaps the same: a millennial battle between repressive and expressive impulses, a conflict that exploits the language of myth and ecstasy, but takes place always and only on the female body.

Toshio Saeki

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Among all the artists adressing the liminal zones of obscenity and taboo, few have explored the Unheimliche in all its variations with Toshio Saeki’s precision.

Born in 1945 in Miyazaki prefecture, he moved to Osaka when he was 4 years old and then landed in Tokyo at 24, right when the sex industry was booming. After a few months in a publicity agency, Saeki decided to focus exclusively on adult illustration. His drawings were published on Heibon Punch and other magazines, and slowly gained international interest. Today, after 40 years of activity, Toshio Saeki is among the most praised japanese erotic artists, with solo exhibitions even outside Japan — in Paris, London, Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco and Toronto.135

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For Saeki, art — like fantasy — cannot and should not know any limit.
In spite of the sulfurous nature of his drawings, he had surprisingly little trouble with censorship: apart from some “warning” notified by the police to the magazines featuring his plates, Saeki never experienced true pressions because of his work. And this is understandable if we take into account the cultural context, because his work, although modern, is deeply rooted in tradition.
As the critic Erick Gilbert put it, “if you look at Saeki’s art outside of its cultural sphere, you may be troubled by its violence. But once you go inside that cultural sphere, you know that this violence is well-understood, that ‘it’s only lines on paper,’ to quote cartoonist Robert Crumb. This extreme imagery of Japanese artists, and their characteristic need to go as far as possible, can be traced several centuries back to the so-called bloody ukiyo-e of the 19th century“.

To fully understand Toshio Saeki, it’s essential to look back to the muzan-e, a bloody subgenre of prints (ukiyo) which appeared around the half of ‘800, drawn by masters such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. This latter created the Twenty-eight famous murders with verse, in which he depicted all sorts of atrocities and violent deaths, taken from the news or from the stories of Kabuki theater. Here are some examples of Yoshitoshi’s extreme production.

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Other muzan-e, often particularly cruel, were drawn by Utagawa Yoshiiku, Kawanabe Kyōsai, and more marginally Hokusai; this current would then influence the more recent generation of artists and mangaka interested in developing the themes of ero guro – eroticism contaminated by surreal, bizarre, grotesque and crooked elements. Among the contemporary most prominent figures, Shintaro Kago and the great (and hyper-violent) Suehiro Maruo stand out.
So our Toshio Saeki is in good company, as he mixes the solid tradition of muzan-e with classical figures of japanese demons, bringing to the surface the erotic tension already hidden in ancient plates, making it both explicit and obsessive.

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His work is a visionary maelstrom in which sex and torture are inseparable, where erotic pulsion is intertwined with frenzy and psychopatology. The manic intensity of his illustrations, however, is coupled with a formal and stylish elegance, which cools down and crystallizes the nightmare: his prints are not created on the spot, because this precise refinement points to a deep study of the image.
Often they are connected with nightmares I had as a child, or extreme fantasies of my youth. These images made an impression on me, and I exaggerate them until they become those works that seem to have such a stong impact on the viewer“, declared the artist. These visions are carefully considered by Saeki, before he puts them on paper. For this reason his work looks like some sort of cartography of the further limits of erotic fantasy, those fringes where desire ultimately transforms into cupio dissolvi and cupio dissolvere (the desire to be annihilated, and to annihilate).

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But, for all their shocking power, Saeki’s paitings are always just dreams. “Leave other people to draw seemingly beautiful flowers that bloom within a nice, pleasant-looking scenery. I try instead to capture the vivid flowers that sometimes hide and sometimes grow within a shameless, immoral and horrifying dream. […] Let’s not forget that the images I draw are fictional“.

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And, again: “The important thing, to me, is awakening the viewer’s sensitiviy. I don’t care if he is a bigot or not. I want to give him the sensation that in his life — basically a secure and ordinary existence — there might be “something wrong”. Then hopefully the observer could discover a part of himself he did not know was there”.

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Quotes appearing in this post are taken from: here, here and here.
For a deeper treatise on muzan-e, here’s an article (in Italian) on the wonderful website Kainowska.

Il mercato dei feticci

Lomé, capitale del Togo, ospita uno dei mercati più particolari al mondo: si chiama Akodessewa, ed è conosciuto anche come “il mercato dei feticci”.

Il mercato è una specie di “farmacia” tradizionale, dove i guaritori e gli sciamani del luogo possono trovare tutto quello che serve per le loro pozioni voodoo. Stiamo parlando del voodoo originario, sviluppatosi nell’Africa occidentale ben prima che gli schiavi lo trapiantassero anche in America.

