Possession, Demoniacal And Other

by T K Oesterreich

  This theory is also confirmed by Radloff’s description,2 the most detailed account given by a German investigator of the shamanistic ceremonies, but unfortunately much too long to be reproduced here.

  The ceremony begins with an appeal and invocation to the spirits. Then the shaman appears to set off on a journey through the various regions of the heavens—according to the belief of these peoples the heavens are composed of various regions. The shaman seeks as best he may to give a vivid picture of this journey, and also makes the spirits talk, that is to say he speaks in their stead. It is as if an actor played several scenes single-handed and impersonated various characters in turn. Up to this point Shamanism recalls true possession, but when we realize that everything takes place in a pre-determined order, that the words of the spirits are fixed in advance, we shall be reluctant to admit true possession, and shall rather believe that these are stereotyped ceremonies. Nevertheless there is no doubt that such set performances are the echo of earlier true phenomena of possession. What to-day is stereotyped was once spontaneous and involuntary.

  It is surprising that in spite of this the shamans even now fall into quite abnormal states of excitement, the wildness of which recalls those of the energumens.

  From the highest god the shaman learns “whether the sacrifice is favourably received or not; he also receives from him the best predictions as to whether the weather is set or what its changes will be, bad harvest, failure of crops, whether Uelguen (the god in question) expects still further offerings and of what kind.”1 Unfortunately Radloff does not expressly say in what manner the shaman obtains this information, whether by acoustic or visual hallucinations or else whether he himself speaks in place of the god. Radloff speaks of a “conversation”with Uelguen without it being possible for us to know whether the shaman hears the god speak in his own imagination or whether there is a dialogue in which he speaks alternately in his own name and in the god’s. If this latter hypothesis were true, which I do not believe to be the case, the reality of true possession in shamanistic conjurations would be demonstrated.

  That there is nothing more than a mere audition of words is almost established by what Radloff relates of shamanistic practices amongst the Kirghiz converts to Mohammedanism. He remarks that “after the meal it is the custom for the baksa (shaman) to make known what he has learnt … from the spirit.”2

  All that has hitherto been said of Siberian Shamanism is based on the German literature concerning Siberia. The Russian literature is far more extensive but remains inaccessible to me, although it may to some extent be replaced by a dissertation of the University of Halle published shortly before the war by a young Russian ethnologist called Tschubinow. It was to have appeared in extended form in Krüger’s Arbeiten zur Entwicklungspsychologie, and contains a review of the Russian literature of the subject. Up to the present this is the most thorough work which has appeared in German on Siberian Shamanism, but unfortunately it does not pursue in further detail the question, all-important so far as we are concerned, of the extent to which states of possession occur. Broadly speaking, Tschubinow’s text and arguments produce the same impression as the writings of German travellers.

  Tschubinow also gives a description of a typical shamanistic performance,1 from which the reader is at first inclined to believe that the shamans are possessed and that spirits do indeed speak by their mouths. This would nevertheless be a fallacy, for scrutiny of the other evidence reveals that there is no spirit-speech of the kind so abundantly known to us from primitive regions; the shaman practices something much more like ventriloquism. Thus the spirits do not speak through him as through the possessed, but he imitates them voluntarily.

  “The shamans of the Tshukshs and Koriaks utilize ventriloquism in such a way that the demons utter articulate sounds, incomprehensible to the spectators, the sense of which the shaman sums up from time to time. The shamans in their way achieve—especially amongst the Tshukshs—the most impressive effects.” “The sounds make themselves heard somewhere very high up, approach little by little, seem to pass like a hurricane through the walls, and finally vanish into the bowels of the earth.”2

  There can naturally be no question of true possession in these performances; ventriloquism is clearly the artificial substitute for true possession which is wanting. The Siberian shaman appears to be a relatively late religious phenomenon.

  The following description shows very plainly the extent to which the whole performance is pre-arranged.

