In regard to the priests, their habits are precisely the same as those persons of the same rank; and when they are not inspired, all the respect that is paid to them is that only which is due to their private rank.… It most frequently happens that the eldest son of a priest, after his father’s death, becomes a priest of the same god who inspired his father. 2
There appears to be no profound general psychic difference between the priests and the other men of the same race. Mariner has observed that:
… If there was any difference between them and the rest of the natives, it was that they were rather more given to reflection, and somewhat more taciturn, and probably greater observers of what was going forward. 3
A second detailed account of possession in the South Sea Islands dates from the end of the last century. This, too, comes from the pen of an English investigator and is found in his book on the Melanesiane.4 Whereas Mariner’s information related to a group of Polynesian islands, Codrington has studied the Melanesians. The states of possession are not of the same nature; in Melanesia it is visibly the somnambulistic form which predominates. The methods by which they are provoked are also more complicated than the simple autosuggestion of the Tonga islanders. A particularly interesting fact is that the Melanesians distinguish clearly between diseases of the mind and possession, just as do the Ba-Ronga in Africa. Possession may be desired or else undesired and morbid; the former variety may be spontaneous or artificially provoked. A further remarkable fact is the conscious identification of the possessed with the spirit who fills him, a phenomenon which clearly indicates that the possession is at least partly lucid in form.
Codrington remarks concerning certain Melanesian spirits:
There is often difficulty in understanding what is told about them, because the name Nopitu is given both to the spirit and to the person possessed by the spirit, who performs wonders by the power and in the name of the Nopitu who possesses him. Such a one would call himself Nopitu; rather speaking of himself, will say not “I,” but “we two,” meaning the Nopitu in him and himself, or “we” when he is possessed by many. He would dance at a festival, such as a kolekole, as no man not possessed by a Nopitu could dance. He would scratch himself, his arms or his head, and new money not yet strung would fall from his fingers; Vetpepewu told me that he had seen money fall from a Nopitu at a kolekole—bags full. One would shake himself on a mat and unstrung money would pour down into it.1
Of spontaneous possession we learn the following:2
The knowledge of future events is believed to be conveyed to the people by a spirit or a ghost speaking with a voice of a man, one of the wizards, who is himself unconscious while he speaks. In Florida the men of a village would be sitting in their kiala, canoe-house, and discussing some undertaking, an expedition probably to attack some unsuspecting village. One among them, known to have his own tindalo ghost of prophecy, would sneeze and begin to shake, a sign that the tindalo had entered into him; his eyes would glare, his limbs twist, his whole body be convulsed, foam would burst from his lips; then a voice, not his own, would be heard in his throat, allowing or disapproving of what was proposed. Such a man used no means of bringing on the ghost; it came upon him, as he believed himself, at its own will, its mana overpowered him, and when it departed it left him quite exhausted.3
A party would be sitting round an evening fire, and one of them would hear a voice as if proceeding from his thigh, saying: “Here am I, give me some food, I am hungry.” He would roast a little red yam, and when it was done fold it in the corner of the mat on which he was sitting. In a little while it would be gone, and then the Nopitu would begin to talk and sing in a voice so small and clear and sweet, that once heard it never could be forgotten; but it sang the ordinary Mota songs, while the men drummed an accompaniment for it. Then it would say: “I am going”; they would call it, and it was gone. Then a woman would feel it come to her, and sit upon her knee; she would hear it cry “Mother! Mother!” She would know it, and carry it in a mat upon her back like an infant. Sometimes a woman would hear a Nopitu say “Mother, I am coming to you,” and she would feel the spirit entering into her, and it would be born afterwards as an ordinary child. Such a one, named Rongoloa, was not long ago still living at Motlav. The Nopitu, like other spirits, were the familiars only of those who knew them, and these were often women. If a man wished to know and become known to a Nopitu, he gave money to some woman who knew those spirits, and then one would come to him.1
It is difficult to separate the practice of magic arts from the manifestation of a ghost’s or spirit’s power in possession; because a man may use some magic means to bring the possession upon himself, as in the case of prophecy, and also because the connection between the unseen powerful being and the man, in whatever way the connection is made and works, is that which makes the wizard. Yet there is a distinction between the witchcraft and sorcery in which by magic charms the wizard brings the unseen power into action, and the spontaneous manifestation of such power by the unseen being; even though there may be only a few who can interpret, or to whom the manifestations are made. In a case of madness the native belief is that the madman is possessed. There is at the same time a clear distinction drawn by the natives between the acts and words of the delirium of sickness in which as they say they wander, and those which are owing to possession. They are sorry for lunatics and are kind to them, though their remedies are rough. At Florida, for example, one Kandagaru of Boli went out of his mind, chased people, stole things and hid them. No one blamed him, because they knew that he was possessed by a tindalo ghost. His friends hired a wizard who removed the tindalo, and he recovered. In the same way not long ago in Lepers’ Island there was a man who lost his senses. The people conjectured that he had unwittingly trodden on