After the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen had lived for six
months with the Netsilik Inuit, some of his hosts opened up about their dreams,
their shamans and their sacred stories. The stories were only told to the right
person at the right time, because, Rasmussen noted, “all that is described in
them did really happen once, when everything in the world was different to what
it is now. Thus these tales are both their real history and the source of all
their religious ideas.” [1]
Over long nights by the fire in an ice hut or a tent,
the women were especially loquacious and some were
formidable. Nalungiaq, a Netsilik woman, was married to her third
husband, who had killed her second husband, who had killed her first husband, all from the desire to possess her. She described a time when there was no time, when the world was dark and there
was no difference between humans and animals; they could take each other’s
forms.
She spoke of how the dead are alive in dreams. “We believe
that dead people whom we see so vividly in dreams really are alive. In that way
dreams have taught us that people live on after death. For very often our dear
departed come to us while we sleep, and we see that they live, and that they
are the same as when they lived together with us on earth.” [2]
Rasmussen heard many stories of how souls wander
beyond the body, and sometimes get lost or stolen, which is when the services
of a shaman, an angakok. may be required.
Manelaq, the wife of Qaorssuaq, told how her husband once
saw his own soul, wandering apart from his body, and where this
led. Qaorssuaq had lain ill for a long time, and no one could understand
what was wrong with him. Then one day, he saw "his own living self" a
little way away.
"No one else could see him. Seeing himself suddenly
outside his own body he began to shiver all over. What he saw was his own soul,
and it was owing to his illness that it had left his body. All trembling he
stretched out his arms towards his soul and cried: 'Come nearer, come nearer.
Come to me, come back to me!'
" I could not understand what was happening to
him and had to hold him by the hood when he kept on trembling. At the very
moment I took hold of him the vision disappeared, but the soul did not return
to his body. It had fled just at the moment it was perhaps on its way back to
his body, for I was unclean and just in those days had my bleedings, and
therefore the soul fled from me."
Help came in the form of a couple who were both
shamans. "When they heard what had happened, they insisted that 1 should
go into a corner of the -tent, right over behind the fireplace; there I had to
lie with my head hidden in a heap of caribou bones. While I remained concealed
there, the two shamans conjured and summoned their helping spirits. They held a
great seance in order to call the soul back to Qaorssuaq's body. And it was not
long before he again saw his soul.
"The two shamans, to whom nothing was
impossible, could see it too. They uttered magic words and spoke with their
helping spirits' own tongue until the soul came quite close to Qaorssuaq. Then
they suddenly sprang to him and began to beat him here and there on his body,
the consequence being that the soul was frightened and became so scared that it
slipped into Qaorssuaq's body once more.
"At the very same moment he was well again and
I could hear him shouting and singing with joy. Only then did I venture to rise
from the heap of animal bones where I had hidden my head till then, and we all
sang with happiness. In that way Qaorssuaq got his soul back again." [3]
It may seem odd that the vagrant soul was induced to get
back in the body rather than go further away when the beating began, but it
seems the shamans knew what they were doing. The magic words were certainly an
important part of their operation. Inuit shamans have special language to do
special things. Rasmussen later recounts a story of how magic words were used
by an angakok to create a kind of Inuit golem , turning a neap of snow into a
black bear. [4] Calling up helping spirits is central to Inuit shamanic
practice, as in other traditions. An Inuit name for a spirit helper means
"one that exists to be questioned" and the variety of entities that
may play this role can be startling. Rasmussen mentions one shaman whose
helping spirits included the moon, a sea scorpion, and one of his father’s living
dogs. [5]
Inuit shamans were unwilling to share much of their
training and practice with an outsider, and some told Rasmussen that the great
shamans were no more; their tradition was in deep decay. Nonetheless, he was
able to report how Inuit shamans are often called by the spirits in dreams.
were prolific dreamers and "lived long in a dual world as real shamans
must do". In the shaman’s calling, the spirits took the initiative, in dreams.
If you could retain your dream experiences and apply them to the world around
you, you had keys to mysteries impenetrable to others. [6]
Rasmussen collected stories of shamanic soul flight, which
Mircea Eliade, controversially, thought was the central feature of shamanic
practice. [7] His most memorable tales came from Inuit recounting the deeds of
illustrious ancestors. “I am a shaman myself,” an informant named Samik told
him, “ but I am nothing compared with my grandfather Titqatsaq. He lived in the
time when a shaman could go down to the mother of the sea beasts, fly up to the
moon or make excursions out through space.”
Titqatsag was a frequent flyer. He loved spirit flight, and
had a friendly rival, Muraoq, who also took to the air. They met in spirit
flight over sea ice midway between their villages. As they converged, Muraoq
spread his arms, like a bird gliding on its wings, but did not judge distance
well and crashed violently into Tirqatsaq, who fell down onto the ice. He could
not move until Muraoq called in helping spirits to get him up. Then the
incident was mirrored. Back in the air, Tirqatsag crashed into Muraoq, who
dropped to the ice and had to be rescued by his rival’s helping spirits in
turn. Even shamans may need flight controllers. [8]
References
1. Knud
Rasmussen, The Netsilik Eskimo Social Life and Spiritual Culture. Report
of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24, (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghhandewl,
1931) p. 207.
2. Ibid., p. 213
3. Ibid. p. 216
4. ibid., pp.288-91.
5. ibid., p. 294
6. ibid,, p.296
7. Mircea Eliade, Eliade. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of
Ecstasy. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
8. Rasmussen op.cit., pp 299-300.
Illustration RM + AI