  Amongst the more highly developed peoples he (the shaman) is the only actor—the centre of general attention and of dramatico-religious interest. He arranges the dialogue so as to appeal to the audience on their sentimental side, and combines the various poetic measures and other modes of expression in such a manner as to render the finest shades of meaning while at the same time producing a general impression of unity. The prosody and music of the songs are very strictly prescribed, even when the text is improvised and variable.3

  This recalls the accounts of the Vedda shamans.

  It is obvious that the manifestations of the Siberian shamans are not all identical in character, the excitement to which the shaman works himself up making it inevitable that individuals who lack stability should fall into abnormal states. Even if to all appearance it is visionary states which preponderate, there is naturally no reason why the phenomena of possession should not also be produced on occasion. But as Siberian Shamanism is now no longer anything more than a sort of play-acting, this occurs much more rarely than amongst the primitive peoples, with whom everything is still genuine and where visions and possession have not yet given rise to theatrical performances. In Siberian Shamanism we have a very interesting primitive form of dramatic spectacle, more primitive than history enables us to discover in the Græco-Roman world, and yet more recent and highly developed than that of the Shamanism intimately connected with true possession of most other primitive peoples.

  Tschubinow repeatedly speaks of “states of trance,” without defining more clearly the meaning of this expression. We must understand it as denoting somnambulistic or at least pseudo-somnambulistic states in which the shaman is insensible to the ordinary stimuli of the outer world—words addressed to him, etc.

  The sorcerer loses all sense of reality when by inhaling smoke or smoking tobacco, as well as fixing his gaze upon the hearth-fire, he has reached a state bordering on intoxication. He begins to get into touch with the invisible powers and sometimes falls into a trance.…1 In this state the shaman sees and hears the spirits and converses with them.2

  Nevertheless many of Tschubinow’s data seem to leave open the possibility that possession occurs in many cases amongst the Siberian shamans. Thus a sudden collapse of the shaman is not unknown. “Sometimes on the appearance of the spirit the shaman falls to the earth as if struck by lightning.”3

  The exact manner in which the shaman gets into touch with the spirits is said by Tschubinow to be unexplained:

  When the sorcerer has changed the drumming to a new measure he begins to sing a conjuration; then the spirits of the ancestors approach. Our knowledge of these operations is unfortunately very imperfect and existing literature still fails to explain them in any way.1

  It is of the highest interest that in the neurological clinic of Tomsk in 1909 Doctor W. W. Karelin observed in a shaman of the Altaï the following physiological changes when he was shamanizing:

  The shaman’s pulse increased from 80 to 100 before the magic action, to 200 afterwards, the respiration from 20–24 to 36, the temperature from 36.5 to 38.7. 2 The muscular strength showed a marked augmentation in the right hand and a slight one in the left. The reflexes of the legs, which were generally very weak, disappeared completely after the magic action. 3

  The word shaman is, moreover, often understood, even by Ehrenreich, in a sense so wide as to embrace persons who induce in themselves sleep and dreams by artificial means. 4

  If in spite of their wide divergence the genuine states o
f possession of other peoples are generally included under the name of Shamanism, this is at bottom a misuse of words, an application of the term to states which are entirely distinct from true Shamanism. Perhaps nothing is more significant of how little psychology has hitherto come into its own in ethnological works; it has not been observed that completely different things have been falsely identified. Once the word Shamanism has been adopted into the language as embracing possession—and this has become quite usual not only in German but also in English literature—it is very difficult to divorce it from this association again. In future it will be necessary to bear clearly in mind that true Shamanism is something quite distinct from possession-Shamanism.

  So far as north Asiatic Shamanism is concerned the most important problem arising and the investigation of which I should like to commend to Russian researchers as the persons most nearly interested, is a close psychological study of the shamans, not only during shamanistic phenomena, but also at other times. The thorough individual observation of a single shaman might readily be worth more than the whole mass of “casual” travellers’ tales. The neuropsychic constitution of the shaman requires elucidation, as well as the manner in which the shamanistic states come on. How far does his will intervene in their production and cessation? Are the phenomena which occur akin to somnambulism or is memory complete? What is the history of the shaman’s youthful development?

