Robert Wessing (b. 1939) is an anthropologist who obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Urbana. His main interest lies within Southeast Asia, value systems and symbolic reality, and religion. He has worked for many years on problems surrounding the relations between people and tigers as well as people and spirits in Indonesia and has previously published The Soul of Ambiguity, The Tiger in Southeast Asia, and The Gunongan in Banda Aceh, Indonesia; Agni’s Fire in Allah’s Paradise?.