Vulnerable minds, bodily thoughts, and sensory spirits: local theory of mind and spiritual experience in Ghana

This essay looks at the resonances between common cultural models of the mind in the central region of Ghana and patterns of spiritual experience among charismatic evangelical Christians and practitioners of southern Ghana's indigenous religion, known as traditionalists. In particular, I examine the resonance between the model of the mind that construes it as porous, as vulnerable to forcible take-over by hostile entities, and experiences of divine beings insistently pushing people to do their will. It is also relatively common for people in Ghana to report seeing the divine with their eyes and hearing it with their ears. I argue that this experience resonates with, and is perhaps facilitated by, a tendency of local models of mind in Ghana to blend sense and percept.