  As Shamanism is dying out it is high time that such investigations were undertaken. If there is much delay the opportunity will have vanished for ever.

  1 Engl. trans. in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. xxiv (1895), pp. 62–100 and 126–158. Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia, being the Second Part of “Shamanstvo” (from the 12th vol. of the Proceedings of the Ethnological Section of the Royal Russian Society, etc., 1892, in Russian). Unfortunately most of the sources to which it refers are likewise in Russian.

  2 Ibid., p. 158.

  1 By way of example the author here gives a quotation from the works of J. G. Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien (Göttingen, 1752) which is, as he states, entirely lacking in precision and psychological interest (R. Sudre).

  2 F. von Wrangel, Reise längs der Nordküste von Sibirien und auf dem Eismeere in den Jahren 1820–1824, ed. with a foreword by C. Ritter (38th and 39th vols., Rlagazin von merkwürdigen neuen Reisebeschreibungen =14th vol. of the new Magazine), Berlin, 1839, vol. i, p. 285.

  1 Ibid., pp. 286 sq.

  1 Ibid.

  2 M. Alexander Castrén, Nordische Reisen und Forschungen, vol. i., Reiseerinnerungen aus den Jahren 1838–1848. St. Petersburg, 1853, p. 291.

  1 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 192 sq.

  1 A. Bastian, Ein Besuch bei den buratischen Schamanen, in “Geographische und ethnologische Bilder,” Jena, 1873, p. 406.

  1 P. S. Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs in einem ausführlichen Auszuge, part iii, Frankfurt, 1778, pp. 84–86.

  1 Bastian, loc. cit., p. 402.

  2 Ibid., p. 406.

  3 Mikhaïlowsky, loc. cit., pp. 85 sq.

  1 Gustav Klemm, Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der iMenschheit, vol. iii, Leipzig, 1844, p. 105. Also Georgi, Bemerkungen auf einer Reise im russischen Reiche, vol. i, pp. 275 sq.

  2 W. Radloff, Aus Sibirien, Lose Blätter aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden Linguisten, vol. ii, Leipzig, 1884, pp. 16 sq.

  1 Mikhaïlowsky, loc. cit., p. 87.

  2 Wrangel, loc. cit., vol. i, pp. 285 sq.

  1 Mikhaïlowsky, loc. cit., pp. 131 sq.

  2 W. Radloff, op. cit.

  1 Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 49 sq.

  2 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 62.

  1 G. Tschubinow, Beiträge zum psychologischen Verständnis des sibirischen Zauberers, Diss., Halle, 1914, pp. 34–38.

  2 Ibid., pp. 55 sq.

  3 Ibid., p. 57.

  1 Ibid., p. 48.

  2 Ibid., p. 51.

  3 Ibid., p. 57.

  1 Ibid., p. 49.

  2 I.e., a rise in temperature of more than 2 degrees due to essentially psychic causes (36.5 is a surprisingly low temperature).

  3 Ibid., pp. 66 sq.

  4 P. Ehrenreich, Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Brasiliens in Veröffentlichungen aus dem Königl. Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin, 1891, vol. ii, part i, p. 33.

  CHAPTER IX

  ARTIFICIAL AND VOLUNTARY POSSESSION AMONGST THE HIGHER CIVILIZATIONS

  (i.) IN THE PAST (THE GRÆCO-ROMEN WORLD)

  IN the Græco-Roman world religious possession did not, so far as we are aware, constitute one of the primordial elements of life. It was still unknown to Homer, and in more recent times was brought into Greece from Asia and Thrace, producing phenomena analogous to possession which persisted in a greater or less degree down to the Christian era. Even in the cult of Apollo which had in turn replaced an older worship at Delphi, inspiration was introduced at a late date, and even then from Dionysiac worship.

