Captives of the Spirits: On Shamans, the Limits of Human Agency and the Power of the ‘Invisible’ Realm among the Kham Magars of Nepal

How does one become a shaman, against one’s own will, in a world of today? Based on a series of encounters with novice Kham Magar shamans in Nepal, Dr Ina Zharkevich (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford) explores the limits of human volition and the power of the ‘invisible’ realm in making people follow a career of a shaman – a predicament one cannot escape when one is called by the spirit of the deceased ancestral shaman.