Some of these masks are made with double faces, so that the muzzle of the animal fits over and conceals the face of the inua and the outer mask is hinged on or held in place by pegs so that it may be removed at any minute. The psychological moment when actual transformation occurs is symbolised at a particular part of the ceremony.
The wearer of the mask then becomes imbued with the true spirit of the animal represented, and the dance turns into a species of thanksgiving for the hunter's success.[16]
Dancing is sometimes used as a form of exorcism.
In Abyssinia a disorder similar to that of being possessed by a bouda, or sorcerer, is called tigritiya, and is a supposed possession by the devil in which the victim, who is generally a woman, believes that she has been transformed into an animal. Whatever the patient demands must be procured, for else she becomes sulky and, covering up her head, remains for days without eating or speaking. Since the symptoms always include the wasting away of the attacked person, this state is very dangerous.
Ornaments of all kinds have to be borrowed in answer to her lightest whim. She asks for the lion's skin worn by a warrior, his silver ornaments, or other valuable articles difficult to procure. In some cases music is used as a means of charming away the tigritiya. Drums and other instruments strike up and the patient moves her body in time to the music and gradually increases her energy until the pace is furious and her motions so violent that it seems likely she will dislocate her limbs, if not her neck. Having lain on a bed of sickness, reduced to a mere bag of bones, such fatiguing exercises appear uncanny, but it is on this dancing and on her incantations that the ejection of the evil spirit depends.
Some of the dances imitate the antics of bush-hogs and other animals desirous of fun rather than of injury to human beings. In one of the Acawoio dances, each dancer has a kind of trumpet to which a rudely carved figure of some animal or reptile is fixed, and he impersonates this animal for the time being.[17]
Musical instruments used in the dances are frequently made of animal skins, and the Indians attribute special virtues to the wolf-skin.
It is said that a tom-tom or drum made of this animal's skin can silence any similar instrument made of sheep's skin from which no man can emit a sound while the wolf-skin vibrates.
Real animals often play a part in the ceremonial, especially snakes in the serpent dances and sacred animals in such dances as are dedicated to their worship.
In China a big dog is dressed up like a man and is carried round in a palanquin to break up a drought.