  The vehicles of manifestations resembling possession in the ancient world are almost exclusively women. We must consider on the one hand the “seeresses”and on the other the participants in the cult of Dionysos.

  The foremost of the prophetesses of Greek antiquity is Cassandra; yet it is remarkable that in Homer she as yet possesses no gift of vision, or at least there is no mention of it, either in the Iliad or Odyssey.

  She first appears as a seeress in Æschylus’ Oresteia, but is in no way possessed; she beholds the future in visions. Thus Lykophron does not show her as possessed in his poem Alexandra. When she says “I” it is of herself that she speaks, it is not Apollo speaking through her mouth. He has conferred on her the gift of reading the future, but it is always she who prophesies and speaks, distinguished from others only by the gift of foreseeing future events.1 Cassandra cannot therefore be regarded as the poetic prototype of Greek religious possession.

  Amongst the possessed prophetesses of historic times the most eminent is the Pythoness.2 The seeress of Delphi is mentioned innumerable times, but we can form no clear and certain picture of her inspirations; everything is wrapped in obscurity and contradiction. Unfortunately little is known about her; there exists no eye-witness’s description designed to hand down to posterity a detailed knowledge of the Delphic priestess. Much of the information given by existing documents is, moreover, disputed.

  The priestess was originally a maiden from the surrounding countryside who must keep her virginity. Later, after a priestess had fallen victim to a sexual assault, a fifty-year-old woman was chosen. She was—at least in Plutarch’s time (second century A.D.)—required to undergo no training.

  In early times the Pythoness only gave replies on one fixed day in each year; later, when the influx of visitors increased, it was one day a month. The replies were given at once and uninterruptedly, and at its zenith the oracle was even in constant activity, two Pythonesses alternating regularly while a third was in readiness to assist them.1 In Plutarch’s time it was once more sufficient, owing principally to the terrible depopulation of Greece, for the Pythoness to give her utterances once a month, for now as formerly pilgrims came but seldom to consult the oracle. According to Plutarch a preliminary sacrifice was, moreover, necessary, and only when the sacrificial animal at once trembled and whined did the priests lead in the Pythoness.2

  It is generally thought3 that the Pythoness, when an oracle was demanded, made lustral ablutions, and then wearing a golden headdress, clad in long robes and her head encircled with laurel-leaves, went into the Adyton, drank from the spring Kassotis and chewed laurel-leaves. She seated herself upon a tripod above a cleft in the rock from whence arose inspiring vapours, then fell into a state of enthusiasm in which, apparently under the influence of Apollo, she foretold the future and gave counsel either in plain words or more often by dark sayings. Near her stood a to whom those consulting the oracle imparted their questions either verbally or in writing.

  The state of inspiration into which she fell was one of great excitement. Unhappil
y we know very little about it, as is clearly demonstrated by the summary statements of philologists.

  P. Stengel comes to the following conclusion:

  Owing to the gaseous emanations arising from the gulf, the Pythoness was thrown into an ecstasy. She then pronounced more or less consecutive words which were rendered by the priests into often very bad hexameters or later into other poetic metres also, and imparted to the questioners. Sometimes the replies were given in prose. The Pythoness must often have found herself in a state which rendered her incapable of reasoning, and it was then the duty of the priests to see what they could make of her words and outcries. But deliberate fraud was certainly rare. It may have occurred in isolated cases and a Pythoness is even reported to have been deprived of her office because she was alleged, on receipt of a bribe, to have given a false oracle. But in the hey-day of the oracles the Pythoness and the priests themselves believed, as a general rule, that the god spoke in her; and even if these men, wily, and for the most part well-informed as to the circumstances of the questioners, showed moreover all possible circumspection and were content to speak darkly and ambiguously where not sure of their ground, it would be impossible to explain the extraordinary regard which the oracle enjoyed for centuries by an attempt to posit repeated fraud. Lysandros made attempts at corruption at Delphi, at Dodona, and in the seat of the Ammonian oracle, but was everywhere frustrated and finally betrayed.1