THE CONJURORS
The greatly esteemed profession of Conjuror is open among the Eskimo to
both men and women. Anyone is eligible to become a student in the rites
and lore of the caste, but only those who pass its tests (i.e., only
those who attain, not only a really high degree of the power of mental
concentration, of intuition and character reading; but some true occult
gift), are allowed to practise. The art has its own hierarchy of
professors according to their degree of aptitude and initiation. Only
those with some particular qualification, natural or acquired, such as
the power of throwing themselves into true trance, attain the highest
degree of dignity. Aspirants to the position of conjuror who fall short
of this, but have yet studied and schooled themselves to some purpose
in the art, are not denied its practice altogether, but hold lesser
rank and officiate on minor occasions.
The would-be conjuror is put through a fairly long and fairly severe
course of training, the whole of which, wrapped up in an immense amount
of magical circumlocution and sheer imposture, simply tends to enhance
his intellectual qualities, such as they may be, at the expense of the
grosser appetites of the Eskimo lay individual.
The candidates to the caste—youth or young woman—begins by choosing a
conjuror—male or female—under whom to study. And immediately the
neophyte enters upon his apprenticeship. The length of time this may
last rests upon his capacity to learn the rites and acquire the
psychological stock-in-trade of a conjuror. It is to the teacher’s
advantage to spin out this period of tuition as long as possible, since
for the whole term of his training the disciple is the body servant of
the master, and performs for him even the most menial offices. The
novice is a sort of articled pupil into the bargain. He pays for his
initiation.
First of all, he has to acknowledge all his breaches of the communal
law and custom, and confess to the conjuror whatever of wrongdoing
there may have been in his life. The Eskimo believe in this sort of
confession, and it is frequently enjoined. He receives forgiveness, and
thereupon embarks upon a wholly new course of life.
Fasting and abstinence and the mastery of the appetites of eating and
drinking are the first trials, and the first victories he has to win.
The Eskimo are vast eaters, and so much of their diet being flesh meat
and in the raw state, their physique tends to grossness. This grossness
has to be remedied if the conjuror is to be capable of dominating other
minds by the greater force and clarity of his own. The neophyte eschews
all luxuries whilst learning, again, of course, with the idea of
self-command and of that detachment from the unnecessary things of life
which—under civilised conditions also—hang so many trammels round a
finer aspiration. In the terms of Eskimo experience, this involves
allowing the hair to grow long and hang down; to eat with the hands
covered; and to go to rest without discarding the clothes. The strict
diet, the austerities, the real course of mental training, improve the
candidate’s natural powers of mind, enhance his memory, and concentrate
his will and consolidate so solid a belief in the system and powers he
is attaining that the graduate has really, at last, something
professional and exclusive to offer the community.
To begin with, the aspirant has to become absolutely familiar with all
the ancient customs of the people, and their significance. Then he has
to study the spirit language, the tongue of the conjurors—that is to
say, the language in which spirits are to be addressed and in which
they express themselves through the initiate. He proceeds to study the
cause of sickness (this however in a superstitious and not a natural
sense), and what penalties to inflict for the wrongdoing which sickness
is supposed to indicate. He has to learn all the various incantations
for various occasions, and exactly how to set about them.
All this is merely the first stage of his apprenticeship. He begins to
show of what stuff he is made, so far as the career of conjuror is
concerned, when it comes to dealing with matters of guilt and secrecy.
The accomplished conjuror must be able to detect and affix guilt. Here
he is concerned entirely with the minds of his fellow men, and trying
to fathom and read them. The Eskimo mind is as tortuous as the Eastern.
The conjuror pursues his own method, which may have a good deal to
recommend it in the eyes of those who have made a study of the occult,
but which is not the method of direct evidence and deduction. He throws
himself into a perfectly genuine trance, and stakes everything on the
intuitions of that state and the awesome effect of it upon the
interested beholders.
To do this the conjuror sits down with his face to the wall, and
drawing his hood well over his features, rocks himself backwards and
forwards, calling the while on his familiar spirit (his Tongak) to come
to him. He continues this howling and rocking until such concentration
of mind is effected that he becomes unconscious; he foams at the mouth.
Whilst in this condition of self-induced hypnotism—or however the
spiritists may explain it—his spirit, it is believed, goes below to
Sedna, or above to the regions of beatitude, to find out what has been
the cause of the guilt in question, and discover the requisite
punishment.
