Fighting illness with gesar—a healing ritualFrom eastern Bhutan

mona schrempF

university oF westminster, london

in the far east of Bhutan in 2011, i witnessed a healing rite (rim gro)performed by a jomo or female healer who becomes possessed bygesar. gesar is the most powerful warrior king and key mythical fig-ure in the tibetan epic of the same name. gesar usually possesses malespirit-mediums called pawo (dpa’ bo) or ‘heroes’. in common with thefew other jomos in this locale, my informant Jomo drolma usuallybecomes possessed (djab)1 by her main local protector, the eldest ofseven (sometimes nine) daughters of the regional mountain goddessama Jomo. this group of female deities resides atop a sacred mountainin the pastoral area of merak-sakteng, situated about two days walkacross the river valley to the south-east from Jomo drolma’s home.even though ama Jomo has become partly reinterpreted withintibetan-style Buddhism as a form of the protective goddess paldenlhamo, and is locally known by the name ‘Khamsum ama Jomo’(‘ama Jomo of the three worlds’), she also remains an importantsacred source of local healing powers.2

gesar, however, is believed to be more powerful than these localgoddesses. he is a strong, deified protector and seems to be recognisedas the superior authority over the local cosmology of gods and spiritsdwelling within the environment. gesar can order and, if necessary,fight them when taking possession of the healer. many of these godsand spirits are not necessarily evil per se, but can easily become offend-ed by polluting or disturbing human activities. at this, they retaliatewith affliction of illness upon the culprit/patient, commonly by stealinghis or her ‘soul’ (tshangla, yong; dakpa, phla; cf. tibetan bla) and/orthe patient’s ‘life principle’ (srog).3 the healer must first diagnose theroot cause of a patient’s illness using divination (mo) with rice grains.since illness is generally perceived of as loss of the soul or life princi-ple, the healer needs to determine which god or spirit is responsible andthen invoke, propitiate and confess (bshags pa) any wrong doings bythe patient to the respective deity. the healer needs to offer appropriate

foodstuffs, certain flowers, grain, water and alcohol, as well as a ‘ran-som’ (glud)4 in order to free the soul once again so that it can berestored to the patient. gesar and his army are addressed as the ultimatesource of power in this struggle for reinstating the patient’s balance oflife forces. gesar is believed to be able to heal serious illnesses.

i met Jomo drolma several times over a period of two years duringmy pilot study on ritual healers in eastern Bhutan.5 she is an unusualwoman in many respects, compared with her Bhutanese peers. i record-ed her life story6 and documented four different healing rites duringwhich she sometimes performed as gesar and sometime as the jomo

group of sibling goddesses.7 Jomo drolma’s first possession by gesaroccurred when she was already over forty years of age. during thetwenty years prior to that first possession, she had continuouslybecome pregnant each year, only to experience many miscarriages,with just five of her children surviving. she became ‘mad’ (tshangla,nyospa) for a long period of time. her husband, himself a ritual special-ist of the phrami type, and much older than her, affirmed this by rollinghis eyes while she narrated this episode to me. Jomo drolma explainedthat during this period, she often found herself following ‘two boys’and ‘two girls’ around. these child figures later turned out to be herguardian deities, and the messengers of gesar and ama Jomo respec-tively. By following them, she went to remote places in the wilderness,getting ‘lost’ for days on end, and behaving ‘antisocially’ and strange-ly in the opinion of others. it was during this period that Jomo drolmalearnt about the world of local spirits and demons that remains invisi-ble to all other ordinary persons. something that had also troubled hersince childhood was contact with unclean substances, which made hersick and crazy. in her daily life as a farmer and mother, she tried herbest to avoid unclean things as best as she could. in particular, theseincluded contacts with ‘birth pollution’ (skye grib) and ‘death pollu-tion’ (shi grib), but also certain foods that ritual healers consider to beimpure, as well as touching polluting substances, such as pig manure.only when Jomo drolma stopped becoming pregnant was she inten-sively ‘trained’ for three years by her guardian deities, after which shebecame a practising jomo and pawo.

Jomo drolma says she ‘inherited’ the possession of gesar from twoother different pawo who once dwelt in her settlement area. after bothof these mediums had passed away, their children—including theirsons and daughters, grandchildren and even the niece of one—all

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sought to continue the professional family lineage of pawo themselves,although none were able to do so for longer than twelve years. thepawos’ descendants continued to fall ill, and one even died at a youngage. Jomo drolma thinks that they did not follow the purity rules prop-erly, and that this had caused all their problems. Finally, Jomo drolmaherself was asked to take over this lineage of gesar possession. shealso inherited a powerful riknga (rigs lnga) crown—an essential part ofthe medium’s costume—from meme pawo in Komding village. Jomodrolma herself has several riknga of her own, but it is only this specialone from meme pawo that she places upon her altar during rites whenshe is possessed by gesar (cf. fig. 2, no. 14).