a sacred place belonging to Tagaro, and that the ghost of the man who lately sacrificed there was angry with him. The doctors were called in; they found out whose ghost it was by calling on the names of dead men likely to have been offended, they washed him with water made powerful with charms, and then burned the vessel in which the magic water had been under his nose; he got well. In a similar case they will put bits of the fringe of a mat, which had belonged to the deceased, into a cocoa-nut shell, and burn it under the nose of the possessed. There was another man who threw off his malo and went naked at a feast, a sure sign of being out of his mind; he drew his bow at people, and carried things off. The people pitied him, and tried to cure him. When a man in such condition in that island spoke, it was not with his own voice, but with that of the dead man who possessed him; and such a man would know where things were hidden; when he was seen coming men would hide a bow or a club to try him, and he would always know where to find it. Thus the possession which causes madness cannot be quite distinguished from that which prophesies, and a man may pretend to be mad that he may get the reputation of being a prophet. At Saa a man will speak with the voice of a powerful man deceased, with contortions of the body which come upon him when he is possessed; he calls himself, and is spoken to by others, by the name of the dead man who speaks through him; he will eat fire, lift enormous weights, and foretell things to come. In the Banks’ Islands the people make a distinction between possession by a ghost that enters a man for some particular purpose, and that by a ghost which comes for no other apparent cause than that being without a home in the abode of the dead he wanders mischievously about, a tamat lelera, a wandering ghost. Wonderful feats of strength and agility used to be performed under the influence of one of these “wandering ghosts”; a man would move with supernatural quickness from place to place, he would be heard shouting at one moment in a lofty tree on one side of a village, and in another moment in a tree on the opposite side, he would utter sounds such as no man could make, his strength was such that many men could hardly master him. Such a man was seized by his friends and held struggling in the smoke of strong-smelling leaves, while they called one after another the names of the dead men whose ghosts were likely to be abroad; when the right
name was called the ghost departed, but sometimes this treatment failed. 1
This is the manner in which the Melanesians set about invoking the spirits, that is to say for the purpose of inducing possession artificially:
This has been described by a native under the name of Na tamet lingalinga, by which name those who are subjected to the ghostly influence are called. It is done, he writes, on the fifth day after a death. There was a certain man at Lo who took the lead, and without whom nothing could be done; he gave out that he would descend into Panoi, the abode of the dead, and he had with him certain others, assistants. He and his party were called simply “ghosts” when engaged in the affair. The first thing was to assemble those who were willing to be treated in a gamal, a public hall, perhaps twenty young men or boys, to make them lie down on the two sides, and to shake over them leaves and tips of the twigs of plants powerful and magical with charms. Then the leader and his assistants went into all the sacred places which ghosts haunt, such as where men wash off the black of mourning, collecting as they went the ghosts and becoming themselves so much possessed that they appeared to have lost their senses, though they acted in a certain method. In the meanwhile the subjects lying in the gamal begin to be moved; those who bring as they say the ghosts to them go quietly along both sides of the house without, and all at once strike the house along its whole length with the sticks they carry in their hands. This startles those inside, and they roll about on the ground distracted. Then the “ghosts” enter in with their sticks, and in this performance each is believed to be some one deceased, one Tagilrow, another Qatawala; they leap from side to side, turning their sticks over to be beaten by the subjects on one side and the other. The subjects are given sticks for this purpose, and as they strike the stick the ghost “strikes,” possesses, them one after another. In this state the sticks draw them out into the open place of the village, where they are seen. They appear not to recognize or hear any one but the “ghosts” who have brought this upon them, and who alone can control them and prevent them from pulling down the houses; for they have a rage for seizing and striking with anything—bows, clubs, bamboo water-vessels, or the rafters of the houses—and their strength is such that a full-grown man cannot hold a boy in this state. After a time the “ghosts” take them back into the gamal, and there they lie exhausted; the “ghosts” go to drink kava, and as each drinks he pours away the dregs calling the name of one of the possessed, and the senses of each return as his name is called. It is five days, however, before they can go about again. This was done once after a Christian teacher had come to Lo, and two of his scholars whom he let go to prove that it was a deception were possessed.1
In New Guinea possession has a bearing on all important circumstances affecting either the individual or the family. Ancestor-worship is practised there, and the natives have the portraits of their ancestors carved in wood in their houses. These are made the object of a certain cult with sacrifices, but this is not all; natives endowed with a particular aptitude plunge themselves when occasion arises into a state of possession before these ancestors in order to ask their advice on important questions. The ancestor-gods are induced to speak not by efforts to obtain from the wooden images some utterance which is afterwards interpreted, but by persuading the ancestor dwelling in the image to enter into the body of a living man and thus pronounce real words. The head of the household or else a professional sorcerer acts as medium.