The interesting thing about this performance is that it is by no means
the tissue of imposture one might suppose. The Eskimo conjuror may be
no more and no less a fraud than the medium of a spiritistic séance.
The writer has been creditably assured by these practitioners that the
trance ensues in the vision of a great white light (like the light
thrown on a sheet by the magic lantern), and then in that illumination
they see the whole scene of the supposed crime re-enacted, all the
people implicated in it, and its every detail. They are told, or
inspired, what penalty to inflict. On returning to consciousness, the
vision is not forgotten, but sharply remembered. The conjuror is able
to accuse the offender, to question him, and extort a confession from
him. The penalty generally takes the form of some obnoxious task to be
performed or some fine to be paid in kind.
This power to see the white light and to project in it the thoughts,
probably, of the assistants at the conjuration—for the performance,
when genuine, amounts to nothing less—is really a remarkable psychic
feat. Probably the conjurors understand it as little as the laity; they
have only trained themselves to achieve it, and they explain it
according to the fantastic body of superstition which constitutes the
Eskimo religion. It is only after long practice and the sustained
effort after great mental concentration that the manifestation is
attained, that the light can be seen, and incidents recorded in it.
This is the final test for the honours of full conjurorship. The
candidates sit night after night with the teacher, faces to the wall,
and the lamps burning low, shutting out all extraneous objects and
distractions, in the endeavour to see the light, to pass into trance.
Those who remain for ever unable to arrive at this, fail to pass the
test, and are rejected from the class of the full-fledged. They must
content themselves with minor dignities in the order of conjurors. One
of these inferior grades is that of the Kunneyo, the one who incants
for the seal hunters. Another is the Makkosâktok, the one who goes
round with the whip during the Sedna ceremonies; and a third is the
Noonageeksaktok, another official at the great annual celebration.
On the completion of his training and on his passing the final test for
the witch-doctorate, the candidate is publicly acknowledged as a
Conjuror. He makes a visitation of all the dwellings in the settlement,
performs incantations in each, and receives in payment a number of
charms, such as small pieces of carved ivory or bits of deerskin
fringes. These things are valueless in themselves, but signify that the
tribesfolk have accepted the new conjuror.
It is easy to see how the conjurors acquire the power they undoubtedly
have over the people, and easy to imagine how much of fraud,
imposition, hypocrisy and sheer self-seeking could be practised under
the thick cloak of their rites, incantations, superstitions, and—last,
but not least—their clever trickery and legerdemain. What may be
perhaps not quite so easy is to convey to the reader an idea of the
real good faith and of some demonstrable if inexplicable occult command
underlying much of the conjuror’s art. The whole subject is too big,
either from the point of view of primitive superstitions and procedure,
or from that of occultism, to be dealt with at much length here and
now; but by way of illustrating the point that the Eskimo conjuror can
perform miracles (collective hypnotism?) as striking as the well-known
Eastern trick of the mango-tree, one of the incidents of the Sedna
ceremony may be instanced.
At a certain stage of the Sedna proceedings, the conjuror, who has the
spirit of a walrus or bear for Tongak (familiar spirit), spears himself
through the jacket, or is speared by others, deep in the breast. When
this whole performance is not merely a spectacular trick, it seems to
be quite genuinely done. A line is attached to the deeply embedded,
barbed spearhead, and the people catch hold of this and pull on it and
haul the impaled man about, to prove that he is fairly caught, as the
victim of a hunt might be. The conjuror is bathed in blood. At length,
however, he is let go, and he makes his wounded way alone to the
seashore. Here the Tongak releases him from the spear, and after a
short space of time he returns to the festival whole and well as ever,
with no sign about him except his torn clothing to indicate the rough
handling he has undergone.
The whole stock-in-trade indeed of the Eskimo conjuror is a certain
very demonstrable, acquired, occult power. Besides this, he has a good
memory, an immense amount of shrewdness and cunning, an intimate
knowledge of animals and their habits, of weather conditions and
seasons, and, above all, of course, a capacity to judge of his fellow
men.
