SHAMANISM CASANOWICZ 433 



would be difficult to describe all the tricks performed by shamans: 

 Some of the commonest are the swallowing of burning coals, setting 

 oneself free from a cord by which one is bound, etc." There is also 

 nothing new about the pranks of the spirits in our spiritualistic 

 seances : " Sometimes the spirits are mischievous. In the movable 

 tents of the reindeer people an invisible hand will sometimes turn 

 everything upside doAvn and throw different objects about, such as 

 snow, pieces of ice * * *. The audience is strictly forbidden to 

 make any attempts whatever to touch the 'spirits'."^*' 



THE SHAMAN— HIS MENTAL ATTITUDE 



The question is: Is the shaman himself convinced of the power of 

 his- conjurations or is he a play actor, playing a comedy before the 

 superstitious people? In general and a priori it may be said that 

 the rise of so complex a phenomenon as shamanism can not be 

 explained by mere trickery and deception. Only a profound belief 

 in their calling could create the conviction in the people of the 

 miraculous power of the shamans and endow them with the enor- 

 mous influence which they enjoy among the Siberian tribes. " You 

 can not fool all the people all tiie time," has its application also 

 in this case. The fact that the shaman employs external devices and 

 artifices to impress or even to deceive the spectators does not ex- 

 clude the possibility of his earnest belief that he has intercourse 

 with the spirits, is inspired by theju and possesses mysterious power. 

 It is the unanimous opinion of investigators and observers of the 

 practices and psychology of wizards everywhere that truth and 

 fiction are closely combined and inseparably blended into one whole 

 in this jDhenomenon. Just the intense conviction that the spirits 

 speak and work through him may prompt the wizard to use external 

 accessories and to change m good faith the tones of his voice to 

 assist the work of the spirit and to suit its utterance. " Nothing is 

 more superficial," says Reville, ''than the opinion of those who 

 see in the sorcerer of the uncivilized peoples only a charletan and a 

 juggler. Without doubt he is strongly driven to the proneness 

 in which charlatanism is not long in becoming in some manner fatal. 

 But in reality, not only do all others around him believe in his 

 superior powers, but he himself believes in them, because the states 

 of hallucination, of ecstasies and mental overexcitement, which are 

 not simulated, have for him as for others the only explanation in 

 the assumption of his intimate intercourse with the invisible spirit." ^^ 



Among the Yalaits, Sieroshevski says, "Some shamans are as pas- 

 sionately devoted to their calling as drunkards to drink. One of 



=^W. Bogoras, The Chuckchee, p. 438, quoted by Czaplicka, p. 232. 

 "A. Reville, Histoire des Religions. II, 238. 



