All this is merely the first stage of his apprenticeship. He begins to show of what stuff he is made, so far as the career of conjuror is concerned, when it comes to dealing with matters of guilt and secrecy. [[199]]The accomplished conjuror must be able to detect and affix guilt. Here he is concerned entirely with the minds of his fellow men, and trying to fathom and read them. The Eskimo mind is as tortuous as the Eastern. The conjuror pursues his own method, which may have a good deal to recommend it in the eyes of those who have made a study of the occult, but which is not the method of direct evidence and deduction. He throws himself into a perfectly genuine trance, and stakes everything on the intuitions of that state and the awesome effect of it upon the interested beholders.
To do this the conjuror sits down with his face to the wall, and drawing his hood well over his features, rocks himself backwards and forwards, calling the while on his familiar spirit (his Tongak) to come to him. He continues this howling and rocking until such concentration of mind is effected that he becomes unconscious; he foams at the mouth. Whilst in this condition of self-induced hypnotism—or however the spiritists may explain it—his spirit, it is believed, goes below to Sedna, or above to the regions of beatitude, to find out what has been the cause of the guilt in question, and discover the requisite punishment.
The interesting thing about this performance is that it is by no means the tissue of imposture one might suppose. The Eskimo conjuror may be no more and no less a fraud than the medium of a spiritistic séance. The writer has been creditably assured by these practitioners that the trance ensues [[200]]in the vision of a great white light (like the light thrown on a sheet by the magic lantern), and then in that illumination they see the whole scene of the supposed crime re-enacted, all the people implicated in it, and its every detail. They are told, or inspired, what penalty to inflict. On returning to consciousness, the vision is not forgotten, but sharply remembered. The conjuror is able to accuse the offender, to question him, and extort a confession from him. The penalty generally takes the form of some obnoxious task to be performed or some fine to be paid in kind.
Asseak and His Wife.
Asseak was a skilful hunter, but lost his sight through snow blindness. His wife was a noted conjuror in her day.
This power to see the white light and to project in it the thoughts, probably, of the assistants at the conjuration—for the performance, when genuine, amounts to nothing less—is really a remarkable psychic feat. Probably the conjurors understand it as little as the laity; they have only trained themselves to achieve it, and they explain it according to the fantastic body of superstition which constitutes the Eskimo religion. It is only after long practice and the sustained effort after great mental concentration that the manifestation is attained, that the light can be seen, and incidents recorded in it. This is the final test for the honours of full conjurorship. The candidates sit night after night with the teacher, faces to the wall, and the lamps burning low, shutting out all extraneous objects and distractions, in the endeavour to see the light, to pass into trance. Those who remain for ever unable to arrive at this, fail to pass the test, and are rejected from the class of the [[201]]full-fledged. They must content themselves with minor dignities in the order of conjurors. One of these inferior grades is that of the Kunneyo, the one who incants for the seal hunters. Another is the Makkosâktok, the one who goes round with the whip during the Sedna ceremonies; and a third is the Noonageeksaktok, another official at the great annual celebration.
On the completion of his training and on his passing the final test for the witch-doctorate, the candidate is publicly acknowledged as a Conjuror. He makes a visitation of all the dwellings in the settlement, performs incantations in each, and receives in payment a number of charms, such as small pieces of carved ivory or bits of deerskin fringes. These things are valueless in themselves, but signify that the tribesfolk have accepted the new conjuror.
It is easy to see how the conjurors acquire the power they undoubtedly have over the people, and easy to imagine how much of fraud, imposition, hypocrisy and sheer self-seeking could be practised under the thick cloak of their rites, incantations, superstitions, and—last, but not least—their clever trickery and legerdemain. What may be perhaps not quite so easy is to convey to the reader an idea of the real good faith and of some demonstrable if inexplicable occult command underlying much of the conjuror’s art. The whole subject is too big, either from the point of view of primitive superstitions and procedure, or from that of occultism, to be dealt with at [[202]]much length here and now; but by way of illustrating the point that the Eskimo conjuror can perform miracles (collective hypnotism?) as striking as the well-known Eastern trick of the mango-tree, one of the incidents of the Sedna ceremony may be instanced.
At a certain stage of the Sedna proceedings, the conjuror, who has the spirit of a walrus or bear for Tongak (familiar spirit), spears himself through the jacket, or is speared by others, deep in the breast. When this whole performance is not merely a spectacular trick, it seems to be quite genuinely done. A line is attached to the deeply embedded, barbed spearhead, and the people catch hold of this and pull on it and haul the impaled man about, to prove that he is fairly caught, as the victim of a hunt might be. The conjuror is bathed in blood. At length, however, he is let go, and he makes his wounded way alone to the seashore. Here the Tongak releases him from the spear, and after a short space of time he returns to the festival whole and well as ever, with no sign about him except his torn clothing to indicate the rough handling he has undergone.