This page groups practices by whether they are carried out alone or with others. Wikipedia distinguishes "communal rites, whether of worship, where a community comes together to worship" from "rites of personal devotion, where an individual worships, including prayer and pilgrimages." Browsing this way lets a visitor separate a group ceremony from a practice one person performs alone.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingPractices that induce or accompany an altered state the tradition treats as religiously significant - possession, trance, prophetic speech - usually through drumming, dance or sustained rhythmic movement. Grouping them by the state they are held to produce is an outsider's criterion: the traditions concerned classify them by who is invoked and on whose authority. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsThe comparative frame is I. M. Lewis's, from Ecstatic Religion (1971), which treats possession and trance as a single field and reads their social distribution - central cults upholding the established order against peripheral cults of the marginal, women above all. That is Lewis's analysis, not a category the traditions use of themselves. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 2 Learn More
The Ecstatic Practices
This group gathers ecstatic practices: disciplines that seek altered, heightened or trance states of consciousness through means such as dance, drumming, chanting or whirling, in which the practitioner may feel union with, or possession by, the divine.
The browser will find ecstatic practices from various traditions. The entries describe each practice's form and aim, noting the tradition in which it is found.
Solitary or Communal
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, 3rd edition
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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