Possession, Demoniacal And Other
Page 43
1 Same title, London, 1905, vol. ii, p. 228.
2 Cf. Maxwell, Shamanism, 1883, p. 226, and Skeat, Malay Magic, 1900, p. 443.
3 Martin, loc. cit., p. 961.
4 E. H. Man, On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, London (1884?)
5 M. V. Portman, A History of our Relation with the Andamanese, 2 vols., Calcutta, 1899.
1 P. and F. Sarasin, Die Veddas, in Ergebnisse naturw. Forschungen auf Ceylon in den Jahren, 1884–86, vol. iii, Wiesbaden, 1893.
2 C. G. Seligmann and Brenda Seligmann, The Veddas, Cambridge, 1911.
1 Ibid., pp. 128 sq.
2 Ibid., pp. 129 sq.
1 Ibid., pp. 133 sq.
2 It is interesting to note that the Seligmanns wondered whether hysteria were not present amongst the Veddas. They reached the following conclusion: “There was nothing about the general behaviour of all the Veddas with whom we came into contact that suggested a neurotic or hysterical tendency. The graver stigmata of hysteria, which would warrant a diagnosis of functional disease, were also absent, and the Veddas, even when ill, were in no sense fuss-makers or inclined to magnify their ailments in the way so many Melanesians do” (The Veddas, p. 135, note).
1 Ibid., p. 135.
2 Ibid., p. 136.
3 Ibid., p. 166.
1 Ibid., p. 151.
2 Ibid., p. 153.
1 Ibid., pp. 209 sq.
2 Ibid., pp. 211 sq.
3 Ibid., chap. ix.
1 Leo Frobenius, Und Afrika sprach …, vol. ii, Berlin, 1912, chap. xi.
2 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 249.
3 Ibid., p. 249.
1 Ibid., pp. 258–260.
2 Ibid., p. 270.
1 Tremearne, Hausa Superstitions and Customs, London, 1913, p. 146.
2 Ibid., The Ban of the Bori, London, 1919.
3 Tremearne, Hausa Superstitions …, p. 146; from Benton, Notes on Some Languages of the Western Sudan, p. 15.
1 Ibid., p. 148. The pictures are near the title-page.
2 Ibid., p. 530.
1 The names in brackets are those of the dancers representing the spirits.
2 Tremearne, The Ban of the Bori, p. 287.
3 Tremearne, Hausa Superstitions, pp. 530 and 532.
4 Tremearne, The Ban of the Bori, p. 288.
5 Ibid., p. 287.
1 Tremearne, Hausa Superstitions, p. 534.
2 Ibid., p. 536.
3 Ibid., p. 537.
1 Ibid., p. 538.
2 Tremearne, The Ban of the Bori, p. 377.
3 Ibid., p. 257.
1 Ibid., pp. 288 sq.
1 Ibid., pp. 292 sq.
2 Possession is imagined as a ride on horseback. The Bori rides the possessed, “he mounts him.” This image has already been used. We read in Fritz Langer, Intellektualmythologie, Berlin, 1916, p. 252: “Amongst popular beliefs we meet the image of the horseman.…; It is connected with the idea of possession, ‘The devil rides so-and-so’ is a well-known metaphor still encountered to-day. (Cf. Grimm, Mythologie, i, p. 384: ‘The devil has listened to you and ridden you; as Satan, so the nightmare: nightmare- or hobgoblin-ridden.’) A man who is ridden by the devil is, in fact, possessed by the devil, and in the same way he may be ridden by a demon, a witch, etc., whither the malignant power wills.”
1 Tremearne, The Ban of the Bori, pp. 259–60.
2 A. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, vol. ii, Leipzig, 1860, p. 151.
1 O. Dapper, Umständliche und eigentliche Beschreibung von Africa und denen dazu gehörigen Königreichen und Landschaften, etc., Amsterdam, Anno MDCLXX, pp. 530 sq.
1 A. Lang, The Making of Religion, 2nd edit., London, 1900, p. 141.
2 J. Warneck, Die Religion der Batak, Göttingen, 1909, p. 68.
1 In conjunction with Warneck’s work see Die Lebenskräfte des Evangeliums. Missionserfahrungen innerhalb des animistischen Heidentums, 3rd edit., Berlin, 1908, and the study Der bataksche Ahnenund Geisterkult, “Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift,” 1904.
