SHAMANISM CASANOWICZ 423 



victims. The Buryats also believe that the white and black shamans 

 flight with each other, hurling axes at one another from distances 

 of hundreds of miles. The black shamans are sometimes killed 

 for their evil deeds. Landtman^^ adds: "Facts go to prove, how- 

 ever, that the distinction between good and evil disposed classes of 

 the priesthood is often arbitrarily drawn, with little or no regard 

 to the means, whether religious or magicial, which they make use of 

 in their practices." 



SHAMANS INCARNATED IN ANIMALS 



It was stated above (p. 421) that the Yakuts believe that every 

 one of their shamans {oyums) has his emekhet^ or guardian spirit, 

 and his bestial image ie-kyle, sent down from above. This incarna- 

 tion of the shaman in form of a beast is carefully concealed. Only 

 once a year, when the snow melts and the earth becomes black, do 

 the ie-kyles appear among the dwellings of men. The incarnate 

 souls of shamans in animal form are visible only to the eyes of 

 shamans, but they wander everywhere, unseen by all others. , They 

 often fight, and then the shaman whose ie-kyle is beaten falls ill or 

 dies. The weakest and most cowardly shamans are those of the 

 canine variety; the most powerful wizards are those whose ie-kyle 

 is a stallion, an elk, a black bear, an eagle, or the huge bull boar. 

 The Samoyeds of the Tur'ukhinsk region hold that every shaman 

 has a familiar spirit in the shape of a boar, which he leads about by 

 a magic belt. On the death of the boar, the shaman himself dies, 

 and stories are told of battles between wizards, who send their spirits 

 to fight before they encounter each other in person.^^ 



DEAD SHAMANS 



The souls of the departed are generally believed by primitives to 

 be more or less hostile and dangerous to the living. This the more 

 so in case of the ghosts of wizards who were already powerful in 

 life. Hence "the Turanian tribes of northern Asia fear their sha- 

 mans even more when dead than when alive, for they become then 

 a special class of spirits who are the most hurtful of all." ^^ Among 

 the Yakuts the shamans are thought to be transferred after death 

 into evil spirits. The dead shamans are buried with great haste by 

 night or at evening in a remote nook in a grove or in a forest open- 

 ing, and the place is always afterwards carefully avoided. On the 



» Op. cit., p. 179. 



" Mikhailovskii, 1. c. p. 133 f. Among the American shamans, according to Swanton, 

 op. cit., p. 522, '■ two shamans among hostile people would fight each other thro'.igli 

 the air by means of their spirits." 



" Rafael Karsteu, The Origin of Worship. A Study of Primitive Religion. Washing- 

 ton, 1905, p. 110. 



