SHAMAN - ISARS

SHAMAN

Volume 7 Number 1 Spring 1999

Contents

Articles The Life and Works ofBenedek Barathosi Balogh, a Hungarian Researcher

of Manchu-Tunguz Shamanism MIHALYHOPPAL 3

Nanai Shaman Songs From Benedek Barathosi Balogh's Collection TATIANA BULGAKOVA and CATHERINE U. KÖHALMI 24

Further Thoughts on the History of Shamanism ULLAJOHANSEN 40

Sappho's Koma: Insights lnto the Vocabulary of Shamanic Trance in Ancient Greek Poetry BARTON KUNS1LER 59

Field Reports Present-Day Shamanism in Northern China and the Amur Region

DANIEL KIS1ER 77

SHAMAN

Volume 7 Number 2 Autumn 1999

Contents

Articles Seiör as Shamanistic Practice: Reconstituting a Tradition of Ambiguity

JENNY BLAIN 99 Categories of Selkup Shamans

I.N. GEMUEV and G.I. PELIKH 123

Discussions Trance or Symbolic Representation: That is the Question

JOHN A. DOOLEY 141

Field Reports In Black and White: Contemporary Buriat Shamans

KIRA V AN DEUSEN 153

Book Reviews ROBERTE HAMAYON Lachasse a l' /ime. Esquisse d' une theorie

du chamanisme siberien. Memoires de Ja societe d'ethnologie I (György Kara) 167

THOMAS C. PARKHILL Weaving Ourselves into the Land: Charles Godfrey Leland, "Indians", and the Study of Native American Religions (Ake Hultkrantz) 172

Variations chamaniques 1-2, [cahiers] presente[s] et coordonne[s] par MARIE-LISE BEFFA et MARIE-DOMINIQUE EVEN. (György Kara) 175

News and Notes Report on "Central Asian Shamanism: Past and Present,"

Tue 5th Conference of ISSR, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia DANIEL A. KISTER and PEI'ER KNECHT

Minutes of the General Assembly of the ISSR, Held in the Hall of the Scientific Council of the First Building of the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, 6 August 1999.

177

GREGORY G. MASKARINEC 185 Conference on "Shamanism and Other Indigenous Beliefs

and Practices," Moscow, May 1999 KIRA VANDEUSEN 187

Cover design: ANDRAS NAGY

Copyright © Molnar & Kelemen Oriental Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise,

without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISSN 1216-7827 Printed in Hungary

VOL.7. N0.1. SHAMAN SPRING 1999

The Life and Works of Benedek Barathosi Balogh, a Hungarian Researcher of ManchuTunguz Shamanism

MIHALYHOPPAL BUDAPEST

The Hungarian Linguist and ethnographer, Benedek Barathosi Balogh visited the Far East (Japan, Sahalin, Amur region, Korea, Manchuria, China) on several study trips at the beginning of the 20th century. His linguistic and folklore collections are entirely unknown, partly because they remained in manuscript and partly because another portion of them was published only in Hungarian. When, in 1996, the Budapest Museum of Ethnography organised an exhibition of Barathosi' s object collection, primarily the material collected in the Nanai and Ainu areas of the Amur region, 9 Nanai shaman songs (prayers) were also discovered in the archives. These are being published here in K. Köhalmi' s phonetic transcription, with T.D. Bulgakova' s commentary.

lt is rare in the history of Hungarian ethnography for a scholar to have roamed such vast stretches of Eurasia as Barathosi Balogh did. He could have become an excellent comparative ethnologist, since he was an observer with a keen eye, noting the tiniest details, little gestures that would have evaded the attention of most people. But as a grammar school teacher and a writer with an excellent style he was pressed into becoming more of a publicist. Travelling, especially in the first quarter of the cen -tury, took several months, which makes it all the more amazing how much interesting and, for the age, novel inf ormation is to be found in his well-written, readable books. lt must be noted that some of his hypothe -ses have been proven since his time while other have proved to be mis -conceptions.

What is of definitely lasting value, however, is his enormous collection, comprising hundreds of objects. Tue Nanai and the Ainu collections

4 Mihaly Hoppal

are among the most treasured pieces of the Hungarian Museum of Eth -nography. 1 However, his linguistic notes are still unprocessed, the folklore texts unpublished. 2

Benedek Barathosi Balogh has been dead fifty years. Since the written legacy and the artifact collection left by this undeservedly forgotten Hungarian ethnographer, writer and linguist has been kept in the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. This article expresses the respect for the Hungarian scholar of the turn of the century who was among the first to do research among the Ainu, the Ulcha and the Nanai peoples. He can be considered one of the pioneers of Hungarian ethno -photography.

TRAVELS

Barathosi Balogh was born into a family of Transylvanian landowners, in the county of Haromszek, on April 4th 1870. From an early age on he showed an interest in questions regarding the origin of Hungarians and the possibility of discovering new answers and new data in this field. He prepared himself consciously for his travels, mainly by pursuing linguistic and ethnographic studies. In 1899 he moved to Budapest in order to have access to better facilities in preparing for his journeys. In the capital city he first worked as a schoolteacher in an elementary school, while later, between 1905-1927, he taught in a grammar school.

His interests drew hirn mainly toward the peoples of Easternmost Siberia, particularly towards the Manchu-Tunguz. After he gained the support of the Central and Eastern Asia Society, it became possible for him to satisfy this interest.

1 A selection from his collection was exhibited with considerable Japanese sponsorship in the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography in Budapest in 1996. Notably, support was granted by the Japanese ethno-musicologist Kazuyuki Tanimoto who had spent a long stretch of time in Hungary studying Kodaly's method for collecting folk music. More precisely, the sponsorship came from the Hokkaido Center for Ainu Studies and the Society of Japanese Hungarian Friendship.

2 lt is interesting, that Vilmos Di6szegi who was, himself, trained as a ManchuTunguz linguist did not set to work on the translation and the publication. Even out of the shaman prayers he only published one. See Hoppal (ed.) 1998:215-227.

The Life and Works of Benedek Barathosi Balogh 5

His first joumey took him to Japan. He was presumably there in 1903-1904, sinee in the subsequent years he published a three volume travelogue (Barathosi Balogh 1906).

As we know from his own deseriptions, it was in 1908 that Barathosi Balogh first reaehed the Eastem Tunguz who live along the Amur. He saw his joumeys as his ordered destiny and withstood all hardship, of whieh he met with plenty on his joumeys, with pride.

The joumal of the Hungarian Ethnographie Society, Ethnographia, published the following article, probably written by the editor Bemat Munkaesi, aeeording to which

[Baratosi (sie)] ... is reeeiving sponsorship from various sourees in order toset out again to study the Tunguz-Manehu people and their language in the Orient. At the Eastem part of the territories where the Ural-Altaie languages are spoken, our eolleague has suffered an aeeident and spent the greater part of his time in his siekbed in Vladivostok. Even so he managed to find the area where the language of the Gold people is spoken along the Amur river. After his return home, he deposited his rieh ethnographie eolleetion in the Ethnographie Department of the Hungarian National Museum. The eolleetion eontains a rieh seleetion of interesting ritual objeets, beautifully deeorated artifaets made of tree-bark, items of clothing out of fish-skin, bird-skin and feit and eharaeteristie primitive eraft objeets. The Museum has also eommissioned Barathosi to draft the deseriptive eatalogue of the eolleetion on the basis of his field notes. 3

These objeets ean still be seen in the eolleetion of the Budapest Ethnographie Museum but the deseriptive eatalogue was left ineomplete at that time.4

Barathosi's 1908 joumey began in Saint Petersburg where he was given an official pass to travel and permission to do researeh by the aeademieian Wilhelm Radloff. From the Tzar's eity he went on to Vladivostok. He joined the Sukhanov expedition filled with high hopes but he was soon foreed to realise that wherever the Russians stopped the loeal

3 See Ethnographia 1908:225. This short note was published without the author's name.

4 lt is going to be completed and published by Gabor Wilhelm. The same author also published an outline of the history of Barathosi Balogh's collection, see Wilhelm 1997.

6 Mihaly Hoppal

Nanais-he still used the old-fashioned appellation Gold for these people-fled straight away. Thus later he continued his collecting work on his own, amassing a remarkable quantity of linguistic material and an ex -cellent collection of objects as well as a large number of valuable photographs. Beside the valuable linguistic and folklore material (e.g. tales, myths, proverbs), the data regarding shamanism are of great significance-including the twelve shaman prayers. 5

In 1909 Barathosi Balogh set out again, but this journey only lasted three months as he contracted typhus on the way. He still got as far as the Amur area and again returned with a large number of photographs.

In 1911 the International Central and East Asia society commissioned Barathosi to go on a collecting tour to the Zyrian and Samoyed areas, west of the Ural Mountains in Northern Rusia. From this journey he re -turned with a collection of almost a thousand pieces for the Ethnographie Museum. Most of these are objects and photographs. The earlier men -tioned work also contains interesting contributions concerning Samoyed shamanism. lt must be noted that although he met a shaman personally, he did not take a photograph, although he did note down a tale.

His thirdjourney to the Far East took place in 1914. He left on April 23rd for Siberia and Japan, whence he went on to the Sakhalin, to visit the local Ainu population. lt is here that he obtained his valuable Ainu linguistic collection. lt was also during this trip that in a village about 20 kilometers from Otaru he collected five sacks of Ainu artifacts, some of which are to be seen up to this day in the Hungarian Ethographic Museum while another part is displayed in the Hamburg Museum of Ethnography.

On 16th June 1914 he went over to Russia, in order to wend bis way through Vladivostok to the Amur region and complement bis earlier col -lections, make checks on the premises and fill in some gaps in the collection. Unfortunately, bis luck failed him again. On 12th August he was arrested by the Russian authorities as a spy and foreign citizen. Luckily, the famous scholar Gondatti, governor of the region authorised the young Hungarian ethnographer be made free again but the outbreak of the First World War forced him to leave the country instantly. lt was only after a long and adventurous detour in his journey that he got home

5 Their publication here is the first occasion they have appeared in authentic translation, see below.


again late in the autumn. In his volume 'Bolyongasok a mandzsur nepek között [Wanderings among the Manchu Peoples]', which is also a historical contribution about the fate of his Ainu collection as well as the entire Barathosi Balogh legacy, he recalled this episode, as follows.

I spent most of my stay in Khabarovsk in the city Museum. lt holds an interesting collection on natural history and archaeology but I was mostly interested in the ethnographic section. Out of the ethnographic collection which was gathered by Russian expeditions 100 to 150 years ago only a portion was kept in the St. Petersburg museum, another portion was stored in Khabarovsk. These were such ancient and valuable pieces that for their sake a true specialist would have gone as far as burglary. The director of the museum, Colonel Arseniev, a scholar of the best sort, kept and guarded with special care every piece that he had dug up and rescued from perishing in the cellars and attics of the museum.

I noticed that although all the peoples living along the river Amur as well as those along the seacoast, all the way up to the Chukchi peninsula, were represented in the collection, there was not a single piece in the museum from the Ainu. I asked the director how this was possible. The story which he told me in answer is very interesting. When in 1890 a World Exhibition was organised in Paris, the Tsar ordered the Ainu collection of the museum to be sent to the exhibition. The marvelous old carvings and ornamental costumes attracted a great deal of attention and the French and English embassies sent letters to the Russian embassy asking them to donate the collection to their own museums. The request was sent on to Petersburg. From Petersburg a telegram was sent to Khabarovsk that they should acquire a new Ainu collection for their museum, as they live at no great distance from that people. Thus the invaluable collection which was over 100 years old migrated to the museums of Paris and London. The Khabarovsk museum never had enough money again to be able to obtain a new Ainu collection. The ancient objects in the museum included over a hundred doubles from the Chukchi, the Kamchadal , the Yukaghir and other Eastern Tunguz nations. I tentatively put it to Arseniev whether it was possible for them to give these pieces to the Hungarian National Museum if in return I give them my Ainu collection of over 300 pieces. Thus they could retain the whole of their old collection and it would be made entire by the missing Ainu treasures. Arseniev was overjoyed to hear my suggestion and instantly reported it to the governor who gave his consent. I sent a Ietter to Japan telling them to send a half of my Ainu collection to Khabarovsk. After striking the deal we got down to selecting the objects that I was to receive in exchange and loaded them into three crates with the intention

8 Mihdly Hoppal

that on my return I would take them with me along with the rest of my new acquisitions. In the meantime, war broke out, I was captured, I was forced to leave all my collection behind. In 1921 and 1922, however hard I tried, I did not manage to gain permission to receive back from the red government my collection, books, manuscripts, photographs and phonograph recordings or the boxes whose place I had revealed to them, and which they thereupon instantly confiscated and transported to the Khabarovsk museum. This I know from a Japanese staff captain who had personally intervened in the interest of regaining the collection. This is how I lost my collection which amounted to 24 boxes and was worth 46 thousand gold Crowns and together with the collection my financial independence.6

Let me note that when in 1993 I myself had the chance to go on a visit to the Nanai living along the Amur in order to do ethnographic fieldwork, I also stopped for a few days in Khabarovsk. I saw a very im -pressive exhibition of the old shamanic objects of the local museum, many of which dated back to the beginning of the century. The colleagues in the museum did not know about the origin of the objects although one of them had heard about the correspondence exchanged by Barathosi Balogh and Arseniev, director of the museum at the time. They showed great interest in Barathosi Balogh's history, which might enable them to determine the background of the objects hitherto catalogued as "of obscure origin".

Barathosi Balogh had visited the Orient a number of times and late in 1920 he made another effort to regain the lost collection but he could only bring home the items left in Japan.

Between 1927 and 1936 Barathosi Balogh worked at home as headmaster of a grammar school in Budapest. His series Barathosi Turani Könyvei [Barathosi's Turanian Books] came out in these years, in which he published a popularized account of his journeys among the Oriental peoples who were believed to be related to the Hungarians. He died weary of travel at the age of 75, during the World War II, on 3rd February 1945.

6 See Barathosi Balogh 1927:28-29.


RESEARCH AND COLLECTIONS

Linguistic and Folklore Texts

Being a teacher, Benedek Barathosi Balogh was a very tidy and very systematic man and on top of that also very hard working. Works on him and his career usually only give a very sketchy, in fact often superficial picture of his achievement (Balassa 1952).

They fail to mention that in the Ethnological Archives of the Budapest Ethnographie Museum there are 25 catalogued items of his manuscripts (numbers EA 963-985 and EA 4704-47077) which contain over five thousand pages of handwritten notes. Among these is the unique Ainu dictionary which alone amounts to 5680 cards. This linguistic material is particularly valuable since according to certain Japanese experts this is one of the best recordings of Ainu dialect from the beginning of the century.

Vilmos Di6szegi, who himself had started his career as a curator of the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Ethnographie Museum, went through the Barathosi Balogh legacy and listed 58 items, in 4 handwritten pages. lt is probable that we also ·owe him the archive cataloguing of the entire material.

Barathosi Balogh collected in the Nanai (by the old name Gold) villages along the Amur, such as Buzin, Haitsu, Gedama, Tsaoza, Fanza, Tulki, Alda, Torgon, Y arin, Nergen, Hungari and Kui. Here we are quoting Barathosi's sometimes imprecise uses of the names of these villages-today, of course, we would find that most of these have altered or totally disappeared. Tue method this Hungarian researcher followed was that he recorded the same list of words and phrases inserted in sentences, and interviewed various groups of the peoples living along the Amur. Thus he produced a collation of "Gold, Ulcha, Samar, Oroch, Nedigal grammatical sample sentences" (EA 973). What he carried out was genuine comparative dialectology, and he was also the first to classify the Manchu-Tunguz dialects. He had started this work in cooperation with the linguist Peter Schmidt (1923, 1928) who later published his works, while Barathosi's notes remained unpublished (EA 970 - A Sketch on

7 EA stands for Ethnological Archives, followed by the numbers of the inventory.

10 Mihaly Hoppal

Gold Grammar (in Hungarian) 206 pages, A Sketch on Nedigal Grammar (in Hungarian), 239 pages).

The Ulcha glossaries are based on dialects spoken in the villages Udan, Puli and Ferma, while the Samar glossary (EA 977. 416) on the area along the river Gorin, more precisely on Hondon and Shorgo villages. Barathosi also made collections among the Orok population living on Sakhalin (EA 967). These people are actually Ulcha speaking a Nanai dialect. On the front of his notebook we find the !ist of contents: "1500 words, 6 prose texts, 3 poems and 15 sentences. Recorded between 14th and 23rd of June at Shishka, at the estuary of the Poronai river". On pages 43-44 of the notebook we find the familiar story of "The Fox and the Raven" related in the local Ulcha language. lt is characteristic of Barathosi Balogh's precision, that he made a precise listing of all his notebooks and the material in them, in the following fashion:

"Notebook 1.: Kilo Gold, from village of Buzin, collected from of Ozul Dincai ... Buzin is by the estuary of the river Inan, the Russian village settled there is called Tatarevski. (pages 1-96)."

"Notebook 2.: Ulcha Gold. Recorded in the village of Udan, from the eldest son of Aydanu (who wrote and read Russian). pages, 1-149, approx. 2300 words".

He also collected among the Ainu on Sakhalin. His notes reveal that he was gathering material for an Ainu dictionary. This work is highly appreciated in our day by Japanese linguists and fellow-ethnographers.

Beside sample sentences of linguistic significance, Barathosi Balogh also noted down entire folklore texts among the various Manchu-Tunguz groups. The manuscript entitled "My Manchu-Tunguz texts corpus" which Barathosi Balogh finalized in 1915, contains 63 different texts, among them tales and mythological fragments (three versions of the story of the Magie Deer, and the myth about the flood of fire ), as well as three versions of the fable about the fox and the raven, songs, riddles, love songs and shamanic verses. Tue last deserve special attention since they had never been published before. lt is interesting to see how Banithosi Balogh refers to the particular marks of shamanic poetry creating a quasi generic classification: jesting shaman verse, shaman verse for celebrating the dead, shaman verse for healing the sick, peddler's shaman verse, healing song, shamanic rhyme.


Another large, almost two hundred pages long collection, which con -tains Nanai texts, begins with a dozen shamanic songs. Barathosi Balogh had noted these down "from Bogdan Oninka, in the first days of August 1909, in the village of Torgon which lies 25 versts away from Troitskaia. His father had been the most famous Gold shaman, his name was Toakunga." When we were collecting shamanic folklore and shooting a documentary film in the village of Daerga about 20 kilometers from Troitskaia, I still heard one of the last shaman warnen talk about the leg -endary Bogdan Oninka.

The scholar Tatiana Bulgakova from Saint Petersburg translated the shaman songs into Russian and pointed out that Barathosi Balogh's phonetic recording needed hardly any correcting. Bulgakova, who speaks the local language, instantly recognised the text recorded by Barathosi Balogh. Vilmos Di6szegi translated 10 shaman songs from Barathosi Balogh 's collection in 1950 but only published one of them in 1972 (Di6-szegi 1972).

In the case of some texts Barathosi Balogh's precision even noted the drumbeats (8, 4 or 2 beats) that interrupt the shaman's song while he heals patients at night. He also pencilled in the words necessary for the translation between the lines. Barathosi Balogh never actually produced the final, precise translations.

lt might still be worth quoting the reconstruction of one of the texts collected by him in the village of Udan, inhabited by the Ulcha people, from a shaman called Aydanu. He met Aydanu in 1909 and, as he describes, they swore to be blood brothers. The following mythological fragment talks about the origin of the universe, the flood of fire which destroyed the world (this is what the three suns refer to), about the spreading of the human race and the appearance of the first shaman. The following is a quotation from one of his unpublished studies.

I only managed to acquire a few fragments about the origin of the earth. They were quite reluctant to talk about it and often what they said showed the Christian influence. 'According to what I heard, the dwelling of the heavenly lord is similar to man's on earth but it is made of silver and gold and precious stones. lt was at his command that a duck brought the Earth up from the depth of the waters. And when the lord filled the earth, the waters and the air with living things, the duck learnt from him the trick of creation and he set to creating also. This brought great danger to the world. The mighty God had

12 Mihaly Hoppal

only created one sun and one moon but the duck created two of each so that he comes out richer. But this led to a great deal of trouble. The three moons made the night so light that nobody on earth could sleep. And when the three suns came up, they caused such brightness, that most of the living things went blind, the plants withered and burned, the water began to boil , the fish were cooked alive and human beings caught fire. Then the oldest man built a hut out of ice, hid in there and shot down, one by one, two of the tree suns and two of the moons. Thus the earth became fit for living on again.

I consider a more complete version of this myth the following story which was told to me by Aydanu (in Udan village). The great heavenly god only created Doldu Haday and his wife. They, however, were immortal. They had lots of children, but they could not die, either. When they grew old, they went to sleep and they woke up rejuvenated for a new life. This is how it went on for generations. Finally there were so many of them that there was not enough room for them on earth and they did not have enough to eat. Doldu Haday, his wife and his eldest son were very much saddened by this situation. They held council as to what they ought to do, for if mankind continued to multiply in this way, they would all die of starvation. The woman thought it would be best to go up to the great heavenly god and ask his advice. But the man did not want that. There is no need to disturb the heavenly being except if there is no other way left for us to help ourselves. - You two are immortal , said their first born son, but all those people who were born from a mother are just like me. If only I could die, they, too, would cease from resurrecting and this great multiplication would come to an end. So it would be best if I managed to die somehow or other. They thought very hard until they finally decided that the son will retire to a cave and the old woman will close the entrance with rocks. They did just that but the resurrection and multiplication of people still did not cease. The old woman went to the cave and saw that her son had not died. She thought for a while and then took a !arge animal skin and stretched it over the opening of the cave. In the meantime she thought that by the time the last piece of that animal skin rots off the entrance of the cave, the resurrection of the people will come to an end. And so she left the cave. For a while the people continued to be resurrected and so did the animals since they, too, were in the same state as people, having become so numerous that they could not live because of the great numbers. After a time the old woman went to the cave and saw that the last piece of the animal skin was just rotting off and in the cave lay her son, dead. She went home füll of joy. What they wanted had come to pass at last.

But their joy was short Iived. The next day, instead of one, three suns rose in the sky. lt became so bright that it blinded man and beast alike and at noon the heat was so great that most of the people and the animals and the plants


burnt like dry wood on the fire . The water, too, started to boil so that the scales feil off all the fish. And at night the moonlight, which had also tripled, made it so bright that those who survived could get no rest at all. The old couple were very scared because the next day even more of the people and the creatures perished. If it goes on like this, in a few days there will be no living being on earth. So they took council again, to discuss what they should do. The very same night they built a hut out of pumice stone, with a little hole at the top. The old man tied together three bows so that they made one and then he made himself three very )arge arrows, with iron heads. Then he quickly hid himself in the hut and waited for the sunrise. When the first sun emerged from behind the mountain and its beams were not so blinding, he stretched his enormous bow and shot it into the sun which feil back into the sea. He did the same to the second sun. That, too, perished in the sea. But he left the third sun to rise. Thus they had a good, proper sun and the people and the animals that had survived now came round. In the evening he shot the two unnecessary moons and thus regained night rest for the earth. Thus he became the saviour of earthly life, because if he had not shot the two suns and the two moons, all living things would have died. This is how proper death came to the earth.

But the earth was full of the dead and the old people, too, were dying as their time came. The old woman was in great trepidation as to what to do with all the dead people. After all, they had been honest men and women who had lived a good life, so they could not be left lying on the earth Iike dead animals, and their souls had to get to that happier land. So they both set to it and started burying people and helping their souls to the better world. They did not even rest at night, they worked so hard. But it was all in vain since the dead were so numerous that the work never seemed to come to an end. They went to bed tired to death. They could not think what to do. They talked and talked but finally they feil asleep. Then the old man saw a dream. He dreamt that in his courtyard such a )arge tree had grown that even the people of a whole village could not have embraced its trunk all the way round. They called this tree kunguru jagdi. Its bark was covered in creepy-crawly insects, its roots were enormous snakes, its leaves were meta! mirrors (toli) , and its blossom were so many tiny bells. (These were called kongokto or suruocha kongokto.) Finally, at the top of the tree he saw a number of antlers made out of iron (timo) and sugdji and choya (hats and strips of fur). The bells were ringing and the old man woke up from his dream. He looked out and saw that the tree he had dreamt of was standing there in his yard. Without saying a word to anybody he went to find his bow and arrows and, making sure to aim carefully, he shot down the spreading antlers from the top of the tree. He rapidly hid them in his sack and went on shooting arrows until his sack held a

14 Mihaly H oppal

number of all the things that he saw up on the tree. He tied the sack up tight and took it into the house. He shut the door and the window tight so that no escape remained from the house. But he forgot to close the smoke hole (chimney) that was just under the roof. When finally he started taking out his acquisitions from the sack, they all jumped out of bis hands and, as if they had wings, they flew out through the chonka (the smoke hole). The old man was very annoyed. He went on grumbling and mumbling until he finally fell asleep. But hardly bad he been asleep a little while when suddenly the great heavenly God appeared in front of him, with bis white beard that came down to bis knees. The God looked for a long time at the old man who could not even move and eventually he shook bis shoulder and said to him, "You did the right thing to bury people and help their souls to the other world. But you could see that you too cannot cope with all the work. Therefore you must make a panya for the dead and that should be in the house until the dead person 's soul has been helped over into buni (the other world). lt is your task to do this but you must teach it to your chosen persons. You are the first shaman and your disciples will follow you. The things you had shot down from the kunguru jaghdir got caught in the chimney. Go and open the chimney top and then the contents of your sack will fly all over the world and travel to all the people who are worthy to be your followers. One of each of these things will be left to you. When you wake up in the moming you must go to the forest and shoot a bear, a wolf and from their skin you must make a hat just like mine. On top of the hat you must stitch a pair of timo (antlers) and at the back nine long strips of fur. You must tie kongokto (bells) on your belt and toli (meta! mirrors) on the back and the front of your costume. In these toli you will see what you need to see and they will protect you against all weapons that your enemies might turn against you. You must make yourself a bubin (a drum) with a buchu idol and a kori. They will help you over to buni and back from there. You must teach all this to your disciples and people shall go on inheriting it from each other in this fashion." Having said these things, the heavenly God with his white beard disappeared. In the moming when the old man awoke, he acted as the God had commanded. After he opened the chimney top, the things he had gained from the kunguru jagdi flew all over the world and descended to the people who were worthy and invested them with shamanhood. They each leamt their task and from then on not a single person remained unburied and not a single soul without guidance to the other world. This is also the reason why every shaman has at least one disciple. (EA 982. pages 10-13)

Vilmos Di6szegi, who catalogued this study called 'A keleti tunguzok (Amur videkiek) hiedelmei [The belief system of the Eastem Tunguz (of


the Amur region)] ', stated that "most of it is translation and not his own collection (Budapest 12th February 1953, Vilmos Di6szegi)" even though the very subtitle clearly indicates that it is based on Barathosi's field work: "Compiled from the material of my 1908, 1911 and 1914 joumeys". The data at the end of the study are of particular importance, as they are missing from the Barathosi Balogh ' s book (1927), even though they contain interesting details and witness accounts.

Most interesting of all was the shaman 's house in the village of N'ergen. This had two doors. One, as usual, faced toward the river, while the other faced South. On the Eastern side of the house a slight slope descended toward the river. On the upper half of this there stood two richly carved posts, each about a met~r and a half tall and about 20 centimeters thick. When I asked about these I was first told that they are for tying the animals to before they are sacrificed. Later I saw that when they were guiding the spirit of the dead to the other world, they built the shaman's tent behind these two posts and then tied the two posts together with three strings of shaman's rope. To the strings they tied long blades of grass which hung down and were set on fire during the ceremony. These blades of grass did not burn with a flame but kindled slowly and sparkled like little stars in the half dark. They also leaned against these posts the !arge human shaped figure which they dress in the clothes of the deceased and then place a sacrifice of dried fish and a strong spirit before it in a wicker basket. Before the ceremony the shaman hung his cap on top of one of the posts and leaned his stick against the other. ..

At the shamans' meetings by Lake Bolon' all shamans had their own little tent. The stood side by side close to each other, in a semi-circle facing the lake. Aydanu who took me to these meetings made it a condition that I must not take my camera along so I could only make feeble sketches of the shaman camp. lt was a touching experience to witness the magical celebration which went on a whole week. In the evening every shaman sat in front of his tent, dressed in their magic costume and lighting a little fire. In the middle of the semi-circle a greater fire was buming and the shaman whose turn it paced around this with dancing steps, singing and beating the drum.8

The descriptions by the Hungarian traveller are even more vivid when he recalls his encounter with a Nanai shaman in a book written for a general public. This is actually the first description of an encounter with a shaman in Hungarian ethnographic literature. Barathosi was a keen eyed

8 See EA 982. pages 14-15.

16 Mihaly Hoppal

observer who recorded plenty of small details when he visited the village of Naikha9 in the summer of 1907, accompanied by his wife. lt is worth reading a longer extract from this description from the turn of the century, especially since the photographs complementing the description can also be seen in the photo archives of the Hungarian Ethnographie Mu -seum.

The shaman was waiting for us in front of the rude canvas tent erected before the village judge's house. He was a sly looking man with an extremely cunning face. He took the whole thing as a joke and talked laughingly of our curiosity. Then he put on his costume. He pulled on boots made out of fish-skin and decorated with drawings of colourful snakes and tortoises, his linen coat had similar painted decorations. On his head he put a fur hat which ha 10 or 12 streaks of fur longer than half a meter hanging from it. Between these streaks of fur there were bells and small Chinese bronze mirrors hanging while on the front it had a pair of devil 's antlers with several branches, made of iron. In his right hand he held a long stick which was covered with snake-skin and its brass handle figured something like a Chinese saint. He tied a leather belt round his waist from which there hung cone-shaped iron bells a span long. In his other hand he took up a flat drum which also had some rattles and iron rings attached to it.

While I photographed him he was constantly mocking me, asking what sort of a face I wanted him to make. Then he came out with the idea that I should pay him a fair sum of money for each photograph, since I am going to seil them and get a tot of money for them. We almost had a row over the bargain because the police officer also got involved. Finally I got hold of him by his vanity. I told him that I am going to put this picture into a book so that the whole world will come to know him, the greatest shaman. This worked, he was pacified, he stood for us and became cheerful. He was laughing as he began to beat his drum and sing and he asked us twice whether we liked it.

Hardly had he been singing a few minutes, though, when the fox-like smile va11ished from his face, he became serious, began to beat his drum more strongly, his voice became louder, it grew to a shout and, circling round the blazing fire he began a jumping sort of dance. During this time two dressedup human dolls, taller than a meter, were brought into the tent. They stood

9 Naikha is presumably identical with the contemporary village Naikhin. This village lies next to the one in which the author of these lines made an ethnographic documentary film about the local shamanic traditions, together with Juha Pentikäinen and Tatiana Bulgakova in 1993.


them up on a straw mat on which they had placed fish in a plate and a strong spirit in a bottle. The shaman steped inside the tent, poked at the two human figures with his stick and crouched down on the ground. The two figures were meant to embody a Tunguz couple who had been burnt in their house a few days earlier. The shaman beat his drum and sang for a long time and repeatedly he spread the food and the drink over the mouths of the wooden figures. In the meantime it got dark and only the firelight spread a mystical twilight, casting its red light over the shaman working inside the tent, increasing his song to a howl and beating the drum as hard as he could. His face became distorted, his Iips were foaming, his limbs were all in spasms and eventually, as if shot through the heart, he collapsed and only his gurgling breath and his hands groping the air betrayed that he was still alive. He had a Jong and hard struggle with the spirits guarding the other world, he said on his recovery, a good fifteen minutes later. But finally he managed to help the souls across. 10

These vivid descriptions, together with the photographs, the poetic texts and the dozens of drawings rich in detail provide a unique and unified database for the study of Amur region shamanism. This rich material is also so elaborate, so highly sophisticated that it offers itself for further and deeper analysis which we have included among our plans.

Barathosi Balogh reports another experience of his in the following way:

The room, which was the size of a barn, was unlit except for the fire under the cauldron which cast a twilight over the spacious hall. On the benches which were placed along the walls, a crowd of people were sitting, tight packed, so that they could hardly make room for us to sit down. The shamaness was sitting next to the fire, sipping tea. Her face was pale, her hair was hanging loose and her eyes burned with a feverish light. Her pale, thin lips were pressed tight together as she looked at the madman lying in the corner next to her, tied up, lips foaming, waving his hands furiously at those sitting near him. My neighbour told me in a whisper that it took ten people to hold him down and tie him together and even so he covered a couple of them in bites. After a little while the shamaness stood up from the fire. She was dressed in ordinary day clothes except that a belt of iron rattles, the yampa hung on her back and a wreath of woodshavings was tied to her head and her right arm. She took up her drum and moved it to and fro over the fire in order to dry it, testing the sound with an occasional beat. Suddenly she gave a shriek, straightened up

IO See Barathosi 1927:114--116.

18 Mihaly Hoppal

and began a jumpy dance around the table or shelf which took up the middle of the room. While she danced, she sang, shaking the rattles by throwing her backside to and fro. She went on dancing like that for half an hour, sometimes jumping in front of the madman, lifting her drum and beating it hard over him. Then she sat down, tired and depressed, next to the fire, drank some tea, lit a pipe and, stepping up to the madman, asked him, 'You are better now, aren 't you?'

She repeated this half-hour dance twice but the madman remained a madman. Theo she complained with hysterical anger that it is because I and the police officer sitting next to me were smoking that the helping spirit is reluctant to appear. We threw our cigarettes away. Apparently reassured she began her circling dance again which became increasingly wild, her voice increasingly shrieking. The madman became restless, issuing animal-like noises and finally shrieking along with the shamaness, throwing himself around so fiercely that those around him could hardly press him down even though his arms and legs were tied together. Now the shamaness stood in front of him and began a wild screeching song. The madman was trying to tear and bite his ropes.

During this time in the house ropes hung with pieces of grass were stretched in triple rows at about the height of a man, on the side where the stove stood. In front of the stove they stood two human figures made out of grass which were tied together with grass ropes. On the rope there hung an altemating line of bird and lizard figures also made out of grass. They set light to the pieces of grass hung on the rope. These did not bum with a flame but faded slowly to ashes. lt all looked as if a hundred tiny stars were floating in front of us. Now the shamaness began a new dance. She was jumping so ferociously as to put the fittest athlete to shame and her song, too, had become so infinitely wild that I feit a shudder.

The crowd of people looked on with a silence of transfixed awe and the male shaman who had sat down next to me was trembling, making chokingchuckling noises while the madman seemed to be competing with the shamaness. lt was a terrible duet. The fire in the stove had bumt down. The buming blades of grass gave a ghostly little light while the shamaness's hair, flying loose as she jumped around wildly, now and then flung through the stars of fire. The sparks settled on the ground and the woman's hair became scorched. Her song was barely a human sound any more, it was closer to the intermittent screams of a falcon. The madman was suffering terribly, he was howling, wriggling like a snake and yelling like one mortally wounded. The shamaness finally threw her drum away, grabbed the axe that was lying next to the fire and, issuing broken screams, started beating the ground. There were a few pieces of rock next to the mouth of the stove, it was these she was


hammering with the axe. The splinters flying off the stone flew into the crowd and the rock sparked under the blows of the axe. The shamaness gave one more frightful scream and collapsed unconscious on the ground.

A lamp was lit. I was overcome by a marvellous relief. The madman had calmed down. His face was relaxed and he looked as we all did at the shamaness who was surrounded by a few crouching people, rubbing her, pouring spirits into her mouth, trying to bring her round again. lt took long, tortuous minutes before she stood up and became quite herself again. Tired, like a person suffering from a lethal disease, she dragged herself to the madman, had the rope taken off his hands and said to him, ' I told you that you 'd get better, didn't I?' Then she declared to those standing around that a black and white pig, a pure white and a pure black cockerel had to be sacrificed to the helping spirits. Two men instantly got into a boat in order to obtain a blackand-white pig which they could only acquire for 150 roubles from a cunning Russian peasant. 1 1

The Drawings Collection

Barathosi's drawings are also of source value. His practice was to make sketches on the premises and then to copy them out on separate sheets at home, so that on each sheet we see the different formal variants of the same group of objects. There is reason to believe that the drawings were made by his wife, Sarolta Vavrik, who accompanied him on his journeys. Several hundred of the drawings remain unpublished even though they are made valuable by the fact that objects such as those depicted here will never be made again since the customs are becoming simplified along the river Amur as well as all over the world. Hopefully, the ancient shapes will survive for posterity in Barathosi Balogh's drawings.

The collection of Barathosi's drawings is tobe found in the archives of the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography, (under catalogue number EA 975). Barathosi copied the sketches he made during field work onto a hundred and one pages, altogether about three hundred drawings and he also included his descriptions, which are usually quite short, amount to 6 to 8 lines. He gave the following title to his collection, "Idols by the Eastem Tunguz (of the Amur region), from my collections of 1908, 1909 and 1914. Descriptions of amulets and shamanic accessory objects". Even at their sketchiest, these drawings of objects provide a com-

11 See Barathosi Balogh 1996:36- 37.

20 Mihaly Hoppal

prehensive idea of the set of objects related to the religious life and shamanic belief of the Nanai, since they present the groups of objects together with their variants. Had Barathosi left nothing other than this collections of drawings, he would still have inscribed his name forever into the history of the ethnography of the Amur region. Up to this day there have not been as many drawings and photographs published in the Russian language literature of the subject as there are in this collection alone. lt would be interesting to publish all three hundred drawings in a separate little volume (perhaps this will come to pass one day). These objects are a witness to the conditions at the beginning of the 20th cen -tury and have long since disappeared from the ritual tradition or can only be found in the most simplified remnant versions, as I experienced in the summer of 1993. Beside providing the precise local name of each object, the collection is also made valuable by the remarks attached to them, for example in the following fashion: "Numbers 10, 11, 12 belang to the shaman of Naida. He would not seil it to me because then he would lose its assistance, and he would not make a second copy since that would mean that I also have the same power as he. He would not even let me take a photograph. He only allowed me to hold it when I threw a small bottle of spirits as a sacrifice to the ayami".12

These often brief descriptions contain several small details but the pictures also speak for themselves, for example the crown shaped shaman' s hats (ungiptu) (drawings No. 232-241), the shaman's sticks (boolo) and other shamanic objects, pieces of clothing, belts, tomb-sculptures of shamans, many of them displaying objects that have never been published until now in the literature of the field. This might have already shown how much significance Barathosi attributed to the visual record -ing of ethnographic facts.

The Beginnings of Ethnophotography

The term ethnophotography is a new coinage both in Hungarian and international ethnographic literature and refers to the photographs made during fieldwork. The several thousand photographs that Benedek Bara -thosi Balogh made during his journeys to the Far East make him one of the pioneers of Hungarian ethnographic photography. His photos are

12 See EA 975. 3.


also in the care of the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography. In the photo archives we can find the original prints as well as the original glass negatives. In the 1940's and 50's reproductions were made of the glass negatives and so Barathosi's old photographs were preserved in relatively good quality. Naturally, on some of the glass negatives the emulsion has disappeared as a result of long years of storage sometimes in unfavourable circumstances. One of them is the picture of a Negidal shaman from the valley of the Amgun river from 1911. Tue upper half of the photograph is entirely missing, but the picture itself is of great value, since it depicts a shaman holding a special stick, and wearing a belt with rattles and a für head-dress (F. 17052).

As early as in the report of his first journey Barathosi mentions "400 photographs taken by myself and the same number I bought" (Barathosi 1909:171)'. Fifty years after his death there are about a thousand photographs kept in the photo archives of the Hungarian Museum of Ethnography as pictures taken or obtained by him. He took the majority of these during his travels at the Amur in the villages inhabited by Nanai, Ulcha and Gilyak groups near Troitskaya and Khabarovsk. There are also pictures about the Ainu of Sakhalin, as well as about Oroch and Negidal peoples. Barathosi was a competent photographer but he was a master at catching the right moment of everyday life and he also took excellent portrait photographs (Barathosi Balogh 1996).

lt is worth noting that on the catalogue cards of Barathosi's photo collection we see the year 1911 marked as the date of taking the photograph whereas in fact this is probably the date when the pictures were catalogued.

As far as the photographs of shamans are concemed, we can say that Barathosi was among the first in the world taking pictures of this theme (roughly at the same time as Sakari Pälsi, S. D. Mainagashev, Kai Don -ner and others 13). A particularly valuable document is the photograph which, according to Barathosi's note, depicts the shaman Aydanu with whom he swore tobe blood brothers 14. To another picture (F. 16644) 15

Barathosi attached the following note, "The walking of the sick person -

13 See Hoppal 1994. 14 F. 15785, Udan village, in the Valley of the Amur, Gold. 15 F. stands for the photo archives number in the Hungarian Ethnographie

Museum.

22 Mihaly Hoppal

they call in every house of the village and there the shaman and his assistants dance. They do 9 dances with 9 people. If the patient cannot walle, they stick 8 posts into the ground and the people dance around that all night." In another picture, as revealed by the description, a Gilyak shaman is healing a patient, but in the photo we can only see the group of people looking into the camera, standing around the shaman with his drum (F. 17129). Barathosi also took excellent pictures depicting the preparations for the bear feast, about a score of them, but unfortunately most of these have been ruined (F. 15927-15941, the photographs taken among the Gilyak). However, there are also a number of negatives from which prints of a perfectly satisfactory quality can be made. Among these are the photos of the Ainu, but it is possible that these were not taken by Barathosi. lt was his habit to buy pictures ready made and in -clude them in his collection. This is how a drawing of unknown origin about a Yakut shaman (F. 16.509) and photographs of several views of an exhibition dummy dressed in the costume of a Tunguz shaman came to be included in his collection. These latter he probably obtained in Saint Petersburg.

In a series of particularly interesting photographs (F. 16915-16918) Barathosi captured a shaman of Gold (Nanai) nationality in the village of Gardama along the Amur. The shaman is sitting before a tent and, as Barathosi's notes attached to the pictures tel1 us, "he is helping the soul into the other world at the feast of the remembrance of the dead". 16 The glass negatives of these photos, which have been ruined in consequence of inappropriate storage, only allow us to produce very poor prints. But even in spite of that we can ascertain that Barathosi's photograph collection meant the beginnings of Hungarian visual anthropology, especially when viewed in a historical perspective. lt can also be stated that few researchers have left such a valuable collection to the Budapest Museum of Ethnography-Barathosi's work comes second only to the invaluable legacy of the other great Hungarian shamanologist, Vilmos Di6szegi.

16 This expression means that the Nanai shaman was a kasatai shaman, whose task or function was to lead the souls of the deceased to the otherworld (buni).


REFERENCES

Balassa, Ivan 1952. "A Neprajzi Muzeum kapcsolatai az orosz neprajztudomannyal [Contacts of the Ethnographical Museum with Russian Ethography]." Ethnographia 19. 254-255.

Ban'ithosi Balogh Benedek 1906. Dai Nippon. Kelet csodai. [Dai Nippon. Wonders of the Orient]. Budapest: Korvin. - . 1909. "Jelentese az 1908. evben az Als6-Amurnal vegzett tanulmany6tjar61 [Riport on his study-tour at the Lower Amur in 1908]." Keleti Szemle 10/1-2. 168- 173. -. 1927. Bolyongasok mandzsur nepek között [Wanderings among Manchu peoples]. Budapest: Barathosi Turani Könyvei. -. 1996. Tavoli utakon [On distant ways]. Valogatta es a bevezetöt frta Hoppal Mihaly. Series Historica Ethnographiae 9. Budapest: Neprajzi Muzeum.

Di6szegi, Vilmos 1972. "A Nanai Shaman Song Sung at Healing Rites." Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 25. 115-128. -. 1998. Shamanism. Selected Writings of Vilmos Di6szegi. Edited by Mihaly Hoppal. Bibiotheca Shamanistica 6. Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6.

Hoppal, Mihaly 1994. Shamanen und Schamanismus . Augsburg: Pattloch. Schmidt, Peter 1923. The Language of the Negidals. Riga.

-. 1928. The Language of the Oroches. Riga. Wilhelm, Gabor 1997. Benedek Barathosi Balogh's Collection in the Hungarian

Museum of Ethnography: Artifacts, Manuscripts and Photographs. Manuscript.