the first healing rite by Jomo drolma that i observed was performedfor several of her immediate family members who had fallen ill. it wasset up and performed in the main room of her own house, within whichthe patients sat upon the floor along the opposite side of the altar. in mydescription of that rite here, i will focus primarily upon the altar and themany different offerings and torma Jomo drolma constructed, sincethat forms the central ritual space and items for invoking, offering andhealing. For this particular case of healing, Jomo drolma chose to per-form as pawo, becoming possessed by gesar, rather than by the amaJomo goddesses.

she initially fits meme pawo’s riknga, which is adorned on bothsides with multicoloured fans, upon a drey (bre) measuring container,as though fitting it upon a person’s head. the drey is filled with rawrice, which is typically used for divination among mediums and otherhealers in east Bhutan. Jomo drolma then inserts gesar’s silk-adornedritual arrow (mda’ dar) into the middle of this drey and sticks a rollednu banknote—Bhutan’s national currency— next to it, which is givento her and thus touched by her patients. this banknote is used for secur-ing the patient’s life force during the ritual. the riknga-adorned drey isthen placed within a larger woven bamboo basket again filled withunhusked rice (see fig. 1; cf. fig. 2, no. 14). the whole structure isplaced upon the left hand side of the altar, which, from the deities’ per-spective, is actually regarded as the right hand male side (see fig. 2, no.14).

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concerning the altar, initially all the food and drink as well as torma

(gtor ma) offerings need to be prepared. the cooked food is exclusive-ly made for the local gods and is then divided up onto six plates to beoffered to different spirits of the bdud and btsan class. these plates areput in front of the altar upon a lower table covered by a blue cloth,which are initially covered with banana leaves to protect them. thefood (tshogs) itself is all carefully boiled without tasting it, that is, asJomo dolma explained, without polluting it. it consists of a mixture ofrice and maize grains (karang), beans (oré), pancakes, ‘tree-ear’ mush-rooms (shing gi ngawa), dried cheese (phrum), small dried fish (nya

sangma), ginger root (saga), fruits, walnuts, and also chilli. more elab-orate torma and palace-like structures also need to be prepared inadvance to be offered to the local deities. these are placed on differentplates and set next to the altar upon the ground, including a special nag

gtor representing all the different ma mo deities. they are placed on aheap of meringma (Artemisia sp.) branches that are also used as a‘local’ palace. last but not least, the ransom for the patient is also

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Figure 1. meme pawo’s riknga on the altar for gesar’s healing ritual. photo

by mona schrempf, 2011.

placed there surrounded by the respective food and torma offerings forthe offended god in direct exchange for the patient’s soul. the localgods and spirits as well as those humans that are either afflicted or pos-sessed by them, are the actual agents, i.e. causing and/or curing illness.their offerings and special torma are set upon the ground in front andto the side of the altar, reflecting their relatively ‘low’ yet importantposition in the cosmological hierarchy that is encoded within the altar’soverall vertical arrangement.

the elevated ‘altar’ (mchod bsham) proper is destined for the high-er-ranking gods and is set atop a cupboard at one end of the room. thedescription to follow refers to fig. 2 and the levels i and ii, while num-bers are given in parentheses.8 the upper part of the altar forms theuppermost of three different levels of representations of gods and offer-ings. however, this arrangement does not follow any strict tripartitecosmology—as one might immediately guess—with the Buddhistrealm at the highest place, but actually embodies a hybrid one.Beginning from the very top of the altar, a small table covered by aclean, hand-woven cloth and banana leaves serves as the most elevat-ed space (level i). at the centre and at the backside of this table, gesar’sthrone is formed by a yellow silk cloth, upon which is placed his image(1).9 the small table is also the platform for other high-rankingBuddhist deities, and the highest-ranking among the local deities, all ofwhich are represented by larger and smaller torma placed in a specificarrangement. viewed from the reader’s perspective, these are: threetorma of lama, yidam and khandroma (bla ma, yi dam, mkha’ ’gro ma)(2) immediately in front of gesar; a group of five khandroma torma totheir right (3); and five chökyong sungma torma (chos skyong srung ma

gtor ma) placed at the very front of the table (4). the latter entail thehighest ranking deities of the region and its local cosmology, identifiedas gonpo maning nagpo, lhamo genden, Khandro, serbu Kyetsan(skye btsan), and gompa terdak who is the local ‘treasure lord’ (gter

bdag) of the padmasambhava pilgrimage site at gomphu Kora, situat-ed in the valley floor below Jomo drolma’s village. together, thisentire group of deities appear to embody a kind of ‘advisory board’overseeing Jomo drolma’s ritual performance.

