If you look at south eat asia there is one cult called "sintua" often channel Chinese heaven and hell deities and possess human. As mention yes there are human destined and some volunteer to be avatar. The deities will perform rituals, prayers, healing magic and also involve with blood to make powerful talisman. I think channeling deities to possess human can be from all culture as we don't know is it this is a real human or already possessed?Noctifera wrote:In a much broader scope, there are many humans or creatures that are actually destined and/or take on a path to be avatars or sacred messengers. This is somewhat similar to priestess/priesthood when talking about deities, and distinct from channeling. For instance if a creature of our earth is sacred to a spirit or deity (say the jaguar to Tezcatlipoca, the dove to Aphrodite), it can end up as a messenger of that force - acting on the otherworldly counterpart's behalf. A human can also be chosen by whatever divine means to take on the path of a messenger, or act as one for a singular purpose and sometimes that means their presence will be meaningfully connected to an otherworldly force in the lives of others - when it's a totally one-off kind of deal that is closer to channeling/being channeled through.
The deity seems like a server to serve multiple client users. Which mean 1 deity can possess multiple physical creatures. Anyway regarding sintua how they exist or how they do or what they do, none of them will tell anything.
Sorry for getting out of topic. Just a small knowledge I wanna share.