A Dutch writer describes as follows the manner in which these images of ancestors are questioned through the agency of possessed persons.
When anyone is sick and wishes to know the means of cure, or when anyone desires to avert misfortune or to discover something unknown, then in presence of the whole family one of the members is stupefied by the fumes of incense or by other means of producing a state of trance. The image of the deceased person whose advice is sought is then placed on the lap or shoulder of the medium in order to cause the soul to pass out of the image into his body. At the moment when that happens, he begins to shiver; and encouraged by the bystanders, the soul speaks through the mouth of the medium and names the means of cure or of averting the calamity. When he comes to himself, the medium knows nothing of what he has been saying. This they call kor karwar, that is, “invoking the soul”; and they say karwar iwas, “the soul speaks.” The writer adds: “It is sometimes reported that the souls go to the underworld, but that is not true. The Papuans think that after death the soul abides by the corpse and is buried with it in the grave; hence before an image is made, if it is necessary to consult the soul, the enquirer must betake himself to the grave in order to do so. But when the image is made, the soul enters into it and is supposed to remain in it so long as satisfactory answers are obtained from it in consultation. But should the answers prove disappointing, the people think that the soul has deserted the image, on which they throw the image away as useless. Where the soul has gone, nobody knows, and they do not trouble their heads about it, since it has lost its power.2
Amongst the Vindessi of New Guinea the idea of possession is particularly connected with the conception, so frequent amongst other primitive races as well as this one, of a double soul existing in man. According to their belief, every human being has two souls. When a woman dies they believe that two souls pass into the other world, but when it is a man only one does so; the other may enter into a living person, generally a man but occasionally a woman. A man who has thus become possessed is considered as a medicine-man or a woman as a medicine-woman.
When a person wishes to become a medicine-man or medicine-woman, he or she acts as follows. If a man has died, and his friends are sitting about the corpse lamenting, the would-be medicine-man suddenly begins to shiver and to rub his knee with his folded hands, while he utters a monotonous sound. Gradually he falls into an ecstasy, and if his whole body shakes convulsively, the spirit of the dead man is supposed to have entered into him, and he becomes a medicine-man. Next day or the day after he is taken into the forest; some hocus-pocus is performed over him, and the spirits of lunatics, who dwell in certain thick trees, are invoked to take possession of him. He is now himself called a lunatic, and on returning home behaves as if he were half crazed. This completes his training as a medicine-man, and he is now fully qualified to kill or cure the sick.1
The great work on New Guinea edited by Neuhauss is remarkable for a complete absence of reference to possession as well as to Shamanism. The only thing possibly relating to these subjects concerns certain “fits of madness.” There are cases in which single individuals are out of their mind for hours, or more rarely days at a time, and inclined to commit grave acts of violence. The missionary Ch. Keysser says: “This state is considered to result from a mysterious influence exercised by spirits.”2 This remark is unhappily too vague for us to deduce from it with safety that the natives regard these states as true possession. In the Fiji Islands each tribe contains a family on whom alone it is incumbent to become inspired or possessed from time to time by a holy spirit.
Their qualification is hereditary, and any one of the ancestral gods may choose his vehicle from among them. I have seen this possession, and a horrible sight it is. In one case, after the fit was over, for some time the man’s muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary way. He was naked except for his breech-clout, and on his naked breast snakes seemed to be wriggling for a moment or two beneath his skin, disappearing and then suddenly reappearing in another part of his chest. When the mbete (which we may translate “priest” for want of a better word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls out his own name in a stridulous tone: “It is I! Katouivere!” or some other name. At the next possession some other ancestor may declare himself.1
Of the Southern Islands of the Pacific Ocean Ellis writes:
Appearing to the priest in a dream of the night, though a frequent, was neither the only nor the principal mode by which the god intimated his will. He frequently entered the priest, who, inflated as it were
with the divinity, ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence. In this respect there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of the Polynesians and those of the celebrated nations of ancient Greece.
As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became violently agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy, the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, and the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god. The priests, who were attending, and versed in the mysteries, received, and reported to the people, the declarations which had been thus received.
When the priest had uttered the response of the oracle, the violent paroxysm gradually subsided, and comparative composure ensued. The god did not, however, always leave him as soon as the communication had been made. Sometimes the same taura, or priest, continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit or deity; a piece of native cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication of inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it. The acts of the man during this period were considered as those of the god, and hence the greatest attention was paid to his expressions, and the whole of his deportment.2
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