VOL.7. N0.1. SHAMAN SPRING 1999

Nanai Shaman Songs From Benedek Barathosi Balogh's Collection

TA TIANA B ULGAKOV A ST. PETERSBOURG

1. Jaji

Gie, gie! Isondi enie uleendi ejve ta(ro) saman taori, jaori ulendi umburi sevenci, uncuxun dukteri, gisil pacilaori uleen jajaori!

Gie, gie!

CATHERINE U. KoHALMJl BUDAPEST

Mother lsondi, Jet me shamanize and sing weil. Let me summon the spirits, drumming, smoking the drum-stick. Let me sing weil!

A short song of evocation by the shaman to his helper in which he calls it Isondi. Female helping spirits are always called 'Mother ' . The shaman usually has several matemal and patemal helping spirits which they inherit from their shamanic ancestors. Jajaori means 'to sing like a shaman', and the seven is 'a spirit, the shaman 's helper'.

3. Kasa

Asi pikteimda ulendi taori

For my daughter, !et me do it weil,

1 For technical reasons, texts 2 and 9 of Barathosi Balogh's collection are missing from the present edition. All the other texts are published here by Catherine Uray-Köhalmi, based upon her transcription and Eng!ish translation of Barathosi's Nanai texts (see Barathosi Balogh 1996:75-83). The texts are commented by Tatiana Bulgakova.

Nanai Shaman Songs ...

bujkin naja ulendi taori seven Selbide caolia bunici iraori! seven Kirgian Bucun ulendi taori, bunici enuri panjamba bunici iraori Darinci enuri mujki mungeel duvendueni simur sioi-de duvendueni

posi sekciuri kay e kaotan

ojalani panjamba neuri

for the deceased person, Let me do it weil! Spirit Selbide, should all the dead summon! Kirgian spirit, do it weil , go to the Beyond, Take the soul of the dead to the Beyond! Go to Darin! Snakes and worms squirm they writhe hissing.

Spread the mat of worms

and place the soul of the dead upon it.

25

This fragment comes from a prolonged, several day long shaman ceremony during which the shaman accompanies the soul of the person who has just died, or been already buried for a while, to the other world called by the name buni. lt is noticeable in the case of this text, as in the case of most of Banithosi's texts, that he did not note them down during the ceremony. Perhaps they were sung for him separately, since the instruction which the shaman gives to his spirit helpers during the cere -mony are more concrete and their grammatical form is always the im -perative. Here, however, it seems as if they were talking of some act in the near future on which occasion the shaman will accompany the soul of the woman mentioned at the beginning of the story on its way to the buni and that on this occasion Kirgian Bucunu seven spirit helpers is supposed to carry her over to the world of the dead.

Dari is that part of the other world which lies right near the boundary separating the world of the dead from the world of the living. According to the Nanai concept the buni is not an attractive place, everything is covered in mud, filth and mould there, everything is rotting and decom -posing. This fragment adds a further feature to our notion of the Buni-it is swarming with snakes creeping and crawling or coiled up in rings and the newly arrived soul is going to lie on a dais built of worms and caterpillars. In Nanai shamanism belief in such resting places made for individual persons (but not for everybody) is quite wide-spread. There is a belief according to which these worms are none other than those tiny snakes which are seen to crawl forth from the shaman's mouth during

26 Tatiana Bulgakova and Catherine U. KÖhalmi

the shamanic ceremony and these create the daises for the individual helping spirits. Tue precise meaning or sense of these daises has not yet been identified.

Panya is the dead man's soul which needs tobe carried to the other world.

4. Taociori

Enusi, enusi taociori dolbo ulen taori uncuxunbe siliusu! gisilbe gadjero, eusi alogoro! dobodu ixereve gupu! sevembe xerkeu ulen dai sevembe angou! dolbodu naja taociori inda Selbide ambamba geleuri ciankan boadu cindala bi duser boadu dunguli bi condo boadu cocoxan bidjere kudbu boadu kupcujgen bi najva ulendi gelegu xajdu-da xamari enusini manga xoragoi! olgiamba vaori dicava buvuri oniva buvuri seleve buvuri bosova buvuri xorogo sevembe egdi buri tevuri ilamba-da aja a!}osiori nucie emumbe a?J osiori totapi korigoi ay osiori ulen boadu neuri! amba giambani dasisiuri! ujuleuri enusini panjanbani! gelendeguri! baogoasi-nu? baogoori eken budoasi nailugi! xaolia xoragu! cimana ayosiori

Let's heal the sick, the sick! Let's heal the sick during the night! Warm up the drum! Bring me my drumstick, give it here to me! lt is night already, put out the light! Tie spirits together, make big, good spirits. Shamanize for the people during the night My dog Selbide, call the tiger spirit. lt is roaming at the mouth of the river, it is resting at a gloomy place. it is roaming in the land of the caves, it is in tottering in the land of the hills. Summon all the people! Nobody should be delayed. The seriously ill should be cured! Sacrifice a pig! Bring coins, bring a cauldron, bring iron, bring a piece of linen! Making an offering to the Xorogo spirit place down all these. Make three good (images of spirits), one of them should be small. Then you should make a kori-bird, and put it in some good place! Let's block the tiger spirit's way! Let's look for the shadow-spirit of the sick! Look for it. Have you found it? If you do not find it, this man will die! Save him somehow! Tomorrow let's make


ambani ajudi sevembe xaolia xoragu-de cimana meuri! goi ixomba meuri

xaolia mindu gudjiesi-mi panjanba cindaori-ni! cimana sinda olgiamba vaori dai olgiamba vaori! nai egdi geleuri kesie geleuri sagdi nai kesieduri xaolia xoragu! nai ulen kesigu kaira nai ulen nai bude buidexe-ni soy oi goaroni bajan sinedin xaolia baldjigu! gereni kairmJ i boa kesiduri xaolia xoragu!

a nice image of the spirit! Save him somehow! Tomorrow we shall do the shamanic dancing, and people of the other village with do the

dancing with us. Take pity on us some way! Set this soul free! Tomorrow we will sacrifice a pig for you ! We will sacrifice a big pig! People will ask much at this sacrifice, they will ask for happiness. Help this old man to have luck in some way! This man has good fate, he is poor, he is good. If he dies, everybody would cry. Whether he was poor or rich, Jet him live somehow! Take pity on all of us! When we ask the sky for happiness, save him in some way!

27

Extract from a taociori, a shamanic rite during which the shaman goes to find the soul which had left the ill person's body and has gone astray to the wrong place. In the meantime it is mentioned that in order to heal the patient it is necessary to perform a few other rites. Thus for example the statement according to which "the sevens should be tied together, all the prepared big sevens" may refer to the fact that beside the taociori rite it is also necessary to perform the rite called sevembe nievuciuri, i. e. the demons of disease must be driven out of the ill person's body, which means the seven s must be made out of bunches of grass and tied together and then these must be thrown out of the house (this rite is described in the following, text 5). The rite of the prayer for called kesie geleuri must also be perf ormed. This is a sacrifice and prayer for happiness when as a sacrifice to the spirits an animal (pig) must be killed. (This is the rite that is described in text 6.) After the sacrifice it is customary for the shaman to f eed the spirits with the meat of the slaughtered animal and play his drum, to the sound of which all the participants dance (meuri, see text 8.). The shaman who needs assistance in carrying out the taociori rite encourages the helping spirits by promising that the next day he will

28 Tatiana Bulgakova and Catherine U. Kohalmi

perform a sacrifice (kill a pig) and will feed them in the course of a shamanic dance.

In traditional Nanai belief when the soul leaves the body or the safe place where the shaman had placed it, it strays into dangerous areas and eventually comes to the evil spirit, amban, which tortures and taunts it and this is what makes man ill. During the taociori rite the shaman sets out after the amban which is holding the stray soul in its power, in order to find the soul, in this case in a hilly area or some dug-up place.

An onyi 'cauldron' is a sort of a container which is given as a gift to the shaman by the first sick person to appeal for the shaman 's help. lt can be ajug, a plate, a pot, a saucepan, a dish or even a boat but it must in any event be whole, free of chips, scratches or cracks. According to N anai belief, in the other world this container becomes some form of a vessel into which the shaman can place the soul when it has been found. This container is at first kept in the soul container called dekaso (dyekaso) made specially for this purpose by the shaman. In Barathosi's text the shaman must have considered that the patient had some chronic disease and therefore he would not undertake to get the soul back into the body, fearing that it would only depart again. Beside the onji, the shaman asks the relatives for further metal objects since in the other world metal turns into shield and armour and protects the shaman from evil demons. He also asks for some textile material, clairning that if that is attached to the back of the shaman costume, in the other world it turns into wings and will make it easier for the shaman to fly . Shamans claim that they are usually unable to carry out their mission unless they are given some money (always coins, never bank notes) tied on a string round the seven 's neck.

Seven xorogo is one of the spirits which invade the patient' s body and cause him or her suffering. Some of these spirits were successfully ex orcised by the shaman with the help of the rite called sevembe nievuciuri. But according to the shamanic belief the xorogo spirit cannot be exorcised because it wants to stay permanently in touch with the patient. In these cases healing is limited to moving the demon into the dummy made specially for it. In other words in ensuring for it another "body". In this particular case they made three large and one smaller seven. Seven xorogo has to move into these dummies and later, after the patient has recovered, he must keep them and occasionally even feed them. lt is likely that the kori 'the bird on which the shaman flies' is none other than an -

Nanai Shaman Songs ... 29

other of these sevens. According to the available data the kori is a seven which helps the shaman by revealing that this patient also had shamanic gifts and at one stage he, too, could have become a shaman.

Text 5. relates how they move the sevens that torture the patient into the dummies.

5. "In the morning, when the shaman makes amulets for the sick"

Esi ejnie esi ayosiori ilan sevemhe djuer nuci sey kureve ponkio siaponha pocilu ulen korigoi ayosiu! ulen boadu xemde enusi

xaolia ocovando! mindu namilbomi namcia y a mindu berel buni belecigu, mindu epilbumi elecindu ulendi jajaoridi sevembe tenixenui naja xoragon

puril baldjigoari

posiakta njeliu bejeguasi G/Josiaxan diligoasi ele ay osixan nasalgoasi potalia siangoasi cerelie diligoasi xombolia cumcuy uesi laptalia xujguguesi lundelie ulen boaci irapi ... sugdiu!

Now today now we should make three amulets. Two of them are small. Let's smoke them with shaman grass! Fanning the fire in the incense-burner, Make a good kori-bird! At some good place, all the sick ...

keep it some way! I hit the target skillfully, help me to find my way to the Beyond, content yourself with my shamanizing, with my good singing, setting the amulets, save the people!

May children be born

There are bluish sparks, your body has been hea\ed, your head has been healed, your eyes are shining, your ears stick out, your head is rising your fingers spread wide, your tail dangles, You are coming from the good place ... we treat

you!

30

sevendu siapomba ayosi sey kure egdi eneru, aliu! dolani mueve neru! sey kureve neru! dili enuri gudieleni omiori! totapi ocogoi xemde xaolia gudiesiu esi beje G!J oxa

Tatiana Bulgakova and Catherine U. Kohalmi

We make an incense-burner for the amulets, fetch wild rosemary and spread it, place there some water quietly, place the wild rosemary there, drink the illness of the head! Then Jet them all ... Take pity. Now the body has become healthy.

Extract from a rite called sevembe tevuciuri (the making and invigora -tion of the sevens that cause disease and invade the patient, and the moving of these demons of disease into the dummies prepared for them. The kori is a dummy of this sort. During the ceremony they offer the freshly made dummy food. On this occasion they also use "shaman grass" (Ledum palustre) (either giving it soak:ed in water or using it incense before the dummy) and by way of candle they bum thin Chinese type incense sticks. They believe that this sacrifice charms the spirit and makes it agree to stay in the body prepared for it. Besides this, the shaman tries to charm the spirit with epili song which is a brief shamanic ceremony during which the shaman requests something of the spirit or persuades it to do something i.e. moves it, during the ceremony, into one of the above mentioned dummies. While the shaman brings the dummy to life, he or she also indicates the signs of life as they appear, the flash -ing of the eyes, the formation of the mouth or the nodding of the head.

6.

Budji, budji (osini), endurci kesie geleuri boaci mixorambori xosaktaci kesie geleuri, gereni moxorambori. njeani gudjiesi. ilan olgiamba vaori. totapi ixondo bi djari naj bi

When someone is about to die, is about to die it is necessary to ask deities for favour. And we bow to the sky, to ask the stars for happiness and we are all to die. Take pity on him. Sacrifice three pigs! Since in the village, there is a singer.


ixondo bi ulendi otoli naj bi. savasi xaj mangadi kesie gelidi bugi-nu savasi xorogoi-ka

gerenidu ulen kesiku naj xaolia baldji.

kesie ana bujkin-de! uj-de songora meme budji-de, mene xodji myuj-de djapi-da anal

Since in the village, there is a good singer. lt is not known how powerful he is when he asks for favour.

31

lt is not known whether the sick person will be saved.

Favour is necessary for the people.

If there is no favour, the a sick will die. Who is crying? He himself will die, he himself will pass away, and nobody can retain his soul!

A description of the rite of a prayer for happiness called kesie geleuri 'to ask for favour', which is, in this case, often addressed to the stars (in many cases the target is ilan xosakta, three stars from the star sign Orion but it can be any other constellation as well). lt is believed that the star systems are the homes of the mightiest of spirits, the endur gods ( even if they do not always stay there). These rites were usually not carried out by shamans but always by competent people. Lopatin (1922) called these people kazi galen on the basis of the name of the ceremony, kesie geleuri. In Barathosi's text they are referred to as djarin naj, which literally means 'song man, singing man', but since djarin means 'star' as weil as 'song', they could also be 'star men', i.e. people who are in touch with the stars. On the occasion of these prayer ceremonies, or directly after them, a sacrifice of a cockerel is made to the stars. The sacrifice is made regardless of whether or not the prayer was heeded. Thus, for ex -ample, if the patient talked of in the text happened to die in spite of the prayer ceremony, the sacrifice must still be performed. In the opposite case those who dared to disturb the stars, but failed to honour them with sacrifice are threatened with death.

7. Song, sung in the presence of the dusa spirit

Mugde itoan darimba mJosori mugdeve gerbeuri mugdeve tetuemburi

Let's make the darin in the hut of mugde, let's carve a mugde out of wood, and let's dress the mugde.

32 Tatiana Bulgakova and Catherine U. Köhalmi

apomba apoli, daiva teuci, otalagoam tetui, kacamagoani, omologoani. omoloandi xui!tului!ndi toliva tetui, kmJ goktova ti!tui, panjan baroani, xodjixan osini, doktomba tetuemburi, garomha tetuemburi, kumpenbeni tetuemburi, poktoani tetuemburi, punkueni tetuemburi, moyotomba tetuemburi,

orkin djaka acogori, xemni acogori, cadu ulen acogori. aja boadu exele anadu xajal-xajal taori.

sevesel jajaori daj seven masi. nuci seven nja!J ga elkecin. ujsi tori endur anadoani,

gudjiesi abadoani. bue xoni-da tavoasi, bujkin gurumbe, panjasalba

ulendi ... ulen naj ujsi tokoj, enduri bari. orkin naj ambanciani. ulen taori naja sitJ gerexen. kesie baxa ... esi orkin ocogoi. geren sevesel endurci enei. mutesi panjamba olbimi esi ambanciani. totapi djidjui,

The shaman puts on its hat, fills its pipe, puts on its boots, puts on its mittens and tightens its belt. tightens its belt, tightens its mitten-knitters, puts on its mirror, fixes its bells, approaching to the soul, its is getting ready, and the shaman puts on its boots, he puts on its leggings, he puts on its meta! ornaments, he puts on its garment, he puts on its headbands, he puts on its necklaces.

Bad things should be left behind, everything should be left behind, good beings should be taken to the good place. Having been freed from evil something eise

should be done. I am singing for the spirits. The big spirit is strong, the small spirit is a little bit quieter. Let's rise upward, and if the deity does not

ex ist, there is no mercy. How could we make good to the souls of the land of the dead ...

Good people rise upwards, towards the deity. Evil people become tiger spirits. One gets exhausted doing the ritual for dead. Favour should reach you ... Now it has become evil. AU the spirits go to the deity. Now we can lead the souls to the demons (tiger spirits), Then I am coming back


gasadi djidjui xodjixa ujsi , endurci iraxa. cilaxamhi, ambanci iraxan,

gasadji djidjuxen.

xodjixan.

I am coming back on a bird, I have finished everything above. I have brought the souls to the deity. But if I could do that, the soul went to the

demon, I have come back on a bird.

I have finished.

33

Description of the kasa ceremony of saying farewell to the dead and helping the spirit of the deceased to the other world. The first part of the text describes the preparations, the making of the darf, the special con -tainer in which the wooden doll, the mugde, shall stand, which repre -sents the dead person's soul. (lt is interesting to note the likeness between the word darf and the place name Dari (the latter is the place to which the shaman carries the dead person's soul and which, according to the tradition, stretches somewhere near the border of the land of the living and the land of the dead.) The darf is placed in a tent called itoa specially built for this rite. From the next part of the text we find out how the shaman dresses up the mugde, the doll in which the dead person's soul resides during the ceremony. Before the soul is carried to the place where it is to remain for ever after, the shaman frees it from the evil spirits that threaten it. This important part of the ceremony is merely mentioned by the shaman, who launches instead into the explanation, unusual in the Nanai tradition, of the fate of the soul after death. "The good ones get to go up to God and the evil ones go to amban, the evil spirit." Later he said, "Today you cannot take the soul to the amban any more ... 1be shaman takes the soul to God but if he cannot do that then he takes it to the amban." This element is probably a result of the fact that Christian and shamanic religious beliefs have mingled. In the N anai tradition the shaman takes the soul to the same place, the other world called buni, regardless of the life the person had lead on earth, thus including the souls of those who had comrnitted suicide.

After describing the several day long kasa ceremony of saying farewell to the dead, the shaman declares that he will return from the world of the dead on the back of the kori bird.

Xuetun is the bandage wound round the lower arm. This wide bandage is worn by the shaman above the wrist, over the sleeve of the shaman's gown, before he starts chanting. Toli is the shaman' s ehest disk made of copper or bronze. Panjan 'a wooden doll with a triangular head and a


hole for mouth' in this case represents the soul of the dead person. The doll representing the soul of the deceased (mugde) is dressed in the pieces of clothing called dokton 'a leather stocking', garon 'a leather knee protector', kumpen and pokto 'a women's summer gown'. Mango is the part of the costume which covers the neck and the shoulders. J ajaori is a shaman sang, or the singing of a shaman sang. Seven is a spirit in general and the shaman's helping spirit. But the ward is also used in a more general sense, in the present case it means those wooden dolls into which the soul of the dead person is relocated. Endur is a powerful spirit, in this case probably God, while amban is the evil spirit.

8. Meuri, the shaman goes from hause to hause

Andasal, ulen meuri! palamba kendeliu! saman teri nakando, jai.

mimbive xaolia ulen ocogoando! olgiomba varo! xaolia ulendi meuri! elenju, enie, ama nieguj!

[At the next house]

lri, meuri, jaj ulendi! xaolia teru! xaolia teru! andasal, meuri em mondan, djuer mondan dakcigu! gereni Dolindoani xorioxa. Gudjiesi! cimana ajadi teuvendu! xujun ixomba meuri giasidala, teturi seveselbe. Xaolia mimbive olbiacu! nadan birue ...

My friends, let's have a celebration! There is a circle on the floor. The shaman is sitting on the plank bed and

singing. Let me become weil! Let's kill a pig! Let's have a celebration! You all, mother, father, go away!

[At the next house]

Come, let's have a celebration! Sing weil! Get seated somehow! Get seated somehow! Friends, let's have a celebration, once, twice repeated! All those in the Middle have been saved. Take pity! In the morning do the ritual weil. People of nine villages put on ceremonial head-dresses, and dress as spirits. Somehow take me with yourselves! Seven villages .. .

Nanai Shaman Songs ... 35

This is a warning addressed to the people of the village to perform the rite called undji. This means that, led by the shaman, they should visit the houses in which the shaman' s earlier patients live and during this march they should give a feast to tbe sbaman's belping spirit. A part of tbe undji is the shamanic dance called meuri. At tbe shaman's request everybody joins tbe dance. During this time the sbaman quotes parts of the rite tbat are to follow, inviting bis motber and fatber spirits to accept the foods offered, "Take it and depart!", and tben addressing otber spirits, "Come and dance a meuri !" According to popular beliefs, tbe sbaman's state of healtb is greatly influenced by tbe number of tbose present and tbe amount of food offered for feeding tbe spirits (tbe number of pigs and cockerels killed, wbich are afterwards given to tbe shaman as a gift) and, finally, by tbe number of pieces of material stitcbed to tbe sbaman' s costume during tbe ceremony. This is why the sbaman asks everyone to take pity on bim and remember bow many people bad regained tbeir bealth in the village of Troitskoe and to join the sbamanic dance meuri.

Giasidan 'tbe sbaman's bark bead-dress' tbis plaited bead dress is made out of tree bark and bangs down deep over the sbaman 's back.

10. A sbamanic song for bealing during the nigbt

(8 drum-beals) Gea, gea, geo, geo! (4 drum-beals) ulemesie (2 drum-beals) xaoliadu-ma (2 drum-beals) ixonjao (4 drum-beals) gje, gje, gje, gje! (4 drum-beals) djelo boado (2 drum-beals) kadar boado (2 drum-beals) xuren boado (2 drum-beals) aja boado (2 drum-beals) meuri boadoja (4 drum-beals) jaypagoari (2 drum-beals) undiciuri! (2 drum-beals) saksa nado (2 drum-beals) aodan boado (4 drum-beals)

[8 drumbeals] Gea,gea,geo,geo! Lel's do weil somehow 10 lhe village. Gie, gie, gie, gie! On lhe slony land, on lhe rocky land, on lhe hilly land, on lhe good land, on lhe land of lhe ceremony, pul on lhe shaman bell, and dance lhe undi dance! On lhe land covered wilh frosl, on lhe land wilh meadows

36 Tatiana Bulgakova and Catherine U. Köhalmi

njaron boado (2 drum-beats) alian nado (2 drum-beats) giasiday goaro (2 drum-beats) jaypamba tetu (2 drum-beats) sonava sonalu! (2 drum-beats) meuri! sonalu! (2 drum-beats) edexeve anjalu! (2 drum-beats) sevembe tetu! (2 drum-beats) mogliamba djapagu! (2 drum-beats) ajamia olbindu! (2 drum-beats) djulimbe tetu! (2 drum-beats) argala asi (2 drum-beats) bukuci enimbi (2 drum-beats) kay goa indai (2 drum-beats) siy gala edjii (2 drum-beats) endur-le amimbi (2 drum-beats) pergeli-gde piktei (2 drum-beats) meundi-gde piktei (2 drum-beats) argala ektei (2 drum-beats) xujun birue bituri (2 drum-beats)

xujun sannjam salambori (2 drum-beats)

meundi-gde salambori endur ama ... edjiselie (2 drum-beats) (16 drum-beats) uli manja (2 drum-beats) xaoliadu-ma (2 drum-beats) sijan nava (2 drum-beats) sijami taktolami (2 drum-beats) ceyki nava (2 drum-beats) cidjaki-gda (2 drum-beats) taktalami (2 drum-beats) taja unkin na tolcala (2 drum-beats) taktolaori (2 drum-beats). serume piktei (2 drum-beats) nilako piktei (2 drum-beats) ajadi ayosiori! (2 drum-beats) olgiamba vaori (2 drum-beats) sekceve omiori (2 drum-beats) ulikseve siaori (2 drum-beats) ulen meuri! (2 drum-beats)

On the peaceful land, on the land where there is the bay, With a headband Wearing the sona-belt, let's shamanize with the sona-belt! With the edehe-necklace! Put the spirit to the right place! Take the image of the Moglian! Bring the ajami! Dress the diulins ! My sly woman, my humpbacked mother, my dog clanging with bells, lord, covered with hair, my father deity, the child who stands the trial, the child who shamanizes, my sly woman. The people of nine villages flock

together, Nine smokes ... have a celebration,

shamanizing ... have a celebration, Father deity, remember! [16 drumbeats] May it be weil somehow. Stepping in sand, sticking in sand, ... land up to the calves of our legs, let's step down to the bottom of the muddy soil. My child Serume, my naked child, do weil! Kill a pig, drink its blood, eat its meat, shamanize weil!


caolia xorogu! (2 drum-beats) aja ocogu! (2 drum-beats) a/ian boado (2 drum-beats) siun dekdei (2 drum-beats) deregci garpai (2 drum-beats)

Save us in some way! Do weil! In the land by the river, the sun rises and shines into our face.

37

Contrary to the previous text, this is probably one about a ceremony which was actually perforrned in Barathosi's presence. lt is apart of an undji rite, the shaman's song to his helping spirits invoking them to take part in the meuri shamanic dance. lt contains a number of invocations addressed by the shaman directly to his helping spirits. lt also contains a promise that he will sacrifice a pig in their honour and a request that in exchange they should give him good health. According to the Nanai belief such rituals take place parallel in the world of humans and the world of spirits. Thus in this case the meuri is being danced by humans and spirits at the same time, the latter dancing in the invisible "stone country, granite country, land of hills and valleys". The local people call the village Troitskoe, "the rniddle".

Jaypa is the shaman's belt with metal objects suspended from it. Sona ('a long leather belt tied to the shaman's waist while somebody holds the other end), holding on to this long leather belt the participants of the rite, or, in this passage, the spirits, line up behind each other. Edehe (metal talisman wom round the neck) is a spirit whose picture is worn on a metal disk hung round the neck. Ajami is one of the shaman' s main helping spirits. Djulin is the guarding spirit of the house. Serume pikte is a helping spirit, child of Serume. Usually, women give birth to these in their sleep. According to popular belief serume pikte are creatures of curious appearance who retain the shape of the naked new-born baby till the end of their lives.

11.

Mueve neru! se!J kure neru! sjapomba pacilu! se!J kure neru!

Take some water! Take some wild rosemary! Set a fire in the incense-bumer! Take some wild rosemary!


usuri mue/en uncigumi, songari mueleni tunde tukpembuembi urekte uregumi,

mongoi mojkoxambi tujgei tujkuxeni.

dama buxembeni xodjagomi ... mueleni mulku/i seven segdilbumi sajdja muxergien dorxo dalinko

xere-de bie enie, ama-da bie

xa?J gadia xamialani cilxigdia cialani bolxogdia boy alani severu boay gil bie ambaro boay gil bie aragali ektei serumenaondjeakan uncuxun siasindolani xueduru! gisil djilgandoani tunderu! jaypan djilgandolai ulimeje xaolia mindu gudjiesigu!

xaolia xoragu!

12. Jaji

Gia, gio, gie, gie! esi tej-de hie. siani bi-ge /aptalia-ma, nasal bi-de boldjalia-ma

djili bi-de bombolia-ma, xuktedi ekdjelia-ma,

Melt the water of Usuri river, I hit with willow-twigs the water of the Sungari river. Grow willow-trees.

I am sliding about with my neck, I wiggle with the image of the tujge,

My deceased great-grandfather is followed ... water the pillow of the image of the spirit, the hoop of the sieve, the place of the cradle

There is a toad here, Father and mother are here.

Cure ... somehow! the other ... open the reversed .. . This is the land of Bolokho, this is the land of the spirits. This is the land of the tiger spirits, my sly woman. my son, Serume, the sound of the drum spreads around, the sound of the drumstick fills the air, the voice of the pendants on the shamanic

belt make good, Take pity somehow!

Gia, gio, gie, gie! Now it so. The ears seem to bulge, the eyes seem to goggle,

the head seems to become round, the nails seem to sharpen,


siru-me laptalia-ma, naladi nandalia-ma, cumcuendi serbelie-me, xosaktadji xondjilia-ma, cavaktadji serbelie-me sarmaktadji odjilia-ma oporo bi-de xelpelie-me, xol.J soan bi-de xodjilia-ma, cumcuen bi-de, mindu bi-de, berel humi, beleciegumi mindu bi

de, namil bumi, namcaljgojsi mindu

bi-de, epil bumi, eleci?J gujsi mindu bi-de

na, il bumi, namciangojsi mindu bi-de

gudjiesigumi! ajsin siapondi , mengum siapondi mindu bi-de segden sel.J kure selkicu7Jgumi, n}el.J gian seykure njeliocigumi mindu bi-de ajsilagumi teusiy en teurunku mindu bi-de ajsima armiayoi mengume.

four fingers seem to bulge, the hands seem to grasp, the fingers seem to get red, the nails seem to sharpen, the claws seem to get red, the eyelashes seem to blink, the nose seems to sniff, the legs seem to stand, its fingers seem to be mine. We give you a place, help us.

We give you land, take pity,

We perform the epi/-ceremony, be contented,

we give you land, take pity,

and have mercy on us! We have a a gold incense-burner, and a silver incense-burner. Red wild rosemary, Green wild rosemary, we have. Golden armour is our protection, we have a golden lake, a silver. ..

39

Episode from a rite during ~hieb the spirit is moved into the dummy depicting it ( cf. text 5).

VOL.7. NO.l. SHAMAN SPRING 1999

Further Thoughts on the History of Shamanism*

ULLA J OHANSEN COLOGNE

Countless articles and not a few books have been written on the history of shamanism. Most, however, advance speculative hypotheses suggesting that shamanism had its origins at the very outset of mankind' s development with no explicit definition of who is considered to have been a shaman and who not. This paper therefore opens with a general definition of "shaman" and, in the light of this , reconsiders those Eurasian sources which report on persons who qualify as shamans. An overview shows that most Palaeolithic rock carvings do not provide unambiguous evidence of shamanism, as Hoppal has claimed. Only a limited number of archaeological finds indicate that shamanism existed in Northern Asia and China 3000 years B.C. or perhaps a little earlier. From mediaeval times onwards there are many written records of shamans, but these show that they were only one of many groups of religious specialists (as in present-day Korea) under the great empires. Only in small, scattered societies do shamans have such manifold tasks as the anthropological prototype of the shaman would indicate . Shamanism, then, has undergone many changes, not only in the present century but in earlier centuries as weil. We should not conceive of it, in contradistinction to all other continuously changing cultural elements, as an immutable institution.

A WORKING DEFINITION OF S HAMANISM

The enormous popularity of the term "shamanism", which clearly has an exotic appeal for the supporters of a wave of fashionable irrationality, has led to an inflation of this term amongst the wider public. But, from an academic point of view, it is applied to so many phenomena that Hultkrantz 1 is right when he declares that "practically every scholar forms his

* The present article is a revised and enlarged version of Johansen 1987. 1 1973:25; cf. 1978:30; and see Hoppal l993:183ff.

Further Thoughts on the History of Shamanism 41

own opinion of what constitutes shamanism". I therefore see myself obliged to explain what I understand by the term.

Shamanism is not a religion-at least scholars of comparative religions and modern anthropology, with the exception only of some, mostly Russian, colleagues 2 agree on that-but a phenomenon-namely, the activities of shamans-that can be found in various religions. This transfers the need for a definition to the word "shaman". This term, which Europeans probably took from a Tungusic language, 3 is used for performers of religious functions who have the following abilities or characteristics.

1. They can intentionally put themselves in a trance (i.e. an altered state of consciousness) in which they react at least to a lesser degree to audi -tory and visual stimuli in their real environment.

2. They acquire the ability to enter a trance state after a vocation during a period of psychic crisis.

3. In this state of consciousness they are able to communicate with imagined beings (non-existent from a scientific point of view) whose form is determined by the religion under which they profess their voca -tion.

4. They generally induce the religiously motivated state of altered consciousness in the interests of, and in accordance with, the whole of their society, in which they act as religious interpreters and to which they con -vey a feeling of security in relation to the powers of the other world.

5. In the directly visible forms of their activities, for example in ritual clothing, during rituals or in the preparation of their locality, they are the bearers of a tradition.

The use of the term "shaman" as defined by the five points above should not be confined to North and Central Asia because it is worth looking comparatively, at least, at neighbouring cultural areas. Like Siikala (1992:26f.), I use "religious trance", "a specific religious form of suggestive absorption" (Arbman 1963:XV; Hultkrantz 1978:41), as a concept superordinate to "religious role-taking", which includes the subjective experience of different roles : ecstasy-when consciousness leaves the self to go on soul-journeys-on the one hand, and posses -

2 E.g. Chang 1993:6; Potapov 1991; Pustogachev 1997. 3 The question of the origin of the ward "shaman" is discussed very often; see

e.g. Hoffmann 1967: 100.

42 Ulla Johansen

sion-subjective experience of entry of another being into one' s selfon the other. In Siberian shamanism ecstasy prevails, though it is not always the shaman's soul itself which flies away: his helping spirits may do this. In the shamanism of southernmost Siberia, as in the steppes, in Tibet, Korea and China, possession is characteristic. Thus I cannot use "ecstasy" and "religious trance" as synonyms as Arbman did, despite my considerable esteem for his fundamental oeuvre. With ref erence to Hamayon's (1993:Sff.) reservations about the concept of "trance", I confess that my final goal is nothing more than to translate the religious experience of the other-being possessed by spirits or talking to theminto a more precise scholarly language. As far as possible I attempt to do so without off ering physiological or psychological diagnoses.

lntentionally Induced Altered States of Consciousness

Religious trance

lnduced by role-taking

Ecstasy Possession

Induced by exhaustion

Non-religious trance

Others

Fig. l . My use of the concepts relating to intentionally induced altered states of consciousness (contrary to Harner's "SSC"/1982). Religious trance is sometimes

additionally stimulated by non-religious trance techniques.

REMARKS ON METHODOLOOICAL PRINCIPLES OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH

A further definition concerns my understanding of historical research. This is necessary in view of a large number of anthropological papers that take issue with the history of shamanism in the sense of evolutionary theories. Like Mühlmann (1962:252ff.), but in contrast to Hultkrantz (1989:43), I look upon history and development as separate aspects of research. Papers on the evolution of shamanism reconstruct it on the basis of reflections on the logical antecedents (or, rather, those considered


logical) of recent manifestations of shamanism. I include in this category also evolutionary models that arise from ideological systems.

Here one should mention Zelenin (1952:241) with his theory of the development of shamanism from the role of the mentally ill, or Anisimov (1958:127-187) and Tokarev (e.g. 1981), within the last decade one might cite Basilov ( 1995: l lf.; 1997) to some extent. They all view shamanism as originating in classless societies by way of the transition from the matemal-totemistic to the patemal stages, which they necessarily have to go through. Humphrey (1980:244) and Hultkrantz (1989:44, 1993:4) have already dealt with this handicap for Russian anthropologists.

Father Schmidt's contrary idea of the development of real shamanism in agrarian cultures, which he identifies as a distancing from the original revelation of God, is outdated too. Best known is Eliade' s hypothesis of a general "archaic" soul-travelling shamanism at the dawn of the history of mankind. Though his theory is not supported by a thorough interpretation of sources, his vast knowledge and his beautiful, enthusiastic style has influenced many even of the best-informed researchers on shamanism. Tue word "archaic", which properly refers to a period in Greek history but in anthropology only signifies the indistinct feeling of a writer that he is dealing with an ancient element of culture, thus occurs even in the writings of specialists in shamanism. Ozols (1983:137), referring to Eliade, argues that because of its connection with ecstasy shamanism is a primeval phenomenon ( Urphänomen). In a similar way Furst (1994) takes it tobe mankind's first form of religious worship. Referring to them, Chang (1993:6) writes: "I believe [my emphasis] its [shamanism's] full development coincided with the extensive spread of Homo sapiens throughout the world". Wierciiiski (1989:21) takes this further by declaring that shamanism was found even among the Olduvai people, 1.5 million years ago. Lommel (1965:173) 4

appears to be more cautious, writing: "Of course shamanism already existed in the Magdlenien, in other words between 15,000 and 10,000 B.C., the rock paintings prove this" or "However, the roots of shamanism reach without a doubt as far back as the so-called Alpine Paleolithic, in other words perhaps as far back as 30,000 to 50,000 years".

4 Cf. Johansen's (1970) review of Lommel 1965. Findeisen (1957:7) argues in a similar way.

44 Ulla Johansen

The examples of such evolutionary theories could be extended considerably. lt seems unnecessary, though, to carry on with the list. Hultkrantz (1989:43) has already characterized these endeavours with the comment that "Any such appr~ach obviously contains a good deal of speculation". I must stress, however, that I am not opposed to all ideas about the possible developments, but I believe that analysis of the available sources-what I would now refer to as historical research-has precedence. This will be carried through not only on the "micro-level" (Hultkrantz 1989:49), but in an overview of more than 5,000 years and almost a continent. A precondition for a successful solution of the prob -lems of this task is a working definition of shamanism, as I have attempted to provide at the beginning of this paper. One has to know what to look for in the sources: what is shamanism; and what is religion, but not especially shamanism? The above-mentioned works show clearly that what happens without such a methodically reasoned procedure is that any hint of religion in the distant past is presented as shamanism. As a result such pan-shamanistic studies can then portray not the occurrence of shamanism past and present but only whatever in the world has been declared to be shamanism.

Our sources are above all archaeological evidence and written records. By methodologically stringent, and very critical, analysis, conclusions about the past of shamanism can also be drawn from the shaman's paraphemalia5 and from oral traditions. Indeed, some of those authors who would fain come to conclusions based on such sources start from unsatisfying definitions. At this point I would again like to characterize briefly another two of the better known papers rather than look at the whole breadth of this tendency as my intention is not to display exasperation at the mistakes of earlier researches but to clarify my own position.

The first example is Kirchner's (1952) "Archaeological Contribution to the Earlier History of Shamanism". Kirchner does not explicitly define what he understands by the term shamanism. A "theriomorphic Weltanschauung" (the concept of spirits in animal form or with animal characteristics) is sufficient to point to the presence of shamans. He too considers their first appearance to be connected with the economic stage of hunters and gatherers at the dawn of mankind's existence. Also classed as evidence for shamanism are the occidental discoveries of chains and

5 E.g. Di6szegi 1960, 1961 and 1963.


bells with trappings for horse riders, which he interprets as protective charms against evil spirits, as well as Indo-Germanic horse sacrifice and the Dionysos cult in ancient Greece. Archaeologic'al finds of drums in the shape of goblets and sand-glasses are supposed to set shamanism at an even earlier date (Kirchner 1952:245ff.). With the help of figures of warnen and birds found in Siberia and Europe, as well as cave paintings from Lascaux (1952:254ff.), Kirchner (1952:272) places shamanism as far back as the Palaeolithic. Narr (1959:248ff., 269ff.) drew attention to the hypothetical nature of such conclusions. He himself considers shamanism as only probable at the time of the cave paintings of Lascaux.6 I do not wish to deny that shamanism, as I described it at the outset, could already have been widespread in the Palaeolithic. The goal of historical research of the kind described earlier, however, is not to determine how something could have been but to recognize how it was.

In this sense the more important works are those by Roux, which portray the history of shamanism through written sources from the time of the Hsiung-nu and which contain many stimulating remarks. Roux also fails, however, owing to his unsatisfactory definition of shamanism. The characteristics which he postulates (which do not or only partly correspond to my definition)-principally magical eures, soul joumeys, divination, "various capabilities", the mastering of elements, political activities and priestly functions (Roux 1959)-are listed separately, and their connections within the complex of shamanism and with society as a whole become lost (Roux 1958a, 1958b; 1959; 1961).

6 "so kann man keine Gewißheit darüber erlangen, ob etwa Darstellungen wie die von Altamira und Homos de Ja Pena wirklich Schamanen mit Vogelattributen darstellen oder nicht in eine allgemeine animalische Vorstellungswelt ohne schamanistische Prägung einzuschließen sind" (Narr 1959:252 ); "Es bleibt [ ... ] in diesen Dingen bei einem Analogieschluß, mit dem sich nur Wahrscheinlichkeiten, nicht aber strikte Beweise erreichen lassen." (271). In this connection the paper of Miyakawa and Kollautz should be mentioned. They concentrate on old Chinese sources and take all antler-crowns on anthropomorphic figures as proof of shamanism.

46 Ulla Johansen

THE H ISTOR Y OF SHAMANISM IN S IBERIA AND CENTRAL ASIA ACCORDING TO A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION OF SOURCES

Cle.µ- evidence of Siberian shamanism has been unearthed by Russian archaeologists. 7 The first trace was the skeleton of a woman from the Glazkovo Period, who, according to Okladnikov (1955:236 and 349ff.), was interred between 1700 and 1300 B.C. She is wearing two anthropomorphic figures made of mammoth bone on her apron, a characteristic item of dress that is still found among the Tunguz. The figures distin -guish this burial from all the others. Moreover, they are attached where Ket, Y akut and Chukchi shamans of today place figures that personify their special guardian spirits. 8 Okladnikov' s interpretation of this dis -covery as a female shaman has not yet been contradicted (Okladnikova 1997). We can say with certainty that the person was a woman who had special religious status and who, with her ritual clothing, followed a tra -dition. That the first two criteria for shamanism apply to her must be presumed.

The same can be said of two newer archaeological discoveries of per -sons who obviously bad a special religious status at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. In 1972, in the neighbourhood of Choybalsan, Eastem Mongolia, Novgorodova (1989:77ff.) found the skeleton of a young man whose garment, unlike those of the others buried there, was sewn over and over with beads and with representations of the sun, moon and stars and two bears. He also owned a headdress, different from those of the others, and a mask. Thus Novgorodova's (1979:59) assumption that the young man was an Eneolithic shaman sounds plau -sible. In the neighbourhood of Karakal in the Altai Mountains, Kubarev (1988:102ff.) found rock carvings, from a time only a little later, of dancing people with horned crowns and lang stripes on their garments. These can be seen as dancers with masks, but possibly also as shamans despite Hoppal's (1992:140f.) warning against too facile interpretations of rock carvings.

lt should be added that it can be demonstrated from written sources that in China, at almost the same time as Okladnikov 's discovery, there

7 Cf. Ozols 1983. 8 E.g. Pekarskii and Vasil'ev 1910. Fig. 1., Anukhin 1914. Fig. 3. and Bogoras

1904- 1909:458.


were performers of religious functions-the wu, for the most part women-who clearly correspond to my definition. lt is reported that on particular occasions they danced while possessed; in other words, they were able to put themselves into an altered state of consciousness, which they did at the suggestion of, or at least with the agreement of, the peo -ple, or even the Emperor, in order to establish contact with the spirits. They had a special way of dressing whereby everyone could immediately recognize them as wu. As far as I know there are no reports concerning their vocation as such. However, they usually stood in contrast to the cult of Heaven, which was presided over by the Son of Heaven himself, 9

and were often even branded as its opponents. Thus it becomes clear that shamanism corresponding to our definition

was already fully developed in the Shang period in China and to the north, and that it came into being by at least about 3000 B.C., which one can say is very old as far religious phenomena go. As to the first millen -nium B.C., there are Greek reports about the western Scythians, which have been analysed principally by Meuli (1935:128ff.). According to these there were seers, including some who had changed their sex, and the self-induced state of altered consciousness was in no way unfamiliar to the Scythians. Whether these persons and practices comply with the complexity of shamanism is not clear.

In the east, the continuity of shamanism becomes clear at the time of the Hsiung-nu. Chinese annals report that the Hsiung-nu worshipped heaven and earth, knew about weather magic (Deguignes 1756-58. 1. 2: 296) and made offerings to the dead. They also believed in various sorts of spirits. Their ruler bore a title similar to that of the Chinese ruler. He also carried ultimate responsibility for the cult of heaven and the ances -tors of the ruling house. Furthermore, philological considerations of the origin of the word tängri show a possible Chinese influence (Doerfer 1965. I:584f.). The Hsiung-nu had wu, who, when possessed by ancestor spirits, could proclaim their will (De Groot 1921: 186; Eberhard 1942: 47f.). As in the case of the Chinese wu, we can be fairly certain that they correspond to our definition of a shaman.

An indication of shamanism can also perhaps be seen in one of the headbands found in Kurgan VI at Noin Ula. lt is made of thick felt bor-

9 See Schang 1934; De Groot 1910: 1205ff; Maspero 1950:34, 53f.; Hopkins 1945; Eichhorn 1973:25ff.

48 Ulla Johansen

dered with sable skin. Above the eyes two surfaces are left free with light spiral ornamentation. Silk ribbons hang down from the headband to the shoulders. The form, the material and the ornamentation-the latter appearing only on this piece-resemble the shaman's crown of recent times in this area and to the north. The representation of the eyes on the latter is especially important should the wearer's eyes not be covered by fringes. Tue shaman performs in this case with his eyes closed, and the eyes on the crown watch over his body. They are the eyes of the shaman's ancestor, from whom he inherited his gift. 10 Is the headband of Noin Ula accordingly a shaman's crown?

