The Red Thread

 The Red Thread - Healing Possession at a Muslim Shrine in North India,
Hardback - 252 pages,
by Prof. Beatrix Pfleiderer, Ph.D.



Synopsis : This book is a collection of factual stories, that describe the paths that people chose to heal their lives, bodies, and relationships. It also describes the “accidents” on a social, physical, and emotional level that people experience and which cause the need for healing.


The stories were experienced and collected at a Muslim Pilgrimage centre of the Sufi; Sayyad Mira Data Dargah (suhrawardi silsila) in Gujarat.



Contents :

---Foreword,
---Preface: Two Fables,
---Introduction,
---The Cunning Women,
---The Question,
---the Journey and the Field,
---Mira Data Dargah,
---The Women’s Stage,
---The Men’s Stage,
---The Women, their Psychology and Possession,
---Outlook,
---Glossary,
---Bibliography,
---Groundplan of the Mira Datar Tomb,
---Index.



The field trips during which this material was collected took place between 1979 and 1982. Financial support came from the German research Association and the university of Hamburg. For the German version of this book the author was a awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Price of the German-Indo Society in 1996.