Prior, however, to an account of this ceremony, it will be as well perhaps to devote some space to the conjurors themselves. For, among the Eskimo, as among other primitive peoples, the typical “medicine man” is a specialist, trained for his vocation and initiated into an exclusive guild. He is by no means necessarily a fraud and a charlatan. Normally, the primitive faith healer has as much faith in himself and his methods as his patients have, and between the two of them—when it is a question of a mental reaction to be obtained—there is no reason why absolute success should not crown his efforts. In the sphere of material results these amazing methods seem to be wholly empirical, and yet it cannot be denied that the Eskimo conjurors sometimes produce effects comparable only to some of the well-known demonstrations of the “magic” of the East. [[196]]
CHAPTER XIV
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, [[197]]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, [[198]]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.