From the Pei-shu and Wei-shu (Bichurin 1950. I:197) we learn that at the beginning of the sixth century A.D. the Juan-Juan had a female wu who performed sorcery with the help of spirits. As was related of the Chinese wu, she had a disastrous influence on the ruler.

According to Chinese annals the religion of the T'u-küe corresponds to that of the Hsiung-nu. Apart from that, we also learn that the T'u-küe worshipped a mother goddess, Umay. As with the Chinese, the determination of auspicious and non-auspicious days-in other words astrology-was important. 11 One of their great leaders also knew weather magic (Liu 1958:6). Again, there are reports of wu, but the appearance of these people must have been so commonplace for the Chinese that they do not speak of them in detail. The Old Turkic inscriptions do not men -tion them at all. Only the mention of a shaman's drum in an inscription in Tyva can be taken as further evidence for the existence of shamans. The dead person explains that he is parting from his drum in a far away place (Batmanov and Kunaa 1963:27). In present-day ethnic groups, however, the shamans used to be given their accessories, the drum included, at their burial to take with them into the afterlife, although at the beginning of the twentieth century the iron parts of such items were often removed. The idea of the dead shaman continuing to have an influence on life forms part of the basis of shamanism in Siberia.

The word qam appears in the language of the Y enisei-Qyrghyz. lt is translated in the Tang-shu by the word wu ("exorcist", "soothsayer") and thus bears witness to the existence of shamanism (Bichurin 1950. I:353;

10 Communication of the shaman Shonchu in Tyva to the late Peter Karal'kin of Leningrad, who kindly informed me.

l l See Gabain 1953.


Roux 1958a: 135). In the eleventh century there is even a report of the Qyrghyz shaman's trance (Boyle 1972:180). In the following centuries we continue to come across the word qam, pointing to the existence of shamans among the Turkic peoples, as in Uyghur, Qarakhanid and Qo -man, where a female shaman, qam qatun, also appears. 1 2

References to shamans during the early periods of the Turks and the Mongols are few and fragmentary, but much more comprehensive information begins to appear with the Mongolian empire. This comes mainly from the Secret History (and later from Rashid ad-Din) and the reports of European travellers. With this a better interpretation of the early references to shamanism is possible, assuming there were comparable sociopolitical and socioreligious conditions in earlier kingdoms. All the sources, especially the accounts by Europeans, allow us to recognize various religious domains and the corresponding social status of the cult officiators.

Rubruk (1934:279ff) divides those responsible for religious functions into magicians and soothsayers. Into the latter group he places mainly those who acted for the state cult. The Khan himself confirmed that these were the priests of the Mongols. Their knowledge of astrology was obviously good, and those who later were advisors to the Emperor Qubilai in China possessed an astronomical knowledge of a world standard. According to Marco Polo's (1908:284ff.) account, there were hardly any Mongols left among them by that time. The astrologers had their own hierarchy by the time of Möngke, as they did at the Chinese court. Their head held the highest religious office. He was the highest official beki, as we learn from the Secret History (Haenisch 1948:lOlf.). Since he was dealing with heaven, which belonged to the higher male principle and to which even the Khan himself was subject, his social prestige was second only to the latter's. He could even become a threatening competitor, as was the case with Teb-tengeri, who could independently summon all the people together. The fundamental political question of the Middle Ages in Central Europe as to who had the last say-the religious officiator of heaven, in this case the Pope, or the secular ruler, the Emperor-also had its counterpart in Mongolian history. We know how the contest ended: Jinghis Khan had Teb-tengeri assassinated during this govemment crisis,

12 See Caferoglu 1934:129; Gr!1)nbech 1942:191; Nadeliaev et al. 1969:413 and Clauson 1972:625.

50 Ulla Johansen

but remained so in awe of his supernatural powers, which, in accordance with the beliefs of the Mongols, as an ancestral spirit he still possessed after his death, that he quickly left the place where Teb-tengeri had been killed (Haenisch 1948: 115ff.). After that he had a loyal high priest in Üsün the Eider, who did not challenge the supremacy of the temporal ruler. However, according to Rubruk (1934:279), the highest priest still had so much power that nothing, not even wars, could be undertaken without his approval. According to Rubruk's (1934:276) report Möngke said: "God gave you the Holy Scriptures but you do not abide by them. But He gave us the soothsayers and we do everything that they tel1 us, and live in peace". Rubruk (1934:280) also states that the yurta of the holder of this office stood "nearly in front" of the khan' s, whereas everybody else's was pitched behind. In the Secret History Üsün is accorded the highest place. His holiness was expressed in his title and his white clothing. According to Rubruk (1934:279), next to astrology his task was the cult of the ancestral rulers, whose images were driven around in a special cart. He organized the large sacrifices to heaven and earth in the autumn and winter, for which the ruler himself was the donor of the sacrifices.

However, Rubruk does not speak of the special experience of the vocation, and above all not of religious trance, which he should have noticed in connection with them. Their almost continuous description as shamans in the literature 1 3 cannot be correct-unless, of course, we were to call the Pope a shaman too. Since we would not seriously con -sider doing that, we should not apply the term to all who held religious office with the Mongols, using what appears to be a "primitive" terminology, despite our enthusiasm for the Mongols or the ancient Turks. We need to differentiate more exactly by applying our definition and adopting a more precise terminology.

As with Marco Polo's account too, we learn that next to prophecies about the future weather magic was an important task. As this too was directed to the heavenly regions, it was also a highly regarded skill, which was practised by members of the nobility. Clearly, ritual knowledge was needed to practise it, and perhaps one even had to have a rain stone and a high degree of social prestige, but it certainly did not require the ability for self-induced religious trance. High social status was a re-

13 E.g. Boyle 1972:181 and Basilov 1995:21.


quirement for the consent of heaven so that the rain magic could not be tumed against the practitioners, as was the case with Buyrukh-khan and Khudukha (Haenisch 1948:43; Marco Polo 1908:201 ; Rubruk 1934: 287). At the beginning of the sixteenth century Babur reports that one of his relations on his mother's side was able to bring on rain with a piece of jade (Beveridge 1969:27). We must assume that he was a member of the nobility too.

The leaders of the clans were responsible for the course of the great sacrifices to heaven and earth in spring and autumn, as reported by the Secret History even before the time of Jinghis Khan (Haenisch 1948:6). Nor were sacrifices to the ancestors carried out by shamans, but rather by the clan leader or the head of the lineage, or sometimes by women of high status (Haenisch 1948:12, 76).

As in China, the ruler, whose power was derived from heaven and earth, was responsible for the cosmic harmony enjoyed by the state. He directed his invocations to the "etemal heaven", 14 to which he ascended after his death (Haenisch 1948: 136). Only once do we learn that, on the orders of Jinghis Khan, one of the great generals made such an official invocation .to heaven (Haenisch 1948:113). This shows that the ruler himself had priestly functions. Unlike in modern ways of thought, we cannot separate religion from the rest of culture in the Mongolian thinking of this period.

Who, then, were the shamans? Here again we should look at Rubruk's report: "There are some amongst them who call up the spirits and invite those who want to have an answer from a demon into their house at night. They then put cooked meat in the yurta and the khan (qam is meant here) [ ... ] begins his magic formula. At the same time he holds a drum in his hand [ ... ] at last he becomes frantic [ ... ] then the demon appears in the darkness and he gives it the meat to eat, after which the demon gives the answers" (Rubruk 1934:289f., where consideration is given to the rnisunderstanding of the word qam 1934:109). Quarter of a century later Juvaini reports almost the same of people whom the Uyghurs called qam and who still had this function among the Mongols at the time. He writes that they could speak with their demons and that they could find out everything that was going on. Juvaini distinguishes the qams from astrologers. Doerfer (1967:402ff) , Nadeliaev et al.

14 E.g. Haenisch 1948:34, 74, 130.

52 Ulla Johansen

(1969:413) and Clauson (1972:625) all note the use of the word qam in the ancient Turkic sources. The latter are mentioned as healers and diviners in personal matters, but never as priests.

Qam is the Turkic word, whereas in Mongolian they are called bö' e. Such people are also mentioned in the Secret History, once again in connection with a personal predicament-the strake suffered by Ögedei (Haenisch 1948:138f.; Poucha 1956:181). Shamans and persons with other skills came to the bedside of the dignitary to heal him with their different practices. They undertook the actual contact with spirits, in this case the water and earth spirits of the Kitat country, which had been insulted by the breaking and thoughtless throwing away of bones, especially the backbones of fish. They found out what the spirits required by way of atonement and, as Rashid ad-Din reports, the shamans conjured the deadly drink, which Tolui drank (Doerfer 1967:403). This shows that at the level of the individual the state cult had room left for such perf ormers of religious functions.

lt is, however, more difficult to apply our definition to the various specialists described in this source than it is to those mentioned by Rubruk and Juvaini, for whom only the reference to a vocation is lacking to comply with the definition of "shaman" given above, but this may be presumed. Among them there were astrologers of a lower order who could cast horoscopes at significant tirnes in people's lives, especially on the birth of boys, and who were also familiar with the various forms of oracles. These one could certainly not refer to as shamans. Rubruk, who recognized exactly the trance of the qam, does not mention anything of the kind here. Therefore we cannot suppose that they went through a time of crisis and experienced a calling as shamans do. Apart from that there were also healers who could heal illnesses caused by spirits or brought about by other people; the spirits would be atoned as in the case of Ögedei, or those who had caused the illness through magic would be identified and would have to make amends to dispel the magic (Rubruk 1934:283ff.). These healers were also called bö' e, or "shaman". Rubruk reports that they once used a young girl as a medium and that she had visions.

If we now look back at the short reports from Turkic or Hsiung-nu times, it becomes clear that the wu, seen as on the same level as the shamans, were always mentioned separately from religion at the high political level too, so that here also there were different social levels of


the cult and, related to this, performers of the rituals on different levels. How could it be that in a complex state-which had, as we know already from the Hsiung-nu, an elaborate military and administrative hierarchythere was only one form of religious functionary? With this it becomes clear why the Old Turkic inscriptions never mention shamans, despite the fact that foreigners do, and the Chinese refer to them explicitly. Roux has briefly answered this question (1958b:135; Doerfer 1967:403): in the inscriptions, leading male members of the clans turn to the afterlif e so that they may be remembered for their political and military achievements. Here we are dealing with the highest political level, the domain in which the political leaders themselves, or the astrologers or weather magicians, implement the cult. The level of personal problems never provides subject matter for these inscriptions.

If we now turn our sights from the period of the height of the power of the steppe peoples to the periods thereafter, we have to look at their loss of power and ask the question: what became of the religious organization, and especially the shamans, after the fall of the empire? I seek an answer in those areas where, and at those times when, none of the world religions was officially recognized. To provide this we can look to the reports of European travellers from the seventeenth and eighteenth cen -turies. Roux (1960:441-457) has already analysed these to determine what, in his opinion, were the characteristics typical of shamanism, which I discussed at the outset. Here the relevant texts are given in detail. I can build on his preparatory work.

lt can be shown for early colonial times that where there continued to be relative political independence and a local sociopolitical hierarchy, a diversity in religious offices was observed. We learn from Pallas that there were several classes of religious functionaries among the Qazakhs, who officially recognized Islam, including specialists in divination who practiced scapulomancy. He observed the same among the lamaistic Qalmuks.

At the same time an accumulation of religious functions is observable not only among shamans of the ethnic groups living in the northem parts of Siberia but also among the Turks and Mongols of southem Siberia. The shamans established contact with the spirits by entering a trance to help personal crises, but they were now also responsible to the heavenly spheres. Not only did they send their souls there; Gmelin reports from the first, and Pallas from the second half of the eighteenth century that

54 Ulla J ohansen

the shamans among the Siberian Turks as well as in the northern Mon -golian areas officiated alongside the heads of clans at the main sacrifices in spring and autumn. Those who performed weather magic were often shamans too. 15 Soothsaying was also undertaken by these religious officiants, now on their own, who could be very influential in the aff airs of the clan. They might also contribute to entertainment, in a way comparable to the bards of Central Asia. lt is in this form that the Siberian shaman appears to us as the prototype known from research.

How did such a change come about within three centuries? The decline in power of the centralized state must inevitably have bad its strongest effect at the higher socioreligious level. As far as I know we learn nothing more after the expulsion of the Yüan dynasty about the hierarchy of those state astrologers directly under the ruler. The small principalities that emerged after the empire could not afford a hierarchy of this kind, not to mention the Turkic clans which were becoming ever more independent in Siberia. In contrast, the original domain of responsibility of the shaman remained intact: that of personal problems, especially those related to the health of clan members. Since the shaman was the only individual who had serious dealings with the other world, bis functions increased dramatically.

CONCLUSIONS

Is shamanism therefore, with its abundance of functions, a phenomenon of colonialism-in other words something that could only develop in this form in the context of alien rule with a political framentation of native Siberians, and not in large, independent states? This would coincide with Lewis' types of peripheral and central forms of social embeddedness of religious trance. Before we can decide such questions, however, it is necessary to work out in detail the different types of Siberian shamanism and their socioreligious background on the basis of an explicit defini -tion-not too broad and not too narrow-having regard to the changeableness of this institution in history.

15 E.g. Seroshevskii l 896:668f.


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Harner, Michael 1982. The Way of the Shaman. New York: Harper & Row. Hoffmann, Helmut 1967. "Symbolik der tibetischen Religionen und des Schaman

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Hultkrantz, Ake 1973. "A Definition of Shamanism." Temenos 9. 25-37. -. 1978. "Ecological and Phenomenological Aspects of Shamanism." In Vilmos Di6szegi and Mihaly Hoppal (eds.) Shamanism in Siberia. Bibliotheca Uralica 1. Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6.

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Hultk:rantz, Ake 1989. "The place of Shamanism in the History of Religions." In Mihaly Hoppal and Otto von Sadovsky (eds.) Shamanism : Past and Present. 1. ISTOR Books 1-2. Budapest: Ethnographie Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences/Los Angeles/Fullerton: International Society for Trans-Oceanic Research. -. 1993. "Introductory Remarks on the Study of Shamanism." Shaman. An International Journal for Shamanistic Research. 1/1. 3-14.

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VOL.7. NO.l. SHAMAN SPRING 1999

Sappho 's Koma: Insights Into the Vocabulary of Shamanic Trance in Ancient Greek Poetry

BARTON K UNSTLER CAMBRIDGE, MA.

Although most scholars discount the existence of an active shamanic tradition in mainstream Hellenic culture , an analysis of one of Sappho' s poems reveals Sappho to have been a trance practitioner. The key term in this regard is koma, central to a matrix of terms employed in Greek poetry to describe the experience of trance. Comparative analysis of passages from the lliad, Odyssey, Theogony, and Pythian /, as well as the Biblical Song of Songs, uncovers a language of shamanic trance in which koma, the River Styx, paradisal gardens, wind and breath, metaphors for psychotropic substances, and key words such, as kaluptein and pneuma, are among the key elements. Decoding this language provides insight into the history of shamanism, epic and poetic themes, poetic diction, and the transitionfrom direct experiential modes of religion to more formal, mimetic institutional practices.

INTRODUCTION

Most classical scholars would discount the notion that the practice of trance was an integral part of the Greek city-state civilization of the Archaic (750-480 B.C.) or Classical (480-323 B.C.) periods. The mythological tradition, as it appears in the works of great poets, cult practice, and fragments rescued from literature, is not perceived as referring to trance experience, except in isolated cases described by Dodds (1973:135 ff.) and Eliade (1972:377 ff.). Yet, the great poet Sappho of Lesbos, in one of her most coherent surviving fragments , employed a vocabulary shared by other Greek poets in describing an experience that can only be called shamanic. In uncovering this stratum of her work, we will see how the shamanic tradition extended into the historical era in Hellas and better understanding how this tradition evolved into other cultural forms throughout the archaic era.

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The "tenth muse", as she was known in antiquity, is still a mystery to us. Of her nine volumes of poetry, only fragments survived destruction. The sixteen line poem we will examine, found on a broken potsherd dating from the third century B.C., is missing entire phrases. That Sappho taught choral dances to young women and girls seems fairly certain. In that role, she has been viewed as ancient school-marm, enraptured lover of her charges, member of a woman' s "literary coterie", ex -plorer of the boundaries between private and public sexuality, and simply a great poet. She was undoubtedly several of these. But she was also, in all likelihood, a practitioner of shamanic trance who, in this particular poem, employs an ancient and, for her contemporaries, probably a recognizable vocabulary of trance experience.

Sappho 2, deuru m' ek Kretas, invokes Aphrodite's appearance in a sacred grove, suitably idyllic and pristine. Sappho's language, however, reveals something more subtle and mysterious, the latter in its literal, an -tique sense. Sappho employs a vocabulary charged with allusion to blissfully mystical transport to a visionary realm. Decoding Sappho's language, which the poetess consciously used in the light of poetic tradition, extends our knowledge of the historical and poetic frameworks in which she worked as well as the tradition of shamanic trance in which her poem is embedded.

DESCRIPTION OF THE POEM

The structure of the poem, or rather, the sixteen line fragment salvaged from a third century B.C. potsherd, is deceptively simple: the invocation to the goddess followed by a description of the grove. There is only brief mention of what will happen when the goddess arrives, and no larger social purpose, alluded to beyond the ritual of welcoming the goddess. The language is almost surreal in its beauty, embodying our fairest fantasies of life on "the isles of Greece! where burning Sappho loved and sung". Certainly, it describes a ritual in enchanted terms, but does it actually detail a shamanic trance?

Tue invocation is clear enough, although not complete: "[come] hither to me from Krete to this holy shrine" (1-2). The shrine is located in, or identical with, a grove of apple trees in which frankincense smokes on the altars (2-4). Other details follow: cold water murmurs through the

Sappho' s Koma ... 61

branches of the apple trees, the place is shaded by roses, and a koma pours down from the shimmering leaves.

Sappho next compares the grove to a horse-nourishing meadow in which flourish springtime flowers the sweet winds blow upon. There, the poetess sings, the Kuprian will take her garlands while gracefully, from golden kylixes, the participant(s) pour out nectar mingled with the festivities. A possible continuation found in Athenaeus alludes to the presence of other companions ("with my companions and yours"), while a lacuna in lines 11-12 reminds us how accidental is the survival of those lines we do possess.

KOMA

General Characteristics

Koma, the key term in the poem, indicates the experience Sappho celebrates. In Greek poetry, koma has certain characteristics that indicate its function as a thematic sign in the poetic diction of trance. Koma refers to a "sleep ( or deep sleep) induced by enchantment or other special or supematural means." (Campbell 1967:267). One does not simply slip into koma, nor does it merely overtake one, as does sleep. Rather, koma generally envelops a person or deity, often descending from above. lt has an almost physical presence that transcends a mere condition or state of being. And unlike Hypnos, Morpheus, or Kalupso (from kaluptein), koma is never personified (although Kalupso herself, as we shall see, may in -deed represent koma). In the poetic tradition, koma is specifically associated with the presence or distinctive absence of nectar and/or ambrosia, the drink and food of the gods. Koma's source or its manifestation is often noted as shimmering or glistening, and the sources are as magical as they are various: a goddess, the waters of the River Styx, the lyre, roses, and a cloud. As do few other cosmic forces, koma has the power to overwhelm the gods themselves.

Iliad14

Zeus, after making love with "deception-minded" Hera, falls into a koma brought upon him by Hypnos (II. 14.359). lt is not, however, Sleep who generates the koma, although he is its immediate agent. The koma that

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subdues Zeus comes about by a rather complex process that includes intimations of Olympian revolution. Hera's true desire is to enchant her husband so that Poseidon and other like-minded Olympians can help the Greeks in battle (hence dolophroneousa, 'deception-minded'). She prepares by cleansing her skin with ambrosia, anointing it with "pleasant ambrosial olive oil" (14.170-72), plaiting her hair into "beautiful radiant ambrosial braids", and cloaking herself in an ambrosial robe (14.177-178). lt is difficult to miss the point: ambrosia appears four times in nine lines. Hera is literally drenched in the stuff, perhaps in some mysterious way identified with it, and it is with ambrosia itself that Zeus mingles as well as with his wife.

Before their lovemaking, however, Hera undergoes an attack of mod -esty over the exposed nature of Mount Ida's Gargarian peak, and suggests they repair to a bedchamber "made by your own dear son Hephaistos" (14, 338-339), a recommendation that carries little weight with Zeus, considering his usual hostility to Hephaistos. Instead, the Cloudgatherer gathers round (amphikalupso, 14.343) them a golden cloud which even Helios's eyes cannot pierce, and from which descends glistening (stilpnai, 14.351) drops of dew. The lovers lie upon the dewy grass midst lotus, crocus, and hyacinth flowers. Afterwards, Zeus sleeps (eude, 14.352), while Hypnos envelops (kalupsa 14.359) Zeus with a soft koma and races off to tel1 Poseidon that all is clear for intervention on behalf of the Greeks.

Zeus is thus wrapped about or hidden twice, first by the dew-dispensing cloud of his own device and next by the koma itself, both incidences described by the verb kaluptein. Dew is sacred in and of itself; witness the Hersephoria festival, where it may be identified with distilled tinctures. The passage is alive with immortal substances: ambrosia, the golden cloud, the dew, and the flowers, often associated with magical transport and eroticism.

In addition, the deceit Hera uses in persuading Aphrodite to lend her the love goddess's own lust-arousing girdle (14.214) and to justify to Zeus her unexpected visit to him, is telling in this context. Hera spins both Aphrodite and Zeus the same tale: that she is going to the ends of the earth to visit Ocean, birthplace or origin of the gods, and Tethys, who acted as a mother to her at the time of the battle of the gods and Titans (14.200-210, 301-311). Hera's plan, she says, is to reconcile the two titans, who have been angry at one another and sleep apart.

1

j

Sappho' s Koma .. . 63

Lies in Homer are, of course, a form of truth. The titanic discord resounds through Hera's marriage, as the stygian loathing (stugeros) she feels in her thumos toward Zeus (14.158) indicates (reinforced, no doubt, by the tactless catalog of former loves he offers his wife just before embracing her, 14.317-327). Directing the term stugeros at Zeus is truly extraordinary; in the Theogony, the word refers to the Olympians' feelings towards Tartarus (739, 810) and the Styx (775). Potential cosmic disruption is hinted at by the joy she feels ( khaire de thumoi) upon observing Poseidon, pointedly called "her brother and husband's brother" (14.156), as he aids the Greeks. The incestuous closeness of the three deities is Homer's way of hinting at the cosmic disruption that always threatens to erupt before the walls of Troy and that is dangerously close at the very moment Zeus and Hera embrace. Hera' s allusion to Ocean as progenitor of the gods situates Zeus' s koma at the very place and time of the "beginnings", and her allusion to the marital strife that rives the Titanic world is precisely the sort of dark, allusive, oblique statement one might expect from a spouse who cannot speak openly about her longing to replace the king of the gods with his brother - and herself.

We cannot pursue the füll implications of this passage. For our purpose, let us note that in Greek myth the ends of the earth represent a zone of magic, transport, and sacred transformation, whether the Isles of the Blest, the Hyperboreans' haunts or, as in Hera's lie, the birthplace of the gods and home of Ocean. In this case, it is Zeus via his koma, not Hera, who is transported to that place; Hera's deceit reverses the valence of her tale. A deity's journey to such liminal zones is often the catalyst for a shift in momentum in the mortal world, as indicated by Poseidon's Ethiopian visit that allows the Odyssey to commence. Thus, in Iliad 14, while Zeus lies deep within his koma, Hector is almost killed by a giant stone hurled by Telamonian Ajax. As he falls, he is compared to an oak uprooted by the thunderbolt of Zeus (14.414--416); he is revived by water from the River Xanthos, explicitly called child of immortal Zeus (14.433-434).

Xanthos was the name of the immortal horse belonging to Achilles who spoke to him of his death (II. 16.149-154; 19, 19.408-417). This horse was born by the banks, i.e., at the edge of, Ocean, and was the offspring of Zephuros, the west wind linked to immortality in epic, and Harpuia ('Seizer'), a gust of wind whose name stamps her as an abduc-

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tor. Alkman, in his Partheneion, has his chorus sing "we sing just as a swan at the streams of Xanthos". These "tawny streams" recall the reddened edges of Ocean' s streams at sunrise or sunset, the far eastern and western borderlands across which the Greeks often located the mystical regions. In myth, swans do not sing until the moment of their death, and Xanthos here is a realm in which the mysteries of life and death are revealed, a magical place his chorus associates with the Sirens. Both the reviving waters of Xanthos and the simile of "Zeus' s oak" situate Hector with Zeus. And well he might be, for even after recovering, he rests and "dark night enveloped (ekalupse) his eyes" (14.438-439). Hector is caught up in a vortex, flung between the extreme potentials of Zeus: utter devastation and renewal. Hector ends the scene in a virtual koma, denoted by kaluptein, the verb that almost always indicates koma, used of both Zeus and Hector in these synchronic scenes. Zeus's hold on the cosmos is unsettled by Hera's successful scheme and his power suspended for the duration of his trance.

The parallels with Sappho are telling. In Sappho, roses shadow the grove while in the Iliad, Zeus' s golden cloud blocks the sun. The descent of the koma in Sappho is paralleled by the descent of the koma-associated (perhaps koma-inducing) dew in Iliad 14. In Sappho, nectar, drink of the gods, mingles with the rites themselves; in the Iliad, it is ambrosia, food of the gods, that mingles with the rites of love, and both are associated with goddesses in erotic contexts (Aphrodite by virtue of who she is, Hera because she is preparing for love). Sappho's nectar pours from golden kylixes; the dew drops from Zeus's golden cloud. And the shimmering leaves and glistening dew possess the electric quality often associated with koma.

That koma is a far deeper state than hupnos is clear, as Hupnos is the bearer of koma and then races away while the koma is still in effect. lt is noteworthy that Hupnos swears a sacred oath on the River Styx that he will do what Hera asks. The association of the Styx with koma is most explicit in the Theogony, but it appears obliquely in Sappho and the Odyssey as well, as we shall see. Koma 's power to envelop and hide is often expressed by kaluptein, whose resonances with Kalupso cannot be accidental, as we shall see. Odysseus's seven year stay with Kalupso in her cave at the navel of the sea is, in effect, a koma of massive proportions.

1

Sappho' s Koma ...

Pythianl

65

At the beginning of Pythian 1, Pindar claims for his lyre the power to induce koma, and he surely did not intend that his audience doze off. Pindar ascribes several attributes to koma. The lyre can "quench the speared bolt of ever-flowing fire" identified with the eagle of Zeus perched atop the god's sceptre. The lyre loosens the eagle's wings and places a black-faced cloud upon his beaked head, and the lyre pours down (katekheuas 8) a sweet shutting of the eyes. The slumbering (knosson 8) eagle raises ripples, or vibrates, his liquid back, which is held down by the quivering of the lyre's strings. The lyre also can subdue Ares' harsh strength and melt his heart with its koma. The lyre charrns (thelgei) the phrenas of the gods by the wisdom of Apollo and the deep-folded Muses (11-12).

The eagle of Zeus, like Zeus in Iliad 14, also with bis head in a cloud, is the god himself. The lyre and the eagle both possess that rippling, vibrating activity that accompanies koma in Jliad 14 and Sappho; in this case, the connection between the two motions points to an electric resonance between lyre and eagle. Zeus's eagle's sleep is indicated by neither Hypnos nor eude, but by knossein, a verb associated with prophecy and deep dreams ( Od. 4.809; Olympian 13.71). This magical sleep descends upon the eagle in the manner of koma. lt is Ares whom the lyre explicitly puts into a koma (although the lyre's ability to induce koma is expressed in general terms with Ares presented as an example), and the lyre is also associated with the power to entrance ( thelge1).

The association of koma with magical trance would appear undeniable at this point. The koma falling upon the acolyte in Sappho's grove is a trance, a religious experience associated with the highest universal powers - Zeus and Aphrodite - and the "deepest" as well, as the Styx passage in the Theogony shows. The idea of trance cannot be taken lightly as merely indicating a deep sleep, or a metaphorical allusion to some vague religious experience. Trance states are known and respected in virtually every archaic culture. Trances involve a shutting down of the senses and everyday. consciousness; hence the idea of mystery, from muein ('to close'). The verbs kaluptein and knossein, closely associated with koma, refer to states in which consciousness itself is enveloped by a deep, trance-like sleep, i.e., trance itself.

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Tue death-like quality of the trance, that is, the stillness and depth of sleep that bears the transported one closer to the realm of death, is logical considering that trance often involves stilling or controlling the breath, as in yoga and various shamanic practices (Eliade 1964:412, Sansonese 1994). Tue Greek poet was a master of breath. In the caesura that mark virtually every line in epic, breathing rests denote "micro-shifts" within the narrative. In choral presentations, the rhythm govemed by the choir master - a role probably fulfilled by both Sappho and Pindar - required a coordination of movement with the meter of the poem, meter being an elaborated articulation of breath' s role in goveming the recitation of the poem, as weil as being useful as an aid to memory.

Pindar clearly alludes to breath in describing the rippling motion of the back of the slumbering eagle at the top of Zeus' s sceptre. This figure of the bird atop a sceptre refers throughout the world to the center of con -sciousness located at the crown of the cerebro-spinal system. The sceptre, as world axis, is also the spine, and the great bird at its apex is iden -tified with a "higher" consciousness, accessible through trance and breath control. In any other system, we would recognize the stilling of Zeus's eagle at the top of the sceptre, accompanied by a vibrating motion and the depths of trance, as a mystical state, not simply belonging to the god himself, but to the individuals who have engaged the godhead, within or without. There is a traditional resistance to recognizing this trance tradition as Hellenic; we also lack explicit evidence that the poets actually referred to trance states. To believe they were not referring to trance, however, is to ascribe to the Greeks an ignorance of traditions current throughout the archaic world. lt is possible that such usages were lost and lived on only as poetic or religious tropes. In the case of Sappho, however, I would argue for her familiarity with the trance state, a case that may be made stronger as we advance our evidence.

Odyssey 18

Penelope, wife of Odysseus, also experiences koma: "A soft koma hid (ekalupsen) suffering me" (Od. 18.201). Hypnos is again associated with koma, but ekalupsen is used here only in reference to koma (not any other sleep state), although hypnos and eude appear in lines 188, 189, and 199. In fact, once Penelope uses koma to describe her sleep, she immediately associates the deep sleep with death (18.202) and the release


from suffering it would bring. The sleep that engenders the koma is poured down (kata ... ekheuen 18.188) upon Penelope, who is also anointed with ambrosia (18.193), linked here with Aphrodite. For Penelope, the koma and ambrosia prepare her to charm the suitors, again mingling magic and desire; it is also fitting that the koma envelops her on the morning of the day Odysseus returns to reclaim his wife and his house. Again, we see koma in its characteristic context: trance-like, erotic, coming from above, associated with immortality via nectar or ambrosia, linked to a goddess, and associated with sleep but clearly distinct from it.

Koma and the River Styx

The most famous use of koma in Greek literature occurs in the Theogony (798), where Hesiod describes the effects of the waters of the Styx upon an Olympian deity who breaks his or her pledge. Tue Styx represents the great pledge of the gods (784) which binds them to a spirit of unity. When a god lies or "is false" (783), Zeus sends Iris to bring water from the Styx in a golden jug. The god who violated the pledge pours a libation of the water and then lies in bed breathless for a year, tasting neither ambrosia nor nectar, possessing neither pneuma ('breath', 797) nor voice. An evil koma envelops (kaluptei) him; after a year, the deity spends nine years in exile from the gods and their councils and feasts, a situation called much more difficult than the year spent in koma, which is also referred to as a nouson (799), an illness.

The Styx is the tenth stream, or eldest daughter, of Ocean; the other nine encircle the earth, but the Styx does not emerge into the encircling stream but rather flows out from a rock, a great pain to the gods (792). Tue water in Iris's jug is the megan horkon (784) itself, the great oath of the gods. Tue libation that parallels the libation of nectar from golden kylixes in Sappho's poem may shed light on Sappho's odd phrase, "mingling with the ceremony", for the libation of Styx-water literally is the oath, and Sappho's nectar may be identified similarly with the ceremony. After all, the presence of nectar and ambrosia means the gods are present; the food and drink of the gods are the ceremony, not merely appointments to it. Like Kalupso (see below), Styx the goddess dwells in a cave apart from the gods (777). The water pours (kataleibetai) down

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from a lofty rock (785-86) where, it is said, the gods may never taste ambrosia or nectar (796).

Sappho's brook and Hesiod's Styx both flow with chill water described by the same phrase, hudor psukhron (785-786). For Sappho, living only a century after Hesiod, this distinctive phrase must have served as unmistakable indicator of the Stygian nature of the stream in her poem. In using the same word - khoros (806) - to describe the grove as Hesiod uses to describe the place through which the Styx flows, Sappho reinforces the Stygian connection. In both passages, golden cups pour essential fluid: the Styx's water in Hesiod and nectar in Sappho. The koma that envelops (kaluptei) the gods is kakon (798), the antithesis of Sappho' s koma; the evil character of Hesiod' s koma is indicated by the gods' tasting neither ambrosia nor nectar for the year's duration of the trance (796) and their lying breathless and voiceless (797) during this time. Nagy demonstrates the link between the Styx and immortality via the epithet aphthiton (805) used by Hesiod of the Styx, and which, according to Nagy, "can denote the permanent and sacred order of the Olympians, into which the hero is incorporated after death through such cultural media as epic in particular and cult in general." (Nagy 1979/1981: 189). Thus the Styx is by virtue of aphthiton critical to the Olympian order while at the same time antithetical to it by virtue of its role in denying ambrosia, nectar, and consciousness itself to the gods. Hesiod states that the Styx is loathed (stugere) by the gods, the same word used of Hera's feelings towards Zeus in Iliad 14, and a word clearly derived from "Styx", or perhaps it is stugein that is the origin of the hateful river's name.

Thus there are two types of koma, those that are kakon and those identified with the food of immortality, and both are divine. The Styx is one of the congregation of chthonians, such as Nux, kindly Hupnos, iron-hearted Thanatos, the imprisoned Titans, Cerberus, Hades, and Persephone who preside over the underworld. Hesiod calls Tartaros the fount or source and outer limit of all things (738); above it grows the roots of earth and the sea (728). He uses the verb stugein to refer to the gods' loathing of Tartaros (739), blurring the line between the identities of Tartaros and the Styx.

While ambrosia and nectar enable mortal or deity to participate in the rites and privileges of the gods, a kakon ... koma in which the divine food and drink are absent represents a state of exile in which one's very spirit,

1


or breath, is absent. Tue positive type of koma, however, as described by Pindar and Sappho, is specifically linked to the divinity of breath (Zeus' s eagle in Pythia land the breezes blowing sweetly through Sappho's grove). Nagy makes the case quite convincingly for the role of wind as signifier of immortality in epic. Xanthos, Achilles' immortal horse, was the child of two winds and closely associated with Ocean. According to Carl Ruck ( 1986:256), xanthos is the color of the amanita muscaria and can denote the mushroom in Greek usage. Ruck (1986:229-230) points to wind as traditional abductor into a state of mystical transport while Nagy (1979/1981:195) sees it specifically as transporting the soul to a state of immortality. The pneuma of Boreas, for example, abducts Oreithuia while she plays on a mountain crag with her friend Pharmakos (Plato, Phaedrus 229 c). Wind is so close a metaphor for breath that it may be viewed as divine breath, and the connection between wind and breath, which converges in the term pneuma, is vital to the imagery of trance. Tue verb pnein 'to blow', which Sappho employs to describe the breezes blowing in her grove, indicates the immortality-conferring breath used to achieve trance, while the term aetai, which in Sappho's poem refers to the breezes themselves, was, according to Plato (Cratylus 410B), a word poets used for breath.

Hesiod describes Tartaros as a place within which a man is blasted here and there by wind upon wind, thuella thuellei (742), where breath is harsh and out of control. As Nagy (1979/1981:194-195) points out, "the divine abduction of mortals by gusts of wind ( thuellai or harpuiai) entails not only preservation but also sex and death." Thuella occurs in Odyssey 20.63-65 where Penelope wishes for a wind (thuella) to abduct her and "plunge her into the streams of Ocean." Such usage suggests a very ancient matrix of images in which wind signified breath and such terms as Ocean and xanthos the destination of mystical joumeys at the ends of the earth. These distant realms referred as well to time, as Ocean's role as genitor of the gods indicates; one clearly goes back to illo tempore as well as a sacred latitude on such journeys.

Probably at some point the close connection of wind to breath in the technical language of ecstasy became obscured and "wind" evolved into a poetic sign indicating a formal induction, via cult and epic (as vessel of memory), of the abducted figure into a state of immortality. This seems to be the type of immortality Nagy's work illuminates. The problem points to the difficulty in determining when, in any given religious con -

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text, the immediate engagement of individual with divine power is suppressed in favor of the abstractions of civil ritual and the orthodoxies of institutionalized belief-systems. Inquiry into such patterns is complicated by the fact that the vocabulary and symbolism of older forms are adopted and transformed in regard to their ends by newly ascendant institutions whose rites are often based on miming the spiritual journey rather than actually undergoing it.

According to Hesiod, the imprisonment of the Titans in Tartaros is achieved by the boule of Zeus (Theog. 730), the same "will of Zeus" that is the foundation of the entire Iliad (Il. 1.5). lt is Zeus's will that holds the Olympian cosmos together; without it, the forces of Tartaros would break loose and inundate the world. This sheds light on the seriousness of Zeus's koma in Iliad 14, for when Zeus becomes identified with the stygian forces of Tartaros, and Hera looks kindly on Poseidon, the will of Zeus is clearly threatened. One could posit that, in Book 14, had Hector actually died by the hand of Telamonian Ajax, Patroklos would never have fallen, Achilles' glory would have never blazed forth, and the entire Iliad would have been unnecessary. And as the Iliad goes, so goes the will of Zeus, epic, and the Olympian system, while Hera repairs to Poseidon, ancient husband of earth. In this regard, let us note that it is the Styx that underlies Achilles' immortality as weil as his mortality, as it is the Styx into which Thetis dipped him to guarantee his imperviousness to attack, failing however to expose the heel by which she held him.

Y et the mighty oath of the gods is rooted here at the foundation of cosmos, as is Hera's destination, Ocean, in the lie she tells Aphrodite and Zeus. Tue power of the Styx lies in its unadulterated quality, being the only stream of Ocean that does not mingle with the other waters; its power is delivered directly from Ocean. When the power of the Styx is managed properly - contained in Iris's golden jug, poured out in an Olympian ceremony, bound by the contract between celestial and chthonian powers - it helps regulate the celestial order. So, too, with the power of koma.

Where the Styx Flows

The koma of the gods occurs in an actual location pinpointed by Santillana and von Dechend in Hamlet' s Mill. They believe the Styx, the only branch of Ocean that does not open into the perceivable realm, to be


the celestial southem pole, the linchpin of the universe lying in the farthest depths of the underworld, counterpart to the celestial north pole. This was a spot invisible to the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world, but clearly known to them, at the very least by surmise (i.e., a northem pole must have a southern counterpart). Santillana and von Dechend (1977:200) note the use of the term "ogygian" to refer to the Styx; this place, abhorred of the gods and lying beneath the "earth" - in archaic astronomical vocabulary "earth" stood for the plane of the ecliptic - is, in my view, the ac1?al place where offending gods lie in koma.

Kalupso

Kalupso's isle is named Ogyges, and it may be found at the omphalos thalasses ( Od. 1.50), navel of the sea; the nymph is the daughter of Atlas, he who knows the depths of the sea (1.52-53). Atlas is the column god who separates heaven and earth, and he dwells in the gloomy underworld described by Hesiod; his daughter's home is at the heart of the axis mundi but far from the palaces of Olympus. Kalupso's name is derived from kaluptein, indicating a close association with koma . And while Homer never states that Odysseus is in a koma, he is under a spell, enchanted by the goddess (1.56-57), who is said to hold him "by necessity" (5.14). Anagkei, "Necessity", is the goddess whose bonds hold together the cosmos, to whom even Zeus is subject, and she bears a strong resemblance in this regard to the River Styx as described by Hesiod. Odysseus is not only stranded by charms and lack of a ship; he is held in bonds at the foundations of the universe.

Hermes, appointed by Zeus to order Kalupso to release the hero, dons his golden ambrosial sandals and carries his sceptre with the power to charm men awake or asleep, as he wishes, an intriguing allusion perhaps to his true mission: to rouse Odysseus from his koma. Kalupso's home is paradisal, like Sappho' s grove: a cave in which she weaves like one of the Fates, surrounded by exotic birds. Four streams flow among beds of parsley and violets, while buming spices scent the cave. After greeting her guest, Kalupso serves him ambrosia and nectar (5.93). Hermes transmits Zeus's command to release Odysseus, and Kalupso rails against Zeus' s jealousy towards goddesses who sleep with mortal men, a theme closely linked with the validation of the will of Zeus (Michel 1983). Sexual relations between a deity or spirit and an "en-tranced"

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shaman indicate initiation in shamanic traditions (Eliade 1964:?lff.), and we can see how far epic has gone in transforming such meetings into dramatic narrative. Zeus's boule is embodied in his intention to free Odysseus from Kalupso, in large part as a sign of his power over the goddess-world. When Kalupso tells Odysseus she will help with his return, the hero thinks it is one more trick, so she swears by the Styx, which she calls the greatest and most terrible oath to the blessed gods (5.185-186), that she will no longer hold him with her spells. Then, she sits down to eat with him, reserving the feast of nectar and ambrosia for herself and offering Odysseus only mortal food (5.198-200). However, Odysseus is undergoing a transformation. Once he realizes that he will be moving again, the epithets used to describe him shift back to the character we are familiar with; thus, in responding to Kalupso's final bid to convince him to stay with her, he is called polumetis (5.214), 'subtleminded, crafty, wise'. Now that he is leaving the trance, his intellectual faculties return.

The southern pole is anitpodal to the northern in more than a physical sense. One travels north to find the Hyperboreans and the bliss of their endless feasts. To be in the South Pole, however, is to experience an unwanted koma, as is evident in Hesiod's description of the koma occasionally visited upon the Olympians. Thus frequent allusion is made to Odysseus's misery (5.13, 83, 151 ff., 171). Kalupso's cave is very much like the stygian depths of Tartaros; the cave of the goddess Styx is held up by silver columns and both caves are located at the roots of the sea. Odysseus, who heard the Sirens sing, suffers for it after all; like Er at the end of the Republic, who listens to the Sirens' song from his perch at the apex of the cosmos, Odysseus too is witness to the harsh weaving of the Fates. In Alkman's Partheneion, the Sirens are said to sing by the streams of Xanthos. Odysseus, boundary crosser and visitor to Hades, returns home via a labyrinthine route that includes seven years' koma in Kalupso's embrace at the southern celestial pole, and a transitional journey to the Hyperborean-like Phaiakians at the northern pole, who finally deliver hirn back to Ithaca.

Odysseus is freed from his ogygian koma by the spell by the pillar god, Hermes, who releases men from sleep and whose ambrosial sandals allow him to travel to the antipodes of the axis mundi. The paradisal haven, Kalupso's cave in this case, is home to an erotic union of divine lover and mortal beloved; only here, the union is sexually reversed in a


manner the Olympians cannot allow, and Paradise is actually the scene of a harsh koma for a sailor to whom the winds have not been kind. That Odysseus must be rescued to restore order on earth is the celestial motive driving the poem.

Odysseus 's retum is marked by helping winds, indicative of the ability of breath to sustain poetry, but also a sign of the spring winds that open the sea-lanes and renew epic and the immortalization it confers (because the winds allow the poets to travel from one community to the next, thus standardizing epic and its related festivals and cults (Michel 1983). After twenty days alone, the hero washes ashore at Phaiakia, an island whose inhabitants live akin to the blessed Hyperboreans. Od ysseus 's difficult koma is mediated successfull y and his return to Ithaka assured.

