A mildly annoyed except on Possession:
Possession, being an umbrella term, exists in many many traditions. It’s not a simple and spontaneous thing within these traditions. But it also is not a “one Universal experience” either.
For different cultural traditions, it means many different things. Shinto experiences a tradition of possession. Afro-diasporic traditions share a variation of possession.
And there’s just many many more to bring up, but these are the biggest examples off of the top of my head.
The west? It treats it like a spontaneous thing. Like being “sensitive” to something automatically translates to possession. That being able to “channel”* (a practise that traditionally requires years of disciplinary training and mentorship), is suddenly possession. It’s not unless you’re approaching it from the appropriately vetted backgrounds, traditions, and belief systems that occupy that particular framework of tradition.
And even then, Channeling is a separate discipline.
*Channeling itself, specifically in traditions where it legitimately exists, requires years of discipline, mentorship, and training.
Possession and Channeling are not interchangeable. And that's a common confusion.
In pretty much every tradition where spiritual possession is part of the religious or ritual framework, it is a trained role.
Not random.
Not spontaneous.
Not “oh I’m just sensitive to energy so it happens to me sometimes.”
People who serve as vessels undergo:
Intense disciplinary courses from fasting for weeks or changing entire lifestyle regiments, behavioural discipline, abstinence, and other disciplines of control and balance
Protocols set up between them and their spirit in question
physical and spiritual conditioning which is often grueling, taxing, and exhausting. These conditionings don’t stop. They go on for years and years and years. And they will take up a vessel’s entire lifetime. You don’t just “Get to stop”.,
mentorship / initiation / lineage transmission - all depending on tradition and background.,
Vessels don’t just “get possessed.”
They are taught how to ground, open, host, channel, and close.
Possession is a responsibility, not an accident. Nor is it just done willy nilly for clicks on Shit-Tock or for social clout.
Your body? Yeah that doesn't belong to you anymore. That autonomy is gone.
If a tradition incorporates possession, there is always structure:
Factors that go into possession are circumstances like oversight. Someone often (but not always) oversees the ritual or ceremony that is taking place. There are safety and exit procedures. The vessels serve a purpose for the spirits in question and/or the community. Not the individual or the ego.
When you’re a vessel, rarely it is ever for multiple deities or beings either. (Unless the specific tradition structures it as such. Examples can be in within the spheres of ancestral spirits or specific diaspora).
Pop culture sells the idea of spontaneous possession.
Actual traditions teach technique and discipline.
That’s the difference.
And this is always lacking. And that’s how I know people don’t know what they’re talking about.
I highly doubt the randos on the internet that I see goes from zero to “vessel of a deity” in a week.
If possession were that simple,
everyone with a Shit-Tok altar would be doing it. (Oh wait! They kind of already are! Silly me).
The seriousness of possession is exactly why it isn’t common.
It takes training, not vibes.
Commitment, not aesthetics.
Discipline, not “sensitivity.”
And even if you constructed your own tradition and your own system, I really cannot believe for a second that anyone can go from zero to one hundred with possession with a spirit or a deity in a few months or even a year.
Why would a rando on the internet somehow get a pass in a skill and practise that requires people from ethnic and traditional practises years and years of lifestyle change, dedication, and discipline without having to do the work?