Medical Museum
Art That Heals: The Image as Medicine
in Ethiopia
Christianity, Possession, and Talismanic Art
| Integrated into the cult of a zar, the scroll tends to become a sacrificial medium. While it is used according to Christian orthodoxy, it loses its material and almost all reference to the particular situation of the patient. Between the extremes of moist and dry, blood and dust, the depths of the body and the heights of the soul, the Ethiopian scholars have developed the most original part of their talismanic arts. They have done this in relation to situations where one must register an invasion of the body, must chase the intruders out, seal the body up, and forbid them access to it: "The house that is the body will no longer have either door or window by which the demon may enter," as Asres used to say.
While differing elsewhere, Christian discourse and the discourse of the zar are mutually reinforcing on the question of possession. If Christianity is a religion of transcendence, it still allows spirits, and even the holiest of these, may dwell in a human body. Talismanic art, which has always flirted with possession, has found an extraordinary catalyst of this potential in the Ethiopian universe. And if this potential is really implicit in Christian visual art, we can legitimately ask if Christianity has not been able to engender a talismanic art in its purest form, that is, in asceticism. This is suggested by the association of the seals with the image of abba Melki driving a demon before him. It is as if, the better to fight the violent and insidious assaults of demons, the athletes of God needed to exercise their inflexible will through images more powerful than simple commemorative portraits. In the West, possession and ecstasy found a privileged expression in Baroque sculpture. Did the churches of the East do something similar in talismanic art? |
Text courtesy of Mercier, Jacques. Art That Heals: the Image as Medicine in Ethiopia. New York: Prestel Books and The Museum For African Art, 1997.
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