The Song of Songs

The Old Testament Song of Songs uncannily parallels Sappho. In Chapter 2, the poet sings of his beloved as an apple tree, and notes that the flowers of spring betoken a resurgence of life and love. In chapter 4, the Sister/Spouse is described as an enclosed garden filled with fruit trees, streams, frankincense and myrrh, and refreshed by pleasant breezes, which blow so that the spices might be borne from the garden. The groom invites his bride to enter the garden and taste of its fruit, much as Sappho does Aphrodite; the garden is both beloved and the place the lover wishes the beloved to enter. Tue groom describes himself eating honeycomb and honey and drinking wine with milk, clear stand -ins for ambrosia and nectar, and he enjoins his friends to eat and drink as well. The bride herself, like ambrosia-drenched Hera in Iliad 14, is dripping with myrrh, as is the bridegroom (5.13). The groom is said tobe gathering lilies in the spiee and flower gardens. And finally, in 5.2, the bride utters an explicit definition of koma that recalls Empedokles and also serves as a precise description of trance: "I sleep, but my heart waketh". The erotic aspects of this trance are reinforced by the explicit sexual imagery of 5.4-6.

That the wine itself has magical properties is demonstrated by 7.9, "and the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak", another reference to trance. R6heim (1952/1969:155] points out that shamanic

74 Barton Kunst/er

singing and teaching took place during sleep. Aztec poetry praised vision-inducing mushroom using flowers as symbols of the sacred plant (Wasson, 1980). Soma, like nectar and ambrosia the food of the gods, has been identified by Wasson (1968) with the amanita muscaria mushroom. Persephone, Creousa, Galatea, Oreithuia, Europa and Helen are but a sampling of mythic Greek maidens transported to underworldly or celestial destinations after plucking a flower, or who are ravished in a garden (Motte 42-43). Silenos eats roses in Midas's gardenjust before initiating the Phrygian king into the mysteries of the Hyperboreans (Aelian, V.H. 3.18) who live beyond the boundaries of the horizon (Pythian 10) and who, like the "beloved" of the Song of Songs, represent both the destination of the trance journey and those who accomplish the journey as well. And the apples of the Hesperides are convincingly shown by Ruck (1983) tobe psychotropic plants, cognate with the magical golden apples of the Hyperboreans. As Motte (24) points out, gardens in myth are often situated in remote places near celestial or inf ernal regions. Finally, there is a link between the nectar that Sappho sings will be poured from cups and the roses of Sappho' s glade: it was said that at a feast of the gods, Eros spilled cups of nectar that fell to the earth and turned white roses red (Grigson 1976:193]. At the birth of Aphrodite, it was nectar falling upon some shrubs that caused roses to sprout (Grigson 1976:190]. Nectar, in a sense, bestows upon the roses their tincture, erotic, to be sure, but also, in their close identification with the soma-like nectar, psychotropic as weil.

CONCLUSION

Whether or not the nectar, apple trees, roses, springtirne flowers, andreviving breezes of Sappho's "horse-nourishing meadow" represent similar agents, they create a typical landscape of trance experience found in many poetic and mythological contexts world-wide. In this poem, Sappho orchestrates a richly textured linguistic code that points to an ecstatic experience within a garden/paradise tradition that stretches from the stories of Eden, to the Song of Songs, and on into Near Eastern, Islamic, and European alchemical traditions. Sappho' s intense concentration of a set of images traditionally employed to describe a trance experience, and her manipulation of the theme of koma, already prominent in epic, sug-

1 '


gests that she employed traditional syntax to frame her own poetic hymn to trance.

Sappho's immortality, the culmination of her koma, is a vision of the goddess, a form of immortality distinct from the koma described by Homer, Hesiod, or Pindar. The goddess who enters the grove is at once the beloved who enters the garden, but the goddess is also the lover who enters the beloved. lt is the goddess who is invoked to come to Sappho, but it is Sappho who will be taking the visionary journey. The experiencer of the trance also is found at the scene of the trance (in garden, grove, or feast), which then becomes identified as the destination of the journey itself. This complex interweaving of identities and roles is one way that poetry extends the bounds of linguistic expression in an eff ort to express the unutterable. Evidence for the exact nature of Sappho's vision may elude us, but that she was referring to an actual trance experience, within the context of a vital cultural tradition, and in the syntactical context of conventional poetic usage manipulated in particularly beautiful and innovative ways, seems difficult to deny.

Sappho was not simply a girl's dancing teacher who happened to write superb poetry. If Athenaeus 's line referring to the presence of companions truly belongs to the poem, the trance was part of a ritual in which others participated. With her subtle but clear allusions to Hesiod's Styx passage, and her appropriation of the term koma and its associated imagery for her own purposes, she may have been consciously using lyric to subvert epic much as Archilochus did. Here, koma is not part of the epic arrangement of themes dedicated to the validation of Zeus's order, the propagation of epic itself, or the immortality of the heroes (as it is even in Penelope's dream). Rather, it represents an alternative native Mediterranean trance tradition tied, perhaps, to the ingestion of nectar

. and ambrosia, foods of the gods; erotic expression; and epiphanies of the goddess to members of a chorus or ritual group. If so, we may well wonder at the exact nature of the rite and its transmission, the public or occasional aspects of Sappho's poetry, and the knowledge and vision these practices were meant to preserve.

76 Barton Kunst/er

REFERENCES

Campbell, D.A. 1967. Greek Lyric Poetry: A Selectimz. London: MacMillan. de Santillana, Giorgio and Hertha von Dechend 1977. Hamlet's Mill . Boston:

David R. Godine. Dodds, E.R. 1951. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California

Press. Eliade, Mircea 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Trans. by Willard

R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Grigson, Geoffrey 1976. The Goddess of Love. New York: Stein and Day. Michel, Robert 1983. The Daughters of Zeus: Divine Brides and Helpmates in

Greek Epic. Boston: Boston University. Unpublished dissertation. Motte, Andre 1973. Prairies et Jardins de la Grece Antique. Brussels: Academie

Royale de Belgique. Nagy, Gregory 1979/1981. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hera in

Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. R6heim, Geza 1952/1969. The Gates of the Dream. New York: International Uni

versities Press. Ruck, Carl 1983. "The Offerings from the Hyperboreans." Journal of Ethnopharma

cology 8. 177-207. -. 1986. The Offerings from the Hyperboreans." In R. Gordon Wasson, Carl Ruck, Stella Kramrisch, and Jonathan Ott (eds.) Persephone' s Quest: Entheogens and the Origin of Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sansonese, J. Nigro 1994. The Body of Myth: Mythology, Shamanic Trance, and the Sacred Geography of the Body. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International.

Wasson, R. Gordon 1968. Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. -. 1980. The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica. New York: McGraw-Hill.

V0L.7. N0.1. SHAMAN SPRING 1999

Present-Day Shamanism in N orthem China and the Amur Region

DANIEL KISTER SEOUL

Fragile yet enduring, shamanism has survived the political currents of the twentieth century in China and Siberia with different faces in different areas. I have long become aware of the various forms that shamanism can take in Korea, where I have lived for many years; but I was somewhat surprised to find a similar diversity in the glimpses I got of shamanic activity in north-eastem China and eastem Siberia while teaching in Harbin, China during the spring of 1997.

Visiting a scholarly Manchu shaman, I was introduced to a ritual that matches anything that can be found on the Korean Peninsula in fascinating theater, though it perhaps lacks the transformational power of truly vital drama or religious ritual. Visiting the last two shamans of the Oro -chon, I was told that dramatic ritual displays ceased to be performed in the mid-1950's; but utterly simple, untheatrical rites honoring the Mountain God still transform the Orochon hunter's way of life into a trusting religious experience for the few remaining hunters. Traveling north along the Amur River into Siberia, I found among the Nanai and Ulchi aging, isolated representatives of a tradition of spirit-healing that has outlasted the period of Soviet domination. In no case was I able to participate in an actual shamanic seance; but I was able to interview shamans, speak with Chinese scholars, and get a glimpse of a number of rites from video recordings and photographs. I shall describe what I have gleaned about present-day shamanism in these areas, while adding comments from a Korean perspective.

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A MANCHURIAN SHAMAN RITE

Many Manchu live in the vicinity of Ling'an, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants on the Mudan River, an hour south of the city of Mudanjiang in the south-eastem part of Heilongjiang Province, about 350 kilometers from Vladivostok. About one fifth of the inhabitants of Ling 'an itself are said tobe Manchu. There I spent two days with Fu Ying-ren, an energetic Manchu shaman in bis mid-seventies. A retired high-school teacher of Chinese, Fu has a strong scholarly interest in Manchu shamanism and is presently the head shaman of the Fu clan. According to what he said, there are about seven other elderly Manchu shamans, each with a number of young apprentices. Altogether, he estimates the number of Manchu shamans tobe around 120, perhaps seventy male and fifty female. He himself has initiated eleven shamans.

The rites which the Fu clan seems most keen on preserving are purely ritualistic affairs honoring the clan gods, devoid of any pretention to ec -stasy or trance-possession. But, as observed through a video recording of the Rite of Buming Incense, the Manchu tradition also knows rites that dramatize the gods' presence in theatrically vibrant seances of trance possession.

Each clan worships different gods. Tue Fu clan worships fifteen gods, the identity of which is a closely guarded secret. On the whole, the Manchu worship about 240 gods. According to Fu, the main god is the Sky God, who changes every 500 years. The female sky god Abakaihehe and her sky-god son Abakaienduli originally made human beings and so are the original ancestral gods. There are eight groups of disciple gods, each group associated with a local natural phenomenon: Changbai Mountain, the Sungari River (Songhuajiang), the Ussuri River (Wusulijiang), Mohe (a small river at the northemmost tip of China), the Russian peninsula of Sakhalin, and the East Sea. The Sky Gods enter shamans through the head; the Barth God enters through the shoulders; animal gods like the Wild Boar, Hawk, and Snake through the hips; ghosts through the feet.

Traditionally, Manchu shamans were present as the clan's highest representative at rites performed on the occasion of birth, death, hause building, and marriage, as well as at healing rites and rites preceding a battle. Since Liberation in 1948, however, in marked contrast with the flourishing of shamanic ritual in present-day Korea, most rites have not been held. Fu says that these days, the rites held are the following: the

Field Reports 79

communal autumn clan rite, simple rites of healing, and private rites in which a person prays for blessings. Tue clan rite is a two-day affair cel -ebrated at the end of autumn, but now only once every three years because of a lack of funds. lt has been only since around 1980, moreover, that this has been possible; and since in principle rites are still forbidden, the rite can be held only with difficulty. Fu estimates that about ninety percent of older Manchu persons believe in the rites. Most young persons perform them without actually believing in them.

Fu says that until about 200 years ago, the Manchu summoned the spirits, but that from that time, the Manchu rulers forbad this. Some rites have continued to summon the spirits; but for the past 100 years, most have not. Some present-day older shamans say that they still summoned the spirits when they were younger; and a video of the dramatically vivid Rite of Buming Incense that I viewed with Fu presents a group of now -deceased shamans calling the spirits in a rite that he thinks was at least in part a true example of spirit-possession. Based on what he has said, Manchu shamanism can be seen to have come to its present state through a three-stage process:

Early rites summoned the spirits. For the past 200 years, the rites became more purely ritualistic.

They expressed a belief in the gods and spirits, but generally did not depend on a belief in spirit- possession.

Current rites have come to be purely ritualistic events that entail belief in neither spirit-possession nor the gods.

Tue current Fu clan rite is such a ritualistic affair. Called simply Manzu Jisi (Manchu Ritual), it is held every three years in late fall. lt honors five gods on the morning of the first day, seven in the aftemoon, and two or three in the evening. Which gods are worshipped is kept a secret, but they include both nature gods and hero gods. In a video of a recent version of this rite, the five gods are honored in the moming in a box placed overhead above an altar, with other gods honored in a box overhead to the side; in the aftemoon, the gods are honored in six clusters of pendant ribbons. Rice, home-made wine, and a pig are offered. Liquor is poured into the pig' s ear before it is slaughtered; and if the ear twitches, this is taken as a sign that the gods receive the offering. When preparing the pig, no one should cough; and pregnant women must not be present. At

80 Field Reports

midnight, all share in eating the cooked pig meat, all of which must be consumed or shared with others. On the following moming, another pig is offered to the Sky God(s?). The pig's blood is dabbed on the tip of a tall pole; and when the pole is then set up in the yard outside, the blood dabbed on it signifies that the pig is offered to the God(s?). In that the officiants of this rite are male and the rite involves no spirit-possession, it perhaps bears a closer kinship to Korean Confucian rites than to what one finds in Korean Shamanism, although Korean shamans are by no means all warnen and Korean shamanist rites by no means all seances of trance possession.

In marked contrast with this ritualistic clan rite is the Rite of Buming Incense (Shao Xiang). This rite has been performed only once in recently years, in 1983; but l was able to watch with Fu Ying-ren a video of this performance sponsored by the Jilin Research Institute for Social Science and Literature. Tue rite consists of a series of dramatic episodes of what are believed to be possessed contact with the gods that match the most lively Korean shamanist rituals in displays of eye-riveting theater. The rite was originally held by the Tang Dynasty Emperor Li Shi-min Tang Taizong (600-649 A. D.) near the Liao River for soldiers who died in an unsuccessful military campaign on the eastem front. lt was held regularly thereafter and is said to have taken on shamanist elements with the takeover of the Manchu. lt should normally be celebrated once every year and can also be performed as a private rite.

The performance was held at Gongtong, Jilin Province, on a snowcovered afternoon in late autumn. lt spanned three days and involved participants from at least three Manchu clans. lt was performed in Chinese, not Manchu. lncluding sessions summoning the gods through spirit-possession, it perhaps belied the three-stage process of the evolution of Manchu shamanism sketched above. Among the gods summoned were the Ancestral God of Heaven (Tianchaoshen), the God of the Underworld (Fengdu Guwang), Tangwang Zushi (that is Tang Taizong), the Wild Boar God (Taiwei), and the Tiger God (Hushen). The rite was performed by four shamans-two principal shamans and two assistants-all of whom are now deceased. lt took place in a hause arranged as follows:

Field Reports

North

Unentered Room Drawings of the Gods Above Door

Central Door with Altar Vestibule

Left Room Right Room, Family Tree

OuterDoor Courtyard

81

Preparatory rites began on the afternoon of the first day as the four officiating shamans, in hats and grey Chinese padded tunics, escorted the shamans' garments, "peace" drums (taipinggu), and spirit bells in procession to the hause where the rite was held. The garments are carried by assistants in a large box, followed by the shamans' drums and bells, also carried by assistants. Once in the room to the right of the vestibule, the shamans make deep bows before the family tree, which is inscribed on a wide swath of white paper and enshrined on a wall above a small altar table. The shamans' garments are hung out, including two headdresses called tuohate (t-f;ll@-*), each with peacock feathers and three mirrors with which the shamans deal with ghosts ( gui). Two tall, colorful paper symbolic constructions called qixiang ( ifyffl{) are prepared, along with a blue-and-yellow paper flower that is used to call spirits (shenhun), little white paper flowers, and other items.

Tue main rites began after sunset, with a dramatic procession imaginatively escorting the gods to the ritual site. By that time, a large crowd of people had gathered in the courtyard, where a small altar had been set up with offerings of a pig's head, steamed buns, and other food. At each side are set the qi.xiang; and above the altar are spread out roughly sketched colored drawings of a dozen or so gods, including the God of Heaven, the God of the Underworld called Fengdu Wangzi or Diyu Guiwang, and at least six of the gods summoned in the course of the rites. Tue four shamans, in hats and tunics, drum before this altar. Then a bow and arrows are fixed to the back of the ritual host. Joss sticks are tucked under the host's arm pits; and on the crossed bow and arrows is placed a yellow box containing the altar or altar cover for the gods and

82 Field Reports

another for the ancestors. The blue-and-yellow paper flower mentioned above is affixed to the box. To the vigorous chanting and drumming of the shamans, the gods-more than 120 in all-are then imaginatively escorted into the house. Tue chant proclaims:

Tue gods are coming anew. A horse is walking on water, like a dragon; Tue gods walk fast, on clouds.

In the vestibule, on a shelf above the central door of the house, the drawings of the gods are enshrined. Steamed buns are set out before each; and red paper cuttings are hung on the shelf as guaqian (:ti~), the papers that are pasted above a house door on the Chinese Spring Festival to express a desire for happiness and wealth and to drive away ghosts. On the altar below are set out the blue-and-yellow flower, the pig's head, and bottles of liquor. A representative of the host family bows before the altar to thank the gods for coming.

Tue ritual action then moves into the inner room at the 'right, where the ancestral family tree is enshrined. The four shamans have tak:en off their hats and tunics; and the two principal shamans put on the shaman headdresses, blue shaman skirts, and waist bells. Tue shamans call the gods and invoke blessings on the family hosting the rite. One of the two principal shamans, a thin and elderly, yet tall, energetic man--referred to here as the first shaman--serves as the head shaman for this part of the rite. Tue shamans invite the spirits to retum to the home ( qing zu xian wang ling huijia), and they enthrone them in peace (an shen jiu wei). They chant:

We drum to invite the spiritsThe spirits of scholars to the east, The spirits of soldiers to the west. lt is snowing; all the world is white. lt is easy to invite the gods, but not easy to make them feel at home. The gods must be put in their proper place.

Tue tall, head shaman begins to shak:e. Twirling their drums, he and the other shamans do some fancy drumming. The shamans then put two

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wild boar tusks on each of two drums and divine by means of the tusks that the rite is successful. Having invited the gods without difficulty, they congratulate the host and sing a chant stating that the farnily is happy and the gods are happy.

Later, deep in the night, before the family-tree, the shamans in shamanic dress as above invite deceased family ancestors back from the underworld. The second of the two principal shamans, a shorter man, now serves as head shaman and sings a chant stating that the gods have chosen him to go to the underworld to summon the spirits. The shamans drum and chant what is mostly incomprehensible to an ordinary Chinese listener. The drumming and dancing gets more excited. According to the chant, the shaman encounters on his way the God of the Underworld Fengdu Wangzi and many spirits and ghosts (gui); and he must cross the Y ellow River (Huanghe) in the sky. Several persons are gathered inside the room, while many crowded in the dark cold outside watch through windows.

The second head shaman takes up two large steel chopper blades. Wielding them in the air and hammering them against each other, he symbolically opens the gates of heaven and the underworld (Tiantang Diyu). In opening the gates of the underworld, he summons or takes the role of the god Daoshan Wangzi. While doing so, he asks for money. Making reference to a Chinese legend about a bird who got trapped while seeking food, he says, "Birds die for food, and people die for money." This request for money led Fu Ying-ren, the shaman with whom I viewed the video of the rite, to surmise that the officiating shaman was faking the performance (Bushi zhen de). In any case, the shaman bows in all five directions and summons the souls (linghun) of the deceased ancestors of the host family.

In the bright light of next morning, the host, in fedora and padded tunic, performs a rite called Kaiguang, in which he imaginatively gives the gods portrayed in the drawings enshrined above the central door in the vestibule an opportunity to wash and clean up after a hard night's work. On a pole, he holds before each picture two burning joss sticks and a small, burning paper flower ( one of the white paper flowers prepared on the previous afternoon). By means of the pole, he then holds before each picture a small hand mirror and comb; and he offers the gods a cup of liquor mixed with fresh rooster blood. An assistant tosses the rooster, still alive, outside the door into the courtyard, where the crowd of specta-

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tors are gathered. Going into the right inner room, the host then presents the smoking joss sticks, buming paper flower, comb, and a white towel before the family tree, allowing the ancestors also to freshen up. While doing so, he chants the names of places in the Ming Dynasty novel Western Travel Journal (Xiyouji), by Wu Cheng-en, about a monk who travels to India to get the Buddhist Scriptures.

The drama gets more intense around noon of this second day, when the four shamans, in shamanic dress as on the previous night, drum and bow before the altar beneath the drawings of the gods above the central vestibule door and then before the family tree in the room to the right. They retum to the vestibule altar and chant an invitation to five gods, who are then thought to appear one by one and possess one the shamans. First, there appears the Wild Boar God, Taiwei; then the God of the Underworld, Fengdu Wangzi; third, the Tang Dynasty Emperor Tang Taizong; fourth, a god called Xianfeng Xueli, who is said to have been a general under Tang Taizong; fifth, the Hawk God (Ying).

When Pu was asked why these particular five gods were invoked at this time, he replied simply that the rite is performed as it has been handed down by the ancestors said and that these gods come at noon, others at other times. He added that gods are commonly summoned in groups of five or nine and that four of the five gods invoked in the present rite, all except Xianfeng Xueli, are hunting gods who are invokedrather anachronistically, I should add, in terms of present-day Chinese life-to insure that people can bunt for meat without giving offense of the gods.

In the initial segment of the ritual sequence, the Wild Boar God is seen to possess the first head shaman. The shaman begins to shake strongly and, arms raised, gets rather stiff. An assistant pierces his lips with needles suggesting a boar's tusks in a rite called Shangzan (J:~ ). lt is said that the green-faced Wild Boar God was bom in Nanjing, grew up in Gulou, and has now come to the place where the present ritual was held. He enjoys himself and doesn 't want to leave. Another shaman sings a chant asking the god to walk ahead; and the head shaman goes outside and retums into the vestibule, waving his arms stiffly.

The same shaman is then thought to be possessed by the homed God of the Underworld, who can drive away disaster. A mourning cloth worn at funerals is hung from the shaman' s neck, while those around him call out. He goes outside into the courtyard and then retums into the

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vestibule. Next, there appears Tang Taizong, who reenacts through the shaman the sorrow that he felt when he learned that his general (not Xianfeng Xueli) had been killed. Fourthly, Xianfeng Xueli is believed to possess the second head shaman, the one who opened the gates to the Underworld the previous night. According to the accompanying chant, Xianfeng Xueli wears white clothes and rides a white horse. The shaman goes outside and re-enters the vestibule. Then, in the fifth and final episode, he waves his arms and jumps lightly around as the Hawk God.

Finally, the two chief shamans go out into the courtyard and display their best fancy drumming before the crowd of spectators, apparently to send away the gods summoned in the previous sequence. They each twirl two drums, balancing one on one of their fingers. There is a Chinese proverb that it is easy to summon gods, but not easy to send them away (Qing shen rongyi song shen nan ). In any case, Fu commented that present-day shamans cannot do this kind of fancy drumming. . Dramatic displays of the gods' presence resume in the evening as the two chief shamans, dressed in the shaman garb of the previous evening, perform a ritual sequence in which they call upon another five gods: the spirit of the famous Han general called here simply Guanye, one of the many Chinese child gods (Tongzi), the Fire God (Huoshen), the Golden Flower God (Jinhuashen), and the Tiger God. The Tiger God, and apparently these other gods too, are said to favor the night and so appear at this time. Summoning the Fire God, the two shamans do a dance with burning joss sticks. Summoning the Flower God, they do a dance with paper flowers that look like sunflowers and are said to exude fragrance throughout the world. In the role of the Tiger God, the first head shaman plays with a cub in the form of a man lying on the floor and then prowls around ferociously on all fours, going in and out of the room to the right, where the family tree has now been dismantled. He lets out roaring sounds while holding a prey in his mouth in the form of what appears to be two steamed buns stuck on the ends of a short stick.

Animal gods like the Tiger, Wild Boar, and Hawk summoned in these Manchu rites do not have the role in Korean shamanism that they have in the shamanism of northern China and Siberia. The Korean tiger is imagined as serving as the messenger of the Mountain God; an imaginary dragon gives concrete form to the Korean· god of rivers and the sea; and the Snake God has traditionally been worshiped on the southem Korean island of Chejudo (Chang 1998:43-44). But I have never participated in

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a Korean ritual in which an animal god, apart from the imaginary Dragon God, was in any way summoned or invoked.

From a Korean perspective, too, it seems rather anomalous that the gods are summoned and sent away in the present Manchu performance without any significant interaction with those offering the rite. From the beginning, of course, altar off erings have been set out for the gods; the host interacts briefly with the gods in the morning when he presents them the mirror, comb, and towel; and the two shamans officiating in the aftemoon and evening rites are no doubt thought to be in intimate contact with the gods who possess them. But in Korean rites, the gods who are summoned are entertained at great length, often quite humorously, by those offering the rite; and they are consulted for the valuable advice they can give them through the mouth of the shaman. The religious purpose of the Manchu rite as it is captured on video to this point seems limited to reaffirming belief in the gods through dramatic displays of their presence to a community that for the most part remains unengaged spectators.

The whole Rite of Burning Incense ends with a dramatic sequence different in focus, theatrical means, and tone from the afternoon and evening seances of spirit possession. Deep in the night in the outside courtyard, the second head shaman, he who opened the gates to the Underworld the previous night, now appears in shaman skirt and headdress for a rite called Summoning the Ghosts (Qingban). A healing rite that is played out as a mask farce, this lively dramatic ritual introduces the first note of humor into the whole ritual proceedings and draws those present somewhat more actively into the action. Assistants playing the roles of ghosts appear, wearing various large, grotesque paper masks. Some are clothed in sheepskin, and all dance around a table on which has been placed a wash basin together with what seems a small brazier of buming coals and a pile of steamed buns. Together with the shaman, who beats his drum, they enter the room where the family tree had previously been enshrined. While laughing spectators crowd outside the windows to watch, the masked ghosts grab fiercely at persons in the room and wildly toss about what appear to be bits of rice-cake or buns. The shaman, or perhaps rather the god who possesses the shaman, fights with the ghosts; then the first shaman takes over. One of the ghosts awkwardly tries his hand at twirling a drum, but he is no match for the shamans in fancy drumming.

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The masked ghosts (ban) are said to stand for five illnesses that are hard to eure: stomach gas, side cramps, leg cramps and, more seriously, lung and intestinal diseases. The ghosts are eager to be with gods and human beings, but their presence is unwanted. If they are angry, how -ever, they can bring harm; so people do not dare refuse them. lt is said that the mirrors in the shaman' s headdress reflect the ghosts and that without these mirrors the shaman cannot defeat them.

The present ritual was perf ormed at least in part for a sick person in another room. lt seemed something of an addition to the main rites, but Fu maintained that it was integral to the whole ritual perf ormance. In any case, as with much Korean shamanist ritual, seriousness of ritual purpose does not exclude play and humor. Tue rather cornical appearance of the grotesquely masked ghosts constitutes a shift from the tense atmosphere of the aftemoon and evening sessions and brings the two days and nights of ritual drama to an end on something of a comic note.

Tue ghosts and the first shaman then dance around the small basin, in which liquor is now burning. The shaman enacts an attack of stomach pains and then chews on white paper flowers that were made the first afternoon and vomits them into the basin. In so doing, he follows a Chinese practice that is sometimes still employed, not just by shamans, to get rid of disease. One of my Chinese students said that his grandmother used to apply this method to him when he was sick as a young boy. In the present rite, the shaman also puts yellow paper spirit money in the basin. He then goes out of the door and comes in again with strands of small rope coming out of his mouth. The ghosts pull these out. The shaman then grabs at his stomach, and the ghosts pull out of his stomach something shaped like the large intestine. Finally, the shaman fights off the ghosts, thrashing at them with bunches of straw that he wields in his hands. The ghosts appear reluctant to leave, but in the end are driven away. Tue Rite of Burning Incense thus ends in the rniddle of the night as persons outside bum spirit money and shoot off firecrackers to send off the ancestors and the gods.

OROCHON S HAMANISM

At the end of The Psychomental Complex of the Tungus, S.M. Shirokogoroff surmised that the shamanist "complex" of the Tungus people as it existed at the beginning of the twentieth century would soon give way to

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another way of organizing human experience and stated that "there is no chance for the survival of shamanism in Siberia, in Manchuria and in Mongolia" (1935:402). Contrary to bis prediction, shamanism still survives among the Manchu, though in a weak:ened state as a communal belief system; and it is actually experiencing something of a renascence in Siberia and Mongolia. In the case of at least one of the peoples of the Tungus linguistic group, however, Shirokogoroff's prediction seems close to the truth. This people is the Orochon (Elunchun), who dwell at the farthermost northem tip of China. In the 1990 census, the number of persons in this ethnic group in China numbered a little less than 7,000. The numbers of the Orochon are slightly increasing, but since the Oro -chon have no written language and the young no longer speak: the language, their linguistic culture seems gradually to be dying out. As far as shamanist culture goes, there are said to be in 1997, only two shamans alive. Tue older is Meng Jin-fu, a man in bis early 70's and so roughly a contemporary of the Manchu shaman Fu Ying-ren. Somewhat younger is a female shaman in her mid-60's.

Both of these shamans live in the town of Shibazhan, near Tabe, about 50 kilometers from the Amur River, which marks the border with Russia. When I visited them in the spring of 1997, both were in poor health. Meng presents a marked contrast to the retired city school teacher Fu. Fu is a typical bookish teacher. Meng is a bunter who loves life in the forest. Both, however, belie the stereotype of the shaman as socially marginal beings. Fu is a typically bookish school teacher devoted to bis family. Although others laughed at Meng when he described bis vision of bis god as a two-headed bird, he, like Fu, seems a quite ordinary hu -man being-tender-hearted, practical, and endowed with a good sense of humor. Shamanism itself survives among the Orochon with a markedly different face from that displayed in the Manchu Rite of Burning Incense.

As the "psychomental complex" of the Orochon People, shamanism gave way to a Communistic "complex" more than forty years ago in 1955 or 1956. At that time, several of the principal Orochon shamans, including Meng, danced for three days and nights in a grand ritual once and for all to send the gods away. They bad undergone a period of Communist-inspired education and decided, I was told, that this was for the best. lt took some people quite a long time to get used to the idea of the gods' absence, and some still continue to pray to the gods. Meng said

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that he himself had no particular feelings about sending the gods away; he said that it didn't matter.

Meng and the other living Orochon shaman say that they have not celebrated shamanist rituals since the grand ritual forty years ago. By this they apparently mean that they have not held rituals involving dancing, spirit-possession, and/or healing. For they have continued to perform spring and fall rites for their own clans, and both are still regularly called upon to assist at funeral rites. Moreover Meng and non-shaman hunters like his younger brother still perform simple rites to the Mountain God, Bayn Achaan (Bainagia) when they go hunting.

As explained by Guan Xiao-yun of the Tabe Region Nationalities Board, the gods worshiped by the Or.ochon include not only the Mountain God and ancestral gods, but various nature gods. In her small book, An Overview of Orochon Customs (1993:78-81), she speaks, for example, of the Sun God, Dilaqia; the River God, Mudoulihan; and the Fire God, Gulongta.

In conversations with Guan, I was told that Orochon clan rites are traditionally held in the spring and fall. The clan gathers in the spring to celebrate getting through the harsh winter, give thanks, and pray for blessings. Tue last female Orochon shaman added that there are no rites for childbirth; for the gods like persons who are pure, not persons associated with childbirth or menstruation. Nonetheless, shamans are still invited to participate in funeral rites.

Guan said that funeral rites traditionally have two stages, the first at the time of death and the second 100 days later. A shaman is commonly invited to participate in these rites, although his or her presence is not required. The first rite includes the shooting of two arrows. One arrow is shot toward the west to send the deceased on his or her way to where he or she cannot disturb the living; the other arrow is shot to the east to draw forth blessings for the living. The second rite includes a ritual in which members of the farnily of the deceased all line up in order of age. Tue shaman or another ritual officiant loosens the white cloth arm band that each wears as sign of mouming, takes each band separately to a dead stump of wood, and ties it around the stump. Funeral rites also include a rite before the coffin, on which a paper boat, spirit money, and an offer -ing of liquor are set out. The dead person is imagined as taking the boat to the other world and using the money there. Members of the family prepare three cloth bags for the deceased. In one, they place millet; in the

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second, a pot; andin the third, ifl remember correctly, spirit money. We can get a glimpse of these funeral rituals in The Last M ountain God, an evocative video study of the Orochon people made in the early 1990's by Bai Lan, of the Nationality Research Institute of the Inner Mongolia Social Sciences Academy in Huhhot. There the deceased does not appear to speak through the shaman. The shaman sirnply says to the deceased, "You were a good person. Why did you die so soon?" He expresses a wish that the deceased sleep well. According to the Orochon funerary traditions, the coffin is placed in a tree so that the spirit of the dead per -son can go with the winds.

Hunting rites are performed by anyone who hunts, like Meng and his younger brother, not a shaman, who is one of the few persons still granted permission to hunt. In the early spring, the Orochon hunt <leer; in the early summer and early fall, moose (?); and in the winter, wild boar. At the beginning of the hunt, as can be seen in The Last M ountain God, the hunter carves the face of the Mountain God on a tree, leaving a piece of bark to form the nose and using charcoal to line out the eyes, eyebrows, and other features . He then makes a deep bow before this carved effigy and prays that the god will give success in the hunt. After the hunt, he gives thanks, sticking a piece of the meat from the catch on the lips of the effigy. He also dabs the lips bright red with blood and may stick a cigarette on the lips. When he is unsuccessful in the hunt, the hunter may hold the gun over smoke while praying to the god in a rite to correct the failure of the gun to shoot straight. He may also divine his success in hunting by holding the shoulder bone of a <leer against the sun and seeing in the bone the figure of the animal he will catch. In general, hunters depend on their hunting skills; but they ritually transform the hunt into a religious encounter with the god.

The young have given up these religious practices lang ago. In The Last Mountain God, when Meng prays before the effigy of the Moun tain God that he has carved on a tree, his teen-age son does not understand what he is doing. The father sees the Mountain Spirit; his son sees only a tree. For his part, Meng's brother says that he still prays to the Mountain God when hunting, but that once he ceases to hunt, he will no langer do so.

Meng became a shaman when he was in his mid-teens. At that time, all of his brothers and sisters had died. He hirnself had also become seriously ill, but his parents had him cured by a shaman. He then became a

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shaman and perfonned healing rites before the Orochon gods were sent away in the 1950's. He says that his god is call Sukki, a two-headed bird that ordinary people cannot see. He also prays to other gods, such as the Fox God; and he experiences the presence of numerous spirits of the dead hovering about the forest. In general, Meng does not like to speak of his experiences of the gods. He did say, however, that he did not want to become a shaman; it was just something he had to do. He had his most satisfying experience as a shaman when he cured a girl who had almost died. He cured her sister and others as well, all before the gods were sent away.

Meng's mother, who died in the spring of 1997 at the age of ninety- . two, was a very devote believer and became quite angry when her son perfonned a brief segment of the old rite summoning the gods for taping of The Last Mountain God, thus making a stage perfonnance out of what was for her a sacred matter. As she saw it, the gods have left; they do not retum. Nor did she like people to talk about the gods. She thought that non-believers do so only to make fun of them.

Meng has initiated only one shaman, a male shaman whom he initiated before the gods were sent away. This man went on to become a famous shaman, but has now died. After the gods were sent away, he became an ardent member of the Communist Party; but he retained a strong urge to dance at times and make contact with the gods. His wife had to restrain him. lt was he who healed and initiated the last female Orochon shaman. The woman' s parents had invited him to do a healing rite when she got sick in her mid-teens. She in turn tried to heal someone only once, but without success. She is accepted, nonetheless, as a shaman and is still asked to take part in funeral rites. Her spirit is the Fox God, who is helpful, she says, in solving persons' problems. She had a brother who was a shaman and whose spirit was also the Fox God.

Numberwise, the two remaining Chinese Orochon shamans make a poor show alongside the more than 100 persons that serve as shamans among the northem Manchu. However, the rites that Meng and his brother perfonn when they hunt, commonplace and undramatic though they are, make a more convincing religious statement than the eye-bedazzling displays of trance-possession and masked drama of the Manchu Rite of Buming lncense. The simple Orochon hunting rites preserve a coherent world view of harmony among man, nature, and the gods as they transfonn what was traditionally the ordinary means of livelihood,

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hunting, into a world of perduring encounter with a divine source of life. The Manchu rites seek contact with the supernatural world in physical demonstrations of the presence of the gods in the form of the bizarre ac -tions of entranced shamans or the ritualistic veneration of clan ancestors. The Orochon hunting rites find such contact in the natural environment and in the commonplace work of hunting.

For its part, Korean Shamanism knows both simple rites before natu -ral phenomena-an old tree, spring water, or an unusual rock formation-and theatrically stunning rites that equal the Manchu Rite of Burning Incense in lively drama. Korean shamanist rites of any form are sometimes criticized for limiting religious activity to asking favors from the gods. The criticism is unjust; nonetheless, the Orochon hunting rite perhaps exhibits a more mature stance toward the gods in that it seems to maintain a better balance between petition and thanksgiving. For its part, Korean Shamanism has a flexibility that Orochon Sharnanism appears to lack. The Orochon rites are so rooted in forest life that Meng's brother can state that he will cease perf orming the rites to the Mountain God once he stops hunting. Quite the contrary, rooted though they originally were in the rhythms of rural farm life, Korean shamanist rites now thrive in Korea's booming cities. Whether in country villages or in the metropolis of Seoul, moreover, the thousands of shamans active on the Korean Peninsula differ markedly from their northern Chinese counterparts in that they make a good living from their sharnanist profession.

lt is said that in the south of China a person can readily encounter shamans and observe shamanic activity. A village of 5,000 inhabitants in the southem coastal Fujian Province that I visited briefly in the summer of 1998 is said to have five male shamans, plus several female shamans. The one shaman I met is a member of the Communist Party, yet he per -forms a public rite at last once a year. In northern China, however, shamans seem hard to come by. There is said to be one male Daur shaman in his eighties living in the area of Qiqihar, but I was told that he is not well and was given the impression that there would be little gained by visiting him. However, I was also told of only one Manchu shaman, Fu Ying-ren; but when I went to meet him, I learned that there are more than 100 Manchu shamans in the area. I was told, too, that there were formerly two shamans living two hours north of Harbin in Suihua, but that they had both died. When I visited a village just outside of Suihua, however, I learned from local inhabitants that shamans still do healing

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rites in the surrounding area. The inhabitants spoke of two Daur shamans associated with the Fox God and what is perhaps a Manchu shaman associated with the Wild Boar God. They stressed, however, that these shamans perform their rites at night to shun attention and avoid detection. I had also been told that the shamans still active in northern China perform no healing rites, but only clan rites, and just for members of their own clans. But when I visited Suihua and the Manchu shaman in Ling'an, I learned that shamans do perform simple rites of healing. All this makes one wonder if there isn't much more shamanic activity in northem China than meets the eye.

SHAMANS OF THE AMUR REGION

From the region occupied by the Orochon, the Amur River flows eastward along the Sino-Russian border and then north into Siberia. There one can find several elderly Nanai and Ulchi shamans who have outlived the Communist regime. Shamanism among the peoples of the northern Amur cannot be said to experience the kind of communal revival that it enjoys among the Buryat and Y akut peoples, but the scattered shamans whom I met in isolated villages along the banks of the Amur are now able to practice private healing rites in peace. They apparently enjoy a certain amount of respect and attract at least a few aspirants who may carry on the tradition, which in its present form focuses on contact with the world of the gods and spirits in illness and rites of healing.

Throughout Siberia, there are said to be about 10,000 Nanai. Two el -derly female Nanai shamans live about 200 kilometers north of the Chinese border · along the Amur River near Troitskoe. One, in her nineties, lives in the village of Dada; the other, perhaps in her eighties, lives in Lidoga. The latter knows some Russian. Another shaman in the area died in the spring of 1997; and still another, a younger woman, is said to live near Lidoga. Tue older Lidoga shaman has never actually met this younger woman, but they are said to make contact in dreams. The shaman from Dada is quite feeble, but the one from Lidoga feels her en -ergy return when she does a rite. Seeing what shamans do, the Lidoga shaman wanted long ago to become a shaman; but she actually became one only about twenty years ago. These days a number of persons come to her for healing, especially after a reporter did an article on her in a Khabarovsk newspaper. People also ask her to perform divination to

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determine such things as where the body of a drowned person can be located; and no Nanai or Russian family in the area has a funeral without inviting her. The young, however, do not understand her preoccupation with spirits.

Another Nanai shaman, not known to the Troitskoe area shamans, lives about 500 kilometers still further down the Amur to the north in the Ulchi Area near Bogorotskoe, at Savinsk. She claims to have recently celebrated her 100th birthday. She speaks Russian weil and seems to like talking about her initial shamanic experiences. Her grandfather had been a shaman; and before her marriage in her early twenties, he had offered her only sister to the Tiger God. She regards this event as her sister's marriage to the Tiger God. She herself had not experienced any particular illness on the way to becoming a shaman; her grandfather simply taught her his shaman lore. She sometimes perf ormed healing rites during the Soviet period, but she has never taught her shaman lore to others. These days she continues to perf orm private rites both for those who are ill and for those who have died. When someone comes for healing, her deceased grandfather tells her that the person will come and instructs her how to treat the person.

I had wanted to meet a male Ulchi shaman in the vicinity of Bogorotskoe, but he had recently died. Instead, I met there a female Ulchi shaman in her early eighties. She also spoke of her initial shamanic experiences at length. She knew a fair amount of Russian, but spoke through an Ulchi translator. Her father's younger brother, who raised her as his daughter after her father died, was a shaman. When this uncle was sick, he told her to take a sturgeon that was in his mouth and bury it. This she did, circling the buried fish three times with a cup of liquor. When he recov -ered, he asked where she had buried the fish. They dug it up, and in its place they found the remains of three snake-like creatures. When the un -cle died, he said that he would pass on his shamanic power to her; and she understands that it is the spirit of these snake-like creatures, along with the Tiger God, that now assist her in her shamanic activity. Her shaman headpiece contains a drawing of the three creatures and a picture of a tiger. She does healing, formerly for tuberculosis, now for other diseases; but sometimes when a sick person comes, the helping spirit teils her that the case is hopeless. She has never taught anyone her shaman lore.

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In her fascinating study of Daur religious activity, Shamans and Elders, Caroline Humphrey has indicated how hard it is to pin down what shamanism can mean as a category for investigation (1996:48-51). The same is to some extent true of Korean shamanism and perhaps also of what can be found among the Manchu, Orochon, and Amur peoples. I would like to be able to compare present-day shamanism among the Manchu, Orochon, and Amur peoples in a more balanced scientific fashion, all from the same perspective: the dramatic rites of each, the healing rites of each, personal histories of shamans, the social and religious roles of each. In this study, I have simply described and commented on the differing faces that shamanism presented to me in each of the areas that I visited. In some ways, however, such an impressionistic study may give a truer picture of what shamanism now actually is in these areas than a more controlled scientific study.

REFERENCES

Chang, Chu-kun 1988. "An Introduction to Korean Shamanism." Tr. Yoo Youngsik. Shamanism: The Spirit World of Korea. Eds. Richard W.I. Guisso and Chaishin Yu. Berkeley: Asian Humanities.

Guan, Xiao-yun 1993. Elunchunzu Fengsu Gailan [An Overview of Orochon Customs]. Harbin: Heilongjiang Nationalities Research Institute.

Humphrey, Caroline 1996. Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power Among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon.

Shirokogoroff, S.M. 1935. The Psychomental Complex of the Tungus . London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.

The HARVARD ORIENTAL SERIES (edited since 1993 by Michael Witze!) is pleased to announce the recent release, on December 24, 1998, of Volume 55:

ISBN 0-674-60795-3 pp. xii , (Nepalese text) N 1-391, (Engl. transl.) 1-391; pp. 392-695

(commentary, indexes) = total pp. xii+ 1085. Price: $90

DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts is a bilingual (Nepali and English) critical edition of three complete, representative repertoires of shaman texts collected over the past twenty years in Jajarkot District, Western Nepal. Throughout that area, shamans continue to fulfill important therapeutic roles, diagnosing problems, treating afflictions, and restoring order and balance to the lives of their clients and their communities. Each of these efforts incorporates extensive, meticulously memorized oral texts, materials that not only clarify symptoms and causes but also detail the proper ways to conduct rituals. These texts preserve the knowledge necessary to act as a shaman, and confirm a social world that demands continued intervention by shamans. This volume, the first of its kind, includes both publicly chanted recitals and privately whispered spells of the area's three leading shamans, annotated with extensive notes. Containing over 250 texts totaling nearly 11,000 lines of material, this work endeavors to provide a comprehensive documentation of a non-Western healing system through the material that sustains and preserves that tradition, demonstrating that shaman texts remain thoroughly meaningful.

