426 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



man and must be expelled. But only the shaman, who is himself 

 possessed by spirits, is fitted to deal with the demon in such a man- 

 ner as to bring about the recovery of the patient. The procedure 

 frequently takes the form of a duel between the shaman, or rather 

 the spirit he has conjured into himself, and the spirit that has in- 

 vaded the patient, in which the latter is vanquished and expelled. 

 This is perhaps the most primitive form of exorcism. The expulsion 

 of disease demons is often accompanied by the use of herbs, purga- 

 tions, fumigations, and manipulations, which sometimes have 

 remedial effects, so that the shaman is in a measure a forerunner 

 of the physician. Diseases are also caused by the soul of a man 

 having been frightened out of his body and fled away. The shaman 

 pursues it wherever it has gone, even to the prison of Erlik, and re- 

 stores it to the owner. 



But it is the gift of prophecy, or the art of divination, that makes 

 the shaman powerful and is the basis of his other functions. He has 

 direct intercourse with the spirits and actual access to the spirit 

 world, and so obtains knowledge superior to that of ordinary men. 

 By virtue of this knowledge he can give directions about worship 

 and sacrifice, and overcome or drive out hostile spirits. He can 

 foretell the future, find out what is going on in distant places, dis- 

 cover secrets, detect thieves, and answer all manner of questions for 

 which men resort to a soothsayer or prophet. Divination by the 

 shaman may be practiced by the shoulder blade of a sheep ^^ or 

 the flight of arrows. But the characteristic method of Shamanistic 

 divination is the seance, or what is locally known as kamlanie. 

 In this the shaman by smoking, the use of other narcotics, singing, 

 shouting, dancing, beating of the tambourine, and so on, produces 

 a state of trance or alternate personality. While in this state the 

 spirits take possession of him and reveal their will to him or give 

 him the desired information.^* 



THE SIBERIAN SHAMAN CONTRASTED WITH THE AMERICAN 



MEDICINE MAN 



The main aspects of the Siberian shaman's procedure, as well as 

 the idea of possession by spirits, are found to be well-nigh of uni- 

 versal occurrence in connection with healing, discovering the will of 

 spirits or gods, or soothsaying. One may occur without the others, 



" Mikhailovskii, 1. c, p. 90, quotes the following Buryat tradition about tJiis bone: "A 

 written law was given by God to the chief tribal ancestor of the Buryats. On his way 

 home to his own people he fell asleep under a haystack. A ewe came to the stack and 

 ate up the law with the hay, but the law became engraved on the ewe's shoulder blade." 



18 " The answers of the shaman, or rather of the spirit he conjures into himself, t« 

 questions about all sorts of things which there is no natural means of knowing, is per- 

 haps the oldest form of natural divination and the origin of the idea of revelation." 

 George Foot Moore, The Birth and Growth of Religion, 1923, p. 88. 



I 



