"Office Hours with the Hāratī and her dyaḥmāṃ: Possession, Healing, and Listening"

Presented by the 2025 Toronto Newar Summer School

What does it mean to try to follow possession, healing, and divinations events as they unfold in Newar? In this talk, I reflect on the how learning Newar shaped my fieldwork in the living rooms of several dyaḥmāṃ, Newar Buddhist women who become possessed by the goddess Hāratī and per-form divinations and healings for their devotees. Focusing on conversations between deities, dyaḥmāṃ, and de-votees during these office hours, I consider how the living room emerged as a key site of ritual labor, de-votional practice, and hea-ling care. What unique challenges and possibilities for language learning emerge in such a space?  Drawing on moments of clarity and confusion, I ask what it means to take language seriously as method, not only as a tool for access, but as a condition for cohabiting ritual worlds.

Austin Simoes-Gomes is a PhD Candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto and Research Affiliate at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute. His dissertation, In the Living Rooms of the dyaḥmāṃ: Coming, Divining, Healing, and Doing dharma explores possession among Newar Buddhist women known as dyaḥmāṃ, who get possessed by the Buddhist goddess Hāratī and perform healings and divinations. His dissertation brings these female experiences from beyond male-dominated spaces to the centre of Newar religious life, concentrating on what Newar women do, and demonstrating that women are central, not peripheral, participants in the making of religious experience. 

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For all enquiries, please write to Christoph Emmrich at christoph.emmrich@utoronto.ca