Celestial hierarchies, labile pantheons: Tamil Hinduism through the prism of divination

International audienceIn Tamil Nadu, like in other parts of the Indian subcontinent, seeing an astrologer is a normal, regular, often mandatory procedure. Among the Tamil specialists of divination, the Vaḷḷuvar astrologers occupy a special place. Though long regarded as an untouchable caste in the local socio-religious hierarchy, they nevertheless have the reputation of being the best astrologers in the region and are consulted by people from all castes. But the Vaḷḷuvar astrologers are not only soothsayers interpreting the language of the stars. Like other religious specialists of low status elsewhere in India, they also intervene at different levels of treatment of illness and misfortune. Indeed, by prescribing certain types of cures to their consultants, which they send to other specialists, Vaḷḷuvar astrologers appear as nodal points of the network of complex interactions shaping the local therapeutic system. Moreover, they are often part of these specialists (physician, priest, mantiravāti, etc.), and they frequently take charge of all or part of the treatment they prescribe to their consultants.In words or deeds, during astrological diagnosis or during ceremonial prescriptions, Vaḷḷuvar astrologers evoke and summon different powers supposed to be able to inflect the destiny of their consultants. These powers are of different kinds. First are the nine planetary divinities of the Indian astrological system - in Tamil, the navakkirakam; then Murukaṉ, son of the Pan Indian "great god" Śiva and major divine figure of the Tamil Hindus; finally, the Goddess in her local form of village deity. But these powers do not appear in the same way in the words and in the acts of the astrologers, and their ability to alter human destinies varies according to certain factors related to the divinatory context as well as to the situation of the consultant.In this paper, I show how these different powers manifest and interact both in the discourse and in the ritual action of astrologers, in order to reveal the place occupied by the navakkirakam - the nine planets of the astrological system - in the invisible hierarchy that structures the local pantheon