For information write to Editor, Harvard Oriental Series, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA 617-495 3295; e-mail: [email protected] and cf.: www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htrn, sub: HOS.

The book can be ordered directly from Harvard Univ. Press.; see: http://128.103.251.49/default.html or email to: [email protected]

SHAMAN

Volume 7 Number 2 Autumn 1999

Contents

Articles Seiör as Shamanistic Practice: Reconstituting a Tradition of Ambiguity

JENNY BLAIN 99 Categories of Selkup Shamans

I.N. GEMUEV and G.I. PELIKH 123

Discussions Trance or Symbolic Representation: That is the Question

JOHN A. DOOLEY 141

Field Reports In Black and White: Contemporary Buriat Shamans

KIRA V AN DEUSEN 153

Book Reviews ROBERTE HAMAYON Lachasse a l' /ime. Esquisse d' une theorie

du chamanisme siberien. Memoires de Ja societe d'ethnologie I (György Kara) 167

THOMAS C. PARKHILL Weaving Ourselves into the Land: Charles Godfrey Leland, "Indians", and the Study of Native American Religions (Ake Hultkrantz) 172

Variations chamaniques 1-2, [cahiers] presente[s] et coordonne[s] par MARIE-LISE BEFFA et MARIE-DOMINIQUE EVEN. (György Kara) 175

News and Notes Report on "Central Asian Shamanism: Past and Present,"

Tue 5th Conference of ISSR, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia DANIEL A. KISTER and PEI'ER KNECHT

Minutes of the General Assembly of the ISSR, Held in the Hall of the Scientific Council of the First Building of the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, 6 August 1999.

177

GREGORY G. MASKARINEC 185 Conference on "Shamanism and Other Indigenous Beliefs

and Practices," Moscow, May 1999 KIRA VANDEUSEN 187

Cover design: ANDRÄ.S NAGY

Copyright © Molnar & Kelemen Oriental Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this _publication may be reproduced,

in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise,

without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISSN 1216-7827 Printed in Hungary

VOL.7. N0.2. SHAMAN AUTUMN1999

Seiör as Shamanistic Practice: Reconstituting a Tradition of Ambiguity*

JENNYBLAIN HALIFAX

The Saga of Eirik the Red describes a seeress, who sat in a specially prepared High Seat to foretell events for a Green/and community of 1000 years ago. She used a technique kriown as seiör, calling on "powers" to help her see further . Seiör magic was chiefly performed by women, with male practitioners disparaged as ergi. Today members of reconstructionist "heathen" communities in North America are drawing on such accounts in establishing seiör as shamanistic practice, involving trance or shapeshifting,for foretelling and hea/ing. This article examines constructions and contestations of seiör within communities of past and present.

INTRODUCTION

The Saga of Eirik the Red describes the visit of a spakona , a seeress, to a Greenland farm, one thousand years ago. Her clothing and shoes, her staff and cloak, are detailed. She is asked to predict the progress of the community; she eats a meal of the hearts of the farm animals, and the next day a "high seat" is made ready for her, where she will sit to foretell. She engages in ritual practices known as seiör, which requires a special song to be sung to "the powers" in order that she may gain their knowledge, in trance.

Within the small but growing community of those following Norse Heathen practices today, in North America and Europe, people are making attempts to reclaim practices of seiör. They rely on accounts from the

* This is a revised and extended version of a paper titled "SeilJr, shamanism and women 's magic: recovering a tradition of ambiguity", given at the Conference on Shamanism in Contemporary Society, Newcastle, June 1998.

100 JennyBlain

sagas and Eddas, scholars' analyses of this literature, and parallels with shamanistic practices elsewhere, using these within a framework of Norse cosmology and beliefs about soul, afterlife, and the nine-worlds. Seiör-workers engage in faring-forth, trance-journeying, for a variety of ends, including healing and divination.

This article discusses seiör as sets of practice informed by shamanism within a non-shamanistic community, both today and in the past. lt indicates some of the ambiguities inherent in early descriptions and implications for present-day understandings and contestations of seiör and its practitioners, and examines how today's workers are reconstructing seiör along with its dilemmas and contradictions, as shamanistic practice within late-twentieth-century Heathenism.

l>ORBJÖRG THE GREENLAND SEERESS

An increasing number of people within today's Heathenism, and more generally within paganism, are developing an interest in the practices known as seiör, which some consider represent the remnants of shamanic tradition among the Scandinavian peoples of Northern Europe. In this article l will attempt to outline something of how these are being developed by some groups in North America today. Many diverse interpretations of seiör are possible, and the term does not imply the same practices to all people. Let it be clear from the outset that l am here describing the specific practices of specific groups, and in particular "highseat" or "oracular" seiör. Neither these groups nor l claim to have uncovered the ultimate or only meaning of the term. lt seems likely that meaning and implication varied across time and even from one community to another and between individuals during the period from which we have stories of seiör practice.

As part of my task, l indicate the sources from which reconstructions commence, and some of the debates, or arguments around seiör-practice, today or in the past. As today's Heathens are well aware, the past shapes the present, with actions or thoughts long within Wyrd's Well forming part of the weaving of present-day Earth-religion.

So l will begin with the most complete account of the phenomenon known as oracular seiör: the visit of the spakona, Porbjörg, to that Greenland farm, one thousand years ago, as described in the Saga of Eirik the Red. She wears a hood of lambskin lined with catskin, and has

Seiör as Shamanistic Practice 101

white catskin gloves. Her gown is girdled with a belt of touchwood, from which hangs a bag to hold magical items. Her cloak is blue, fastened with straps and adorned with stones, and stones stud the head of her staff. Her calfskin shoes are tied with thick laces, with tin buttons on their ends. The next day she sits in the high seat, on a cushion stuffed with hen's feathers, to make her predictions. Tue description continues:

A high-seat was prepared for her and a cushion Iaid under her; .. . at sunset, she made the preparations which she needed to have to carry out seiör. She also asked for those women who knew the wisdom (chant) which was necessary for seiör and was called Varölokur. But those women could not be found. Then the folk dwelling there were asked if anyone knew it. Then Guörför said, "l am neither magically skilled nor a wise-woman, but Halldfs, my fostermother, taught me that chant in Iceland which she called Varölokur" ... The women made a ring around the seat, and l>orbjörg sat up on it. Then Guörför recited the chant so fairly and weil, that it seemed to no one that they had heard the chant spoken with a fairer voice than was here. The spae-wife thanked her for the recital and said (that) many of the powers were now satisfied and thought it fair to hear when the chant was recited so weil... "And now many of those things are shown to me which I was denied before, and many others". 1

The song Guöriör sang is, unfortunately, not given us. Tue account of l->orbjörg the seeress is the basis for today's practice of

oracular seibr, also known as high-seat seibr or spae-working. In this article I intend first to look at the construction of high-seat or oracular seibr, then refer to how seibr may be used for healing, and other "ways of knowing" related to seibr, and finally examine some of the contradictions and ambiguities, including ambiguity involving gender, questioning how the gender practices of one thousand years ago were themselves constructed and how they are echoed in the present.

SE/DR IN TODAY' S HEATHEN PRACTICE

I have observed a number of high-seat seibr rituals conducted by practitioners of Asatru or Heathenism, a religion reconstructed from the extant

1 Eiriks saga rau/Ja , 4. From the translation used by Kveldulfr Gundarsson, in "Spaecraft, Seiör and Shamanism" I. ldunna 25. December 1994:33.

102 JennyBlain

material on Norse and Germanic pre-Christian practices, and participated in these on a variety of levels. Within North America, a school of practice is emerging, based on the work done by a Californian group known as Hrafnar (the Ravens), and particularly the author Diana Paxson, to reconstruct oracular seiör. Hrafnar began its reconstruction with the account of l>orbjörg, quoted above, using such details as were available: the seeress needed first to familiarize herself with the community and its energies, she then sat on a high seat and a special song was sung to "the powers" that enabled her to gain her knowledge-or "the powers" to give it to her. The word "powers" ( natturur, from Latin natura, nature, in plural meaning spirits, and therefore an adopted rather than native Old Icelandic word) is uncertain: it may refer to ancestral spirits, elves (alfar), guardian or anirnal spirits or other wights or beings, or deities. Tue mechanisms of how the seeress entered the trance in which she was able to acquire knowledge and the process of questioning her have not been handed down in the account. Hrafnar have therefore gone to other sources to find details of how a seiör seance might be conducted.

Their main resources have been the Eddic poems Völuspa, Baldrs draumr, and Völuspa in skamma ( the shorter Völuspa, forming a part of the poem Hyndlu/jöö). Each of these appears to show part of a questionand-answer process, in which one who knows, a seeress, a Völva, is asked to reveal her knowledge. In Völuspa the seeress speaks in answer to 6öinn, the god/magician; in Baldrs draumr 6öinn travels to a gravemound, just outside Hela's realm, and there raises the dead Völva to answer his questions. In Hyndlu/jöö, the giantess/seeress Hyndla is speaking to Freyja and her follower Ottar about Ottar's ancestry, when (in the portion known as The Shorter Völuspa) she starts to foretell the coming of Ragnarok and the fates of the Gods. From Baldrs draumr Hrafnar has taken the calling of the seeress;

Way-tame is my name, the son of Slaughter-tame, teil me the news from Hel-I know what's happening in the world: or whom are the benches decked with arm-rings, the dais so fairly str.ewn with gold?2

2 Baldrs Draumar, 6:244, Poetic Edda translated by Carolyne Larrington (1996:244). Old lcelandic is:

Vegtamr ec heiti sonr em ec Valtams ;

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From Völuspa and the Shorter Völuspa comes the pattern of question and seeress' ans wer.

Much we have told you, we will teil you more, It's important that you know it, do you want to know more?3

or the shorter version of Völuspa:

Do you understand yet, or what?4

Diana Paxson has described the construction of the high-seat seiör ritual in The Return of the Völva, an article written for a Heathen journal. 5

Drumming and singing accompany and facilitate the induction of the trance state. Tue guide narrates a meditative journey whereby all present, seers and questioners alike, travel through a tunnel of trees, down to the plain of Miögarör and the great tree Y ggdrasill, then below one of its roots past Urö's weiland through caverns of Barth, across the echoing bridge with its guardian maiden Moöguör to the gates of Hela's realm, the abode of the dead, for in Old Norse tradition wisdom comes from the dead, the ancestors. There the audience participants remain, in a light trance state, while the seiöworker enters deep trance and journeys on her or his own, assisted by spirit allies or "power animals". One participant will act as seiör-guide, singing the seeress through Hela's gates, and

seglJu mer 6r helio hveim ero beccir flet fagrliga

- ec man 6r heimi - : haugom sanir, fl6lJ gulli? (Kuhn 1962:278)

3 Song of Hyndta, 34, repeated in later verses, Larrington (1996:258) translation:

Mart segiom Per vöromz, at viti sva

oc munom fleira, viltu enn lengra? (Kuhn:293)

4 Völuspa, 28 and many subsequent verses. Larrington translation (1996:7). Old lcelandic given by Kuhn is:

vitolJ er enn, elJa hvat?

5 Mountain Thunder. This particular article is available through the world wide web at http://vinland.org/heathen/hrafnar/seidh.html.

104 JennyBlain

calling to other participants to ask their questions, and the seeress to answer.

A seiömaör, Jordsvin, describes the joumey and what he finds there .

... there's a guided joumey down to Helheim. The people that are doing the public oracular seil5r go with me, they stop at the gate. We stress stay with the group, don't go runnin' off and stirring up the jotnar, you can mess yourself up. This is real stuff, you're dealing with real beings, it can have real results .... I go down, I go through Hela's gate ... I always nod respectfully to Heia, I'm in her living room. I see, other people see different things, I see a lake, an island and a torch burning on it. lt lights up, the torch and the Iake light up the area enough to actually see the dead people. And I walk down there and they tend gather round, and I'II say, would those who need to speak with me or speak with the people I'm here representing please come forward . .. .l've never seen anything scary, they look Iike people, the ones that have been there are passing on I guess to another life or whatever they're going to do, sometimes they're just Iike shadows, some look like living men and women, some are somewhere in between. Of course there 's many, many many of them. They ask me questions, sometimes they'II speak ... Sometimes I hear voices, sometimes I see pictures, impressions, feelings, I have my eyes closed physically, and I'm in a trance, and I got a shawl over my head, sometimes it's almost like pictures on the back ofmy eyelids ... (Interview, 1996)

Not all seiör-workers see what Jordsvin sees. Even within Hrafnar's scenario, each worker faces the task of seeking knowledge in their own way, within the trance. For Winifred, a seeress who has likewise received training from Hrafnar, a large part of her work is in making contact with deities, and attempting to place other people, her seiör clients, in a relationship with them.

(O)ne of the reasons that I love the seil5r work is that due to people 's questions I have the chance to see their relationships with the deities that are, for example Sif comes often for a friend of mine, whom I do seeings for ...

And one of the most interesting seeings that I had was for a young man, and Heimdall came for him.

I'm trying to bring people closer to the gods and to their own souls .. . (Interview, 1996)

A seiö-worker known as RavenHom traces his seeings to varying -sources depending on the questioner: after passing Hela's gates, he often


journeys on a ship, which transports him to where the answer to the question can be found. At other times he travels in the form of a raven, seeing the countryside below him. Sometimes a question brings contact with a deity, particularly Heimdallr, Freyja, or Ööinn. Others may experience being in darkness within a mound, solitary, and called forth by the seiör-guide; visions, sounds, sensory experiences then arise in response to the questions that are asked, and these may involve people, animals, birds or trees, specific scenes or objects, sometimes music.

Hrafnar has now trained several people in their methods, and these people are training others, so that a fellowship of seeresses, and seers, all working in similar ways and following broadly similar methods, is emerging across North America. However not all seiör workers follow this method, and even for those who do, not all seiör-workings are oracular. Jordsvin uses similar methods of trance-journeying to dispel ghosts and finds himself called upon by people outside his religion to "unhaunt houses". Some have derived their practices independently of Hrafnar. Bil Linzie's work is chiefly in healing and soul-retrieval, andin dealing with death. He terms himself "seidman" and "wholemaker"6: his task is to make others whole. Again, he finds himself called upon, as a shamanistic practitioner, by people outside his religion.

THE SEER/ESS AS SHAMANISTIC PRACTICIONER

lt should be stated at once that N orse culture of 1000 years ago was not "shamanic" in the sense in which Tunguz or Saami culture is said to be shamanic: we do not find a "shamanic complex" of activities, no shaman is described as central to community life. There are kings and queens and battle-leaders, goöar associated with different deities, and in Iceland the emergence of a representative system of goöar, as regional administrators, coordinated by a "lawspeaker"-and no shamans, only occasional seiö-workers, and other magic practitioners. Rather, it seems likely that oracular seiör and other magical practices may form part of the rather scattered rernnants of shamanistic techniques in Norse culture, related to the shamanic practices of other cultures, notably the Saami, though not necessarily derived from Saami practice (Hultkr<)-ntz 1992). Grundy

6 See web pages at http://www.angelfire.com/nm/seidhman/index.html, The Seidman Rants.

106 JennyBlain

points out (1995:220) that "The only figures in Germanic culture which we can point to as bearing significant resemblance to the 'professional shaman' ... are the seeresses who occupy a position of respect based on their visionary capabilities" though they do not demonstrate other shamanic techniques or activities. The seeresses often are said to have been trained by "the Finns", which probably refers to the nomadic Saarni. Saami shamanism has been described in Scandinavian accounts at least since the 12th century, and up to the present day (Pentikäinen 1984).

Of course, "shamanism" is itself a highly problematic term, initially specific to Tunguz-speaking peoples but generalized and universalized into a westernism (Wallis, in prep.), an abstraction coined to explain aspects of religious and spiritual practice of "other people", in societies as different from the defining Westemers as possible. lt may be of more use in attempting to understand sei1'r to understand "shamanism" as indicat -ing techniques of trance-ecstasy attained by otherworldly experienceembedded in specific social relations and cultural settings. Thus the trance both emerges from and partly constitutes socio-political relations of the community. The Old Norse material becomes particularly interesting because shamanistic activity is not supported by the entire community: it is contested on a number of levels (Blain and Wallis, in prep.)

Here it may be useful to remember processes of change which were occurring during the period described by the sagas: expansion of trade links, centralization, Christianization, the settlement of Iceland, among others. lt may be that in some communities in some periods a sei/Jworker did hold a position not so dissimilar to that of a Saami shaman. Rather than say that there was one unified "Norse" culture, it may be more helpful to examine some of the instances-told lang after the occurrences they purport to describe-in terms of how they reflect shamanistic techniques elsewhere, how these techniques may have been embedded in community practice, and how their definition may have contested, in past and present.

These Norse seeresses enter again and again into the Icelandic poems and sagas. Katherine Morris (1991) has catalogued some of their activities. For instance:

Heiö, the sibyl of Hr61fs saga Kraka 3, was also treated hospitably and then asked to prophesy ... King Frodi asked her to make use of her talents, prepared

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a feast for her, and set her on platform for her spell-making. She then opened her mouth, yawned, cast a spe II and chanted a verse .. . (Morris 1991 :45)

l>6rdfs, the seeress of Kormaks saga and Vatnsdrela saga, was "held in great esteem and knew many things", and the hill behind her dwelling was named after her Spakonufell, the mountain of the seeress. These women, and others, such as Oddbjörg of Vfga-Glums sage, Kjannok of Heiöarviga saga, Heimlaug of Gull-l>6ris saga, are woven into the fabric of the family sagas, the stories of everyday life, written by Icelanders two or three hundred years after Christianization to tel1 of the lives of their ancestors who settled the country. They can be seen as semi~historic; they, and others like them, lived and had their being within a cultural framework in which trance, magic and prophesy were possibilities for women: to the extent that in the later legendary sagas and short sto -ries (told for entertainment value), the seeing-women appear once again.

Thus, in the l>attr of Noma-Gest, three wise women came to the house of Noma-Gest's parents, at his birth, and foretold his future: a lack of attention to the youngest nom caused her to attempt to countermand the great prophesies of her elders, stating that the boy ' s life would be no longer than that of the candle buming beside him. The eldest nom extin -guished the candle and gave it to the boy 's mother to preserve. Three hundred years later, Norna-Gest related his story to the king of Norway, accepted Christian baptism, and had the candle lit, dying as the flame expired. Arrow-Odd, hero of Örvar-odds saga, likewise had an extended life of 300 years, and both this life and the strange death that ended it were predicted by a seiökona known as Heiör.

Seeing might be only one component of what one who wasfjö/kunnigr-possessing much knowledge-could do. The accounts refer to people who change shape, to avoid enemies, to seek knowledge, or to cause trouble. In sagas and in today's folktales, it is told how people would discover that their problems were associated with the appearance of a particular animal. When this animal was wounded or killed, a woman would have a similar wound. In the saga of Kormak the Skald, when Kormak and his brother set off in a ship, a walrus appears close by. Kormak aims a spear at it, striking it, and it disappears and does not come up again. The walrus had the eyes of the woman Thorveig, de-

108 JennyBlain

scribed in the saga as fjölkunniga . P6ttust menn jJar kenna augu jJ6rveigar.7 Thorveig was reported as dying from this spear-wound.

At other times the metamorphosis was made for protection, as in accounts of swan-maidens who guarded chosen warriors. The shapeshifter is hamhleypa, one who is hamramr, shape-strong. Another example from Kormak's saga is Vigi, who is both fjölkunnigr and hamramr; he sleeps by the door of the hall, and knows the business of everyone who enters or leaves.

In the old material there is no overall word for "shaman", but many words for components of shamanic practice. This may suggest that by the time of the composition of the sagas, two hundred years post-Chris -tianization, the practices were in decline. And it is from these doubtful remembrances, this fragmentation, that today's practitioners are attempting to work to construct seiör, not as an individual technique in itself, but as part of a developing complex of beliefs about soul and self, person and community, within community relationships that involve people with other beings, wights of land and sea or stream, deities known to Heathens as their "Eider Kin". All these beings form part of the fabric of Wyrd, the destiny which people and deities make together, woven by the Norns, Urö, Veröandi and Skuld, who are invoked within Hrafnar's seiör ritual, as they sit by Uröarbrunr, Urö' s Weil, at the root of the Ash Y ggdrasill.

Bil Linzie, today's "seidman", works within a community. His work, as he describes it, is about transformation, death, lif e, and is focused ex -ternally to himself, on those others for whom he does his work. A requirement for practice, he says, is to lose one's ego: he emphasizes that his work is for the community, not for personal development. As "wholemaker" his task is to make others whole. In pursuit of wholeness, he uses the techniques of trance and journeying to effect healing which is spiritual, emotional, physical, or all of these.

He points out that "wholeness" is not the same thing as physical "normalcy". Being whole is:

7 "Men thought they recognized Thorveig's eyes ." lcelandic courtesy of "Netutgafan", http://www.snerpa.is/net/netut-e.htm, Kormak ' s saga, 18.


for the average person, a friend tried and true. For the musician it is a tune weil turned. For the artist, it is just the right color in just the right spot. .. it's when things just seem to go smooth.

He is seeking to find ways of encouraging wholeness. One such is expression of self. He says "Expression is a method, a technique, for attaining Wholeness," and compares the human organism with a millstream which can be blocked upriver from the millpond, in which case the pond dries up and the mill-wheel disintegrates; or down-river, in which case the water becomes stagnant and the mill-wheel rots. The first he sees as akin to lack of impression, lack of imagination; the second to lack of expression, explaining:

The form of expression of the Whole-maker is to see how he or she can assist in bringing other beings into their full form of expression. The Whole-maker shows the sick individual the way to access impression and expression most completely and efficiently. There is much talk about something called balance. Balance, however, relies on comparison to some sort of standard. But what is the standard for a person dying from Alzheimer's? What is the standard for a schizophrenic? What is the standard for one suffering from depression? .. . The Whole-maker, rather than looking for what is normal or what the standard is, expresses himself by helping others to open up the mill pond of their Jives. That is his art.8

SE/DR AS EVIL M AGIC?

Of today's practitioners, many use the word seiör for what they do-the Hrafnar group, Bil, RavenHom, and others whom I have not quoted directly in this paper, whether they work as community-diviners using oracular seiör, or seek private knowledge through techniques of "sitting out for wisdom". However, some prefer to use another term, well-attested in the sagas for those who speak with foreknowledge. Thus Winifred is a spakona, Jordsvin a spamaör. Spa (or spae, as in the Scottish "spaewife") refers to foretelling, or prophesying. These words, spa and seiör have differing implications within the old literature-the spakona or spamaör is spoken of with respect, for the most part, whereas the seiökona or seiömaör is often regarded rather negatively.

8 Web pages at http://www.angelfire.com/nm/seidhman/index.html

110 JennyBlain

Seil5r may imply not only trance-divination, but what Jordsvin calls "messing with people's minds" (this is not, he emphasizes, what he does, whatever people call it); or using shapeshifting to journey in this world, not the spirit world, and use the knowledge gained to the detriment of others, and influencing or affecting other people' s behaviour by means of the journey.

An example from the old literature is from Egils saga Skallagrfmsso -nar. Egill is in the power of his enemies, in York, England, attempting to write a poem which will save his life. He cannot concentrate for the twittering of a swallow-all night long-by his window. His friend goes up onto the roof, and sees the bird flying off. The implication is that the bird is his arch-enemy Gunnhildr-Queen at York, and later of Norway-who is attempting to prevent his composition and thereby cause his death. Gunnhildr is spoken of negatively, in this saga andin others, as a sorceress, who was taught seil5r and shapeshifting by "Finns" (i.e. Saami), and used these skills to further her own ends; and in the passage referred to, as hamhleypa, a shape-shifter. Previously the saga informs us that Svo er sagt, a/5 Gunnhildur /et sei/5 efla og /et jJa/5 seil5a, a/5 Egill Skalla-Grfmsson skyldi aldrei r6 b[l5a a f slandi, fyrr en hun scei hann. 9

("lt is said, that Gunnhild worked spells [seil5r] and spelled out this [did seiör], that Egil Skalla-Grimson should never know peace in Iceland until she had set eyes on him": Fell 1975: 103.) The first mention of Gunnhildr is that "of all women she was the loveliest and wisest, and had considerable knowledge of magic" (Fell 1975:53). (Gunnhildur var allra kvenna vcenst og vitrust og fjölkunnug mjög.)

This leads to another important point about the old literature. lt deals in seeresses and fordcel5a, female practitioners. Most accounts of seil5r are of women. Tue seil5r-workers of saga-times appear to have been mostly female: male practitioners-in the late, Christian accounts that we havewere deemed tobe ergi, un-masculine, possibly crossing gender barriers in ways not then acceptable. lt is unclear at what time this negativity spread to include seil5konur (seil5r-women), or how the spread of Christianity affected ways in which seiör-workers were regarded.

Another word is utiseta, and this is how some men-including leaders, kings-are spoken of in the sagas as gaining knowledge, seta uti til fr6l5leiks ("sitting out for wisdom"). A variant of this may be going

9 lcelandic courtesy of "Netutgafan", http://www.snerpa.is/net/netut-e.html

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"under the cloak" as it is said did 1>6rgeirr the lawspeaker of the Icelandic Alping, prior to taking to the decision to have Iceland formally convert to Christianity (Blain 1998a). The knowledge gained through sitting out would be used by the out-sitter, or revealed at a later stage, rather than narrated in trance. Sitting out typically involved sitting on a gravemound or at a crossroads, going under the cloak could be done wherever one was, but both implied a distancing of oneself from the other human members ofthe community. The one who was sitting out was not tobe disturbed, and in particular their name should not be mentioned (Aöalsteinsson 1978). Ütiseta also became problematic, proscribed in Iceland in the laws of the 13th century, which remained in place until the 19th, in terms that name ... fordadJuskap ok spafarar allar ok utiseta at vekja tröll upp okfremja heiöni, "sorcery and spae-working (foretelling) and sitting out to wake up trolls and practising heathenism", a wording which associated utiseta with gaining knowledge from other beings or spirits (we can treat the term "trolls" as a derogatory re-working during Christian times). Referring to this law, Hastrup comments that "By the act of sitting out, which was a metaphor for leaving the ordinary social space, it was possible to invoke supernatural beings." While the penalty was death, no-one was convicted until Iceland's small witch-craze in the 17h century (Hastrup 1990:391, my translation of Old Icelandic).

As with seiör, members of today's Heathen community are attempting to rediscover techniques of utiseta, seeing it as a solitary practice, whereas oracular seiör is a community ritual.

Men (and some women) appear also as practitioners of galdr, sung or spoken spells, which do not involve the shapeshifting, journeying or other shamanic/ecstatic components (and which together with knowledge of runes in the early modern period formed the basis of the few witchcraft accusations and convictions in Iceland, see Hastrup 1990). However, that men could perform seiör is evident. Snorri's history of the Kings of Norway recounts how Haraldr Finehair (who became king of all Norway in the 9th century C.E.), and his son Eirikr called Bloodaxe, were responsible for the death of Eirik' s brother Rögnvaldr rettilbeini, a seiömaör, and the troop of 80 seiömenn with whom he was associated, seemingly because Eirikr and his father did not like "magic" or seiör. 10

(If political motivations were involved, Snorri does not recount those.)

10 Haralds saga ins harfagra, eh 36. See e.g. Monsen 1932.

112 JennyBlain

Another instance is the description of seiör performed by 6öinn, euhemerised by Snorri Sturluson in his Ynglingasaga (written approximately 1225) as an invading king and master magician, and described (in Samuel Laing' s 1844 translation) as both shapeshifter and seidhrworker:

Odin could transform his shape: his body would lie as if dead, or asleep; but then he would be in shape of a fish, or worm, or bird, or beast, and be off in a twinkling to distant lands upon his own or other people's business ... Sometimes even he called the dead out of the earth, or set himself beside the burial-mounds; whence he was called the ghost-sovereign, and lord of the mounds ... Odin understood also the art in which the greatest power is lodged, and which he himself practiced; namely, what is called magic [seiör]. By means of this he could know beforehand the predestined fate of men, or their not yet completed Jot; and also bring on the death, ill-luck, or bad health of people, and take the strength or wit from one person and give it to another. But after such witchcraft followed such weakness and anxiety [ergi], that it was not thought respectable for men to practice it; and therefore the priestesses were brought up in this artl l _

This extract implies that seiör-practice was valued differently in men and in women. Tue word ergi, translated into this 19th century discourse as "weakness and anxiety", might be more accurately glossed as "demasculinization". lt is cognate with the Scots arghr "cowardly". There have been suggestions that a man who was ergi was a "receptive" partner in male homosexual activity. Some seiö-workers have extended this to include a reference to any "passive"f'receptive" activity, physical or spiritual, and compare the "receptivity" of one who waits for knowl -edge to a female heterosexual "role". The words "passive" and "receptive" in this discourse are highly problematic, and political, stemming from a direct equation of homosexuality with a model of "active male, passive female" heterosexual activity. Others suggest that the reference is more general, saying that homosexual practice is not a requirement for a male to engage in seiör, and "passivity" is not for them an appropriate

11 Ynglingasaga. Translation by Samuel Laing, London, 1844. Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #15b., http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/0MACL/Heimskringla/ynglinga.htm1 Snorri Sturluson, (Approx. 1225). English translation by Samuel Laing (London, 1844).


word for the seiö-worker's ecstatic-trance state. But they report that men who do seiör require to dissociate themselves from typically "macho" assumptions and preconceptions (Blain and Wallis, in prep.)-in line with the abandonment of ego spoken of by seiö-worker Bil Linzie, and referred to earlier in this paper. In this they are becoming "like a wo man", in the sense of not fitting conventional discourses of masculinity, and are hence subject to the taunt of ergi.

Seiör-work is associated elsewhere with Ööinn, in poems which state "Y ggr performed seiör at Rind" 12, and where Loki raises the accusation of ergi against Ööinn.

Enn jJic seiöa k6öo Samseyo [ oc draptu a vett sem völor; vitca Uki f6rtu verpi6ö yfir , oc hugöa ec jJat args aöal.

But you once practiced seiö on Samsey and you beat on the drum as witches do (völor, volvas) in the likeness of a wizard (vitki) you joumeyed among people and 1 thought that showed an ergi nature. 13

Within the Heathen community, K veldulfr Gundarsson has clairned that seiör is always used to denote negative practices-and does not re -late specifically to foretelling, but rather to contacting spirits for that pur pose or for purposes of ill-wishing, "messing with people's minds", affecting motivation or intention, courage or concentration-whereas spa, referring to foretelling, was viewed positively in the old literature. The word völva related to a woman who had knowledge, the equivalent word pulr to a man: and it is used of male figures in the Eddic poems who have knowledge, the giant Vafpruönir and Ööinn himself, the Fimbulpulr, Great Thule. The poem Havamal reads:

12 "Kormakr's Siguröardrapa 3 has seiö Yggr til Rindar" (Grundy 1995:187). l 3 Locasenna, 24. From the translation by Carolyn Larrington (1996:89), last

line modified. Larrington gives "and that I thought the hallmark of a pervert." This glossing of argr may be misleading (Blain and Wallis, in prep.). Old Icelandic from Kuh and Necke) 1962.

114

lt is time to speak as a thule, on the thule's seat at the Weil of Wyrd I saw and was silent, I saw and thought I listened to the speech of folk I heard deeming 9f runes, and they were not silent of redes at the halls of the High One, in the halls of the High One, Thus I heard tel t.14

JennyB/ain

(lt should be cautioned, however, that there is no academic consensus on jJUlr as a magic worker or seer. In particular, Liberman (1996:75) holds that: "An admired orator, a despised taunter, a feared character assassin, a repository of obscure gossip-the pulr was all of this and much more, but never a wizard or officiating priest... and hardly ever an evil counselor. ")

Gundarsson draws on the old material to suggest that for both men and women seiör was viewed as negative, even evil. He would apparently name today's practices spa and utiseta, not seiör. Some seiörworkers disagree, pointing out that the term may have become increasingly negative due to Christianization, and draw on the work of, for in -stance, Jenny Jochens (Jochens 1996) who suggests from a study of terms used in the sagas andin law codes that magical practice (fjölkyngi) was originally a complex of female skills, which became taken over by male practitioners, with some of these skills then viewed very negatively, others (spa) positively. Even the (negative) term fordceöa, originally used of warnen, became a term used only for men, as an insult for which füll compensation was demanded in law! 15 She says that "Rooted deep

14 Trans Grundy, in "Spaecraft, Seiör and Shamanism." I. Idunna 25, December. 1994:35. The OI (Kuhn and Neckel 1962) is:

Mal er at pylia pular st6li a UrlJar brunni at; sa ec oc jJaglJac, sti ec oc huglJac, hlydda ec ti manna mal; of runar heyrlJa ec doema, ne um ralJom pöglJo, Htiva höllo at, Hava höllo i; heyrlJa ec segia svti.

15 "The prefix for- adds a negative connotation to dalJ (deed), and designates a female by its form. The word was employed ... in poetry in the sense of a female

1

l 1

i

J

1

1


in paganism, the oldest magical figure in the north was not the skilled male magician but the female diviner." (1996:130) There may however be other ways in which the material on seiör can be viewed.

I will examine two pieces of information, first the story of Rögnvaldr retilbeini and the 80 seiömenn, then a verse in the poem Völuspa . Rögnvald's story is told by Snorri in Haralds saga ins harfagra 36, briefly referred to previously.

Ein'kr bl6ööx planned to be the king over all his brothers, and so wished he and king Harald; father and son were always together. Rögnvaldr rettilbeini had Haöaland; he (had) learning in fjölkyngi and became a seilJman. Seiöworkers were disliked by king Harald. In Höröaland there was a seiöman who was called Vitgeirr; the king sent him a message and told him to stop doing seiör. He replied and said:

There' s no harm if we do seilJr, children of ordinary men and ordinary women, when Rögnvaldr straight-leg does seilJr, Harald's famous son, in Haöaland.

And when Harald the king heard this, then by his advice Eirfk went to the Uplands and came to Haöaland and burned his brother, Rögnvald , in his house with 80 seilJ-workers, and this work was much approved. (My transl.)

lt seems likely that such an event would be part of the political process of centralization of the kingship, together with Eirik 's removing a close relative-bis half-brother-who while unlikely to seek the over-kingship himself, might support another claimant among many half-brothers who each hoped to succeed his father. In any case, if the activities of the 80 seiömenn, and advice given by them to others seeking political guidance,

evil-doer or witch, but without magical connotations .... it was added in the law codes to the füll magical vocabulary and ... described not only the human practitioner but, in the term fordieöuskapr, also the abstract act ... (and therefore) came to be used of men as weil." (Jochens 1996:128) lt Iater appears in the Iaw codes as a term referring only to men.

116 JennyBlain

were directly reliant on shamanic/Ööinnic inspiration, they would be likely to be viewed as problematic for a centralizing government. Within a political system which is bent on centralization and achieving statehood, the shaman is a wildcard, whose "unpredictability" is a destabilizing factor. In the case of 80 seiömenn associated with a member of the royal house, their potential for political resistance would have been very great. Later, in the 10th century king Ölafr Tryggvason is also said to have caused the death of 80 seiömenn, and while Snorri uses the masculine pronoun peir for them, older sources seem to have described them as including males and females (Jochens 1996:125), the word maör , plural menn, meaning "people". Here again it is likely that politics played as great a part as religion. (The figure 80 should in each case probably be read as meaning "a relatively large number" rather than as a precise count.)

The second example comes from the great poem Völuspa, probably composed around the 10th century during a period of increasing Chris -tian influence. A verse from the poem mentions a seeress or goddessperhaps Freyja, perhaps the völva who is reciting the poem-who was named Heiör, a name that later became almost a synonym for "sorceress" or seiör-worker.

Heiöi hana hetu völu velspaa, seiö hun kunni, te var hun angan

hvar er til husa kom, vitti hun ganda; seiö hun leikin, illrar bruöar.

Published translations and interpretations of this verse have a negative slant, chiefly from the last line, translated approximately as "ever was she welcome / to evil women". Recently it has been suggested within Heathenism (notably by Jörmundur Ingi, head of the asatruarmenn in Iceland), that the words of this line could bear an alternative interpretation, "ever she was welcome to women in trouble", and to me it seems that if the phrase illrar bruöar is taken literally, it could suggest Heiör as a midwife, doing her magic for the relief of young women in labour. The verse then would become:

i 1 1

◄ 1

1

~

J


Heiör she was called a völva well-forespeaking seiör she performed ever she was welcome

when to houses she came staffs enchanting seiör in trance (or "seiör with thought playing") to women in need.

On the one band, this puts a different complexion on the völva performing seiör. On the other, it locates the 10th century seeress and the twentieth century reader on opposing sides of a gulf created by late me -diaeval and early-modern constructions of~omen's magic as necessarily evil, wicked. When we think of Heiör, all the discourses of the "wicked witch" come into play. These have informed not only popular European and North American thinking, but scholarly discourse. Consider the emphasis on "harm" in definitions of "sorcery" and "witchcraft" within conventional mid-20th century anthropology: 16 "Witchcraft .. .is 'a mystical and innate power, which can be used by its possessor to harm other people'. Sorcery ... is 'evil magic against others"' (Harwood 1970:xv).

Conventional scholarship has it that seiör was women ' s magic, and was evil: men who took to performing it were therefore seen as evil also, and terms such as ergi applied. Possibly, however, women's magic was only seen as "evil" depending on the observer's point of view. A woman or man who uses knowledge for protection may be seen as "evilly" working against an aggressor-from the aggressor's point of view. In any case, we have one word (fordteöa) referring to a woman (originally) who engages in deeds against the community, regardless of whether these are magical-and many words which refer to techniques or knowledge gained, spakona, seiökona,fjölkyngi. The second woman magicworker from Kormaks Saga, I>6rdis, is termed both spakona and fordteöa . Tue distinction seems to depend on who she is working for at the time, and whose point of view is expressed in the saga, with spakona as a term of respect for her know ledge 17, / ordceöa a term of abuse. Seiör performed by men, or by large numbers of either females or males, may have been politically threatening; also, with increasing Christian influence, gender categories seem to have become much more rigid so that the

16 Harwood is here quoting definitions derived from Evans-Pritchard 's workhe finds them somewhat problematic but continues to use them. (Most often sorcer1 is believed to involve the use of "medicines" to harm, in these studies.)

7 For the most part: although Kormak himself, in a poem late in the saga, uses "spakona's man" as an insult to the husband of 1>6rdfs.

118 JennyBlain

charge of ergi, for men performing activities otherwise associated with women, may have become increasingly important over time.

CONCLUSION: SE/DR AND ITS V ALUATION TODAY

Jochens (1996: 129) teils us that "Although the word völva never appeared in the law codes, the practice of divination and prophesy contin -ued." To her, this indicates that these were being performed increasingly by men, including churchmen, who took over the practice of spa, and to a large extent rune-work. And this divination became increasingly problematic. However, the fact that the word völva never appeared and that male practice was increasingly targeted as unlawful does not necessarily mean that women ceased practicing. Katherine Morris (1991) appears to suggest that "seeking for knowledge" in Iceland remained part of the complex of activities that were appropriate for women: it became problematic only when men practiced it, possibly (in my conjecture) for political reasons.

Indeed there is some evidence, particularly from Iceland's current Allsherjargoöi, Jörmundur Ingi, that women in Iceland have maintained some of the practices associated with seiör, often unthinkingly, as everyday activities, small magics and divinatory performances, simply things that women do in their households and kitchens (Blain 1998b).

The extent to which these activities would be considered seiör is of course debatable. The word seems to cover a range of meanings, not necessarily the same as those of the Heathen period. However Jörmun -dur's point is that practice of "magic" by women was continued, as part of everyday life. On occasion this practice, and possible links with seiör or spa, could become more evident, as with the coming of the "spiritualism" movement to Iceland, in the 19th century, when, he says:

all of a sudden, you would have mediums, women, everywhere, and the most astounding thing about that was that the way they were conducting these seances, what they were doing of course was that you can read the story of the Völva, in the saga of Eric the Red, and they held the ceremony exactly ... (Interview 1997).

Elsewhere seiör is being revived, as stated at the beginning of this paper, in association with the reconstruction of Heathenism, as a specific


set of skills, notably the use of trance states to gain knowledge. By whatever means the lOth-century gendering of seiör came about, in today ' s Asatru in North America the majority of seiör-workers are female, with a number of gay men, and fewer heterosexual men, among the bestknown practitioners. W omen and gay men have held marginal positions in North American society within recent history, and gay men are still marginalized in popular discourses to which some Asatru followers subscribe. However, high-seat seiör-working is now coming to be an expected part of larger-scale Heathen gatherings, though its techniques are still regarded with some suspicion and its rituals viewed by some as marginal to the "main purpose" of the gathering. Other members of Barth Religions are also coming into contact with oracular seiör, at festivals or local events.

How seiör, spa, or shamanic journeying is viewed within Heathenism, or Asatru, depends very much on which group one focuses on. Some cling to an image of Asatru as a religion of viking warriors, and reject signs of "weakness" (including seiör, women's magic, and especially seiör performed by men). However, many people are enthusiastic about the techniques, and about their potential for use in healing and alternative medicine, as well as divination. They also see journeying and utiseta as a way to gain personal knowledge of the cosmology of the World Tree, Yggdrasill, and of deities and other wights, and so to explore the possibilities of the religion together with conceptions of seif and spirit.

Here again we may enter into the question of the status of seiör as shamanistic practice, and its translation by some within the community into an equation of seiör with "shamanism", positioning seiör-workers somewhat problematically with respect both to Circumpolar Shamanism and to the "New Age". Certainly adherents of other neoshamanistic "traditions" or belief-systems attend oracular seiör sessions, and will speak of performing seiör-joumeys. There is therefore yet another set of contestations emerging around the use of the word seiör: who performs seiör, who can perform it, and when is it appropriate to use the term? As seiör practices become better known, we may expect these contestations to develop further.

In summary, the position of seiör is being played out against a background of debate on who or what asatru or Heathenism is. Though some conventional scholarship still associates seiör with evil, scholars

120 JennyBlain

within Heathenism and Earth Religions generally are raising questions and exploring possibilities raised by different definitions. This article contributes to that debate, as well as to an examination of how today 's workers are reconstructing seiör along with some of its dilemmas and contradictions, as shamanistic practice within late-twentieth-century Heathenism.

REFERENCES

Aöalsteinsson, J6n Hnefill. 1978. Under the Cloak. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis 4. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Blain, Jenny, 1998a. "Seiör as women's magic: Shamanism, journeying and healing in Norse Heathenism." Canadian Anthropology Society, annual meeting, Toronto, May 1998. -. 1998b. "Seidhr and Seidhrworkers: Recovering shamanic practice in contemporary heathenism." The Pomegranate 6. 6-19.

Blain, Jenny and Robert J. Wallis (in prep.) "Men and 'women's magic': contested narratives of gender, seiör, and 'ergi' ."

Fell, Christine (ed. and trans.) 1975. Egils Saga . London: J M Dent & Sons Ltd. Grundy, Stephan Scott 1995. "The Cult of Odhinn, God of Death." Unpublished

Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University. Harwood, Alan 1970. Witchcraft, sorcery and social categories among the Safwa.

London: Oxford University Press. Hastrup, Kirsten 1990. "lceland: Sorcerers and Paganism." In Bengt Ankarloo and

Gustav Henningsen (eds.) Early Modern European Witchcraft : Centres and Peripheries. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hultkrantz, Ake 1992. "Aspects of Saami (Lapp) Shamanism." In Mihaly Hoppal and Juha Pentikäinen (eds.) Northern Religions and Shamanism. Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6/Helsinki: Finnish Literary Society.

Jochens, Jenny 1996. Old Norse Images of Women . Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.

Kuhn, Hans and Gustav Necke! (eds.) 1962. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius (VI . Text) . Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Larrington, Carolyne (ed.) 1996. The Poetic Edda. World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Laing, Samuel (Irans.) 1906. The Heimskringla : a history of the Norse kings. London: Norroena Society.

Liberman, Anatoly 1996. "Ten Scandinavian and North English Etymologies." Allvissmal 6:63-98.

Monsen, Erling (ed. and Irans.) 1932. Heimskringla, or The Lives of the Norse Kings, by Snorre Sturlason. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd.

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Morris, Katherine 1991. Sorceress or Witch ? The Image of Gender in Medieval /celand and Northern Europe. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, lnc.

