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with a rather pleasant, sympathetic expression, now opened
his heart to me and confessed that he was a Shaman.
“The priest has told me that it is wrong to shamanise,
and perhaps it is, but I must do it both for my own sake
and that of my people. I confess once a year to the priest
and give him a blue fox-skin, and then he is satisfied, and
I can tranquilly go on shamanising for another year.
Maybe that the god of the “baptised” is mightier than our
deities, but the orthodox priests are unable to subdue the
spirits (i.e. to cure diseases), as we Shamans do.”
This man, no doubt, belonged to the “good Shamans,” [1]
being “possessed by a mighty spirit from above.” “It is
no easy thing to become a real Shaman,” he explained.
In the north of Siberia the office of the Shaman is not
hereditary, as is the case among their brethren in southern
Siberia. The Shaman of the north must go through a
personal crisis to be prepared to receive the “mighty spirit,”
which alone will enable him to fill his office. The way
by which he becomes possessed of the spirit our Shaman
friend explained to me in the following
manner:—“Sometimes,” he said, “it may occur that a young native happens
to come too near the grave of a Shaman in the depths of
the forest or on the tundra, and is ‘seized’ by the spirit
of the buried Shaman, who is always hovering about his
master’s grave; or maybe ‘the mighty spirit’ comes over
him while wandering alone in the wilderness—as was the
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