1 I refer mainly to documents communicated by Warneck, because they are essentially composed of accounts gleaned from the natives. These are not by any means the only ones we possess, many others being fully utilized in a great work by G. A. Wilken, Het Shamanisme bij de Volken van den Indischen Archipel, which appeared in “Bijdragen tot de Taal Land en Volken Kunde van Nederlandsch Indie,” Vidfje Volgrecks, Tweede Deel, 1887, pp. 427–497. The reader is referred to this work for supplementary information.
1 Ibid., pp. 8 sq.
1 Ibid., pp. 89 sq.
2 Ibid., pp. 93 sq.
3 Ibid., p. 104.
1 J. Warneck, Der bataksche Ahnen- und Geisterkult, “Allgem. Missions-Zeitschr.,” 1904, vol. xxxi, p. 74.
2 Ibid., p. 76.
3 Warneck, Die Lebenskräfte des Evangeliums, Berlin, 1908, 3rd edit., p. 63.
4 Ibid.., p. 229.
1 Cf. above, p. 244.
1 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula, London, 1900, pp. 440–444.
2 W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, London, 1906, vol. ii, p. 307.
1 Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 465.
2 Emil and Lenore Selenka, Sonnige Welten, Ostasiatische Reise-Stizzen; Wiesbaden, 1896, p. 73.
3 W. Mariner, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, ed. by John Martin, 2 vols., London, 1817.
1 W. Mariner, An Account, etc., pp. 106–108.
2 Ibid., p. 112.
3 Ibid., pp. 112 sq.
1 The souls of deceased nobles become gods of the second rank in Bolotoo (Mariner).
2 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 111–112.
1 W. Mariner, An Account …, vol. i, p. 112.
2 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 145.
3 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 146.
4 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 110 sq.
5 Ibid., vol. i, p. 112.
1 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 145–46.
2 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 145.
3 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 146.
4 Codrington, The Melanesians, Oxford, 1891.
1 Ibid., p. 153.
2 These accounts of spontaneous cases belong logically to Chap. V.
3 Ibid., pp. 209 sq.
1 Ibid., p. 154.
1 Ibid., pp. 218 sq.
1 Ibid., pp. 224 sq.
2 F. S. A. de Clerq, De-West en Noordküst van Nederlandsch Nieu-Guinea, in “Tijdschrift van het Kon. Nederlandsch Aardrijskundig Genootschap,” Tweede Serie, x (1893), quoted by J. G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, vol. i, London, 1913, p. 309 (Gifford Lectures, St. Andrews, 1911-12).
1 J. G. Frazer, ibid., p. 322.
2 R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, vol. iii, Berlin, 1911, p. 79.
1 Private letter of the Rev. Lorimer Fison to J. G. Frazer, The Magic Art, London, 1911, vol. i, p. 378.
2 W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 2nd edit., London, 1832–36, i, p. 372.
3 K. von der Steinen, Durch Zentral Brasilien, Leipzig, 1884. Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, 2nd edit., Leipzig, 1897.
4 K. Th. Preuss, Nayarit-Expedition, Leipzig, 1912.
5 Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern. Reisen in Nordwest Brasilien, 1903–05, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1910.
1 Ibid., vol. ii p. 196.
1 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 173 sq.
1 Otto Stoll, Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie, 2nd edit., Leipzig, 1904, p. 131.
2 James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion, Ethnol. Report, Washington, vol. xiv, 1896.
1 J. Adrian Jacobsen, Geheimbiinde der Küstenbewohner Nordwest-Amerikas. In: Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 1891, p. 384.
2 Ibid., pp. 386 sq.
1 Ibid., p. 388.
1 Ibid., pp. 390–92.
2 H. Beuchat, Manuel d’archéologie américaine (Amérique préhistorique—Civilisations disparues), Paris, 1912, p. 419.
/> 3 Ed. Seler, Altmexikanische Studien, Museum für Völkerkunde, vi, parts 2–4, Berlin, 1899, pp. 42 sq.
4 Ibid., p. 45.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SHAMANISM OF THE NORTH ASIATIC PEOPLES IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO POSSESSION
WE shall now pass to the countries from which the word “Shamanism” originates, as it was first generally used in connection with their sorcerers.
We should expect to find the phenomena of possession at their height, both as regards intensity and general prevalence, in these lands. Whether this expectation is justified and in what measure remains to be seen. We must first pass in review the relevant literature.
