ROTH] FAMILIAR SPIRITS 169 



which they go to make in it as we go to churches. In this house they have a finely- 

 wnmght table, round like a wooden disk, in which is some powder which is placed by 

 ihem on the heads of these Oemis in performing a certain ceremony; then with a 

 cane that has two branches which they place in their nostrils they snuff up this dust. 

 The words that they say none of our peop'e understand. [WF, 352.] 



In early writings, zemis arc repeatedly called "messengers" and 

 were in fact subordinates of the great gods; being possessed like 

 them of magic power to make the yucca grow, to facilitate childbirth, 

 and to cure the sick (ibid., 356). 



93. These Cemi of the Islantl Arawaks were identical with the 

 Chemin of the island Carib-owned women who, for very intelligible 

 reasons, spoke an Arawak dialect. StiU more interesting is the fact 

 that, on the Guiana mainland, the ^Vi'awak designation both of the 

 piai and of the various kickshaws and apparatus employed in the pur- 

 suit of his craft is Semi-tchihi, or S(>mi-sihi. Indeed, it is in the cult 

 of the piai where traces of this belief in Familiar S[)irits must be 

 sought among the mainland tribes, and it is here where I have been 

 fortunate enough to find some. Thus, the effigy of the Famihar 

 Spirit of the islanders has its representative in the so-called doll 

 (Sect. 290) and neck-ornament (Sect. 292) of the Mainland Arawak 

 and Warrau medicine-man, as well as in the " devil' '-figure of the 

 Gahbi piai (Sect. >311) and possibly in the maize-straw figure described 

 by Crevaux (Sect. 311). The Spirit itself is met mth in the beings 

 invoked by the Mainland Carib doctor when called upon to treat a 

 patient (Sect. 309) : it is indeed not so very improbable that the 

 actual Island Carib term Icheiri (Sect. 89) may be identical with the 

 Mainland Caril) word lakai-a used today on the Pomeroon. 



93A. Wlule frankly admitting that 1 have no actual proof from 

 the hterature or from my own field-work, as to any relationship of the 

 Fanuliar Spirit with the little Baby Spiiit, on whose account the 

 various forms of couvade are practised (Sects. 281-283), I am never- 

 theless very much inchned to beMeve in then- identity. I look on 

 the Familiar Spirit as an early stage in the idea of the Conscious SeK, 

 the "Ego.'' 



