420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



THE SHAMAN— CALL TO OFFICE 



In some tribes the office of a shaman is hereditary; in others a 

 predisposition to it suffices. Among the Tunguse of Trans-Baikalia 

 a would-be shaman declares that a departed shaman has appeared 

 to him in a dream commanding him to take his office. Among 

 the Buryats and Lapps the office is usually hereditary, although 

 anyone may become a shaman or be chosen by the gods. The 

 inhabitants of the Altai district in northern central Asia consider 

 that tlie vocation of a shaman is spontaneously transmitted by in- 

 heritance from parents to children, like a kind of incubation. 

 Among the Ostyaks the shaman chooses one of his sons, according 

 to his fitness, to be his successor. The Yakuts believe that Sha- 

 manism seizes involuntarily upon the chosen individual. " It is 

 in general no rare occurrence that men who have been struck by 

 lightning are looked upon as chosen by the gods and are therefore 

 admitted to priestly honors. * * * Among the Buryats, if any- 

 body is killed by lightning, it is held to betoken the will of the 

 gods, who have thereby conferred a certain distinction upon the 

 family of the dead man ; he is considered a shaman, and his nearest 

 relative enjoys the right of shamanhood." ^ The Tunguse con- 

 sider children who bleed at the nose or mouth to be destined by the 

 gods to the profession of a shaman. 



But in any case, whether succeeding to the office of shaman by 

 heredity or chosen by the spirits or self-chosen, the candidate usually 

 exhibits psychopathic traits. He is shy, distrait and moody, given 

 to hallucinations and trances, or he is subject to epileptic fits. He 

 is fond of solitude and takes to the woods, jumps into fire or water, 

 hurts himself with weapons, and in general betrays the symptoms 

 of an abnormal person. Such abnormality is, however, by no means 

 universal. 



When once called to the office of a shaman the candidate is not 

 free to accept or to decline the call. " The power of the ancestors 

 having passed into him, he must needs shamanize. If he resists 

 the will of his ancestors he exposes himself to terrible tortures, end- 

 ing either in the entire loss of his mental power, becoming an im- 

 becile, or in stark madness, which ends in suicide or death in a 

 paroxism."^ In general, "the vocation of the shaman is attended 

 with considerable danger. The slightest lack of harmony between 

 the acts of the shamans and the mysterious call of their ' spirits ' 



5 Gunnar Landtman, The Origin of Priesthood, Elieinaes, Finland, 1905, p. 98. Com- 

 pare John R. Swanton In Handbook of the American. Indians, II, p. 522. 



« Radloff, op. cit., p. 10 f. With regard to the shamans or medicine men of the Ameri- 

 can Indians, comp. A. J. Dixon, " Some aspects of the American shaman," American Jour- 

 nal of Folklore, vol. XXI, No. LXXX, p. 2. Similarly compelling is the call to the office 

 of a Mutang among the Koreans, comp. I. M. Casanowicz, Paraphernalia of a Korean 

 sorceress in the U. S. National Museum, Proc. vol. 51, 1916, p. 593. 



