Drawing on an analysis of Shi‘i ritual lamentation in Lebanon, I examines how religious actors and pious publics employ literary, recitational, theatrical and socio-technological methods to cultivate imaginal engagements with the otherworldly. I analyse these methods, demonstrating how they locate pious Shi‘is in religious metanarratives which transcend the linearity of time, taking place in the Elsewhere and the here-and-now, simultaneously. I argue that this produces transposable and lasting dispositions which constitute the Shi‘i self, immerses subjects in this-worldly-oriented modes of religiosity and bestows upon Shi‘i politics and the imagined community a profound emotional legitimacy. I posit that cultivated engagements with the Elsewhere are constitutive experiences in modes of religiosity which emphasise a symbiosis between human action and metaphysical intervention, thus complicating the question of agency and intentional action.