V. M. Mikhaïlowsky published in 1892 in the Transactions of the Russian Royal Society of Natural History, Anthropology and Ethnography a large number of accounts of Shamanism amongst the peoples of Asiatic Russia: Tunguses, Yakuts, Samoyedes, Ostiaks, Tshuktsh, Koriaks, Kamchadals, Giliaks, Mongols, Buriats, Altaians, Kirghiz, Teleutes, etc.1 He has come to the following conclusions:
Throughout the vast extent of the Russian Empire, from Behring’s Strait to the borders of the Scandinavian Peninsula, among the multitudinous tribes preserving remains of their former heathen beliefs, we find in a greater or less degree Shamonist phenomena. Despite the variety of races and the enormous distances that separate them, the phenomena which we class under the general name of Shamonism are found repeated with marvellous regularity.2
I shall now give some descriptions, both ancient and modern, taken from German literature, which I have found more accurate than any other. It is noteworthy that the data furnished by the more recent travellers are much superior to those of the earlier ones, but as a matter of fact, accounts satisfying all the requirements of the psychologist are still to seek.
The travellers of the eighteenth century, the “Age of Enlightenment,” could not do enough to show the shamans as mere charlatans or impostors. Their accounts are therefore devoid of information.1
With the romantic period the corresponding deepening in the scientific spirit resulted in the abandonment of the rationalistic view of Shamanism as mere trickery, in fact the change of attitude even went too far in the opposite direction. To-day the bona fides and psychological genuineness of a considerable proportion of shamanistic states is generally recognized, but on the other hand it is universally held that not all manifestations of the shamans are authentic and that imposture goes hand in hand with abnormal phenomena. It is reserved for future investigators to indicate the exact division between the two and above all to determine by close study up to what point both genuine phenomena and trickeries are common property, or differ from one shaman to another. Given the continual melting away of primitive conditions before the “sun”of civilization, it is much to be desired that such researches should be carried out very urgently and under the auspices of the state. Amongst the numerous scientific tasks which it will be easier to execute in the Russia of the future than in that of the past is the investigation of the religious life of its highly diversified populations.
Wrangel, a late eighteenth-century traveller remarkable for his scrupulous accuracy, was the first, or one of the first, to declare the shamans to be more than impostors and play-actors. In certain circumstances they would endure ill-treatment rather than go back in any way on their words.
It is not infrequent for the shaman to be severely beaten in order to induce him to change an unwelcome pronouncement; sometimes this little domestic remedy helps, but the shaman often has firmness enough to stand by his opinion, a fact which infallibly raises him in the public esteem to a marked degree.2
Almost all those who up to the present have expressed an opinion on the shamans have represented them as unqualified impostors of a crude and vulgar kind, whose ecstasies are nothing more than an illusion created for base purposes of gain. From all that I have been able to observe in the course of my journeyings in Siberia, both here and in various other places, this judgement appears to me harsh and unjust. At least it is entirely partial and only applicable to charlatans who travel about under the name of shamans and excite the people’s wonderment by all sorts of apparently supernatural tricks, such as grasping a red-hot iron, walking to and fro on it, running long needles through their skin, etc., in order to extract money from them.
Anyone who has observed a true shaman at the height of ecstasy will certainly … admit that he is neither able to practise deception, at least at that moment, nor desirous of doing so, but that what is occurring to him is a consequence of the involuntary and irresistible influence of his intensely stimulated imagination. A true shaman is certainly a very remarkable psychological phenomenon. Every time that here or elsewhere I have seen shamans operate they have left on me a dark impression which was long in fading. The wild glance, blood-shot eyes, raucous voice which seemed to come forth with extreme effort from a chest racked by spasmodic movements, the unnatural convulsive distortion of the face and body, the bristling hair, and even the hollow sound of the magic drum—all this gives to the scene a horrible and mysterious character which has gripped me strangely every time, and I understand very readily how uneducated and crude children of nature see in it the sinister work of evil spirits.1
Wrangel also disputes the existence of any scholastic association amongst the shamans. He believes in the absolute independence of each individual, and explains what they have in common by the impression of external nature which is common to all the dwellers in one region.
