Hereditary transmission in Siberian Shamanism and the concept of the reality of legends

Abstract

Belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's gift is common to all Siberian shamanism. One can find corresponding motifs in Nganasan shamanism as well as in Tuvinian one. Often there is impossible to become a shaman without having shamans-ancestors in family. Sometimes they are namely the spirits of shamans-ancestors, who at first reveal themselves to the devotee and force him to shamanize. More frequently they are supernormal beings, who were in close relations with them - for instance former helping spirits of a shaman-ancestor. Gilyak researcher Taksami wrote: The boy named Koinyt, who's father - the shaman - died not long ago, fell asleep after noon and began suddenly to toss about and cry, repeating typical shouts of shamans. After waking he looked pale and tired. In dream he saw two spirits - a man and a woman, who said: Before we played with your father, now we would play with you. (Taksami 1981, 167) Belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's gift was firm among several peoples in Siberia. For that very reason children in famous shaman families, who desired not to become shamans, fell ill and lived as mentally or physically diseased persons. For example Nikolai Agitshev, son of the famous Ostyak-Samoyedic shaman, who worked in 1930-is together with linguist G. Prokofyev. Last years of his life Nikolai spent in loneliness, made wooden idols and fed them. (Prokofyeva 1981, 45-46) In the present paper we attempt to explain some aspects of the belief in the hereditary transmission of shaman's talent. Associating the shaman trance with a hypnotic state, we proceed from the definition and general causes of origin of an altered state of consciousness as formulated by Arnold Ludwig (Ludwig 1968, 69) and the analysis of spirit possession given by Sheila Walker. latter shows, elaborating on Merton Gill's and Margaret Brenman's psychoanalytical approach to hypnosis (Gill, Brenman 1961), that hypnosis and possession represent different forms of the same phenomenon - regression in the service of the ego (Walker 1972, 26-51). Together with Walker, we can say, that in many cultures the hypnotists need not to be a person. external pressure that influences the individual and his own conscious and subconscious motives, based on different religious ideas, create a subsystem of the ego, which is the supernatural being that possesses an individual. After that, we shall come from psychoanalysis to psychology and try to explain the process of origin of the shaman's sickness, relying on the notion of the generalized realityorientation borrowed from Roland Shor. He termed so a structured frame of reference that characterizes a normal state of consciousness and supports, interprets and gives meaning to all the experience of an individual. (Shor 1959, 585) Shor stated that hypnosis is a complex of two processes, one of which is the construction of a special, temporary orientation and the other is the relative fading of the generalized reality-orientation into non-functional unawareness. (A.-L. Siikala's resume of theses of Shor - Siikala 1978, 50) To mark the temporary orientation that enables possession (or, more narrowly, the shaman's sickness), we are using the term reality of legends. This is a system which springs from religious images transmitted by tradition and which arises onto generalized reality-orientation in some cases of altered state of consciousness. Applying it, we state that the shaman's sickness common among the Siberian peoples represents an acute manifestation of the shaman's world induced by an activation of the reality of legends and caused by any event or provocation that can be interpreted appropriately. novice is possessed not only by one particular supernatural being but the whole world beyond with its inhabitants. Although familiar