It is after the period of training is over that the conjuror becomes
the bestial, sensual creature, full of cupidity and trickery, he is so
often represented to be. After graduating in the guild, no further
prohibitions and denials are observed. He marries, indeed; but no woman
of the community is safe from him. Under one professional pretext or
another, he may have his way with each and every one of them, with or
without her own particular man’s consent. This, however, is seldom
withheld. On the whole, monogamy is the rule among the Eskimo, although
there are plenty of exceptions. The writer has known a conjuror with
three wives, two of whom were sisters.
When a wife is childless it is a great grief both to her and her
husband. The conjuror is called in for professional advice and to find
out why she is not favoured by the spirits. He resorts to his
incantations, but takes an obvious advantage of the situation (quite as
much for his own ends as for the satisfaction of the would-be parents),
and all is satisfactorily arranged. Again, when a man is very ill and
has been performed over by the conjuror, one of the things demanded by
the latter is that the patient’s coat shall be brought to his house in
the evening by the man’s wife, and not taken home again until next day.
Eskimo life is full of this sort of thing, and the crudities of
relationships entering into any of their typical folk-stories make
these a little hard to reproduce in a manner acceptable to better
taste. But there is certainly some distinction to be drawn between the
primitive doings of a people struggling numerically against the
cruellest conditions of life nature can impose, (who moreover have no
conception of the ethical idea of morality), and mere promiscuity and
vice as practised for their own sakes by the “civilised” peoples of far
more favoured lands.
One of the commonest occasions of calling in the aid of the conjuror is
during bad weather. The days have been dark and stormy, with bitter
gales and snowstorms, so that the hunters have been unable to go
afield. The witch doctor arms himself with a whip—either an ordinary
dog whip or one made from sea-weed—and a knife, and rushes out to join
the howling elements. He slashes the wind and shouts down the gale.
“Taba! Taba! Namuktok!” (Stop! Stop! It is enough!).
And presently the wind drops, and the accustomed death-like stillness
of the frozen world supervenes upon the uproar.
The conjuror of course could read the signs of the weather even more
astutely than the practised hunters, and awaited the moment when the
gale had spent itself for the exhibition of his influence.
After the death of anyone looked upon as more or less of a criminal,
the conjuror is called upon to drive the evil-intentioned spirit of the
departed away from his old home. He does this by shading his eyes
carefully in the effort to perceive the spirit. Then, with a knife or
spear he rushes about, yelling and shouting, and stabbing as if at his
invisible foe, calling upon it to depart and go to its own place below.
At length he vanquishes the spirit, and announces that it is to be
dreaded no more; by their belief in him he removes their fears and
restores tranquility of mind and body; whereupon he receives his dues
and the perturbed and anxious relatives recover their poise and
cheerfulness.
In order to grasp how seriously the Eskimo believe their lives, and
every adventure of their lives, to be beset by unseen influences, it
must be remarked that the main idea of their uncouth religion is that,
not only man, but all things, animate or inanimate, have souls. Rocks,
wood, earth, water, sun, moon, stars, fire, fog, icebergs, plants, all
animals, all creeping things, and even hunting implements, have spirits
which never die. The Tarnuk, or soul of a man, has the shape of a man,
but is about one inch in height, and is to be discovered in the hand of
a conjuror or in that of a new-born babe. The soul of a bear is like a
bear; that of a walrus like a walrus; but the soul of a deer resembles
a spider, and that of a salmon, a man! The souls of rocks are like
sturdy, thickset men; the soul of the earth looks like a piece of
liver. Animals’ souls are black and hairless, but those of some
inanimate objects are clothed in deerskin. It would indeed take a great
deal of study to determine how and why the people should have arrived
at these fantastic notions and distinctions. Perhaps it would never be
given to the mind of the modern white man to fathom the workings of
such primitive intelligence, building up for itself a monstrous,
nightmare scheme of things, on foundations of the blackest ignorance.
For sheer phantasy, the writer is aware of course that the beliefs of
the Eskimos are paralleled by those of many other uncivilised peoples.
It may be that along lines of comparative savage mythology some
generalisations might emerge which would throw light upon the whole
subject. Here, however, would lie the study of a lifetime.
Briefly put, the Eskimo religion consists in the belief in a
multiplicity of spirits, good and bad, and in one Supreme Spirit, of
whom no fear is felt because he has no evil intention towards man. The
conjuration and propitiation of the evil spirits is the constant
business of the conjuring class, although everyone has some degree of
power to deal with them. Man was made, indeed, by the Great Supreme
Spirit, and his name was given, Âkkolukju; and woman, Omaneetok, was
fashioned from his left-hand floating rib.