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Below and in front of the small table, upon the banana leaf-covered sur-face of the cupboard itself (level ii), are placed all their food and drinkofferings. Beginning on the left side, there is a grouping of three small,conically shaped butter torma called pa tshogs (5) that will be blessedby all the deities invoked. after the healing ritual is completed, theseare given to patients to take home as medicinal butter which can beapplied to painful areas of the body. to the right of these pa tshogs

three copper-coloured bowls (6–8) with three different types of dis-tilled liquor (arra) are placed and offered to gonpo maning nagpo andthe highest ranking deities of the region and its local cosmology listedabove, but also including a btsan from sombrang who is Jomodrolma’s ancestral deity. the left-hand copper bowl contains tshe

chang (‘life beer’, made of arra brewed by the patient’s household) (6),the central copper bowl is filled with om nor yang chang (or short o ma

chang), a form of milk offering (7), and the right-hand bowl holdsrakta (water, with dried cow meat and a tea leaf for shaza and yizaKhandro, and all the other ‘dangerous’ khandros) (8). last but not least,

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Figure 2. detail of upper level of the altar, with gesar seated upon a throne

of yellow silk at the highest position in the centre (1). photo by mona

schrempf, 2011.

a small wooden bowl beautifully adorned with butter ornaments at therim contains a special g.yang chang (9), which is offered to increase thehousehold’s g.yang or positive force of ‘increase’—an indispensablyimportant power that plays a role in maintaining high stocks of health,prosperity and good fortune for the household and for all its members.10

a special ‘nectar’ (bdud rtsi) is offered for ama Jomo and all localdeities (10). the remaining items arrayed and interspersed along thefront of the cupboard top include a butter lamp in the centre, silver-coloured bowls with different liquid offerings (chang phud, o ma phud,

chu phud) (11), four bowls containing rice and flour adorned with thesacred seeds of tsampaka metok—large flat seeds surrounded by paper‘wings’(12)—and three food torma (13). complementing the altar, butnot visible on figures 2 and 3, are so-called pho cha and mo cha, ‘maleand female paraphernalia’ placed inside two special woven bamboobaskets that Jomo drolma had inherited from a previous pawo and ajomo. they sit on the right hand side atop the altar on level ii.

once the entire altar arrangement with all offerings has been com-pleted, Jomo drolma dons her costume. For performing a pawo heal-ing ritual and becoming possessed by gesar, she must remove herfemale attire and wear instead the traditional gown of Bhutanese men(go). she crowns herself with one of her own riknga. to the left of thealtar, upon the floor, a large basket full of dried maize kernels was setup beforehand as a temporary protective container (see figure 3). threeincense sticks are erected in the maize, and here Jomo drolma alsoplants gesar’s sword in an erect position that she must use during thehealing rite. parallel to the sword, in the centre of this basket, an arrowis planted. Before Jomo drolma becomes possessed, she temporarilyplaces her own ‘life principle’ (srog), in the form of a cone shaped outof butter, directly onto the tip of this arrow (see fig. 3). this wholearrangement of the basket is otherwise a characteristic device used forperforming a divination.

while seated upon the floor in front of the altar, having first invokedgesar and several other deities, the onset of Jomo drolma’s possessionis signaled by her visibly trembling and yawning. a smoke offering(gsur) is burnt as an offering for confession (bshags pa). For the nextfew hours while possessed, Jomo drolma alternates between sittingbefore the altar, and dancing certain steps in front of it, while drum-ming with a special handheld, double-sided drum that she beats with along curved stick (see fig. 3). sometimes, she manipulates various

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other implements, such as a ritual scepter (rdo rje) and bell (dril bu).all of these different implements are said to belong to gesar.additionally, when she speaks as gesar during her possession, she usesthe epic hero’s language, colloquial tibetan, or at least utters a fewtibetan words and simple sentences.

two assistants—in the case being described, one of her daughtersand her son-in-law—aid her with arranging the offerings, some ofwhich need to be carried outside of the house at certain times during therite and offered to local deities, while other offerings are sprinkledaround the room.11 Jomo drolma also becomes possessed by beingsother than gesar. this can be indicated during possession by changesin the timbre of her voice, a jolting of her body, and is sometimes sig-naled by words in a different language. at times she may also be pos-sessed by the ‘demon’ (bdud) who has stolen the patient’s soul. sheperforms a kind of dramatic role-play during which she voices dia-logues between gesar himself and other worldly gods, interspersed byvarious invocations, placating, enticing and convincing these gods toassist in locating the stolen soul. throughout the healing rite, Jomodrolma narrates how she travels around the terrain of a local cosmos,one that is embodied within the actual topography of mountains, riversand lakes in her home region.