Pentikäinen, Juha 1984. "The Sami Shaman - Mediator Between Man and Universe." In Mihaly Hoppal (ed.) Shamanism in Eurasia. 2 vols . Göttingen: Edition Herodot.

Wallis, Robert J. (in prep). "'Ancestors are still there. Spirits are still there.' Contested Monuments, Conflicting Views and the polemics of Neo-Shamanism in Southwest USA."

VOL.7. N0.2. SHAMAN

Categories of Selkup Shamans *

LN. GEMUEV NOVOSIBIRSK

AUTUMN1999

G.I. PELIKH TOMSK

On the basis of fieldwork carried out among the Northern Selkup of Tazov and Turukhansk and the Selkups of the Ob River area in the Russian Federation in the 1960s and 70s, the authors distinguish three types of Selkup shamans (tätypy ): the tätypy sombyrni, the tätypy kamityrni and the tätypy aloga. The first two differ in their paraphernalia and the time of day they perform their ceremonies. Recent research supports the idea, suggested earlier, that the Selkup did not have separate shamans who were only in touch with good or evil spirits. The aloga, the most esoteric category, occupy a special place among Selkup shamans and are known to us today only through relics. While the first two types of shamanism developed in the already emerged Selkup ethnos, the origin of the aloga goes back to the Siberian ethnic groups with which the Samoyed came into contact during the period ( or periods) of their northward migration.

Selkup shamanism has long been a topic of interest to researchers and a great deal has been already accomplished in research on the subject. Yet this fascinating phenomenon continues to offer many questions that remain unanswered, and in this article we address the problem of the cate -gorisation of Selkup shamanism. Our analysis is based on fieldwork carried out between 1960 and 1970. 1

* First published in Russian in Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie 1997. No. 5. 36-45. The present English translation of the article is published by courtesy of Dmitri Funk.

1 Data relating to Northern Selkup shamanism (from Tazov and Turukhansk) were collected between I 970 and 1979, and those referring to the Selkups of the Ob area (Narim) were collected by G.I. Pelikh and A.P. Topchii between 1961 and 1969.

124 1.N. Gemuev and GJ. Pelikh

The Selkups call their shamans tätypy. To this word is always added the exact type of shaman they referring to--the shaman can be tätypy sombyrni, tätypy kamityrni or tätypy aloga. This means that the original bearers of the tradition themselves distinguished between three types of shamans.

Tätypy sombyrni performed their shamanic feats in a hut constructed from light-coloured materials. In his prime, a tätypy sombyrni would wear a füll costume consisting of a für cloak called a parka, a leather ehest piece and a hat. He had a drum and two drumsticks (kapsit ), one of which would be coated with the skin from a reindeer's forehead, the other with the skin of a bear's paw. The mightiest sombyrni shamans also possessed a sabre (kidy).

The shaman' s equipment was indicative of his power, particularly the num ber of iron discs and small iron figures representing herons ( qarra) attached to his parka. Novice shamans sported only the wing of a qarra on their hat. Later they would receive their first qarra but at first would be "too weak to carry it" on their parka and would attach it instead to the inside of the rim of the drum. As their potency as a shaman increased they would gain more representations of the qarra and attach them one by one to the back of the parka. The most powerful tätypy sombyrni we met during our trip, Mon'gi Kalin, had seven qarras.

In 1979 Mon' gi Kalin 's equipment came into our possession. He had died shortly before our arrival in the Taz area and in his will had left all his spirits to his grandson Iakov. According to Selkup tradition the shamanic gift is passed on, usually from grandfather to grandson (Prokof' eva 1981 :44 ). But Iakov Kalin had no intention of becoming a sha -man and agreed to donate his grandfather's equipment to the Siberian Museum of History and Culture, which fünctioned under the Archaeological and Folklore Institute (then called the Historical, Philological and Philosophical Institute) of the Academy. Accompanied by Iakov, we made a special trip to his grandfather' s grave by the side of the River Ratta. As we surveyed the equipment the fünction of the various objects was explained to us by two Selkup men-Iakov himself, and a blacksmith called Chokurov who had made the metal objects to Mon'gi Kalin' s specifications.

W e should add that throughout his career as a shaman Mon' gi Kalin, who lived along the Taz and the Turukhan, was widely renowned among the Selkups and enjoyed considerable prestige. Any of them could teil a

Categories of Selkup Shamans 125

number of stories about him in whicb real facts mingle in a curious blend witb neo-folkloric motifs. lt bas been related, for example, tbat in tbe 1930s Mon'gi Kalin was arrested and "taken somewbere in an aeroplane". During tbe fligbt be opened tbe door and jumped out. His guards were convinced tbat be was dead, but the sbaman made a fortunate landing in the taiga and lived for many decades more.

Mon ' gi Kalin was buried, in accordance witb bis will, in tbe place wbere be bad lived and died. In popular belief, before a sbaman's death bis belping spirits bave to figbt witb tbe devils to protect tbeir master's lif e. If be dies after all, this means tbat their strength was not sufficient to save bim and tbat tbey bave perisbed in tbe figbt. Tbis is wby tbe iron figurines that belonged to Mon' gi Kalin ' s spirits bad to be buried witb bim in his grave.

Fig. 1. Mon'gi Kalin 's elevated grave 1. T-pillars with Mon 'gi Kalin 's coffin underneath, 2. Mon'gi Kalin 's coffin,

3. the oppaty box with which the coffin is covered.

Tbe sbaman' s relatives covered bis otber accessories-tbe parka and tbe drum-witb machine grease before placing them in an iron ehest that was left in an iron storehouse erected near the grave. His personal belongings were hung on a pillar that was raised between two nearby trees.

In general it may be said that orthodox Selkup tradition requires the destruction of the parka and the drum ("these are the things which are the dead person's due") and the other accessories tobe removed and at-

126 I.N. Gemuev and G.I. Pelikh

tached to a "new drum, new parka" (Prokof'eva 1949:362). However, in the case we are considering the situation was that since the tradition was already in decline and the potential shaman replacement did not wish to undertake the obligations required by shamanship, he treated his dead grandfather's possessions in a quite different fashion.

Mon'gi Kalin's elevated grave (loqot-ki/') 2 was a coffin, carved from a tree trunk (püj-kor), which rested on two T-shaped supports. 3 On top of the coffin was placed a box-type object ( oppaty) made of planks. In bygone days the custom had been to drill round holes where the planks abutted to fasten them with wooden dowels. The box would be made larger than the coffin so that it covered the latter entirely. A long rod was attached at the front end (next to the head of the deceased) on which would be fastened a representation of one of the shaman' s spirits (poryjkükte) in such a way that it looked face down at its form er master.

We found this elevated grave, a valuable remnant of Selkup burial customs, already partially destroyed. Some time before our visit hooligans from the ranks of the "Siberian conquerors" had pushed the coffin off its supports and stolen the objects they found inside. The greater part of the shamanic equipment, however, which had been more efficiently concealed in the sylvan storehouse, was left undisturbed.

On the basis of these surviving objects we can ascertain that the upper part of the shaman 's costume bore representations of, mainly, birds and reindeer. The disc attached to the upper part of the parka held a pendant consisting of seven iron birds. According to our two companions these were qarra, which seems plausible as herons are believed to be the helpers of man in "keeping contact with the heavenly world" (Prokof'eva 1949:357). Tue figure in the middle of the pendant, however, was stated tobe a shag. According to Selkup belief, the shag is one of the shaman's most important helping spirits, being a bird with access to the heavenly, the underwater and the underground worlds alike (Prokof'eva 1949: 353). lt is interesting that around the shag's head was a metal strip which covered its eyes. This symbolises the idea that the bird has an inner

2 For details on the elevated graves of the Selkup, see Pelikh 1972:72- 74 and Gemuev and Pelikh 1993:304-306.

3 Among the Northern Selkup the norm was the use of elevated graves, but sometimes they erected a structure resting on four, rather than two, pillars (Lebedev 1980: 157).


vision with which it can see past, present and future in all three of these worlds and thus has no need of eyes.

Fig . 2. Poryj-kükte. Fig. 3 . Pendant in the shape of a shoulder-blade displaying a

masque-like representation of the helping spirit.

Attached to the back of the shag was a cradle made of iron, which deserves special attention. From its shape this was a pity, a type of cradle in which babies are kept until their first teeth appear. In the hands of a shaman a pity a very effective device, for with its aid he can foresee the course of a person's life as early as in their babyhood and know as much about it as is at all possible. When healing a sick person, the shaman first looks through the pity to see when and what sort of illness-causing spirit has entered the patient's body andin which part of the body it is to be found. Tue pity also enables the shaman to move about in time and space, allowing him to reach any point of the earth or any of the other worlds. Furthermore, it enables a dead shaman to retum to the world of the livmg.

A story told by the Selkup shaman N.I. Kondukov was recorded in 1890 in which he relates how he met the dead shaman Belozerov. Kondukov, the account goes, was sitting fishing on the bank of the River Ket when suddenly he saw the shaman Belozerov flying across the sky

128 I.N. Gemuev and G.I. Pelikh

in a pity. When the latter saw Kondukov he descended to earth. The liv -ing and the dead shaman talked with each other, after which Belozerov flew on in the direction of the Luk'ianov yurts where his wife and daughter were living. Tue wife and daughter died the same year. "lt was to fetch them that the shaman had flown here" was Kondukov' s conclu -sion to his story.

On both sides of Mon' gi Kalin 's parka were sewn strips of iron rep -resenting the shaman's ribs, and at ehest height there were copper discs (lomb) . The discs bares punched representations, three showing the structure of the drum, while the fourth-an anthropomorphic figurewas one of the shaman's spirit helpers. To the belt were attached two pendants known as sakka-tubular objects with long, plaited handles. According to Selkup belief, if one of these is struck with the shaman' s small axe (a standard accessory hanging on the cloak), it turns into a mighty warrior clad in armour from head to toe.

The "crown" of shaman Mon'gi Kalin was supplemented with two knives, one at the front and one at the back, which were needed for fighting hostile shamans. The crown was embellished with rows of beads.

Among the most interesting of the pendants on the ehest armour were the anthropomorphic depictions, one of which was a representation of the Barth Mother Tom§l' Ima (literally "Southern woman", which name is related to the Selkup belief that associates her origin with the "Southern Land"). Equally interesting were miniature replicas of shoulder blades and similarly tiny axes. The disc showing the shoulder blade also displayed the blurred image of a mask. We were informed that the mask appears on the disc if the shaman strikes it with his little magic axe. This is how he summons his immensely powerful but always invisible spirit. The appearance of the mask signifies that the spirit is present and awaiting the shaman' s orders. If the shaman strikes the shoulder blade again, the mask disappears and the spirit vanishes along with it. At pre -sent the mask is barely visible-there are indications that an attempt has been made to file it off the shoulder blade. Our hosts stated with pro -found conviction that this could only have been done by the shaman himself, claiming that no one amongst the Selkup living today would dare so much as to tauch the disc displaying the shoulder blade. They supposed that Mon' gi Kalin summoned his spirit shortly before his


death but had not had the strength to make him vanish again, which is why he tried to erase the mask with a file and so "release" the spirit.

Tue back of the parka had an iron disc sewn to it that depicted a rein -deer. Tue legs of the pemaqi (the shaman's boots) had sewn on to them iron representations of snakes (?) and bears' paws, allowing Mon'gi Kalin to continue practising his skills in the underworld. lt is characteristic that these figures, too, were partially damaged in accordance with the tradition already referred to above. Damaging the shaman's equipment after his death is equivalent to destroying them altogether.

Tue sombyrni is one of the most widespread types of Selkup shaman. We encountered shamans of this type equally along the tributaries of the Ob, the Taz and the Turukhan and heard numerous stories about them. In the part of this study that follows we present examples of such sombyrni shamans.

Y elisei Karligin was a very well known and popular shaman among the Selkup of the Ob area. He lived and died in the village of Napas on the River Tim. After his death his cloak, drum and spirit manikins, together with the miniature tankard made for their storage, were given to the local history museum in Kolpashev, where they are to this day.

At the time of our visit he was no langer alive, but we were nevertheless able to collect some valuable material with the help of his daughter V arvara Mulina, then aged 60. Tue wife of the last amdel' -qöq (ruler) of Tim, she had therefore received the wry sobriquet of "grand lady" or "queen".

Tue shaman Mardori Saigotin from the village of Khudosei died in the 1930s. His relatives collected the spirit representations that had been sewn on to bis parka and the rim of the drum, wrapped them in reindeer skin and stacked them away under a tree. During our visit they allowed us to unwrap the parcel and examine its contents, but they themselves did not dare to come near. Mardori Saigotin's spirit representations were similar to those of Mon' gi Kalin-the same qarras and the same shag.

L.P. Kusamin, who lived in Farkovo along the Turukhan, was not one of the powerful shamans. He had neither a drum nor a complete shamanic outfit and he hardly ever practised his kills. Yet he was the descendant of such famous shamans-well known in the entire northern Yenisei area-as his great-great-grandfather Kytka-ira and two of his great-grandfathers, Sekund-ira and Cicig-iracos. He himself was renowned among his compatriots for having inherited extremely powerful

130 I.N. Gemuev and G 1. Pelikh

shamanic fetishes. lt was believed that he was particularly effective in healing headaches and ear aches as he possessed the appropriate fetish (mäs-myrak).

The costumes of all the above-named sombyrni shamans bore a strong resemblance to the Selkup shaman outfit that was described by Prokof' -eva (1949:336-375, 1971:21-23) and which evokes the association of the "animal-bird". lt was precisely this animal-bird symbolism of his costume that "enabled" the shaman to move into other worlds. The Selkups declare that the spirit representations sewn on to the outfit as pendants are inseparable from the shaman. "They are always with him when he is acting as shaman. When he is just carrying on with his everyday life, he is like any other man. But when he is practising his arts, the spirits are with him."

Fig. 4. Mäs-Myrak - Shaman L.P. Kusamin's fetish.

The shamanic outfit is a "distinguishing mark" (Basilov 1984: 116) that discriminates the shaman from other members of the tribe and at the same time is "the perceptible image of an imaginary world, while the or -ganisational order of the spirits subordinated to the shaman' s power imitate s the organisational order of an earthly army" (Prokof'eva 1971:7-8). We believe, however, that the functions of the shamanic outfit are richer than this would imply in that they can be viewed as an actual model of the Selkup people.

Talking of the difference between the categories of tätypy sombyrni and tätypy kamityrni, Kusamin emphasised that "the sombyrni is a shaman who practises his art by daylight, during the day. Tue kamityrni is a shaman who works in the dark andin secret." We should add to this that the activity of the kamityrni is very strictly regulated and all those present at the ceremony know their place exactly.


Kamityrni shamans have no particular outfit. Of the shamanic accessories they may only have a headdress ( curakty), ehest armour or a ehest leather piece (kutyn) or a drum, but even if they possess some of these they are not allowed to use them for shamanic ceremonies (at least not those perf ormed before an audience ).

Those wishing to participate in a kamityrni shamanic ceremony gather in a hut appointed for the purpose. Before the shaman arrives they light a fire and spread a reindeer skin between the fire and the back wall of the hut. On the floor next to the skin they place a bucket containing thinly splintered wood, and somewhat further back they lay a copper cauldron on its side. A stick is placed on the ground between the fire and the für. A drum may also be placed on the ground (although there was no drum at the ceremony we attended).

The shaman enters in bis ordinary clothes, undresses to the waist and sits down on the für with bis legs twisted beneath him. His helpers pass him bis headdress and ehest armour, while the others present ask him questions which he will ans wer after the ceremony. Two men in the au -dience (not bis helpers) go up to him and tie bis legs together. They then tie the same rope around bis neck and bis arms, constricting bis whole body. At a signal from the shaman bis helpers put out the fire, after which no one is allowed even to strike a match.

After a short time sounds of knocking are heard from the cauldron. The shaman begins to sing, summoning bis spirit helpers and asking them to untie him. The "bear" appears in the hut, and the audience can hear its feet as it moves about, sniffing, grunting, and striking the beams over the audience's heads with its paws. "Birds" fly about the hut, screeching and flapping their wings. The rope that was used to tie up the shaman flies in the face of the people who bound him. The stick that lay on the ground in front of the shaman now appears to be tied to the pillars supporting the hut at ehest height. The spirit helpers "sit" on this stick, screeching. Finally, the shaman himself "takes off heavily" and sits on the stick, spinning and turning about on it and singing all the time. Gradually bis voice fades and seems to come from further and further off. The shaman is "flying away" somewhere. Soon bis voice becomes strong again-he has "returned". After a few minutes, on an instruction from the shaman, the helpers rekindle the fire. The audience see the shaman still sitting on the reindeer skin. His face and body are running

132 I.N. Gemuev and G./. Pelikh

with sweat, which he scrapes off with the wooden splinters. He lights a pipe and rests for a while.

Then the second half of the ceremony begins. The shaman "mutilates" himself with a knife, "pierces" his body with a gun stick and "sticks" a knife in his stomach. All of this appears to be totally real although of course not a drop of blood is shed. According to our hosts some shamans have been known to stick as many as 15 knives into their body and then sing and dance as if nothing had happened.

At the end of the ceremony the shaman answers the questions that were put to him earlier by participants. These may related to any area of daily life. Tue answers may contain prognoses about the coming hunting season, name the culprit responsible for some misdeed or reveal the location of lost possessions and so forth. In this respect it would be hard to agree with Prokof'eva (1981:68), who maintains that shamanic ceremonies performed in the dark "had no other aim than entertainment".

If we compare Prokof'eva's (1981:67-68) description ofthe shamanic ceremony conducted in the dark with the two reports just given, we no -tice some differences. She mentions no objects other than the drum laid on the ground near the shaman. The shaman is said to sit on a bear skin, and there is no mention of the stick on which the spirits perch. The ceremony she describes does not consist of two parts, and the answers to the questions put by the audience are given to the shaman (and to those who asked them) by the spirits during the ceremony itself. We believe that such differences within one and the same tradition indicate the existence of local varieties.

In a Selkup village by the Turukhan River we had an opportunity to examine the fetishes of a kamityrni shaman. According to the account of local people he had come by them through magical means. The main piece was a lozil' -pa!)- a "devil's knife". This is a brass knife with a long, narrow blade. In this case the blade had been chipped. lt happened that one day the shaman and a companion had captured a reindeer "on the edge of the tundra". The two hunters were not strong enough to carry their prey home, so they covered it with the skin of a moose and went to fetch help. On returning to the site with a few young lads and lifting the moose skin, they found that the body of the reindeer had vanished and the knife was lying in its place on the ground.

Another interesting piece of equipment used by the tätypy kamityrni is a shaman stick that was donated to the Siberian Museum of History and


Culture (which functioned under the Archaeological and Folklore Institute-then the Historical, Philological and Philosophical Instituteof the Academy). This had belonged to a shaman who possessed no drum, and in fact the stick had functioned as the allomorph of the shamanic drum. 4

We asked many shamans to explain the meaning of the word aloga in the phrase tätypy aloga, but not one of them was able (or willing) to do so. The phrase, well known among the Selkups of the Ob, Taz and Turukhan areas, has a slightly disapproving connotation. Tue word itself also occurs in place names and the names of rivers. The Selkups call one of the western tributaries of the upper Taz "Aloga", and there is a plateau ("hillock") with the same name on the right bank of the Y enisei near the northern border of present-day Turukhansk. On the left bank of the Taz, about five kilometres from the place where the River Ratta runs into it, there is a village called Aloga.

lt is significant that all of the places mentioned are associated with tragic events. Tradition has it that the village of Aloga was once razed to the ground by Nenets, who did not even spare babes in arm. The Aloga plateau is associated with the events of the 1930s. One winter during the persecution of the kulaks, all the farmers and shamans were herded into this place, tied up like slaves-literally roped one to the other ty the hands and feet-and then pushed, one after the other, into the Yenisei through a hole that had been cut in the ice. We could quote numerous further examples that account for the somewhat sinister connotation of the word aloga. We consider it no accident that, according to our Selkup hosts and other sources of information, the meaning of aloga is "accursed place"--one where some terrible sin has been committed.

Tue activity of the aloga shaman is seen by the Selkups as amounting to black magic, and people who undertake this sort of activity are taking considerable risk. There is a story abroad, for example, according to which a young man becomes a disciple of a tätypy aloga but finds it impossible to persevere and soon runs away. "Lightning struck the hut through the chimney, ruining the entire stove, and the very same lightning also struck the lad to death."

4 lt is in this connection that Prokof'eva (1971 :7) writes: "shamans who possess no shamanic costume ... almost always use the shaman stick as the substitute for a drum".

134 l.N. Gemuev and G.I. Pelikh

We must also add that the Selkups have grave reservations about aloga shamans which are related to the fact that their helpers are the spirits kava-lozy and patcak. The former is the spirit of the dead shaman and the latter is the being that emerges from the souls of babies who die before their first teeth appear. According to Selkup belief, babies at this stage are still in contact with the underworld. If a baby dies before the appearance of the first milk teeth, it turns into a terrifying patcak devil who persecutes and kills people. 5

lt is a significant circumstance that the Selkups themselves see aloga shamanism as an old and obsolete form and attribute this to two things. One is that tätypy aloga often mak:e reference to horses during their rite. "Our ancient ancestors used to keep horses", the Selkup say (and this of course does not refer to the "second wave of horse breeding" associated with the appearance of the Russians). Second, it is said that the aloga shamans use some form of arcane archaic language during their ceremonies which is no longer understood by most people, with the result that they cannot follow much of what is said or sung.

During fieldwork in 1979 we meta descendant of the very famous tätypy aloga Bak:unga, who, beside the Selkups, bad been known to the Kets, Evenkis and even the first wave of Russian settlers. When Bak:unga became aware that his death was imminent, he declared that in 50 years' time he would return to earth in the form of a grandson who would be born in the same village as that in which he died. "Andindeed", our hosts maintained, "50 years later a grandson was born to him." This person entered life in the village of Ianov Stan, where Bak:unga died.

So it was that in Ianov Stan we met Timofeevich Kusarnin, the famous tätypy aloga who is Bak:unga's grandson and who very earnestly maintained that he had inherited the totality of Bak:unga's memory and shamanic capabilities. When we asked why he was not an active shaman he answered, "Tue reason is that I have to earn money. Shamans are always poor men. They receive lavish gifts but those do not belong to him but are the spirits' due. A (true) shaman keeps nothing for himself." Thus A.T. Kusamin gave a convincing account of himself and even tried to persuade us to give him our brand new Vikhr motorcycle which we

5 This is the source of the peculiar burial ritual which is customary in the case of babies who die toothless (Gemuev 1980:134-135) ..


were using in our fieldwork. However, some time later events took a surprising turn.

A village feast was being held on a hilltop not far from a building housing the radio transmitter. A clear, bright Arctic night bad set in, during which we talked about the life of man until finally we found our -selves discussing Selkup shamans. Aleksandr Timofeevich Kusamin joined in the conversation and declared, provoking gaiety all round, that most of those shamans were nothing compared to him, the reincarnated Bakunga. And he volunteered evidence. He said he would split himself asunder from left shoulder to right pelvis right there, in front of everybody, and he would not even suffer. He instantly took bis shirt off, produced a narrow-bladed Selkup knife and thrust it, up to the handle, into his left shoulder (at least none of those present showed any doubt that that was what he had done). Tue frightened onlookers all cried out, anx -ious that in bis drunkenness the man would harm himself. One of the radio station staff, who had been sitting next to him, jumped up to wrest the knife away from the shaman. What everyone saw was that he grabbed the handle of the knife. Blood was running-but it was not Kusamin' s but that of the radio man. Aleksandr Timof eevich Kusamin' s body showed only the tiniest red spot.

What had happened was that Kusamin had just scratched his skin with the point of the knife but bad not pushed the blade into bis shoulder. Yet those present saw him sink the knife into his flesh up to the handle. The only possible supposition is that Selkup shamans, even if they are inactive and not practising their gift, like Kusamin, are blessed with the gift of hypnosis.

We missed an opportunity to attend the ceremony of a tätypy aloga. However, in the little village of Svorechka along the upper Turukhan we got the chance to look at the devices and fetishes of one such shaman, A.A. Saigotin, who bad recently died. We noted the particulars of the objects which were kept by bis brother in a small sack made of the skin from the head of an unborn reindeer calf that had beeh removed from the womb after its mother had been hunted down. Unfortunately Saigotin's brother refused to offer any kind of explanation of the objects, claiming that he knew nothing. He spoke of two fetishes as "sylvan" (spirits of the forest). One of these was an anthropomorphic figure carved out of wood, with a hole through the back of its neck. Its mask had the eyes carefully drawn and a straight line for the mouth. The other "sylvan"

136 IN. Gemuev and G.I. Pelikh

fetish was a figurine in the shape of a <leer. A third object, a metal figure representing a child with two cradles attached to it made of birch bark, was the patcak, one of the shaman 's most powerful spirit helpers.

The same village was also the harne of one I.S. Bezrukikh, member of a famous Selkup family and descendant of the legendary shaman Gordeika. Bezrukikh was a physically energetic, open, communicative man who was deputy head of the village council. He gave an odd selfcharacterisation: "I am a Soviet communist shaman, a shaman from the Gordeika dynasty."

What Bezrukikh valued highest amongst all his inherited fetishes was the bone of the uppermost segment of a human thumb. The background to this is that novices become shamans through a rite of initiation during which the "spirits" dismember his body and count all his bones to see if there are any supemumerary "shaman bones"-specifically, to determine whether this shaman bone (e.g. the right thumb) is suitable for assimilating shamanic capabilities. The novice will only advance to the status of shaman if he has such a bone.

Gordeika had proved suitable and he became a great shaman. In his will he ordered his son Parichan to cut off his right thumb after his death and to keep it, assimilating with it his shamanic power. The bone then passed to Parichan's son, Pyndalia, from whom it passed to Bezrukikh's father, who was killed by his enemies (of whom there were five, we were told, and they inflicted nine lethal wounds). But the man lived on for days after this, waiting for his son so that he could bequeath to him the shaman bone and name his murderers. When his son arrived he told him: "They are no langer alive. I have killed them with my shamanic power."

This "communist shaman" was quite ready to show me the bone. He brought it down from the attic, lit some fat mixed with <log hair and smoked the bone over it. There were several ribbons tied to it, to which we added our own gift. The bone was then retumed to the attic. This bone, like that belonging to A.A. Saigotin, is kept in a sack made of the skin from the head of an unbom reindeer calf.

lt is necessary to point out here that beliefs related to thumbs play an important part in Selkup religious ideas. According to traditional Selkup belief, man tums into a bear after death. But in the case of extraordinary people such as the "great shamans", this transformation has numerous peculiarities. The culmination of these is the act referred to above, when


the thumb is cut off the dead person 's right hand. (Tue literal translation of the Selkup phrase qagal' mun is "grave-like" or "dead thumb". 6) The bone of the upper segment of the severed thumb of a great aloga shaman became the chief fetish of the shamans of that calling and would be passed on from generation to generation because it was the object in which the shamanic power was concentrated.

Associations between the thumb and extraordinary capacities of possession are found in the traditions of several peoples. Thus, for example, there is a legend among the Buriats living east of the Baikal 7 according to which the deity cut off the thumb of a young man "to whom no man may be compared" and tumed the young man himself into a bear. Mongolian folklore8 also contains a sujet which includes the motif of cutting off the thumb and in which the dead person again tums into an animal (in this case into a rodent). A story has been recorded among the Mansi 9 in which a bear petitions the deity for a fifth finger, i.e. a thumb, but is refused one. Similar stories have been recorded among the Khakass 10 as weil as the first Siberian settlers.11

According to a Selkup narrative, bears have only four fingers because otherwise they would dislodge the whole world from its comers. (As is known, it is only on the hind legs that bears have five toes.) The Negidal also think of the bear as an animal with four fingers. 12 W e may add to this that numerous peoples believe that a man's soul dwells precisely in the finger. A Selkup narrative maintains that "the warriors of the Ob area cut off the fingers of their enemies after killing them so that the dead en -emy might not be able to harm them" (Pelikh 1972a:317). Tue Altaic epic about Altay-Buuchay relates how the enemies finally managed to kill the hero:

They pick at him with Jances but they cannot pierce him.

6 Tom.sk Educational Institute, a box from the collection of Siberian place names.

7 See Potanin 1883. IV:168. 8 See Potanin 1916:168. 9 See Gondatti 1888:25, 72. 10 Oral communication by V.Ia. Butanaev. 11 See Potanin 1883. IY:754. 12 See Tsintsius 1971 :190.

138

They Jash at him with swords but the sword runs off his skin. They know no other way. "We must cut off both his thumbs" they say. And with a sharp snap they cut off both his thumbs.13

I.N. Gemuev and G 1. Pelikh

In the commentary the author (ibid.) adds that Altay-Buuchay's soul, i.e. his strength, was in his two thumbs. A.V. Anokhin, famous researcher of the belief system of the Altai Turks, records a legend according to which when the Kirghiz attacked the Altai region, they killed the shaman Badi, who had nine drums. "His heart, which was grown over with hair, was in his thumb. That, too, was hairy." (Emphasis by the present authors.) His Kirghiz murderers said:

He is clearly an extraordinary man, He has a hairy heart and there is hair inside his thumb. 14

Thus we see that in the beliefs of numerous peoples man is capable of turning into a bear. Tue thumb plays an important role in this transformation, as tradition holds it to be the place where the soul and strength reside (meaning both bodily strength and shamanic power). For the Selkup tätypy aloga the acquisition of a fetish of this kind through "legal means" (by inheritance) also meant that he came into possession of special shamanic powers. At this stage the figure of the helping spirit merges with the figure of the linear shaman ancestor.

We are convinced that the number of parallels we find between the details of religious beliefs concerning man and bear is no accident. This may serve as evidence for supposing that the Paleo-Siberian substratum that became a component of numerous Siberian peoples in one way or another did once form some sort of a unifying factor in both a religious and an ideological sense.

Ethnographie research has often dealt with the question of the categorisation of shamans (and shamanisms), but to this day no agreement

13 Surazakov 1961:133. 14 See Anokhin 1924:124.


has been reached. Basilov (1984: 105) maintains that "in the olden days shamans had to excel through special abilities which had been passed on to them from their chief patron, their anirnal mother". This would be hard to dispute. One illustrative example is provided by the two types of shamanism within which five categories are discriminated by E.A. Alekseenko (1981:119-123), classified according to the shaman's patron animal spirit.

Tue source of these differences of categorisation is the diff erence in world views. Within this it has been possible for a long time to contain and pass on from generation to generation widely different views which characterised the peoples at the various stages of their development (and of related ritual and religious practice ).

We believe that the same is the case with regard to Selkup shamanism. Prokof'eva (1981:57-59) was the first to formulate the idea that sombyrni and kamityrni shamanism probably emerged in different periods. She emphasised that the Selkups did not have separate shamans who were only in touch with the good or with the evil spirits. We believe that the data available to us satisfactorily support the above statement.

The aloga, this most esoteric category of shamanism, occupies a special place among Selkup shamans. lt is a phenomenon only known to us today through its relics. While the first two types of shaman developed in the already emerged Selkup ethnos, the aloga form reaches back, in terms of origin, to the Siberian ethnic groups with which the Samoyed came into contact in the period ( or periods) of their northward migration. Tue emergent ethnos adopted this form of shamanism almost without alteration and it filled a previously existing hiatus in the religious and ritual practice of the people.

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Anokhin, A.V. 1924. Materialy po shamnastvu u altaitsev. Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk.

Basilov, V.N. 1984. lzbrannniki dukhov. Moskva: lzdatel'stvo politicheskoi literatury.

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Gemuev, LN. 1980. "K istorii sem'i i semeinoi obriadnosti sel'kupov.' In G.I. Pelikh and E.M. Toshchakova (eds.) Etnografii Severnoi Azii. Novosibirisk: Nauka.

Gemuev, I.N. and G.I. Pelikh 1993. "O pogrebal'noi obriadnosti sel'kupov." Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 38. 287-308.

Gondatti, L.N. 1888. "Sledy iazycheskikh verovanii u man'zov." Trudy Obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii pri Moskovskom universitete. 8. Moskva.

Lebedev, V.V. 1980. "Sel'kupy." In I.S. Gurvich (ed.) Semeinaia obriadnost' narodov Sibiri. Moskva: Nauka.

Pelikh, G.I. 1972. Proiskhozhdenie sei' kupov. Tomsk: lzdatel'svo tomskogo universiteta. - 1972a. Proiskhozhdenie i istoriia se/'kupov. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Tomsk.

Potanin, G.N. 1883. Ocherki Severo-Zapadnoi Mongolii . Spb. -. 1916. Erke. Kult' syna neba v Severnoi Azii. Tomsk.

Prokof'eva, E.D. 1949. "Kostium sel'kupskogo (ostiako-samoedskogo) shamana." In S.P. Tolstov et al. (eds.) Sbornik Muzeia antropologii i etnografii Vol. 11. Moskva/Leningrad. -. 1971. "Shamanskie kostiumy narodov Sibiri." In L.P. Potapov et al. (eds.) Religioznye predstavleniia i obriady narodov Sibiri v XIX - nachale XX veka. Leningrad: Nauka. -. 1981. "Materialy po shamanstvu sel'kupov." In I.S. Vdovin (ed.) Problemy istorii obshchestvennogo soznaniia aborigenov Sibirii. Leningrad: Nauka.

Surazakov, S.S. 1961. Geroicheskoe skazanie o bogatyre Altai-Buuchaye. GornoAltaisk: Gorno-Altaiskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo.

Tsintsius, V.I. 1971. "Vozzrenia negidal'tsev, sviazannye s okhotnich'imi promyslami." in L.P. Potapov et al. (eds.) Religioznye predstavleniia i obriady narodov Sibiri v XIX - nachale XX veka. Shomik Muzeia antropologii i etnografii 27. Leningrad: Nauka.

VOL.7. N0.2. SHAMAN AUTUMN 1999

Trance or Symbolic Representation: That is the Question

JOHN A. DOOLEY MANCIET, FRANCE

For some time Roberte Hamayon and Ake Hultkrantz have aired their differing modes of approach to the current notions of what constitutes trance and ecstasy. This article endeavours to briefly sum up their respective positions, and then-by examples- to work beyond these in a demonstration of support for Hamayon' s use of symbolic representations to describe an elusive condition which--to my mind---cannot otherwise be described scientifically at present; that is given the suppositious terms anthropologists may be obliged to adopt in any attempt to directly describe these phenomena. _

That two intemationally esteemed scholars like Ake Hultkrantz and Roberte Hamayon should recently have argued their positions regarding trance and ecstasy is an event which at last allows one to evaluate the present status of these elusive phenomena. As is well-known, Hultkrantz maintains that trance and ecstasy-mixed as they are with psychologyare two concepts which underpin the whole edifice of shamanism as it is understood today. Hamayon, as a representative of social anthropology, simply finds the two terms inappropriate to the study of shamanism, for among other things, "the meaning of these terms is rarely specified in detail" (Hamayon: 1993:3).

As one might expect, the argument for the conservation of the two concepts appeals to one along traditional lines. Hultkrantz begins bis case by noting that shamanism is a religious entity of its own. As such it has a mediator who furthers relationships between the social group and beings of the other world. This mediation is conducted by means of trance and ecstasy (Hultkrantz 1998: 164). In setting out bis case, Hultkrantz remarks that early 17th and 18th descriptions of shamanism from the northem provinces of the old Russian Empire focused on "dramatic seances". Thereafter from the 1900's anthropologists began to concen-

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trate on questions of the psychical soundness of the shaman. Here Hultkrantz is at pains to list an impressive number of scholars who found the notion of trance compelling: Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Sergei Shirikogoroff were just two of those who concentrated not only on "the psychic state of the shamans, but also questioned the genuineness of bis trance" (ibid. 164).

Adding further to bis witnesses, Hultkrantz notes that from the 1950's until today such scholars as Andreas Lommel, Ulla Johansen, Mihaly Hoppal and V.N. Basilov "presupposed ecstasy as a natural psychic disposition in the shamans" (ibid. 3). Also observed is the apparent lack of interest in trance of those early commentators on the North American shamans until weil into this century. This fact concurs with Hamayon's remark that the rise of psychoanalysis helped scholars to the view that shamanic behaviour was psychological and shamanic practice was mainly therapeutical (Hamayon 1998:180). Obviously the excitement occasioned by the early studies of Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud published between 1893-1895 bad not reached the outermost bounds of traditional American Anthropology, the exception being those anthropol -ogists who were psychiatrically trained (Hultkrantz 1998:165).

All these reports culminate for Hultkrantz in the production of Mircea Eliade's "ouevre on ecstatic shamanism" in 1951, which for hirn was "path-breaking" (ibid. 164). lt is in the evaluation of this event that Hultkrantz and Hamayon markedly differ; the latter viewing Eliade as one of those who have been engaged in what she terms the Idealization of shamanism. lt is Eliade who-in seeking to reconcile religion and psychology into a common approach in which trance and ecstasy constituted "religion in the rough"-managed to rehabilitate shamanism, but at the cost of the shaman becoming a "mystical" and "extremely popular" figure (Hamayon 1998:180).

In the course of describing her three shamanic approaches to the shaman's behaviour, Hamayon begins with Devilization which was nothing less than the orthodox missionary view of the shaman as it appertained to Imperial Russia. Shamans there were seen to serve the devil; they were wild and black; prone to "anirnal behaviour" as opposed to that consistent with the reverential comportment expected of Christians ( ibid. 179). Rather than Hultkrantz' s ongoing evocation of historical scholarly witness, Hamayon weighs in with an engagingly subversive analysis. Indeed, Hultkrantz remarks with some justification that her social an-

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thropological approach with its accent on sociological details takes precedence over the cultural and the religious. However, without this movement towards social mores it is difficult to see how Hamayon would have arrived at her definition of trance which we shall shortly exanune.

Hultkrantz, next, focuses his argument on Hamayon's Siberian work with the Buriats. This is noted as very valuable, even with its sociologi -cal slant. However, in her shamanic researches, Hamayon stresses the very real partnership between man and animal. The latter are feared, but there is no worship of them by man. The shaman's tenure of office is controlled by the community, and will depend on his efficacy. Hultkrantz deplores this view as a depreciation of the shaman's inner experiences, i.e., his trance, in favour of sociological analysis. Hamayon he argues, dismisses shamanism as a religion because of his ongoing "crazy" behaviour, and because there are no religious supports like a temple, dogma, and such like. For her, shamanism is essentially an affair of pragmatic ritual symbolically related to the business of hunting (Hultkrantz 1998: 167). These points, he considers, add up to the fact that Hamayon's social anthropological approach renders her victim to her own method; incurring her sacrifice of a more holistic, scholastic approach on the altar of method (ibid. 168). There is possibly some justification for these caveats, and a debt is owed to Hultkrantz for clearly positing what he sees as the dualistic nature of the issue under discussion. Those scholars who see shamanism primarily as a religion shot with ecstasy will undoubtedly be swayed accordingly. However, when it comes to defining what is meant by "holistic and scholarly" Hultkrantz returns to what he sees as the core of shamanistic approaches: "the overwhelming evidence of ecstatic shamanism from many parts of the world". Eliade, he declares, saw it (trance and ecstasy) as the "kerne!" of shamanism, and then Findeisen (1957:8; 1960) considered the spiritualistic trance or ecstasy tobe the constitutive basis of shamanism (Hultkrantz 1998:167).

Hultkrantz summarizes Hamayon's rejection ofthese views. Not only does she see trance and ecstasy as an obstacle to anthropological analysis of shamanism, she also considers them to be irrelevant. Instead, she maintains a shaman's ritual behaviour "follows a prescribed pattern". Here Hultkranz has inadvertently omitted what is the kerne! of Hamayon's theory which is that tranced or no, " ... the shaman does

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nothing other than respect the model of behaviour prescribed for his function" (Hamayon 1993: 14 ). lt is this part of the definition, for me, which caps what is, presently, the unverifiable condition of trance. As Hamayon says: " ... most often the reality of 'trance' (or 'ecstasy') as a specific interior state is taken for granted by virtue of the usual expectation, despite a lack of any specified empirical data" (Hamayon 1998:176). Where neither the presence of depth of trance can be measured Hamayon's above role-playing definition is invaluable. lt is-so far-the only definition one knows which presently comes near to accomplishing the difficult act of appropriately limiting a description of trance and ecstasy, with all its associated phenomena, in a way which expels doubts about the genuineness of what one is perceiving; in a thrice doing away with suspicions that the shaman' s possible pretence of trance is fraudu -lent and unworthy. 1 In formulating her definition she has managed to neatly sidestep the contradictions involved when both human and divine elements come together in the types of shamanic ritual we are examining.

That such a definition is needed is bome out by Hultkrantz' s declara -tion of his own final position: " ... ecstasy is a necessary part of the shaman's psychic equipment. Moreover, it is the precondition for all shamanic ritual actions". This Statement is followed by examples in which trance is not "palpable", for instance in the Spirit Canoe curing ceremony of the Coast Salish Indians. For all this, we are to suppose the "presence of ecstasy", just as we do when we "presuppose" that "the Siberian shaman climbing the world tree" is also in "an ecstatic trance" (Hultkrantz 1998:168). Thus Hultkrantz makes his final position clear, and what he affirms is the universal belief of many of those who adhere to shamanism as a "religion". Without ~his frequent and seemingly archetypal belief that the shaman is in a trance when dealing with spirits, shamanism would-presumably-become defunct. Takako Yamada's article on the Ladakhi shaman as performer (Yamada 1995:89) gives a gocxl idea of the integral part played by the laity's supposition of trance in their perf orming shamans. This follows from the Ladakhi belief that the lha-or local god-himself performs for their shamans. Accordingly, all the latter deny any remembrance of what happens during their seances. However, immediately after her seance, one female shaman

1 Hamayon ' s debt to Gilbert Rouget's (1985) sociologically aligned thoughts on trance and ecstasy are duly acknowledged in Hamayon 1995:19, 21- 22.

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related to Y amada exactly what she had just uttered; Y amada seeing this as evidence that the shaman can be aware of what she is saying, but denying it in order to convince her clients that it was lha who was presiding over the seance (Yamada:1995:94). 2

The laity 's mental set here would seem similar to that which Hultkrantz suggests the anthropologist should adopt when observing any apparently tranced shaman; but are these suppositions we are dealing with scientific? Who, in analysing a phenomenon in putatively scientific fashion, that is by observation, experiment and measurement, permits himself to conjecture on something to which none of these methods can be applied. Hamayon's present description of the seeming shamanic trance neatly sidesteps the need for such unscientific activities; the need to substitute an act of religious faith which demands we naively believe that trance is present every time the shaman appears to be in ecstasy. Her definition, in fact, uncouples the necessity of both the laity and the an -thropologist to believe in trance, leaving the latter detached from what could be aberrant suppositions and free to investigate whatever other phenomena have presented themselves for scientific examination.

The example of the Ladakhi shaman provides us with a case which will allow our further examination of Hamayon's definition: we can begin with her notion of symbolic representations. These presentations make present "what is not-and cannot be-really present, as for instance, a 'spirit,' which can only symbolically be made present, although they may have the force of reality for those who adhere to them ... " (Hamayon 1998:185). lt is for this reason they have social effects causing people to feel and act and to fall into certain practices. Take the notion of a shaman's contact with spirits. This can be communicated by states such as dreaming, by gestures such as jumping, by shouting and such like (Hamayon 1998:184-185; 1993:16, 22). Because a laity holds to such representations does not mean they cease to me mere ideas, nor, if one might add, does it prevent these ideas ultimately becoming spirits. Thus dreaming about a spirit wife maybe a "sign of spiritual election", and as such a symbolic representation, but the possibility of her possessing the dreamer in reality cannot be ruled out. However, such factors, according to Hamayon, are not allowed to participate in what she terms her "topics"; that is "symbolic systems which are socially operative, (and)

2 Fora convenient citing of other such cases see Hamayon 1993:22, note 42.

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cannot be substituted by actual psychic or physical states which are basically individual Representations are to be considered per se, with no inference from presentation to belief and from belief to reality" (Hamayon 1998:185). In other words what is not objective, observable, and knowable is banished from our analysis in order to preclude what may be misleading speculation as to the shaman's "inner state"-a state which normally only he himself is aware of.