Mentre vi aggirate per i banchetti, vedrete in esposizione decine e decine di teste essiccate di coccodrilli, cani, gatti, scimmie… ma anche camaleonti, cobra, pesci palla… civette, avvoltoi, pappagalli e altri uccelli, corna di antilope o cervo, e addirittura qualche rarissimo “pezzo” di elefante o leopardo.

Secondo la ricetta tradizionale, le teste vengono macinate assieme alle erbe medicinali e poste sul fuoco finché il tutto non si riduce a una polvere nera. Dopo aver tagliato per tre volte il petto o la schiena della persona malata, il guaritore sparge la polvere curativa sulla pelle e la spinge all’interno delle ferite.

Ci sono rimedi per tutti i tipi di problemi: coppie che non riescono ad avere un figlio, vecchi con problemi alle articolazioni, donne possedute dai demoni, sportivi e atleti che cercano una “marcia in più”. Triturando insieme una mano di scimpanzé e una di gorilla, ad esempio, si ottiene una polvere che garantisce ai portieri di calcio una presa di ferro. Se si vuole correre una maratona, invece, è consigliabile utilizzare testa, cuore e gambe di un cavallo: la sua potenza, resistenza e velocità passeranno, per mezzo di uno scrupoloso rituale, al corpo dell’atleta. Le ossa più grandi, invece, sono perfette per difendere la propria casa dai demoni e dalla cattiva sorte. Ogni anno gli sciamani girano di villaggio in villaggio preparando questi feticci di protezione.

La medicina tradizionale non si impara da un giorno all’altro. È una conoscenza che si tramanda di padre in figlio, e ci vogliono dagli 8 ai 10 anni di studio ed esperienza per poter dominare tutti i segreti di questa arte.

Quello di Akodessewa è forse il mercato di feticci più grande del mondo. Le parti di animali provengono da tutta l’Africa occidentale, Ghana, Costa d’Avorio, Burkina Faso e Nigeria. A sentire i venditori, il governo del Togo ne è perfettamente a conoscenza e controlla accuratamente questo macabro commercio. “Non uccidiamo nessun animale con le nostre mani, è tutto regolare”, si premurano di far sapere, anche se più di qualche dubbio resta.

Questa strana farmacia voodoo, ormai famosa, attira non soltanto africani di tutte le regioni, ma anche turisti. “Ai turisti vendiamo quelle piccole statuine là”, dicono con un bel sorriso i commercianti, semisepolti fra teste in decomposizione, code appese che sventolano e ossa impolverate. In fondo, sono lì soltanto per aiutare chiunque abbia bisogno di loro.

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Tutte le splendide fotografie presenti nell’articolo sono state realizzate da Grete Howard, che ci ha gentilmente concesso in esclusiva l’autorizzazione a pubblicarle.

Il Tempio delle Torture

Wat Phai Rong Wua.

Se visitate la Thailandia, ricordatevi questo nome. Si tratta di un luogo sacro, unico e assolutamente weird, almeno agli occhi di un occidentale. Tempio buddista, mèta annuale di migliaia di famiglie, è celebre per ospitare la più grande scultura metallica del Buddha. Ma non è questo che ci interessa. È famoso anche per il suo Palazzo delle Cento Spire, ma nemmeno questo ci interessa. Quello che segnaliamo qui sono le dozzine di figure e complessi statuari che descrivono torture e sevizie riservate dai demoni dell’inferno alle anime in pena.

Infilzate in faccia, o intrappolate nelle fauci di orrendi mostri, con le interiora esposte, trafitte da spade e lance, queste sculture lasciano ben poco all’immaginazione: se non diciamo le preghierine alla sera, non ce la passeremo tanto bene nell’aldilà. Questo macabro e violentissimo “parco di attrazioni” ha per i fedeli un valore educativo. È una visualizzazione grafica e figurativa della sofferenza e dell’inferno.

Certo, c’è da dire che il rapporto dei thailandesi con la morte è meno travagliato del nostro; eppure, per quanto a prima vista il giardino delle torture di Wat Phai Rong Wua possa sembrare una soluzione estrema per colpire la fantasia dell’uomo illetterato, ricordiamoci che anche le nostre chiese abbondano di dipinti e allegorie non meno violente o macabre. Ormai abituati all’arte del Novecento, che si è man mano astratta dal bisogno di veicolare o avere un significato, ci dimentichiamo facilmente del ruolo avuto anche nella nostra storia dell’arte figurativa: quella di educare le masse, di proporsi come libro illustrato, e di servire quindi alla formazione di un immaginario anche per quanto riguarda i mondi a venire.

Scoperto via Oddity Central.