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case with the narrator—or while speeding along behind
his reindeer over the tundra, the northern lights flaming
over his head.” Then the young man “is seized with a
strange melancholy,” which increases to “great anguish.”
He “trembles from inward terror” and finally falls into a
state of ecstasy, “seeing what others do not see and
hearing what others do not hear.” This crisis may be
repeated several times, until the youth finally “is delivered
from the power of the lower spirits and becomes possessed
by a higher and mightier spirit,” by the power of which
he will be able to give such proofs of “subduing the
evil spirits” as shall give him the right of entry into the
brotherhood of the Shamans.
But this is only the beginning, our Shaman friend
explained. “The great trials will come when the young
Shaman is called upon to drive out the evil spirits from
the sick, reveal secret things, or foretell future events.”
Let us take a typical case, the healing of an emirjak,
i.e. a person suffering from a kind of severe hysterical
disease which is very common among the natives of
northern Siberia. In the yurta of the patient are gathered
together his relatives and neighbours, sitting on the nares
or low benches serving as bedsteads along the walls. A few
burning embers spread a dim light from the fireplace in
the midst of the yurta. All are sitting in silent
expectation. To them enters the Shaman, silent and solemn,
carrying the magic drum. His task commences with “the
subduing of the lower spirits, which have their abode in
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