The representations, then, can be seen as the "shaman's qualifying procedure and ritual behaviour" which is "other-than-ordinary", and includes the shaman' s state, his use of the voice, gestures, utterances, etc. All these actions because of their other-than-ordinary quality give him "legitimacy and efficacy for acting in a realm which is also other-thanordinary (be it called sacred, ritualistic, symbolic, religious or other)" (Hamayon 1993:22).

So it is that the Ladakh shaman' s denial that she can recall nothing of her performance may be described as a symbolic representation. This is because her denial fulfills the community' s need for confirmation that their God or lha, does indeed perform the ritual before them-not the shaman. This constraint on the shaman to father an illusion relates to her "acting out a role culturally defined and socially organized" (Hamayon 1993:17). The shaman who betrays her lack of trance to Yamada is obviously acting outside the parameters of her role; in this case as a private individual beyond the control of her society.

Further problems of describing trance have been aired in S.A. Mousalimas' paper (1993). This sets out a number of reasons why Mousalimas considers that not even a broad-based "psycho-physical approach"-with its accent on mental abnormality-is able to encompass all the varied existent forms of trance and ecstasy (Mousalimas 1993:147). Both Evelyn Underhill and W.R. Inge have defined the latter phenomena, and these definitions are still current. Underhill, for instance, defines "ecstasy" as "that state with well-marked physical and psychical accompaniments in which the contemplative loses all consciousness of the phenomenal world" (Underhill 1967: 170), and "trance" as "a necessary for and consequence of ecstasy" (ibid., 360-361). Abnormality eo -ters Underhill's description with such references to trance as a "deathlike catalepsy". Tue inadequacy of this sort of this style of definition-a style which we shall see is also adopted by Hultkrantz-is revealed in Mousalimas' analysis of the working method of three Chugach shamans.

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Of these, two resort to trances which conf orm to the above descriptions; a third, working even more effectively than did bis colleagues, "did not strain himself bodily, nor enter into deep trance" (Mousalimas 1993: 154).

Here we have a classic case of "lack of precision" which-as Mousalimas claims-the intervention of Hultkrantz and Anna-Leena Siikala has done little to reduce. Both approach the matter of trance from a psycho-physical definition. Tue abnormal enters Hultkrantz's definition when he cites the state of trance as "a psychogenic, hysteroid mode of reaction and as a mentally abnormal state of introversion" (Hultkrantz 1978:41). A later 1990 statement by Hultkrantz is already more in accord with those initial descriptions I have cited above. In this, the shaman's trance has fewer characteristics articulated: the shaman is described as above as first and foremost an ecstatic mediator; his state is one of "deep trance" (Hultkrantz 1990). Siikala, according to Mousalimas, rejects this hysteroid element, yet her definition remains within the psycho-physical as she defines the Siberian shaman's ecstasy as "an altered state of consciousness" (ASC), and the latter involves "disturbed" neurophysiological and psychological conditions (Siikala 1987:40--46). As Mouselimas argues, Siikala, despite her avowed intention of refraining from judgements on the ecstatics' psychological health, still remains within the psycho-physical approach by reason of her predications of the Siberian shamans supra normal ASCs which involve the same disturbed conditions mentioned above. Even if Siikala allows that healthy people may achieve to ASCs, Mouselimas observes, she has never said that in general Siberian shamans are healthy. So it is "Tue psycho-physical approach is thus mitigated (by her). But it is not contradicted" (Mouselimas 1993:151). Ruth Inge-Heinze's variation involves: "alternate states of consciousness"; this definition anticipating any suggestion that as in "altered state of consciousness" (ASC), a state has been artificially altered (Heinze 1993:169). In that Heinze's "alternate states" subsume such conditions as "loss of control" and "perceptual distortion, together with a wide variation of recorded brain waves during trance inducing procedures, (ibid. 170) it is clear that she, too, is dealing with those abnormal characteristics which are capped by the psycho-physical definition.

Nowhere then, among this plethora of definitions does Hultkrantz or anyone eise competently describe our third Chugach shaman. But then he

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acts so differently from the other two shamans to whom he is compared. He, contrary to Hultkrantz ' s report, maintains a condition free from trance. At the outset of the healing session (seance?) he says a simple prayer to an unknown god, asking that he, the shaman, be allowed to eure the patient so that he can "believe myself what I am", i.e., a healer. Birket-Smith (quoted by Mousalirnas 1993:154) then goes on to describe how, thereafter, the shaman goes on to heal the sick girl who appears to lie in a coma before him. Known as a shaman with "good medicine breath", he then blew on the girl three times. After the third breath the girl asked tobe sat up on her couch (Birket-Smith 1953:131).

As Mousalirnas remarks, nowhere in the account is there any straining of the shaman to enter into trance; thus the Chugach shaman "cannot be comprehended by the psycho-physical approach, inasmuch as the account lacked definite evidence of psycho-physical abnormality or disturbance" (Mousalimas 1993:154). As Mousalimas adds, this tranceless view of the shaman falls into a "social" not an "ethnographical" perspective on shamanism; the latter dealing more with those very visible and audible characteristics (the "cries" and "screams" of the other shamans as they entered into trance) (ibid., 155). Presumably Hultkrantz would tend to see the latter as part of his religious and cultural perspective. Hamayon might opt for the first, the sociological viewpoint, given that she maintains the shaman is " ... qualified by shamanistic societies with reference not to a particular psychic state, but to the shaman's being in direct contact with the spirits" (Hamayon 1993:7). That the shaman has this con tact

is proven by the successful perf ormance of certain actions which may be termed symbolic representations.

Tue final contact of the Chugach shaman, however, has been preceded by his reputation as a man of "powerful medicine breath", and it is this which brings people to request he takes up his role as shaman; a major portion of this role being to create what is virtually a brief rite of passage presided over by a god, and with a distinctive three-phase, van Gennepian pattern. Hence, despite his simplistic approach, his "separation" comes with his request to the unknown god to allow the girl to return to her parents. Then, as he says: ''I'll believe myself what I am." In making the request he does away with his status and his name: "healer", and reduces himself to the condition of the novice in the "timen" or "margin". "Reincorporation" comes when his breathing on the girls lips effects, with the third blow, a eure, signalled as it is, by her

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asking to be sat up. As with most rites of passage it is a reversal and recognition 3 that marks the final movement of the rite. The first lies in the movement from novice to adept: to bis god-confirmed status as healer; the second lies simply in the recognition in the movement from ignorance to awareness of bis new name and, indeed, bis new enhanced status in society. Note also the girl's condition of "separation" when the shaman begins the eure, for is she not like the initiand in her sickness: detached "from an earlier fixed point in the social structure", like one absent. Her eure, as effected by him, is one of bringing her back to her parents, to life. Hence her sickness is a condition of the "limen", and her "reincorporation" is simultaneous with the reversal from sickness to eure, and the recognition of this event.

Tue success of the shaman 's ritual formalities in this case constitutes a representation: he has uttered words which have called up bis god, and the latter has shown himself willing, after the shaman's gesture of blowing on the girl, to permit a eure. lt is a rite in which the shaman, as specialist, implements the legitimacy of bis power by sacralizing it in a demonstration of "symbolic efficacy".

Tue fact, now, that the Chugach shaman does not resort to trance in order to effect bis eures, can be seen, in the context our present argument, to be irrelevant. Our attention, Hamayon might propose, should now give way to such questions as "How are the spirits conceived of so as to justify the shaman's hysteria-like behaviour?." lndeed, she suggests this may lead us to understand the symbolic reference- (i.e., the representation) of bis behaviour (Hamayon 1993: 17). Obviously in the case of the Chugach shaman the question must be rephrased, for this shaman foregoes hysterical behaviour in that he seemingly performs bis ritual without any representation of trance. In this he is quite unlike the Ladakhi shaman who by necessity: the call of her "social function", emphasizes that it is not she, but the lha who accomplishes the healing. And for this reason she will insist she is always in a trance; that is her role or representation will always portray the tranced shaman. This is what the Ladakh laity expect, and what they will insist on getting.

3 The terms recognition and reversal are derived from Aristotle's analysis of the pivoting points of drama in his Poetics . See Dooley 1995:43-55, where the relationships of these concepts to shamanic ritual are more fully discussed.

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While asking such questions, it might be to our advantage to look at the import of the prayer uttered by the Chugach shaman in the initial stage of his rite. His words request that he be ailowed to eure the girl so he can "believe myself what I am", i.e., a healer. His words reveal certain attitudes in the shaman' s mind. He is, for instance, apparently uncertain about his god's response to bis plea to give him the identity of a healer. In this case any resort to trance would create an illogical representation, as it is he, himself, who through his god' s grace, will successfully eure the girl. This is quite the contrary to the case of the Ladakhi shaman whose representation of trance signals to his laity that he has withdrawn from the rite in favour of the god. The Alaskan shaman, on the other hand, seems to be perfectly aware that trance would undermine his prayer because if his god appeared to effect the girl' s eure by using him as his medium, any bestowal ofhealer-identity on himself would seem to have been inopportune.

How universal is the representing of trance to denote the shaman 's absence? What our analysis does soggest is that the symbolic absence of the Ladakhi shaman, his temporary extinction in order that he can become a representation, rules out any question of possession at this particular level of symbolism, for surely in such a case, the shaman, as symbol, does not become extinct, but may weil be seen as the medium of the possessing god; a role which the Ladakhi will not permit their "agent" to adopt.

Finally it might be asked if a naming ceremony like that of the Chugach shaman could be conducted in a trance; for, in this case, does not naming imply a recognition that should occur simultaneously with the moment of eure when the girl asks to be sat up. Thus any representation of trance on the part of the shaman with its aspect of unconscious -ness just when he should be most alert to his naming, would seem singularly inappropriate, resulting in a disunity in the action of the simple though still formal structure of the passage right which-in this casecould weil be broken by the introduction of trance.

I am aware that much of what I have formulated in this paper may at best appear limited, at worst trite. For all this one must surely feel some satisfaction in using a method of analysis which probes in and around the socialized shape of trance with its myriad representations, rather than one which encourages an initial act of faith that supposes our unknow -able entity exists-a stance which must surely encourage an analysis

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which has every chance of going awry at its commencement. I rest my case.

Acknowledgement: / should like to thank Roberte Hamayon for her valuable comments on the first draft of this paper.

REFERENCES

Birket-Smith, Kaj 1953. The Chugach Shaman. Copenhagen. Dooley, John A. 1995. "Shamans, Actors and Images." In Tae-gon Kirn and Mihaly

Hoppal (eds.) Shamanism in Performing Arts. Bibliotheca Shamanistica 1. Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6.

Findeisen, Hans 1957. Schamanentum, dargestellt am Beispiel der Besessenheitspriester Nordeuroasiatischer Völker. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag. -. 1960. "Das Schamanentum als spiritische Religion." Ethnos 25. Nos. 3-4.

Hamayon, Roberte N. 1993. "Are 'Trance', 'Ecstasy' and Similar Concepts Appropriate in the Study of Shamanism?" Shaman. Journal of the International Society for Shamanistic Research 1/2. 3-25. -. 1998. '"Ecstasy' or the West-Dreamt Siberian Shaman." In Helmut Wautischer (ed.) Tribal Epistomologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology. Avebury Series in Philosophy. Aldershot-Brookfield/USA, Singapore, Sydney: Ashgate.

Heinze, Ruth-Inge 1993. "Shamanic States of Consciousness: Access of Different Realities." In Mihaly Hoppal and Keith D. Howard (eds.) Shamans and Cultures. ISTOR Books. Budapest/Los Angeles: Akademiai Kiad6/International Society for Trans-Oceanic Research.

Hultkrantz, A.ke 1978. "Ecological and Phenomenological Aspects of Shamanism." In Vilmos Di6szegi and Mihaly Hoppal (eds.) Shamanism in Siberia. Bibliotheca Uralica I. Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6. -. 1990. "Arctic or Circumpolar Religions." JAHR (International Association for the History of Religion) Regional Conference on Circumpolar and Northern Religion. Helsinki: IAHR. -. 1998. "The Meaning of Ecstasy in Shamanism." In Helmut Wautischer (ed.) Tribal Epistomologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology. Avebury Series in Philosophy. Aldershot-Brookfield/USA, Singapore, Sydney: Ashgate. -. 1998a. "Rejoinder." In Helmut Wautischer (ed.) Tribal Epistomologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology. Avebury Series in Philosophy. Aldershot-Brookfield/USA, Singapore, Sydney: Ashgate.

Mousalimas, S.A. 1993. "A Question about the 'Chugach Shaman' (Alaska)." In Mihaly Hoppal and Keith D. Howard (eds.) Shamans and Cultures. ISTOR Books. Budapest/Los Angeles: Akademiai Kiad6/International Society for Trans-Oceanic Research.

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Rouget, Gilbert 1985. Music and Trance: A Theory Of the Relations between Music and Possession. Transl. Brunhilde Biebuyck. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Siikala, Anna-Leena 1987. The Rite Technique of the Siberian Shaman. Folklore Fellows Communications 93/2. 220. Helsinki.

Underhill, Evelyn 1967. Mysticism : A Study on the Nature of Man's Spiritual Consciousness . London: Methuen.

Yamada, Takako 1995. "The Ladakhi Shaman as Performer of Oneness with Local Gods, Lha." In Tae-gon Kirn and Mihaly Hoppal (eds.) Shamanism in Pe,jorming Arts. Bibliotheca Shamanistica 1. Budapest: Akademiai Kiad6.

V0L.7. N0.2. SHAMAN AUTUMN 1999

In Black and White: Contemporary Buriat Shamans

KIRA VAN DEUSEN VANCOUVER, B.C.

The Buriat-Mongol people live in the area surrounding Lake Baikal, sacred center for their own traditions and for many others as well. Because of its ecological value, Baikal receives significant world attention. The Buriat people share with Mongolians long traditions of language and culture, as well as political and religious history. For several centuries many Buriats practiced Lamaism, (locally called simply Buddhism, from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition,) which is enjoying a significant revival today, along with the older shamanistic practices.

Today's Buriats live in three administrative areas. This reflects their divergent ethnic background and history, with corresponding differences in dialects and beliefs. Tue Russian govemment also finds it expedient to prevent one of Siberia' s largest minorities from gaining too much political power, especially because of their connections outside the country. The Buriats of Chita Province have the closest ties to Mongolia and Lamaism, while those of the Irkutsk Province to the west of Baikal have retained their shamanic traditions more strongly. The Republic of Buriatia with its capital in Ulan Ude lies between these two extremes. Divergent backgrounds, artificially enhanced by Soviet and post-Soviet policies, make it difficult for Buriats to attain unity today.

In this field report I would like to introduce briefly the practices of two contemporary Buriat shamans. Nadezhda Stepanova, who lives and works in Ulan Ude, comes from the area west of Baikal, rieb in shamanic tradition. Valentin Hagdaev, also from the Olkhon region west of Baikal, maintains his practice in the village of Y elantsy while studying in a postgraduate program in Ulan-Ude. Their particular combinations of ritual and healing practices are typical of what I saw in Buriatia in 1996-97. I

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first met them both in the summer of 1996 when the Association of Buriat Shamans (Khese Khengereg), in association with the Buriat Academy of Sciences, organized an international symposium on shamanism on the shores of Baikal 1.

About 35 shamans were present, representing all the Buriat clans and also Mongolia and Turkic Khakassia. Besides uniting the Buriats them -selves, the symposium invited reconnection on several other levels. Most important was that of Buriatia with Mongolia. Tsenin-zaarin böö, Mongolia's most powerfiil and respected shaman, was the guest of honour. He came to fulfil his lifelong dream of visiting the sacred island Olkhon in Lake Baikal, where he carried out ceremonies. With his visit, many Buriats saw füll shamanic paraphernalia for the first time. Buriat scholar D.S. Dugarov, who has studied shamanic traditions since 1958, told me he heard shamanic singing and drumming for the first time at the ceremonies at Baikal. Tsenin-zaarin böö gave blessings, encouragement and in some cases consecration to a whole new generation of Siberian shamans.

A second reconnection was that of scholars with practitioners of the arts they study. Visitors from Europe, Asia and North America observed the shamans' methods. A contingent of Italian psychiatrists compared notes with the shamans and found much in common. Today's shamans are also finding connections with other philosophies and alternative healing practices from around the world. Buriat Shaman Nadia Stepanova now frequently travels to Italy where she carries out rituals and teaches her methods and philosophy, sometimes together with Tseninzaarin böö and other shamans. They have also taken part in the Circle of United Traditions, which unites indigenous healers and religious leaders from all over the world under the leadership of His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Reconnection also took place between local people and their traditions. The Tailgan, a ceremony of prayer, had not taken place on the east side of Baikal in over 40 years and local people came eagerly to see how it was done and to bring their problems to the shamans, who engaged in a lengthy session of healing after the main ceremony. Although the Tailgan is considered to be a men 's ceremony, another reconnection was with the

1 See reports on this conference by its organizer Dr. Irina Urbanaeva and the present author (Urbanaeva 1997, Van Deusen 1997).

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corresponding women's ceremony Tukhuryon which took place on the sidelines.

Unfortunately, since summer of 1996 all the developments have not been so positive-several of the shamans who participated in the symposium died unexpectedly shortly after it was over, and the buildings in which we lived and worked beside Baikal burned to the ground. These misfortunes were attributed to energies which were raised and not properly dealt with. At a conference in Ulan Ude the following year on the Buriat-Mongol world at the approach of the new millenium, there was a strong Lamaist presence but no participation from Buriat shamans. Organizational disagreements have led to divisiveness in the movement. This is common in other areas of Siberia as well, and can probably be traced to the traditional competitiveness of shamans, exacerbated in Buriatia by regional and philosophical differences.

In the nineteenth century and earlier, Buriat shamans were distinguished as white or black. An ordinary person in Buriatia today will ex -plain the difference by saying that white shamans do good while the black can cast evil spells and do people harrn. Most likely because of this popular opinion, many of today' s shamans call themselves white. But the distinction goes deeper than this superficial view, and there are widely varying opinions among scholars and practitioners as to its source-altemately related to questions of gender, clan, class, geography, function, means of selection, and the spirits served. Here I mention only those views relevant to the symposium at Baikal and the practices of Stepanova and Hagdaev.

When asked in 1998, Tsenin-zaarin böö replied that white shamans are those who have gone over the Buddhism, while black shamans serve the Tengris associated with fire and blacksmiths. Nadia Stepanova disagrees, her own view being that white shamans serve the fifty-five westem Tengris (deities), and the black the forty-four eastern Tengris, whose battles are recounted in the Buriat and Mongolian versions of the Geser epic. Both agree that the question is controversial.

D.S. Dugarov pointed out that in many cases the white shamans did not have shamanic ancestry, nor did they undergo the initiatory illness, enter trance states, or use special costumes and drums, which leads many people to think they are not shamans at all, but ceremonial leaders. Today it is almost impossible to tel1 which shamans are black and which are white, he says. All contemporary shamans claim several generations of

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ancestry, some go into trance and others do not. Most conduct ceremonies and some also do healing and/or divination. While in earlier times women could not be considered white shamans, today many are. In 1996 Buriat shamans were not using drums, since the traditions of instrument making was lost during the communist period. By now some, like Nadia Stepanova, have had instruments made and learned to use them.

White shamanism is often a collective activity-a number of shamans work together as they did at our gathering at Baikal. Their ceremonies can take place in the day-tirne. Black shamans on the other hand traditionally worked alone and at night. Most likely today's shamans are combining elements of both lines in their practice. Some scholars claim that the shamans do not know their own ancestry or how the ceremonies should be conducted, since their tradition was broken during the Soviet era. Some shamans consult with scholars who have worked extensively with archival texts from the nineteenth century, while others rely on the memories of their elders and on their own inspiration.

G.R. Galdanova says that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries black or white depended on which gods or spirits a shaman served. She points out that in early Turkic times shamans were selected by human beings, serving also as khans. Their gods were those of their clans. The idea of shamanic ancestry came later than this individual selection process, and also presumably lat~r than spontaneous selection by spirits which is sometirnes recorded in literature on Siberian shamanism. In fact this spontaneous selection led to hereditary shamanism, since the spirits were seen as having chosen not an individual but a family line.

While white shamans were chosen as leaders by human beings, some black Buriat-Mongol shamans (like Nadia Stepanova, Tsenin-zaarin böö and Valentin Hagdaev) took their ancestry from blacksmiths 2 and from the spirit-masters of Olkhon Island. Later, white shamans claimed heavenly ancestry and worked with "good" spirits connected with their clans, while black battled against "evil" spirits, sensed as "other". Black shamans did more healing ceremonies while the white carried out the

2 Among the Buriat blacksmiths enjoyed a position of respect sometimes equaling that of the shaman. Their gift, which came from the deities, was passed down in an ancestral line. There were also black and white smiths, which some say refers to the meta! they work (white smiths working silver and black iron). lt is interesting that many people who consult shaman Nadezhda Stepanova today have ancestry in blacksmith lines.

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Tailgan and other clan ceremonies of prayer. Black shamans had füll costume including metal pieces, and a drum, while the white did not. Most likely they did sometimes cast harmful spells, although most of their work was oriented to healing. lt seems that the "classic" view of Siberian shamans is closer to the black than the white.

lt is possible that in the past warnen were exclusively black shamans, since warnen were forbidden at the Tailgan ceremonies3• Galdanova points out that this was because warnen were always considered as belonging to a "foreign" clan, since they moved to the harne of their husbands when they married. In earlier times unrnarried girls were present at Tailgan ceremonies. The idea that warnen were unclean, sometimes cited as the reason for the exclusion, Galdanova attributes to a later influx of Zoroastrianism, which also led to a more dualistic view in Buriat philosophy. Most Buriat warnen l have talked with do not feel downgraded by exclusion from the Tailgan, saying that the basic position of warnen in traditional Buriat society was high. They attribute the exclusion to a form of protection, necessary because of their role in child-bearing.

Same black shamans became professionals, Galdanova says, and as such began to call not only their own spirits but others as well. Those spirits were no langer foreign but had the sense of belonging to that shaman. Now that shaman could claim ancestry from both sides, and was considered both black and white. This sense of combining aspects of black and-white pervades Buriat shamanism today.

When l first came to Buriatia in 1996 Nadezhda Stepanova was head of the shaman 's association Khese Khengereg. She impressed me very powerfully with her positive energy. On my return in 1997 l irnmediately began hearing stories about her-and the first was from a Buriat engineer who claimed to know very little about shamanism!

lgor Nikiforov told about how he won a three year battle with the customs authorities. His wife Lilia had bought them a car for a good price in Holland and brought it back to Russia. He drove it from St Petersburg to Ulan Ude. There the customs authorities wanted him to pay an exorbitant sum, several times what he had paid for the car. He refused and the matter went back and forth, in and out of court. At last he went to Nadia Stepanova, who is from the same area of Irkutsk province that he is. She determined that he and his wife were both in an earth year

3 Today women shamans participate in the Tailgan, but other women may not.

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astrologically-a year füll of complications for them. Stepanova asked what clan he was from, but because his upbringing had taken him away from traditional culture, Igor didn't know and had to investigate within his family to find out. lt turned out his was an iron clan, with blacksmiths in his lineage, and yet his family had not made the appropriate sacrifices recently. Stepanova referred him to an elderly male shaman, also of the Irkutsk province, who was a specialist in iron-from an iron clan as well. She told Igor what things to take when he went to do the ceremony, including milk, meat, and vodka. The shaman made special prayers, with offerings, and also carried out an effective healing ceremony for Igor's father, who was not present, but whose health improved as a result. In the end Igor won the court case. This virtually never happens, he says, and he attributes his success at least in part to the shamanic ceremony.

Igor and Lilia told me that Nadia had been ill for a long time and became a shaman only after age 40. He described the scene as he waited in corridor to see the her. An elderly woman went in ahead of him, barely able to walk. Soon terrible cries came from the room. He especially re -members hearing Stepanova say, "Pain does not go away without pain." Tue elderly woman came out walking quite normally.

Stepanova invited me to her home in Ulan Ude where she receives people every morning. First she showed me photographs of energy, taken at workshops she had conducted in Italy. Italian filmmaker Costanzo Allione made a film about her work in Buriatia, which expresses her sense of connection with the world of Baikal, as well as the urgency of her work in healing her people and living harmoniously.

The energies showed up in the photographs as black, white and red. Harmful energies were visible, surrounding an area in a cloud, while the beneficial ones were directed by the shaman. Her healing energy works (and shows) through the vodka she spits. She says vodka works on the physical system, since it is strengthened water.

Nadia says she has shamanic roots on both sides of the family. One of her shamanic helping spirits rides a blue heavenly horse. She had many visions as a child, but didn't realize that others didn't see the same way. Now electric things tend to break down from the strength of her energies, which is why friends do not allow her to use their computers !

A woman came in, asking for a healing. Nadia invited her to sit in a straight chair, with a white square on the wall behind her. Nadia sat

Field Reports 159

down opposite, closed her eyes momentarily, and looked clairvoyantly at the warnen' s energy system. Sometimes while looking she held her hand up next to a client's face, looking at her own palm.

"What happened when you were 17?" she asked. The woman replied that she had had a problem with entering school. "What about 12?" No answer. "Did you know that three generations back there were there blacksmiths in your family?" She didn't know it. Nadia said the woman was from a darkhat (blacksmith) clan on one side, but that the line is lost now. The woman had a stomach ache and pain in her back and legs. Nadia saw that it was all connected. She asked what the woman's mother's clan was. The woman replied, and said that her mother also had problems with her legs. lt goes all along the female line, said Stepanova, so she must make a ritual for that clan. This is where the blacksmiths are.

Stepanova had told the clients that since l was listening they would speak Russian instead of Buriat, but in their excitement they had switched languages. At this point the wo man' s husband began translat -ing for me. Nadia looked further and described a place, which the woman recognized. lt was a place where her mother's family made offerings. Her matemal grandfather was a doctor, she said-this is how the blacksrnith line manifested in Soviet times. Stepanova said she must make an offering and pray at that place to the spirits of the ancestors and then the blacksrniths.

Next the woman asked a few questions involving her husband's problem getting a passport to go to Mongolia. The problem is not really his own, says Nadia, but is caused by ajealous co-worker with problems of her own. The woman asked about her 23 year old brother old who had a concussion. He needs a chiropractor, says Stepanova and must be invited to the ritual.

Now another woman took the chair. She asked about her daughter who had been married five years and had no children. Stepanova saw that the girl had been sick at seven years of age and that the problem came from this. Nadia should see both the girl and her husband. "And who is T.V.?" she asked. He was an uncle on the father's side. They must make a ritual to that clan. Tue woman doesn 't know what clan that is. In that case they must pray to the clan of the girl's husband. lt is diffi-

160 Field Reports

cult when two people of the same astrological year marry 4, Stepanova explains. They tend to compete. These young people need to do a ritual to the spirit of the fire and of family. They must do this every year. Nadia can do rituals to help them.

Next a man took the chair. Nadia asked his name. The question was about his sister.

"What happened in 1979?" asked Stepanova. "She was 29 that year and completed her higher education." "Where is her husband from?" "He is a cossack from the Primorie Territory (in the far east near

Vladivostok.) He was sent there as a political prisoner." Again the number 7 came up. But the man had no association for it. Then Nadia saw a mountain, and said he must do the ritual there. lt was a mountain with water below. Yes, the man said, his sister lived on the shore with mountains above.

"So you must make a ritual to the spirit of the water in the Primorie territory. You must also go to the Datsan (Buddhist temple) and do a ritual there."

Now Stepanova asked the man, "Where do you have a sheree5?" "In the hut where l used to live." "Find it. lt is in bad condition. Fix it and if you don 't use it yourself,

give it to a Datsan. Y ou had strong people in your clan. What happened to you at age 45?"

He didn't answer immediately. Nadia was impatient. "You have people at harne with teeth that scrape."

"My uncle. And my sister gets headaches." "So it is by that line. That's where the altar comes from. l see a big

stone-it is at the place of your native settlement. l don 't do the ritual to water that you need, but l could do this other one."

Stepanova saw now that the sevens related to seven generations back to the ancestor. who owned the sheree. There were also some beads that belonged to that seventh generation grandmother. The man wanted to keep them. Stepanova said he must use them at the rituals. lt would be all

4 The Buriats use a system of astrology based on the Mongolian and Turkic systems, which involve the elements of fire, water, earth, air and metal.

5 Sheree: a small table or altar. Also a box for shamanic paraphernalia.

Field Reports 161

right to keep the beads and the altar too, but he must do a ritual to cleanse them. She also saw that he had a female shaman in the family.

These people had brought vodka, milk, candy, and cookies. Nadia put on a tie belt and a scarf around her head covering her forehead. She in -structed me not to cross my legs around shamans or lamas. She burned pine bark, poured some of the vodka the clients had brought into a cup and put candy on the windowsill. She made off erings on the electric hotplate and out the window: vodka and milk with prayers including all the names of the people involved.

Now a man came with his wife. He was an artist and had had a lot of problems over the last three years, including a robbery. Nadia asked what happened when he was 21.

"I came back from the army and started to work." "And at 39? I see a river, a cliff or hill, and a tree. Whose home is

that?" "My mother's birthplace." "Find the place where her family do rituals and do one yourself. Now

I see a stone. There too you must do a ritual. And now I see two places for prayers, not far apart."

"That is the same place." "By what line do you have darkhat?" He answers. She gives him the address of a shaman. "He is the one

who should do the ritual. Also take offerings to the shaman's mongol (a type of spirit) about the robbery. Take with you two bottles of vodka, one of rnilk, some butter, cookies, candy, and black tea."

Tue man's wife, who was Ukrainian, had problems with her kidneys and also with her knees.

"What happened when you were 15?" "I was sick." Stepaonva saw cliffs-they must be beside Baikal because there were

no cliffs where the woman lived in the Ukraine. This is a place where she needs to be careful, or she may pick up bad energies. At this point Nadia turned to me for confirmation of the dangers for foreigners around Baikal if they are not careful of the powerful energies there.

She returned her attention to the husband. He had very bad sores ex -tending almost the length of his calves. lt came out that he had chased the man who robbed his studio and fought with him. Then the robber ran away. This man let him go. He has the leg sores because he interrupted

162 Field Reports

the robber's karma. The robber should have landed in jail. With rituals the legs would heal-he did not need to go to a lama about it. She'll work a bit with it now.

She opened the bottle of vodka he had brought. "Why have you brought me this poisoned vodka6?" she asked sharply.

He had no idea that the vodka was bad. She decided to use her own vodka for the healing, although she could

use his for some of the offerings. She spit vodka on the sore leg and then removed harmful energies, moving her hands near the affected areas. The sores cleared up considerably over the next few moments.

She told him that they would clear up completely when he did the rituals she recommended.

Next a 23 year old boy came with his parents. Of all the people who came that morning he was the only one who seemed doubtful about the shaman and embarrassed about being there. He resisted when she wanted to look at his hands, but his parents insisted. The whole family talked too much, and Stepanova told them to sit quietly and listen to her. The boy also had darkhat ancestry, she said. They must do rituals at Olkhon Island. She gave them the address of an Olkhon shaman living in Ulan-Ude. This son must be protected. The father had shamanic ancestry-thus his spirits might react if he were offended. The son was coping with the energies of those spirits who are out of control around the father. The son must also learn the Buriat language.

Tue moming session ended here, because people were coming to take Nadia to a village to do a ritual there. In the remaining moments I asked her what brought most people to see her. Most people want to know the reasons for their illness or trouble, she replied. I send them to do rituals, and then they come back to find out what to do next. Then I sometimes do healings with them. I work with the drum only at big rituals.

Stepanova's work at home focusses on healing individuals sick in body and spirit, but as her work becomes more global she joins with representatives of other traditions to carry out ceremonies focussed on healing first and foremost the ecology of our planet.

Valentin Hagdaev also took part in the 1996 symposium. In 1997 I visited him at his home in the village of Y elantsy, near the westem shore of Baikal and the ferry to Olkhon Island, sacred to shamans. He intro-

6 There is a Jot of adulterated vodka on the market in Russia today.

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Field Reports 163

duced me to elders who recalled the amazing predictions of Barnashka. Early in the 20th century this almost legendary figure had predicted most of the technological and political changes that took place in the Soviet era. I al~o met an elderly shaman who had been Valentin's mentor, but was no longer in practice.

One of the first things Valentin wanted to do was to take me on a long hike, stopping at sacred places, making offerings and visiting his native village, where there is a cave with a lake inside. This village was 13 km from Yelantsy, and the cave even further. We walked with two friends who were visiting from Irkutsk, passing the spot where Valentin' s initiatory vision had taken place 7, and then going up into the hills. Along the way we passed several new hitching posts. These posts represent the tree of life, which connects the three worlds-often they have three carved divisions which make this clear. The hitching post serves as a point of entry to the worlds above and below ours, and they are usually put up in places where clans do rituals. The ones we passed had been set up recently, and were decorated with bright strips of cloth, and surrounded by empty vodka bottles at the base. The use of the hitching post for ritual purposes recalls the vital importance of the horse in traditional Buriat society. Valentin also says that in earlier times horsehair was tied to trees and left at mountain passes while travelling the way strips of cloth are today.

As we went further we came to a sacred spring, where we filled bot -tles with delicious water, both for drinking and for rituals. I came to un -derstand that spring water, also called strong water may have been the predecessor of vodka and even of milk for use in rituals. Valentin sometimes uses it-he always carries a bottle with him.

We had lunch in the village, visited the cave and another set of five ancient hitching posts which Valentin said represent five generations of shamans in his own family, going back to the seventeenth century.

On the walk back it rained hard and we got very cold. To distract us from our discomfort Valentin told historical legends, about the founding of the various Buriat clans. Like many shamans, Valentin is a fine story-

7 See Van Deusen 1997.

164 Field Reports

teller, and he says he sometimes uses storytelling as part of his rituals 8.

The stories are important in Valentin' s educational work, as he tries to reconnect young people with tradition.

In retrospect this hike was important in several ways. One is a decla -ration of strength-28km in the mountains is a significant distance-and of his connection with place. Valentin said very correctly that we could have found aride to the village, but that we would not have experienced the sacredness of the mountains and the healing power of spring water after a tiring walk. City shamans would not have walked, he pointed out proudly. There is a new development in shamanism in Siberia today, which I'm tentatively calling eco-tourist shamanism. Not only in Buriatia but Khakassia as well, younger shamans are making a practice of guiding people through sacred places, constructing appropriate rituals and teaching respect for the land and its spirits. Valentin usually does this in conjunction with the National Parkprogrammes on Olkhon Island.

Valentin explained to me that he does some healing rituals; the ones he knows, but mostly general rituals to raise the spirits of the people in this time of depression. He wants to give people a sense that it will pass, by reminding them of the heroes of the past. He thinks medical science does better at healing the body. He also emphasizes that a shaman should work in the village among his/her own people.

While I was visiting in Y elantsy, some people came to Valentin from Ulan-Ude asking for a ritual to bring the soul of their three year old son more into focus. They had been referred to him by a diviner, who discovered that the child's soul was slightly out of his body, and needed to be brought in. The child's older brother was with them, and he seemed more visibly in need of healing than the small child. Presumably this ritual was beneficial to him as well.

The parents brought the makings of a family arrow. Traditionally every Buriat family kept an arrow as a family amulet, attaching some small memento for each new child9. I had seen one at the home of one of the elders-although she hid it quickly when her husband came home. He

8 Tsenin-zaarin böö and many others confirm the importance of storytelling in healing, saying that certain tellers have ancestry and gift similar to those of the shaman, and that miracles occur as people listen to their tales.

9 A custom well-known in Tuva as weil, where arrows are also powerful shamanic symbols.

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was a staunch communist. The arrow is kept carefully wrapped up and stored in a high place outside the living space, such as a barn or shed. The family who came to Valentin did not have an arrow but was pre -pared to make one. They sat in the kitchen attaching buttons, threads, and also -a wedding ring. After smudging the house and participants with pine bark 10 and herbs, Valentin said a series of prayers and then laid out milk, tea, vodka, candy, meat, and salamat (a ritual food made of milk). He attached the thread from the arrow through the top buttonholes of all the family members. He continued with prayers and we all participated in making offerings to the fire (on the electric stove!) He then gave some instructions to the parents and we ate and drank together. Next day we travelled to Olkhon Island, where again Valentin guided me to sacred places such as the famous rock named in honor of Ekhon-baavai, chief of the shamanic spirits and thought to be his home 11 . The Mongolian shamans had visited there the year before. We went on to visit a family who lived further north on the island, in a very beautiful place looking out on meadows, mountains and the sacred sea. Here Valentin was asked to perform a family ritual, usually done about once a year. This family used no vodka, but real dairy products; milk, a sour drink somewhat like buttermilk, and milky tea.

Valentin began by smudging-herbs for the house and pine bark for the people. Then we went outside and lit a fire in the yard. He lit a candle, and made prayers and offerings mentioning all their names many times. He used their sacred arrow (called Odo) which has been in their family many generations and is kept carefully wrapped in the bam.

He offered fat to the fire. If it crackles it means the fire is happy and accepts the offering. He made offerings of milk and tea, using a shallow cup which he threw in the air, together with its contents. If the cup falls right side up, it means the sky gods accepted the offering. Theirs feil fortunately four times, which is very rare 12.

1 O Herbs may be gathered specially for a ritual or brought by participants, but the pine hark belongs to the shaman. He goes out rarely to find a new piece according to ritual, and uses it sparingly.

11 This rock is frequently photographed and is usually called Shamanka Rock. 12 This form of offering connected with divination is similar to the Tuvan prac

tice of throwing the drumstick to find a yes or no answer at the end of a shamanic ceremony. There too, it is beneficial if the hollow side of the drumstick falls face up.

166 Field Reports

The ritual concluded, and we hurried away to catch the ferry back to the mainland, leaving a blessing on that household for the next year.

REFERENCES

Allione, C. 1995. "Nadia Stepanova, Buryatian Shaman." Mystic Fire Video. Dugarov, D.S. 1991. / storicheskie korni belogo shamanstva [Historical Roots of

White Shamanism]. Moscow: Nauka. Galdanova, G.R. 1987 Dolamaistskie verovania Buriatov [Pre-lamaistic Beliefs of

the Buriats] . Novosibirsk: Nauka. Urbanaeva, I.S. 1997. "Of Miracles and Shamans in Buryatia: The 1996

Symposium." Shamanism 10. No. 1:4----7. Van Deusen, Kira 1997. "Buryat Shamans and Their Stories." Shamanism 10 No. 1:

7- 11.

VOL.7. N0.2. SHAMAN AUTUMN 1999

Book Reviews

ROBERTE HAMA YON. La chasse a l' firne . Esquisse d' une theorie du chamanisme siberien. Memoires de Ja societe d'ethnologie 1. Nanterre: Societe d 'ethnologie, 1990. 880 p. 16 plates. ISBN 2-901161-35-9.*

* The wealth of ideas and data of this well-organized and beautifully presented work is only roughly reflected in the table of contents that follows:

Preface (11-15) Introduction: Questions on shamanism

(an extensive ethnography; a phenomenon of embarrassing diversity, 17-40) Part One. The societies 1. Tue sources

(old sources; Buryat sources; Soviet and other sources; field work, 43-67) II. A land, its history and peoples

(72-148, with section 11 about the shaman, hero of service, from 142 on) Part Two. Tue epic as model III. Tue epic proper (151-187) IV. Epic.stories (189-217) V. Tue ways of thebon droit (219-278) VI. Epic portraits (279-286) VII. Invitation to the forest (287-334, with plates 1-8 after 320) Part Three. A logic of alliance VIII. He who takes a woman (337- 372) IX. He who takes the game (373-424) X. Tue spirit-spouse (425-539) XI. Tue soul-hunter (541-601, with plates 9-16 after 576) Part Four. A logic of filiation XII. Shamanism of animal husbandry (605-704) XIII. Shamanism acculturated and marginal (705-744) Notes (745-793) Bibliography (795-843) Subject index (845-865) The !ist of the maps (Siberia, The Buryat lands, The forest peoples) and the 32

illustrations in the text (867-868) The !ist of the 16 plates (869) and the sources of the photos (870) Table of contents (871-880)

168 Book Reviews

In her most significant and voluminous monograph, Lachasse a l' ame, summing up extensive and intense investigations of many years, field research and the survey of the vast and scattered literature, Ms. Hamayon aimed to show the Siberian society of the Buryats through their shamanism and to propose an all-embracing view of Siberian shamanism rooted in the hunters' universe of forests. Without being her ultimate model, the traditional Buryat world, itself split, at least, into two regions, on the west and the east of their Father Baikal, Baigal dalai, Dalai esege (Cisbaikalia and Transbaikalia are terms for the "Far Western" eye), is the terrain that the author, excellent Mongolist and ethnographer, is the most acquainted with. She keenly reviews and aptly refutes some widely accepted approaches to interpret shamanism as a phenomenon of psycho-pathological and therapeutic nature, an ecstatic form of religion, etc. Searching for a general vision of the shamans' and shamanists' ways, views, and practice, a "phenomenon of embarrassing diversity," she examines a great many of inner and outer, primary and secondary sources, outlines the societies in question, explores the epic as a model whereas she offers new ingenious ideas concerning the epic types (epic with sister, epic with father), investigates the forms of alliance, marriage, and exchange and circulation of values, real and symbolic, flesh and soul, the complex dualism, horizontal and vertical, of the one who takes (the woman, the game, the soul, the stock of life and vital force) and the one who gives (a human father-in-law as well as the lord spirit of the forest as father-in-law, the same as he who gives the game, and other spiritual beings who give or take vital force), mostly "masculine" alliances between humans, clans and phratries, between humans and (supernatural) nature, the realm of spirits, the call of the forest, the universe of hunting ... We see how Siberian shamanism emerges from this universe, how it transforms with the extension of animal husbandry where the animal soul ceases to be a value of exchange and the soul-hunting shaman's secondary, for instance, healing, functions replace the primary röle of he who takes, we see how shamanism wanes, assimilated and peripheral, with the extension of Buddhism and other powerful faiths, and how it becomes, now revived, apart of ethnic identity.

My marginal notes, mostly of philological or etymological nature, are arranged in the order of passages referred to in the book.

Book Reviews 169

To the early twentieth-century Buryat sources (55) we could add a hitherto unedited literary work, the play about the early eighteenthcentury shamaness Abazhaa by Bazar Baraadiin; the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, has a copy of this in Tseween Zhamtsarano' s handwriting.

As to the Buryat folk-etymology of the name Yenisei ("He who laughs" from Buryat inyee- with the unexplained ending, 75), Ewenki Yennegi!Yendregi suggests that the quoted version of the story about Baikal's "daughters" cannot be very old. lt is also not sure that Erxüü is a Mongol name in origin. And xangailqangyai 'mountainous grassland with forest' is hardly connectable with the verb xana-lqanu- 'tobe satiated' (76). Mongol oi, Middle Mongol hoi seems to be the old and common word for 'forest'; it may have Uralic affinity.

Seventeenth-century Russian bratskie 'the brotherly ones' = 'Buryats' (87) is a Russian folk-etymology; that this "fraternity" should not have been very deep is feit in the official expression bratskie iasashnye liudishki 'the tax-paying Buryat manikins'.

The yexe tolgoi "great head = chief' of the Buryats under Russian rule was also called goloba, from Russian golova!glava 'head' (97).

On hunting (106), especially on Khangalov's zegete aba, cf. also N. Ts. Münküyev's study where he interprets the first stem not as zeexe 'wolverin' but as zeeg 'ribbon' (ribbons around the field of the battue).

Lower Uda sounds better than Nizhne-Uda (correctly Nizhniaia Uda), but here the city of Nizhne-Udinsk, Buryat Doodo Uda is meant (108).

On the influence of Russian Christianity (112): the description of a palace in the epic of Alamzha Mergen we see some elements reminding of an Orthodox church. And the Russian word for book also found its way to the Western Buryat epic (mentioned on page 761, note 5). (Further syncretistic phenomena are dealt with in the long small script passage andin several paragraphs on the next pages.)

"L'empire chinois" (118) in the eighteenth century was in fact the Manchu Empire with its official Manchu language.

"[L]es sites ou les lamas venereront les divinites lamai'ques seront au sommet des montagnes" (121): pas toujours! And the non-Buddhist cult of heights, for instance, that of the Thicket Height, Burqan [=Buryan] Qaldun, should be much older.

