“…A symbolic construction of the divine does not account for how, once these gods appear and make their presences known, individuals may react—or how this coincides with designations of pathology. This article specifically draws upon three conceptions of the divine: one, it follows scholars who move away from a symbolic construction of the divine and explore the ways in which the divine cannot be fully known (Mittermaier, 2011; Suhr, 2015) and is an unpredictable agent, which can result in ambivalent encounters (Beliso‐De Jesús, 2014; Lambek, 2003; Orsi, 2018; Scherz, 2018; Scherz & Mpanga, 2019; Smith, 2006; Suhr, 2015; Pandolfo, 2018; Whitmarsh [forthcoming]). For example, Scherz (2018), working in a Ugandan convent, explores how the uncertainty of the will of a divine entity that both harms and heals impacts human agency, constituting an ambivalent encounter.…”