The true shamans belong to no particular caste, they form no corporation for the accomplishment of a common aim, but arise as it were singly and remain isolated. Amongst the people men are born endowed with an ardent imagination and excitable nerves. They grow up surrounded by the belief in spirits and shamans. The apparently supernatural ecstasy of these latter, the mystic nature of their whole being, makes a profound impression on the young man. He also desires to attain to this communion with the extraordinary, the supramundane, but there is no one to show him the way, for the oldest shaman does not know how he himself found it. It is from his own inner depths that by contact with the great and sombre nature surrounding him he must derive knowledge of the incomprehensible. Solitude, reclusion from human society, vigil and fasting, stimulants and narcotics excite his imagination to the highest pitch; now he sees the apparitions and spirits of which he has heard tell in his early youth; he regards them with firm and unshakable belief. At length he is consecrated shaman—i.e., proclaimed in the stillness of the night with certain solemnities, the traditional practices, the magic drum, etc. This brings him no increase of knowledge, no change in his spiritual, his inmost being, it is a mere ceremony touching the outer man. What he henceforward feels, does and says, is and always remains the result of his own inner mood—he is no cool and deliberate impostor, no vulgar charlatan.1
Castrén relates of the Ostiaks:
Anyone can accomplish such ordinary sacrificial ceremonies, but when general sacrifices must be offered to the gods and their counsel asked on behalf of the race or a single individual, the priest or shaman is indispensable, for he alone can open the hearts of the gods and converse with them. But to the shaman the magic drum is an indispensable instrument. Ordinary sounds cannot penetrate to the ears of the gods; the shaman must conduct the conversation by means of song and drumming. Then the image of the god placed before him begins to speak, his words being nevertheless understood by the shaman only.2
The description of the Samoyede sorcerers is still more sharply characterized:
When a tadibe (as the shaman is called amongst the Samoyedes) is properly initiated into his calling, he provides himself with a drum and a special costume.… Thus attired the sorcerer sits upon the ground to ask the counsel and help of the tadebstios (spirits). In this he is assisted by a tadibe less deeply initiated than himself in his art. At the beginning of the ceremony the more experienced tadibe beats the drum and sings a mystic and terrible melody accompanied by words. The other tadibe forthwith joins in and
both sing the same air, like our Finnish runesingers. Each word and each syllable are indefinitely prolonged. When after a short prologue the conversation with the spirit begins, the superior tadibe becomes mute and strikes only lightly on his drum. Presumably he is listening for the reply of the tadebstios. Meanwhile the assistant continues to sing the last words uttered by the Master. As soon as the latter has finished his mute conversation the two tadibes break into a wild howl, the drumming grows in strength and the words of the oracle are announced.…
When, for example, a reindeer has strayed the melody is very simple. The tadibe first invokes the spirit, and one of their number said that he used the following words:
Come, come,
Spirits of sorcery!
If you come not
I shall come to you.
Waken, waken,
Spirits of sorcery!
I have come to you,
Waken from sleep.
The tadebstio replies:
Say with what
You are concerned.
Why do you come
To disturb our rest?
(These words are also sung aloud.)
The tadibe continues:
Came to me
Lately a Nienets (Samoyede),
This man who
Earnest entreats me.
Away has his reindeer gone
Therefore have I
Now come unto you.
According to my Samoyede only one tadebstio customarily replies to this invitation. When they come in numbers one says one thing and another another, so that the tadibe does not know which to listen to.
The tadibe then asks his attendant spirit to seek for the reindeer. “Seek it, seek it well, so that the reindeer may not be lost.” The tadebstio naturally obeys the command. Meanwhile the tadibe exhorts him to search very thoroughly and not to cease until the reindeer has been found. When the tadebstio returns the tadibe adjures him again to speak the truth. “Do not lie: if you lie things will not go well. My comrades will despise me. Say only what you have seen. Speak both good and ill. Speak one word only. If you say much without clearness or precision it will do me harm,” etc.
Then the spirit names the place where he has seen the reindeer.… We should not forget to say that before the conjuration the tadibe enquires all the circumstances of the loss of the reindeer, when and where it happened, whether the Samoyede supposes that it has been stolen, who are his neighbours and whether there is not an enemy amongst them, etc. If the person concerned cannot give all the necessary information the tadibe takes his drum and questions the spirits, then interrogates the Samoyede again, and continues thus until he has convinced himself as to the facts by means of the Samoyede’s own declarations. Perhaps this conviction now and then takes form during the state of exaltation as a dream or magnetic vision; so much is certain, that the tadibe believes he has received the pronouncement of the oracle from the mouth of the tadebstio appearing to his imagination.