Quelques aspects du chamanisme et des cultes de possession en Asie du Sud-Est (Shamanism and Mediums in Southeast Asia)
by Georges Condominas
Shamanism, trance and medium practices across Southeast Asia, a study by famous ethnologist Georges Condominas.
Publication: L'autre et l'ailleurs. Hommages à Roger Bastide. Nice : Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, pp. 215-232.
Published: 1976
Author: Georges Condominas
Pages: 18
Language : French
pdf 1.8 MB
The author had directly witnessed shaman and medium practices in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, in particular in the Kulen area.
This brilliant essay puts regional trance and medium ceremonies in perspective with worldwide shamanic practices, notably in Madagascar, another field research destination for the ethnologist.
Read an account of a shamanic ceremony in a Kuy village south of Preah Vihear, in 2012.
And a trance ceremony witnessed by Eileen McCormick in 2018 in Kandal Province (photo).
Tags: shamanism, possession, Kulen Mountain, divination, animism
About the Author
Georges Condominas
Georges Louis Condominas (29 June 1921, Haiphong – 17 July 2011, Paris) was a renowned cultural anthropologist.
A specialist of South East Asia (his mother had Chinese, Vietnamese and Portuguese roots, his father a French navy officer), he has been described as the 'Proust of ethnology'. His field studies of the Mnong people of Vietnam have inspired Francis Ford Coppola for his masterpiece, Apocalypse Now, in particular the final scene of the buffalo sacrifice.
Condominas' working papers, his personal library and his pictures are preserved at the mediatheque of the Musée du quai Branly, available for scholars and researchers. His audio records are preserved and digitized by the French Research Center for Ethnomusicology (LESC, CNRS, Paris Ouest University).