towards the culmination of the healing rite, the patients’ soul inform of a particular spider is found and caught with a piece of cottonwool. the ‘soul spider’ (yong dama) is first transferred onto the top ofthe patients’ head, where the invisible portal for entry and exit of suchvitality principles is believed to be located.12 after this, the soul spideris put safely into the drey measure with the riknga crown upon the altar.at this point, Jomo drolma employs gesar’s sword for blessing andprotecting the patients and all other participants present in the room.she crisscrosses its blade firmly and directly onto certain vulnerablebody parts, such as the top of the head, the shoulders, the throat,abdomen and knees of each person. Jomo drolma then binds blessed,five-coloured protective cords onto the bodies of all present. clearly,gesar functions as the main protector of both healer and patient. hispresence and power is directly manifest in Jomo drolma’s possessionand her successful manipulation of ritual objects restoring both thelocal cosmological order and the patients’ health. this is how the heal-ing is achieved.

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notes

1 the locally spoken tshangla word ‘djab’ (cf. tibetan rgyab, ‘back’ or ‘behind’)was explained as meaning ‘standing behind’ indicating that the protector deity him- orherself is standing behind, i.e. protecting and possessing the healer during the rite.once the protector leaves the healer’s body, they tend to fall backwards, exhausted, andare caught by their ritual assistants, who themselves stand behind healers when theirpossession is about to finish.

2 the Buddhist incorporation of local deities parallels the decline of female ritualhealers in this area, who were actively discouraged by both higher ranking mediumscalled ‘treasure lords’ (gter bdag) and some lamas to cease their healing rituals, beingaccused of ‘fake’ performances and the like.

3 the concept of the ‘life principle’ is complex in this area and ideas about howmany parts it has fluctuate between 3, 7 and 9.

4 a glud is a small human-shaped effigy made out of dough that is offered as a ran-

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Figure 3. Jomo drolma possessed by gesar, dancing in front of the altar

while drumming and chanting. photo by gerhard heller, 2011.

som to the god or spirit who had stolen the patient’s soul. the ransom actually carriescertain traits of the patient’s body, such as his/her hair or nails, fingerprints left onpieces of dough, and alike.

5 this three month long pilot study was funded the german research Foundation(dFg) and facilitated by the centre of Bhutan studies (cBs). i am indebted to bothinstitutions, in particular to dasho Karma ura and dorje gyaltsen from cBs. dorjeworked as my translator and was present for the first healing rite by Jomo drolmadicussed herein. i also thank gerhard heller for co-filming and photographing thisevent. toni huber was also present for the documentation, and i am grateful for hisvaluable insights into the data and for his editorial support.

6 an article on her biography as a healer is forthcoming and will be published aspart of a special issue of Revue tibétaine (2015) on autonomous female religiouswomen, edited by myself and nicola schneider.

7 each of these rituals took at least four hours and are always performed in thepatient’s house. gesar’s altar is usually directed uphill, and in any case towards thenorth of the house and resembles more an elevated Buddhist structure with gtor ma andsuchlike, while the altar used in the invocation of ama Jomo and her daughters is gen-erally placed on the ground, directed towards the south, using many different flowersand elaborate food offerings that are then thrown towards the gods onto their respec-tive plates. the jomo altar is markedly ‘local’—a bamboo stick (dang shing) is used tohang up Bhutanese female garments (kira) and jewelry for the goddesses addressed,and a male one (go) and a sword embodies tsongtsongma, the top male mountain godof the area.

8 cf. fig. 3 for a complete view of the altar and most of the torma and offerings forthe local gods and spirits.

9 even though this image actually depicts guru rinpoche or padmasambhava itseems that Jomo simply used this image for representing gesar and also did not see anyproblem with that. similarly, photographs of the young king and queen of Bhutan adornthe altar on the wall. they seem to be included in this pantheon.

10 when a patient seeks Jomo drolma’s help for healing, a family member of thepatient will come to her home first, handing her some homemade arra and asking herfor help. she will first place this bottle with arra on her altar. depending on thepatient’s birth year, she might first try to bring back the stolen soul at her home, invit-ing all the important local deities of the sick person and his/ her place, i.e. skye lha, yullha, btsan, klu, ’dre, including the local gnas po and bdud. then she will offer a gserskyems and will try and call the soul back, catching it in form of the right ‘soul-spider’.if this does not work, she will have to do this ritual at the person’s home. the impor-tance of arra for hospitality and other social exchanges—including suspicion of poi-soning—cannot be overestimated in Bhutan, yet has so far received hardly any schol-arly attention.

11 these special offering tormas for the local gods are generally called nag gtor,'black offering cakes’. in this healing ritual they concern among others, bdud kyi lustshab, srin mo, za ’dre kha sbyor.

12 in tshangla yong dama means ‘spider’, indicating an inherent relationshipbetween spider and soul (yong). see the forthcoming article by toni huber and myself,‘go-Betweens: insects, bats and birds in myths and rites along the extended easternhimalayas’.

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