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lt is difficult to connect böke 'wrestler; the art of wrestling' and böge 'shaman' (142). And the metonymy 'to butt' vs. 'to prostrate, to bow, to revere' of the verb mörgü-lmürgü- is not enough to apply the first meaning in the second ward in the not necessarily very old expression böö mörgöllmürgel 'shamanism; shamanist faith and practice'. The very old Mongol ward used for a female shaman (and sometimes for a midwife), iduyan known in numerous variants, means a male shaman in Daur (yadagan). As to Buryat zaarin, Torgut, etc. zäärn, Khalkha Khotogoit dzairin 'shaman', cf. the plural ja' arit 'presage, omen, oracle' in the Secret History. 'Musk' (Khalkha dzaar/dzaari, secondary forms) and 'castrated deer' (dzaari) do not seem to offer an acceptable solution (143). (Otherwise as to the origin of Yakut oyun 'shaman', its stem is different from that of oonfiuu 'play, game' < oofioo 'to play', see on page 494).

As to üliger 'model, parable; epic, tale; riddle', it is derived of üli'to compare', cf. irüger < irü- (Manchufiru-) in irüge- (157). Perhaps xaila- in üliger x. means 'to chant' (qayila- in uyila- q.) and not 'to melt' (qayil-) (172).

lt is not very likely that the lang vowels play a significant röle in the prosody of Buryat epic songs (172).

lt is true that the Geser story came to the Mongols from Tibet, but surely not only in written form, and finally orality dominates its fate among the Mongols. Also questionable is its Buddhist message (178, 183), and so is its "anti-lamaist" tendency some authors ascribe to it. Even the very non-Buddhist Alamzha Mergen and the Aiduurai epic show some f eatures coming from the Geser: Alamzha has two uncles going back to Geser's Khro-thung, while Aiduurai's three cuckoo sisters repeat Geser's three celestial öküis. Khangalov's Zat Shükher (263) = Geser's favorite companion Rgya-tsha Zhal-dkar, the White Face Rgya-tsha, its Amdo form is distorted in Mongolian as Jasa Siker. On the reinterpretation of proper names of Tibetan origin see also the passage "Les noms epique" (215).

Wild swine, beaver, marmot, and earth squirrel may be added to the list of animals hunted (300); cf. also the Buryat clan-name bodonguud.

Stony Tunguska Ewenki plural akiinasallakunasal etc. means elder brothers, sons of the father's or mother's elder brother, and a younger brother of the father or mother, while nekuunesel is used for younger brothers or sisters, and brothers in general, according to Vera Tsintsius'

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comparative dictionary. The right form of the ethnonym is Ewenki (340; not a Russian plural!).

Ewenki sewekii, sewen, etc. (379) does not mean the male <leer in general, but, see Tsintsius et al. (ed.) 1975-77. II:135, 'a male reindeer consecrated and tabooed to assure the welfare of the family and the herd; god; lord spirit of the upper world who protects the people and the <leer; idol, ... ' Cf. also Ewenki singkeeleewun, 557, Tsintsius et al. (ed.) 1975-77. II:91. Thus this notion is near to what is meant in Mongolian ongon, and partly identical with the content of Tibeto-Mongolian seter (Tib. tshe-thar), see 636), and eleventh-century Turkish iduq in the custom mentioned by Käshghari, see also in Clauson ( 1972: 46). Meanings of Ewenki buga 'earth, world; firmament, heaven' may be personified or animalized as a male <leer, but the word itself is not separable from Jurchi buga, Nanai and Manchu ba 'place, earth' etc., see Tsintsius et al. (ed.) 1975-77. I:100-101, not identifiable with bugu '<leer'.

Mongol keseg and kesig are two different words : the first corresponds to Turkish kesek derived of kes- 'to cut into pieces', the second going back to Turkish kezig 'order, row' of kez- (629), cf. also Doerfer 1963-75. III:595-596 and I:468.

But these marginalia cannot overshadow the reader's admiration for this long and bright account of a spiritual travel between the worlds of trade of flesh and spirit.

REFERENCES

Clauson, Sir Gerard 1972. An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish. Oxford at the Clanderon Press.

Doerfer, Gerhard 1963-75. Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen. 4 vols. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Tsintsius, V.I. et al. (ed.) 1975-77. Sravnitel'nyi slovar' tunguso-man'chzhurskikh iazykov . 2 vols. Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Nauka.

BLOOMINGTON/BUDAPEST GYÖRGYKARA

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THOMAS C. PARKHILL. Weaving Ourselves into the Land: Charles Godfrey Leland, "Indians", and the Study of Native American Religions. SUNY Series in Native American Religions. Kenneth M. Morrison, editor. State University ofNew York Press. 1997. New York. ISBN 0-7914-3453-2. 238 p. Index. Price $19.95

The prospective reader of Parkhill's book should observe the parenthesized word "Indians" in the title. For this is what it is all about: the wrong interpretation of the word Indian in scholarly books (and, for that matter, also non-scholarly books) about, as the author prefers to put it, Native Americans and Native American religions. lt is, in other words, a work critical of those of us who presume to write about these peoples and their religions. For we all-with the exception of the book's author, obviously--commit the sin of imposing our "hegemonical views" on our understanding of "the first nations" of America.

This is not to deny that there are many who through their writings or actions have simplified and falsified our picture of the North American Indian. Parkhill became aware of the extent of this falsification when he studied the influence of the folklorist Charles Leland on our ideas of Algonquian mythology. He refers to the classical book, The Algonquin Legends of New England (1884), and particularly to the myth of the dual creating brothers Glooskap and Malsum-one of them good, the other of dubious character. Leland based his version of the myth on earlier authors (Rand, Gordon) and on oral tradition, but he altered the story to suit his readership. Thus, he introduced the idea that the bad twin, Malsum, was a wolf, an idea that did not form part the original myth but is today narrated by Indian storytellers after Leland. In fact Leland took the idea from his readings of old Scandinavian religion, where the wolf occurs as the symbol of evil. lt was his view that American Indian and Scandinavian religions were related: Algonquin religion was "steeped and penetrated with the old Norse spirit" (60).

lt is of some interest to readers of this journal that Leland identified this old Indian-Norse religion as shamanism, which he defined as "a vague fear of invisible evils and the sorcerer" (61). To him it was the "first religion", a religion according to which "all events and accidents of life are caused or influenced by spirits", especially invisible evil beings. Its essence, he proclaimed, is magic. lt is easy to find points of association between this definition and Lord Avebury's from 1870. lt

,.

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also reminds us of Tylor's animism from the same time (1871). Leland claimed that "it will be long ere the scholar definitely determines whether Shamanism as it now exists originated spontaneously in different countries where the same causes were to be found, or whether it is historical; that is, derived from a single source" (71; from Algonquin Legends, 334f.). lt is interesting to find that the same question of diffusion or spontaneous development was of concern to Leland and leading ethnologists at the beginning of the twentieth century.

W e may today agree that the shamanism Leland refers to is not so much shamanism as a dualistic myth. As such it is, Parkhill considers, an example of an "Indian stereotype"-a white man's interpretation of Indian characteristics, consisting of age-old conceptions which are strictly wrong or have long since been abandoned. (lt would have been more appropriate if the author had stressed that the myth is, in fact Iroquoian, thus, genuinely represented by the dominant aboriginal nation in northeastern North America Parkhill points out the stereotypical features: apart from the improbable connection with Scandinavian mythology, there are the respectfulness of timeless tradition, an affinity for nature, and the "almost unbridgeable gulf between Thern and Us".

lt is possible that Parkhill is right. lt is even possible that many authors, even scholars, have represented American Indians in this way. So what? Parkhill is a relatively young man and has not met the Indians of yesteryear who could, indeed, be quite different from today's often "Americanized" (!) Indians. lt is a matter of cultural refinement. Personally I have listened to Sioux girls who, after a lecture I gave in Berkeley, California, came forward and asked me to talk to them about their old religion because their parents refused to disclose what they knew. I have met with poor Indians on the margins of their reservation who had lost their traditional beliefs and sense of meaning in life. And I have been introduced to venerable personalities from the long-past Indian wars, human beings who in their aristocratic bearing and dress in every sense represented the genuine stature of what Parkhill calls the Indian stereotype. They were anxious to keep to the old traditional wisdom, the beliefs and cults of yore. If in my ethnographic reports I presented an account of the oral information they gave me, should I then have suppressed my notes to mollify Parkhill? The same objection could be raised against Parkhill' s handling of Indian nature poetry. He maintains that such feelings are a product of a society that has lost its

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ability to communicate with nature-as we whites have done in urban areas-but he then argues that, in Leland's time, the Micmac and other Algonquians Northeast were so dependent on city civilization that their original feelings for nature were lost. He also suggests that an Indian informant who had visited the Royal Court in London could not be the right person to tel1 one about Indians' feelings for nature. Why not? Royal personages are fond of wilderness experiences, as America's own history from the last century overwhelmingly shows.

Much could be said about other details of Parkhill' s argument, but 1 shall restrict myself to the author's criticism of my failing objectivity in a paper on Mother Earth. There I recounted how she appeared to me in extraordinary visual and auditive experiences during a night-time peyote seance. She did, but as a scholar of religion Parkhill should have avoided the conclusion he draws-that Mother Earth has power for me. The truth is much simpler: eating peyote provokes visions, the contents of which are suggested by earlier readings or conversations. So I was startled to find that my experiences had given rise to a debate among American scholars.

This is a new type of book, scrutinizing the interior motives of scholars who write about Native American religion. Although, to my way of thinking, some of the conclusions are strange, 1 also consider this new outlook to be of immense value. Parkhill shows a sensitivity that is most valuable in his task. If some of his exaggerations are omitted in a future edition, this book will make an important contribution to our understanding of research on American Indians.

STOCKHOLM AKE HUL TKRANTZ

Book Reviews 175

Variations chamaniques 1-2, [cahiers] presente[s] et coordonne[s] par MARIELISE BEFFA et MARIE-DOMINIQUE EVEN. Etudes mongoles et siberiennes, Cahiers 25-26. Nanterre: Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative de l'universite de Paris X. 1994 (1996), 1995 (1996), 185, 207 pp.

Fourteen nicely presented papers: studies, materials, translations, and six reviews read in these "shamanist variations" found within and beyond the boundaries of the Mongol world and Siberia. The foreword (Cahier 25, 9-16, repeated in Cahier 26) not only describes the scope and the contents of both volumes, bui: also gives a good selective bibliography of some forty titles referred to in this publication. English table of contents and English summaries of papers help orientation of readers not familiar with French.

The authors of the first volume are "autochtonous" and contemporary researchers of shamanism or have "intimate" knowledge of the relevant local languages and cultures. Ms. Beffa and Ms. Laurence Delaby translated and annotated Tatiana Bulgakova's material on Nanai shamanism, "Captive of her late sister," the two editors offer the translation and annotation of the Mongolian Buryat researcher Gantogtokh's account on the ritual consecration of a ram to Khyahaan Ulaan Tenger and some specimens of the Buryat shamans' ritual poetry of north-eastern Mongolia; here the Buryat texts appear in Khalkha Cyrillic transcription (a short text belonging to the shanar ceremony, another celebrates Manzhalai; then follow invocations of tengers, lords of heaven or celestial spirits, invocation of Abagaldai, the text of a sheep sacrifice, eleven lines honouring the spirit of fire, etc.). Animalization and humanization as well as personification in Darkhat shamanism form the topic of a short study by Mr. S. Dulam and Ms. Even. lt is also she who transplanted Tseweliin Shagdarsürüng's note into French on some aspects of the shamanism among the reindeerherder Dukha people of the province of Khöwsgöl in Mongolia. Also hers are some reflexions on a Dukha tale about the world in reverse. The reviews: Ms. Fran9oise Aubin on Michael Gervers' and Wayne Schleppe's Nomadic diplomacy ... , Mrs. Roberte Hamayon on Klaus Koppe's Epen aus Sinkiang, and on Ake Hultkrantz's North American Shamanic healing and ritual drama, Ms. Beffa on Andrei Malchukov's outlines of the Even (Lamut) language, and Ms. Even on Krystyna

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Chabros' Beckoning fortune and on S. Dulam's Mongol book on Darkhat shamanism (Darkhad böögiin ulamjlal).

In the second volume Ms. Anne Sales compares, the Magar shaman buffoon in Nepal and the Altai Kizhi figure of Kocha in South Siberia, Ms. Beffa and Wang Mingrong translated and annotated Du Shaoyuan's writing on shamanic customs of Muslim Uygurs in Eastem Turkestan, Mr. Jean-Pierre Chaumeil presents the shamanic art of pathogenic aggression in the Amazone, Mr. Jarich Oosten discusses the problem of the third sex in Inuit cosmology, Mr. John A. Dooley attempts at a shamanic interpretation of Hamlet, Mr. Jean-Cristophe Attias investigates a passage from Exodus and the homs of Moses (not "grown" by a philological error ascribed to Saint Jerome and not to be related to the cervine appearance of the Siberian shaman), and Ms. Hamayon puts an end to "trance" and "ecstasy" in studies on shamanism (a new and ampler, French, version of an English paper of hers). Two annotated translations of autochtonous reports in which ("the people speak") close the volume. The first ( edited by Mr. Philippe Mennecier) is the monologue of a Chukchee mother, Tatiana Achirgina-Arsiaq, about her visit in a boarding-school, in the second (edited by Ms. Even and Mr. Wang), Su Chengzhi (Kichengge) relates his Shibe (Sibe/Xibo) people's linguistic situation in Eastem Turkestan, the fate of his endangered tongue which is the only living variety of Manchu.

BLOOMINGTON/BUDAPEST GYÖRGYKARA

VOL.7. N0.2. SHAMAN AUTUMN1999

News and Notes

REPORT ON "CENTRAL ASIAN SHAMANISM: PAST AND PRESENT," THE 511-1 C0NFERENCE 0F ISSR, ULAANBAA TAR, M0NG0LIA (SECTI0N ONE)

The Fifth Conference of the International Society for Shamanistic Research was one of the best that has been had in terms of good organi -zation, adequate translation, balance of academic presentation with con -tact with on-the scene shamans, and the hospitality of the hosts. Section One of the conference had as its general theme, "Central Asian Shamanism: Past and Present" and was the venue for the presentation of twenty papers.

Shamans are generally thought of as persons with special psychic powers, healing powers, and powers in dealing with or manipulating spirits. The papers presented in Section One of this conference, however, said very little about such powers. There were papers dealing with the relation between present-day shamanic rituals and historical documents, between the rites and social structures, between the rites and epic narra -tives, and between the poetry of the narratives and modern Mongolian poetry. There were presentations on the meaning of ritual symbols, on the dance of shamanic rituals, on drumming and the significance of the shaman's drum, on the mathematics involved in the shaman' s costume, on the poetry and metrics of shamanic chants, and on the light that shamanic chants can shed on the Mongolian language. There was only one paper, however, that of Professor Romano Mastromattei on Nepalese shamanism, that centered on the shaman's special ability to enter trance and deal with the spirits so as to promote healing.

In private conversation toward the beginning of the conference, Gregory G. Maskarinec proposed the idea that shamanic activity in gen -eral deals mainly with language; and the papers presented in Section One point in this direction. The papers manifest very little concem about shamans ' manipulation of the spirits, but much about their manipulation of the imagination of ritual participants and about their manipulation of

178 News and Notes

language-the language of ritual symbols, the language of poetry, the language of drumming and dance, the language of costume, the language of numbers. Probably without recognizing the fact, the presenters of Section One seemed to acknowledge that shamanism is, indeed, a matter of language. Their common endeavor was to understand some aspect of the language, or rather languages, of a particular shamanic tradition.

A person studying a foreign language--Chinese or French for exam -ple-has numerous comprehensive guides in the form of dictionaries, grammar books, and general linguistic studies that give him or her a sure grasp on the basic vocabulary and overall structure of the language. In the studying the languages of shamanism, however, we as yet have no such comprehensive guides that we can trust. Bach researcher tries to understand the shamanic language that he or she finds most appealing and does so by probing just one small aspect of that language. This is at present the limitation of our method. At tim es, we see the larger dirnen -sions of the whole in the small aspects on which we concentrate. Often, however, we end up with detached insights into isolated phenomena.

Tue twenty papers presented in Section One of the present conference · sometimes point toward larger dimensions of the shamanist tradition, sometirnes remain focused on isolated phenomena. Almost all seek to understand shamanism as a form of language. Fourteen of the papers focus on Mongolian shamanism, six on shamanism in other parts of Asia.

Most extensive in scope is the paper of Carla Corradi-Musi, from Italy. Entitled "Totemism and Shamanism in Asia According to the Vision of Thomas Salmon," her paper gives an account of Siberian shamanism as presented in the 1731 ethnological encyclopedia of Thomas Salmon, Modern History, or The Present State of All Nations . Corradi-Musi notes that Salmon ' s dependence on the eye-witness accounts of travelers gives his work ethnological reliability and that his method of comparing data from various different peoples yields a matrix of Siberian shamanism that on several points still fits what we find in Asia today. She calls special attention to the worship of domestic totemic idols such as Salmon found common to the peoples of Siberia and Central Asia and also to practices associated with the archetypal tree of lif e and death.

Daniel Kister, from the United States, deals with a more limited historical question in "Modem Shamanist Rites and an Ancient Northeastern China Rite." He describes several modern Korean and Manchu

News and Notes 179

communal seasonal rituals in relation to a communal New Year's rite in honor of Heaven that was celebrated more than 2,000 years ago in the area of Northeast China that is commonly called Manchuria, but that is identified by Korean historians as the ancient Korean Kingdom of Puyo. The modern rites exemplify the drinking, eating, singing, dancing, and divination that an old Chinese document succinctly identifies as the characteristic activities of the ancient rite; but as they appear in the modern rites, these activities vary considerably as to their concrete form, context, atmosphere, and specific ritual purpose. Kister discusses the modern rites for the light they may shed on the ancient Puyo rite, but he cautions against reading any one of their modes of ritual expression into that rite.

Another scholar originally from the United States, Julie Ann Stewart, draws upon the text of the Geser Epic to elucidate aspects of present-day Buryat shamanism in "The Buryat Geser Epic and its Relationship with Buryat Shamanism." Stressing that the Buryat Geser is not just a variant of the old Tibetan epic, but a specifically Buryat cultural artifact, Stewart finds parallels between numerous features of the epic that reflect aspects of Buryat shamanism. She finds parallels, for example, with shamanist initiation rites, soul retrieval, the use of a scapegoat to eure illness, and magical flying horses such as are implied in the symbolism of the shaman's drum.

Eva Jane Fridman, also from the United States, discusses what she calls the "rebirth of Buryat shamanism" in "Buryat Shamanism: Horne and Hearth-A Territorialism of the Spirit." Focusing on rites performed in the vicinity of Lake Baikal in 1996, Fridman stresses that such rites insure both a common closeness to nature and the particular territorial identity of each clan as determined by the spirits of the clan ancestors buried at a particular local.

With particular reference to Tuva shamanism, the German scholar Ulla Johansen, in "Shamanic Mathematics," calls attention to the fact the Western Siberian peoples of earlier times counted by sevens, forty-nine being the perfect number. She then goes on to show how concerned Tuva shamans have been with the symbolic language of mathematics implied in the arrangement of pendants and other items on their costumes. In the costume Johansen principally focuses on, groupings in nines are most significant, followed by groupings by sevens; but she

180 News and Notes

Stresses that no two costumes are alike. Each reflects aspects of the par -ticular vision of the shaman who possesses it.

From quite a different view from these and all the other papers presented in Section One, Romano Mastromattei, from ltaly, focuses on the special state and powers of the shaman in "The Ecstatic Condition Among Tomang Shamans of Nepal." Mastromattei states that presentday Nepalese shamanism is very much like classical Siberian shamanism. He calls attention to ecstatic shaking as a mark of the descent of the gods in the case of Tomang shamans; and he stresses that without ecstasy, we have no shamanism. He stresses, too, that the Nepalese shaman is not, strictly speaking, a healer, but rather fights against spirits who cause specific ailments.

The other fourteen papers presented in Section One all deal with Mongolian shamanism. Eight are by Mongolian scholars, five by Chinese scholars from Inner Mongolia, and one by a Russian scholar. The paper of Ch. Dalai, "Mongolian Shamanism as an Intangible Culture," identifies several trends in the study of shamanism by Mongolian scholars over the past forty years. That of T. Sodnomdargya, "General and Especial Aspects of Mongolian Shamanism" treats of shamanism as the religion of a nomadic people that underlies the "common sense" ethics of the Mongolian people.

Of the six scholars from Russia scheduled to make presentations in Section One, only L.L. Abaeva succeeded in attending the conference. Her paper, "Khadashi: Their Role and Place in the Culture of Central Asian Shamanism," focuses on the language of specific ritual symbols. lt discusses the polysemantic meanings of the sacred mountain and sacred tree in Mongolian sacrificial rites. Abaeva notes that there is very little difference between sacrifices performed by a shaman and those performed by a person who is not a shaman.

Gereljav, a scholar from China also focuses on a specific symbolic usage. Drawing upon Chinese sources of 2,000 years ago, he discusses "The Wolf-Totem of Mongols and Turks." His compatriot G.H. Hurchabilig likewise relates a particular symbolic usage to the Chinese tradition in "The Cultural Meaning of the Custom of Replacing Altan -gadas with the Human in the Cult of Genghis Khan." Hurchabilig argues that the Mönghe Tengger (Eternal Heaven) worshipped by Genghis Khan is the anthropomorphised supernatural constellation Altan-gadas (North Star), and he finds that northern Chinese tribes also bad the cus-

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tarn ofworshipping Mönghe Tengger. Focusing on the language of ritual dance, the Chinese scholar Midagmaa notes similarities between the shaman' s dance and Mongolian dance in general in "Invoking Acts of Shamans as an Ancient Form of Mongolian Dance." Midagmaa demon -strated one ritual dance herself.

Tue Mongolian scholar G. Gantogtokh, in "Phrases of the Spirit of the Hunt, Khoshoongin" stresses the need to approach shamanism from a semantic point of view. He describes rituals honoring Khoshoongin and provides quotations of invocations to this spirit in English. J. Enebish, in "Same Rituals Related to the Shaman•s·Drum," gives detailed descriptions of the construction and ritual animation of a Darkhad shaman' s drum, calling attention to the symbolism of the drum' s animation as the tarning of a new horse. He, too, quotes ritual chants as a part of his füll English text and also includes some musical notations. For bis part, D. Bum-Ochir gives a detailed description, also with the complete English text, of "Smoke Ceremonies in Mongol Sacrifices." In these ceremonies, which customarily conclude the main sacrificial rites, the shaman feeds lesser spirits with the smoke of bumt bones and roast meat. The cere -monies go under various names and employ various customs. The bones themselves have various symbolic meanings, but commonly entail some form of impurity.

Tue remaining five presentations all focus on verbal texts, but give no English translations of the texts. Tue Chinese scholar Erdemtü discusses "The Problem of Shamanic Space in the Jangar Epic. He stresses shamanic influences in the epic, citing spatial concems involved in the construction of a Mongolian ger, shamanic characteristics of good and bad characters in the epic, and moral considerations about human activity as something which always remains under heaven and unable to "pass through the door of heaven." Kh. Sampildendev studies libation texts in "Ritualistic Folklore and Its Relationship with Shamanism." P. Khorloo stresses the importance of poetry of shamanic invocations in "Invocations of Dayandeerkh Shamans." He calls attention to the terse, laconic style, vivid description, and typically Mongolian versification of these invocations. D. Tsedev, in "The Poetic Peculiarity of Mongolian Shamanic Invocations," tums to shamanic resonances in a modern poem, "My Birthplace," especially resonances that come to the fore through the analysis of poetic meter. Finally, Ts. Shagdarsüren, in "A Semantic Study of Shamanic and Epic Textsand Its Linguistic Importance," calls

182 News and Notes

attention to the importance that shamanic texts have both for the study of the history of the Mongolian language and the correction of errors in modern Mongolian.

SEOUL DANIEL A. KISTER

REPORT ON "CENTRAL ASIAN SHAMANISM: PAST AND PRESENT," THE 5TH CONFERENCE OF ISSR, ULAANBAATAR, MONGOLIA (SECTION TWO)

Section two was divided into two large areas, one being "Shamanic Cosmology" the other "Shamanism in Transition." The majority of papers dealt with areas of Asia (Mongolia, Nepal, Korea, and Japan), but other areas such as North America and even Greenland, were also included.

The central topic of the first aftemoon was cosmology or the interpretation of the world. Our attention was drawn to the importance of the landscape' s natural features, in particular mountains and waters (rivers and lakes). They are considered tobe the abodes of protecting spirits. lt was, however, pointed out that the sphere of influence of these spirits has changed over time (0. Sükhbaator). In particular mountains may also be seen as the dwelling places of ancestral spirits, and as such they may at certain times be ritually reconstructed in a house, as for example in Japan (Peter Knecht). Over mountains and rivers looms the blue sky (tengeri) inhabited by numerous spirits (tengeri). The ambivalent meaning of the term tengeri appeared in several papers, but no attempt at a definition was made. J. Tsoloo seemed to think of tengeri as spirits who decide the fate of humans and even dwell in certain parts of the human body. B.S. Dugarov discussed the Ungin version of the Buryat Geser epic, in particular the section about Geser being sent from heaven to intervene in the struggles of humans that seem to reflect the very struggles of the heavenly tengeri.

On a different and more abstract level, the significance of the human body and its constitution as female and male for the interpretation of the world was pointed out. A Nepalese blacksmith shaman ritually builds the cosmos by building the human body (G.G. Maskarinec), while it can be argued, as Tu Wulji did, that in ancient Mongolian shamanic thought the sexual dualism of f emale and male is the concrete foundation for con -

"

"'

News and Notes 183

cepts such as "Father Sky" and "Mother Earth." A more practical interpretation of cosmology was related by Kirn Seong-nae for the Cheju Islanders who reinterpret mythology as a framework for their real experiences and sufferings. D. E. Kahn, finally, showed how the shaman of the Inuit (Dorset) defends his clients against the evil forces of tupilac, spiritually powerfill objects.

The afternoon's last contribution, by G. Gerelbaatar, provided both a look back at the changes in the concepts of shamans concerning spirits and ancestors under the influence of other religions or how they were interpreted by them (including Christianity), and a bridge to the general topic of the next day: "Shamanism in Transition".

As it was with the term "cosmology" so it was with that of "transition": the speakers interpreted it in different ways. Perhaps the most obvious one was a historical interpretation like that by Choiroljav. He traced the changes in Khorchin shamanism under the influence of Buddhism and also saw a revival of especially black (traditional) shamanism at present. R. Otgonbaatar reported the recent discovery of a shamanic text in a Buddhist sutra. According to him, this text indicates how shamanic rites can survive embedded in a Buddhist framework because the text was apparently used embedded in such a framework.

T. Sasamori described another transition: from shamanism to tlieater, or vice versa. He analyzed the J apanese dance drama Kanemaki and showed how it reflects the relations of shaman and spirit in the rite Y ori.

A transition of a quite different kind was the topic of B. Tedlock's paper. She argued for a transition not in shamanism but in the way we look at shamanism, saying that so far the role of women has been left out or overlooked. In order to come to a more complete understanding of shamanism it must be seen as a complementary and dynamic relationship between male and female shamans, that strives for a balance between male force and female calrnness. Interestingly enough, this paper underlined the significance of contributions like that of Tu Wulji.

The papers of the last day were, if I understood them correctly, less confined to the formal theme of the meeting, and instead covered areas we could roughly designate by the terms "description/ethnography" and "interpretation/symbolism." On the ethnographic side, L. Altanzaya ad -vocated a more specific consideration of Oirat shamanism for which he provided short descriptions of some of its main spirits and rituals. H. Hasumi suggested, that in spite of the popular support for Eliade, the

184 News and Notes

study of shamanism should pay more attention to folk oral history and local beliefs of the people.

lt is quite well known how important dreams are for shamans, but D. Tedlock demonstrated how complex the situation is where dreams are narrated or enclosed in other narrations in which dreamer and narrator or myth and reality become closely linked. Svetlana Daribazarov proposed that shamanism should be seen as a system of beliefs concerning nature rather than like a traditional religion. She further said that such beliefs should be seriously reconsidered for their social values.

Tue day 's and this section 's last paper was an interpretation of the magic or mythic significance of the horse ( or horse head) that adorns the Mongol string instrument marin khuur. Dulaan pointed out the horse's role in chasing away evil spirits, and how it serves as the shaman's mount in rites of soul retrieval.

One more paper has tobe mentioned, that of J. Dolgorsüren. In a very abstract and philosophical manner she analyzed shamanism as a cultural phenomenon. Her presentation found one of the liveliest responses from the audience and it was a pity that time did not allow us to pursue the topic further.

In general, more time would have been appreciated by many. While some speakers were lucky enough to have more time because another paper in their section had been cancelled, some had to severely cut their prepared texts to finish within their allotted time. For those not familiar with Mongolian, like the present writer, or with English, the papers presented in one of the two languages posed a problem of appropriate un -derstanding. lt was at least in part solved by the efforts of the Mongolian translators and Julie A. Stewart. Their untiring support was certainly a great help in making our section a rewarding experience. At least in the opinion of this writer, their effort paved the way, even if it was necessarily limited in scope, for a better understanding of each other's arguments and positions; it also initiated several conversations that continued after the official sessions. Nevertheless, l am not sure whether l understood some of our Mongolian colleagues' presentations sufficiently, in order not to misrepresent them in this report. If l did misrepresent them, l apologize for my shortcomings and ask for their understanding. In spite

News and Notes 185

of such shortcomings, the conference provided a wonderful setting that encouraged us to look beyond our accustomed horizons. 1

NAGOYA PEIER KNECHT

MINUTES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE ISSR, HELD IN THE HALL OF THE SCIENTIFIC COUNCIL OF THE FIRST BUILDING OF THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MONGOLIA, ULAANBATAAR, MONGOLIA, 6 AUGUST 1999.

At 3PM the meeting was called to order by its chair, Dr. Peter Knecht, who invited the acting President, Dr. Mihaly Hoppal, to deliver the presidential report.

a. A moment of silence was observed by the assembly for the memory of Dr. Vladimir Nikolaevich Basilov (1937-1998).

b. Society History. Dr. Hoppal outlined the history of the society, recalling the previous meetings, including the initial meeting in Zagreb, 1989 (before the ISSR was officially founded), the first official meeting, in Seoul 1991, followed by meetings in Budapest 1993, Nara 1995, and Chantilly 1997, as weil as relevant non official meetings held in Venice, Y akutsk, Newcastle, and Tempare. Publications sponsored by the society were also listed.

c. Financial Report. Membership in the Society peaked at 62 duespaying members in 1993, declined to 42 in 1995; there at present 15 dues-paying members of the ISSR, an untenable situation for which no solution was presented.

d. Membership Drive. Proposals to increase membership in the society, such as by allowing practicing shamans to join, were, as at previous

1 Participants of the conference received a copy of Central Asian Shamanism (Past and Present) , Shamanic Cosmology (Worldview and Mythology), Shamanism in Transition (Tradition and Innovation) . Papers and Abstracts for the 5th Conference of the International Society for Shamanistic Research. August 2-8, 1999, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia . Edited by S. Dulam and D. Bum-Ochir. Centre for the Studies of Nomadic Civilizations, School of Mongolian Studies , National University of Culture and Arts. Ulaanbaatar. 1999. The Editors.

186 News and Notes

meetings, inconclusively debated. W ays to coordinate the organization with existing and future organizations of practicing shamans will be ex -plored.

e. Internet site. Dr. Daniel Kister raised the topic of increasing international awareness of the society by having a homepage on the world wide web. Members agreed that this was a good idea, and it may be ex -plored in the future.

f Society Elections. A motion was made on behalf of the scientific committee by Dr. Ulla Johansen nominating Mihaly Hoppal for president of the ISSR. This was seconded by Dr. Gregory Maskarinec, who in turn nominated Dr. Sendenjaviin Dulam for the position of Vice President, a motion seconded by Dr. Daniel Kister. Both officers were elected unanimously by votes of 24 to 0, with no abstentions.

g. Next Meeting. lt was decided that the society would plan to meet in Copenhagen in 2001.

h. Report of the Organizing Committee. Prof. S. Dulam made the report of the orgamzmg committee. N Enkhbayar, Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, expressed the support of the party and presented the Organizing Committee with a subvention of 500,000. The weil known Buriat shaman Ch. Tseren sent felicitations to the conference. Gifts were presented to various members of the association by the Dharkhad Mongol shaman, Chinbat.

Professor Dulam concluded the meeting by presenting gifts from the Organizing Committee to all the participants.

i. Conclusions. The meeting was concluded with thanks from all to Professor Dulam for having organized a most successful conference.

Prepared by GREGORY G . MASKARINEC, HONOLULU

News and Notes 187

CONFERENCE ON "SHAMANISM AND OTHER lNDIGENOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES," MOSCOW, MA Y 1999*

One of the important things about this conf erence was the participation of several young indigenous scholars, who presented fresh information and viewpoints based on their own experience and fieldwork, as weil as a thorough grounding in the literature. The conference was organized by Dmitri Funk and his wife, V alentina Kharitonova, who did a wondeful job and who deserve the greatest esteem for their work. 1

Svetlana Tiukhtenova stated in her presentation on neo-shamanism in the Altai that "The most important thing a shaman does is to create a protective shield around his/her community. Everything else is secondary to this, and is done only because people ask for it." This emphasis on the community nature of shamanic practice, and on protection comes up again and again in the work of indigenous researchers and practitioners, and forms one of the differences from many western practices and view -points. lt is also notable that the things uppermost in most western researcher' s minds-like altered states of consciousness, possession, healing, ceremonial practice-are not what this insider considers the top priority. There are strong parallels between shamanic activity and any creative act; music, storytelling, and painting. Tiukhtenova and several other researchers pointed out that the shaman is far from being the only spiritual practitioner in indigenous society, and that especially today there is a wealth of specialists in various forms of divination, healing, and rit -ual activity. Formerly these were all combined in one person, but now they tend to be separated. She discussed clairvoyance and lucid dreaming in detail. Some of these forms are traditional and others are new, the results of a changed way of life and of contacts with Russians and other outsiders.

Sherry Tanaka, in her talk about the Ainu, points out that the concept of "altered states of consciousness" does not exist for her people, since many states of consciousness are familiar to most people and exist on a continuum, not marked off with judgements on value and possibility

* This was intended as just one section of a longer report. I have covered only the sessions on folklore and the contributions of indigenous scholars. We apologize to our many colleagues whose excellent presentations at the plenary and other sessions have not been reviewed here.

1 They are also editors of Proceedings of the International Congress Shamanism and Other lndigenous Beliefs and Practices. 2 vols. Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Moscow 1999.

188 News and Notes

(needing a special talent), as they are in Western society. The shamanic state of consciousness is one of many ordinary states. She calls on Western scientists to widen their view and to learn from indigenous societies, rather than "studying" them.

Another important point raised by Nenets shamanic painter Leonid Lar is that what is going on in indigenous communities today is not so much a revival of culture as a continuation. Most outsiders who have spent time among both rural and urban indigenous Siberian people (and probably others world-wide) are aware that a very different approach to life from that of the dominant society has retained its resiliency, while ceremonial practices remained dormant under Soviet domination. Some observers feel that memories have been held genetically for several generations, while others say there been more continuity of tradition than appeared on the surface.

All this was discussed in sessions devoted to world-view, folklore and ritual practice. Valuable description of Siberian shamanic rituals were given by Olga Murashko and A. Wiget/0. Balalaeva.

Several presentations spoke to the importance of epic telling and myth formation in relation to shamanic acts, and the persona of the storyteller as a communicator with the world of spirit. Elena Batianova pointed out that in Teleut society the storyteller held more traditional knowledge than the shaman, while the important thing about the shaman was the strength of his/her spirits. My own presentation looked at the re-spiritualization of shamanic storytelling in the post-Soviet Amur region and the differences in the way shamanic arts are received in Russia and North America.

There is a metaphoric parallel between shamanic initiation and fieldwork. A new shaman gets to know completely different worlds with new inhabitants and laws. A researcher needs the same openness to new experience, leaving preconceptions behind and getting to know a new world with new laws. We need to use all our senses and look at the shamanic world from the inside, allowing ourselves to be changed by it. Using the example of narratives about meetings with Ban Jhankris of Nepal, Leslie Conton spoke of the difficulties involved in trying to communicate spiritual realities and seemingly impossible experiences to a rational westem audience.

Participants heard fascinatingly detailed descriptions of the shamanic world by highly respected researchers like Anna Smoliak, who described the deities residing in the numerous worlds of N anai and Ulchi cosmol -ogy. She emphasized that shamans in the Amur region were f ar from being the only kinds of healing and religious practitioners, giving special attention to the Tudin, who performed many of the same functions as a

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News and Notes 189

shaman, but without helping spirits or shamanic heredity. Some felt the Tudin was stronger and better loved than the shaman.

Nikolai Pluzhnikov compared aspects of world-view from several ar -eas of Siberia, finding both commonalities and variations in the image of the world tree, looking at the world in both vertical and horizontal layouts. He pointed out some of the ways our understanding of Siberian worldviews has been influenced by asking the wrong questions, or putting words into inf ormants' mouths. This may explain why scholars still speak of "three worlds" in the shamanic world-view, while in reality there are more. Marjorie Balzer spoke about several ways shamans responded to Soviet persecution in the Sakha Republic (Y akutia), including interethnic cooperation, combining shamanic healing with western medicine, overt protest, using shamanic power directly on representatives of Soviet power, theatrical shows of power on demand, going underground, and feminization of shamanic practice. Many of these are still in evidence today.

Looking at the ways shaman's stories and practices relate to political and social realities is important not only in the historical view, but as we consider today's emerging practices as well. Whom do today's shamans serve? Is it poor people in villages, working people in cities, political and ecological activists, an elite transformed from former party officials, new business people? All this affects the nature of their practice and also their credibility among other social groups. lt is something we may not see when shamans appear out of context at a conference.

In addition to bis kamlanie, füll of beautiful singing and dancing, Afanasy S. Feodorov of the Sakha Republic shared with us the stories surrounding a unique collection of photographs of early 20th century Sakha shamans. Himself a shaman, actor, teacher and collector of shamanic information, he bad experienced healing at the hands of several of these shamans, most of whom suff ered under the repressions of the Soviet regime. His stories showed the shamans' dedication to helping their people in the face of terrible persecution, and included tales of remarkable feats, practices rarely recorded in Siberia such as sucking out spiritual intrusions in the form of blood, and the continuing influence of these shamans after death. Descendants of several of these shamans are practicing various forms of healing today.

Several indigenous shamans were present: Bair Rinchinov and bis two assistants (Buriats from Chita Province), Tatiana Kobezhikova (Khakass), Janna Alekseeva (Altai), Afanasy Feodorov (Sakha), Leonid Lar (Nenets). Russian healers and sorcerers included Natalia Ilina, A.A. Sartuff, and Elena Batova. Also present were shamanic practitioners of

190 News and Notes

the Hamer method Leslie Conton, Bill Brunton and Alina Slobodova and Michael Harner himself. On the whole the indigenous shamans were dissatisfied with the way they were integrated into the conference. There were frequent changes of schedule both from the side of the shamans and of the organizers. lt seemed to be difficult for two different organi -zational approaches to work together, since ceremonies and question periods needed to happen when the shamans saw fit. This made scheduling difficult for the organizers, who are to be congratulated for their continuing efforts to make things run smoothly.

Although two evenings were devoted to ceremonies, there was not enough time given to individual shamans and healers to speak and answer questions. Each needed as much time as any other speaker, but instead they were all presented together in one evening. One problem was combining shamans on a program with the Russian healers, although in the end even the shamans themselves were not sure why this should have been a problem. It's possible this conflict between shamans, organizers, and Russian healers may have averted conflict among the shamans themselves, who related without much overt competition (which frequently occurs when shamans are gathered together).

A further complication is that many scholars are concemed only with historical forms of shamanism and do not acknowledge some of today's practitioners as true carriers of tradition. It's difficult to say how this could be handled better. Any gathering of this sort tends to emphasize either scholarly or experiential elements, and this one clearly focused on the scholarly. In Canada many public events open each session with a prayer from a Native elder, which is a great help in creating a peaceful atmosphere in which to work. This might have been useful in Moscow. I hope conference organizers will continue to work out the problems involved with having both scholars and practitioners at the same event.

Indigenous shamans were concerned with answering their view of Michael Harner's work. They insist on the importance of inheritance of the shamanic gift together with specific helping spirits, the reality and <langer of spirits, and the fact that a person does not choose to become a shaman (most would choose not to.) For example there was strong objection from Nenets and Khakass participants to practitioner Alina Slobodova's idea that the spirits are inside us and we can be healed by cleaning them off. (This may have been an unfortunate presentation of her ideas, although there is no doubt about what she said.) Unlike Harner, most indigenous people also call shamanism their religion. They emphasize the importance of community rituals and the fact that the more

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News and Notes 191

dangerous spirits should only be contacted in case of need, not simply for self-development.

Of course Harner himself acknowledges the reality of spirits outside human bodies, and that the lengthy and difficult process involved in be -coming a shaman goes far beyond "self- improvement" The difference seems tobe in the importance of heredity, and in which spirits the indigenous and western shamans contact and under what circumstances.

A significant difference appears to me to be the circumstances in which shamans work. Even in today's largely Russified indigenous societies, most people acknowledge communication with spirits, and there are many kinds of specialists in divination, spiritual healing and conducting rituals. Thus the shaman only deals with the most dangerous of those spirits, and combines many abilities in one person. lt is the <langer of these spirits that sets shamans apart and that contributes to their being feared, more their abilities. Indigenous societies still have a strong con -nection to the past. This is in contrast to the west where the majority of the population does not acknowledge the reality of spirits and many are not in touch with their heredity. The first job of a western spiritual teacher is to get people in touch with that world-to get to the place where indigenous people begin. This lack of ability to see for ourselves often leads us to look for a person with extraordinary powers to heal us, while the indigenous view holds more of self-healing, the exercise of commonly held abilities raised to a higher degree. Shamans are set apart from ordinary people by their heredity and by the presence of their hereditary helping spirits, which give them the ability to protect and heal the people as a whole.

Western societies are also more ethnically diverse, and shamanic traditions have been repressed for centuries, not decades. Hereditary lines may be lost, while helping spirits are still present. Westerners tend to look outside their own traditions for a return to a more personal form of spirituality, while indigenous people look within their own history. Bill Brunton' s paper addressed the specific ways core shamanic practice suits the American world-view. Again, the question arises of whom the shaman is serving, andin what kind of society.

I'm not sure how all of this could have been addressed in the conference (maybe in a series of discussions?), but it was certainly a major part of what was going on outside the official meetings, and needed to be brought into the light.

One of the stated goals of the conference organizers was improved communication between Russian researchers and scholars and their European and North American counterparts-and to a large degree this

192 News and Notes

was achieved. I heard from North American colleagues that the conference exposed them for the first time to the wealth of Russian scholarship, little known because not translated. Some Russians had the opportunity to talk with people whose work they had only read. Many views were represented, including pure scholarship and theory, the views of practitioners, and combinations of the two: both practitioners who also do research, and researchers who maintain a spiritual practice of their own.

Scrupulous attention was paid to translation-which was is in contrast to the ISSR conference in Japan in 1995 where almest nothing was translated, and Japanese and English speakers were left completely in the dark about each other's presentations. But while we must congratulate Maksim Oshurkov and bis team for their tireless work, there was a real problem of language and of something deeper than mere words. In a wealthier world it would have been good to publish all papers in both languages to allow all participants more leisurely access to each other' s work, but the two large volumes are already major publications, demanding much work on the part of the organizers.

Many details were lost on both sides perhaps because it was all happening too fast, but more likely because of a lack of understanding of the political and social grounding of research in various countries. Why do researchers ask the questions they do? What ideas are commonly held in one country but not another? What are the constraints affected by institutions in which researchers work? Just as we must know whom the shaman serves, we also need to take into consideration the different purposes of research in different countries. What would help? A larger number of casual interpreters would certainly facilitate conversation, and could perhaps be found among students. lt would be most important to have round tables which are truly for discussion, and not just another set of papers. The organizers could set a topic, or a few questions and encourage discussion without formal presentations.

VANCOUVER, B.C. KIRA V AN DEUSEN

SHAMAN - ISARS

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