I’m curious about early instances of the word possession or possess, especially in terms of how the word meant ownership or control over property/land, and also the demonic meaning.
I’ve been reading AS Byatt’s Possession again; let’s just say that her sense of what it means to possess, and what possessions are/are not, have got me intrigued. Did something happen to link earlier notions of possessing to later notions of being overcome with something, often to one’s loss of self?