The Eskimo very highly esteem their own race, but hold Europeans in
considerable contempt. They have an unpleasant legend of a woman and a
dog being cast away together in a boat or on a floe, by way of
accounting for the origin of the whites.
Man’s spirit, like the spirit of everything else, is immortal, and
destined to a future life in bliss, in the region where the Great
Spirit presides over a happy community of very prosperous Eskimo, such
as has already been described. Those who die on the hunt go to this
heaven, also women in childbirth, and those who die a violent death by
any sort of accident. The road to this Eskimo heaven is beset by many
obstacles and pitfalls. It is haunted by savage animals, who lie in
wait to attack, maim, and kill the wayfarers upon it. Legend has it
that at the end of this road, at the rim of this world which is the
gate to the next, two huge rocks are set, confronting each other across
the narrow path. They sway ominously and often crash together, so that
the soul seeking heaven has to run the risk of being caught and crushed
between them as he endeavours to get through.
All illness other than that derived from these causes is looked upon as
a consequence of sin, i.e., the failure to be a good member of the
community, the having been of a quarrelsome turn, bad-tempered, mean or
ungenerous, and the having failed to own up to these things when
exhorted by the conjuror. When a sick person, having confessed yet
dies, it is believed that he had some mental reservation and was not
quite honest about his confession. These bad folk go to the Eskimo
hell, to the awful realms of Sedna. But a third idea of a sort of
purgatory comes in, a place to which the damned can escape before they
are finally admitted to bliss. The spirit of the conjuror is able to go
below and fight the evil one, and liberate the soul in question. The
whole transaction is generally a somewhat expensive one for the
relatives.
All animals have their guardian spirits (Tongak) who have power over
their souls (Innua). The bear, walrus, killer, ground seal, etc., have
the best and strongest familiars. It is the custom for each conjuror to
adopt one of these spirits as his own, in order to avail himself of its
attributes and powers. The bear is a special favourite, since his
Tongak is possessed of cunning and intelligence above the ordinary.
Sedna, the goddess or protectress of the sea creatures in her briny
underworld, controls and safeguards their bodies only; each one’s
particular Tongak controls its soul. The conjuror, in turn, controls
the Tongak; so this important personage can counteract Sedna’s
machinations against successful hunting. The hunter invokes the aid of
the conjuror, who thereupon causes the Tongak of the seals to enter
into the man and lead him to success. This familiar companionship is
forfeited if the hunter commit some breach of the law and does not
confess as much to the witch doctor, or if he fail to pay for the
services rendered.
Eskimo mythology is almost an inexhaustible subject. In addition to the
active, informing spirit called the Tongak, which everyone possesses
and which can be invoked for guidance or assistance by every man at his
need, all other beings, animate and inanimate, possess an indwelling
spirit peculiar to themselves alone. This individual, permanent,
presiding spirit is the Innua, something distinct from the patron
spirit, the Tongak.
The writer has collected an immense mass of notes on the Eskimo
deities, as they were described to him by the most creditable of the
conjurors. He believes that his list is unique, and offers the student
of such matters entirely original material. In it are enumerated no
less than fifty of these tutelary spirits, with their personal
descriptions (generally uncouth and imaginative to a degree), their
supposed habitat—earth, air, or water—and their characteristic
activities or patronages.
There is Keekut, for instance, a being who lives on the land, in
appearance is like a dog without hair, and who works in a more or less
maleficent manner. There is Segook, a spirit with a head like a crow, a
body like that of a human being, and who is black. It has wings. It is
a benefactor to the tribesfolk, and brings them meat in its beak. It is
fabled to exist upon the eyes of deer and seals. The list is
monotonously fabulous, and could only be wearisome to the general
reader.
Ataksok lives in the sky. He is like a ball, and has the means of
bringing joy to his beholders as often as he may be invoked by the
conjurors. Akseloak is the spirit of rocking stones. When called upon,
he arrives rolling, and falls flat upon his face at the witch doctor’s
feet. Ooyarraksakju is a female spirit, and lives in the rocks and
boulders; is beneficent in her activities.
So the list goes on. It would doubtless have a value all its own for
the student of primitive imagery or fable, and form an addition to
ethnographical researches on the Eskimo; but to give it here in extenso
would perhaps serve little or no purpose.