Among the rural Punu of Congo-Brazzaville, possession trance is central to women's celebrations for water spirits (bayisi). The spirits communicate wishes through possession, conditioning their willingness to ensure community well-being. Possession requires an 'opening of the mind' activated by collective song-dance mimicking water's flowing motions and expressing longing for a maternal universe. Critiquing the common use of 'agency' to mean autonomy and resistance, this paper adopts a context-based view grounded in how actors experience possession. It argues that receptivity, in its ambivalent link to suffering, is the main source of power these possessions grant to women.
Neo-Tantra, often dismissed as a consumerist distortion of authentic South Asian Tantric traditions, may instead represent a creative synthesis of Western countercultural themes with South Asian sources. This ethnographic study of tantric women's workshops in Belgium traces their roots in the Osho movement and its evolution into a network of therapists and facilitators. The workshops blend Tantric teachings with therapeutic New Age techniques, emphasizing the recovery of sexual and vital energy by taking the body and self as the locus of authority. The paper highlights neo-Tantra's focus on self-determination, women's empowerment, and revaluation of the feminine, noting key dynamics of continuity and change when compared to communities rooted in South Asian traditions.