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.He also learned how one of the shamansconfederates spied on ill members of various prominent families so that he could relaythe information to shamans, who then claimed to have received knowledge of theailments through their helping spirits.Despite his initial skepticism, Hunt graduallyprogressed to public healings and enjoyed considerable success in his therapeutic efforts.His account illustrates cogently how human masters could provide elements of shamanictraining which would strongly complement the supernatural gifts of the spirits, and whichwould potentially enable the new shaman to make an effective career within the tradition.Varieties of Helping SpiritsScholars of shamanism often divide spirits into the categories of tutelary spiritsand helping spirits, and characterize each as either anthropomorphic or theriomorphic.By  tutelary spirit scholars generally refer to some spirit which enjoys primary status inthe shaman s communications and which is regarded as the shaman s essential guide andguardian. Helping spirits are lesser figures, who provide assistance to the shaman inparticular situations, and who may be summoned by the shaman only when the healing orother task at hand requires specific expertise. Anthropomorphic spirits take the form ofpresent or past human beings, either in outward form or in behavior. Theriomorphicspirits, for their part, resemble animals.Such categories can be misleading, however, asthe same spirit may sometimes play varying roles in a shaman s life or take varyingforms.A spirit may be a mix of human and animal forms, or may represent a differentsort of entity altogether, e.g., a disease, star, or mountain.The fluidity of form evinced 94by spirits in some traditions is illustrated by the testimony of a Goldi shaman interviewedby Leo Sternberg in 1925.Although in most cases the ayami tutelary spirit took the formof a beautiful Goldi woman, she also adopted other forms at times:Sometimes she comes under the aspect of an old woman, and sometimes underthat of a wolf, so she is terrible to look at.Sometimes she comes as a wingedtiger.I mount it and she takes me to show me different countries.I have seenmountains, where only old men and women live, and villages, where you seenothing but young people, men and women: they look like Golds and speakGoldish, sometimes those people are turned into tigers.(476; quoted in Eliade1964: 72)Historical reports indicate that Sámi noaidit tended to rely on a combination ofanthropomorphic and theriomorphic helping spirits.The noaide was called into hisvocation by the noaidegázze, a set of human-like spirits who lived in a sacred mountain.The noaide was able to summon these by means of a spirit bird (noaideloddi), and did sowhen he was in need of their advice or supernatural assistance.Other theriomorphichelping spirits included a reindeer bull that protected the noaide during his spiritjourneys, and a fish, that guided the noaide in his travels to the subterranean world of thedead (Bäckman and Hultkrantz 1977: 42-3; Mebius 2003: 170-2).An anthropomorphicfemale attendant spirit also assisted the noaide, particularly when he was under attackfrom other spirits.Each noaide had his own contingent of helping spirits, so that, forinstance, one noaide s reindeer bull spirit might well be called upon to battle that ofanother. 95In Daur Mongol shamanism, as Caroline Humphrey (1996: 182-212) details, thecollection of tutelary spirits that the Sámi shaman knew as a noaidegázze ( noaide sfollowers ), finds a counterpart in the yadgan s onggor.Humphrey recounts thenarrative of an onggor recorded by Nicholas Poppe in 1930 (12-13).In it, we see that theparticular onggor in question represented the fused souls of several different beings.Thefirst of these, Otoshi Ugin, had been a girl born to elderly parents.She was embitteredand driven mad by the brutal murder of her parents and set out on acts of revenge thatdestroyed several villages.A second being, Ganchi Lam, was in life a lama who hadtried to defeat Otoshi Ugin but failed, eventually becoming her follower.The thirdperson, Orchin Dog, was a former paralytic whom Otoshi Ugin had cured.These threesouls became fused into the onggor Guarwan Ayin ( Three Journeys ), destined toremain on earth because of the violence of Otoshi Ugin s acts.Guarwan Ayin becamethe onggor of a succession of important yadgan shamans, each of whose soul likewisemerged with those of the onggor after life.The last soul to be added into an onggor wastermed the borchoohor ( brown-spotted one ) and was taken to be a bird spirit ofunmatched power (187).The onggor helps the yadgan control wild and dangerous spirits(barkan), and banish the demonic spirits of unruly dead (shurkul).The yadgan andonggor receive assistance from the yadgan s ancestral clan spirits (hojoor).Both onggorand hojoor spirits are depicted in images and offered propitiatory sacrifices.M.A.Czaplicka (1914: 182-3) summarizes the findings of the ethnographerSieroszewski concerning Sakha (Yakut) helping spirits.Tutelary spirits (ämägyat) wereessential to any shaman s work and were publicly acknowledged as helpers.Another setof spirits, however, yekyua, were kept hidden from other people in far-away mountain 96caches.Czaplicka writes:  Once a year, when the snow melts and the earth is black, theyekyua arise from their hiding-places and begin to wander.They hold orgies of fightsand noises, and the shamans with whom they are associated feel very ill.Especiallyharmful are the yekyua of female shamans (182).The effects of an individual shaman srestless yekyua depend upon their theriomorphic form: those in dog form may gnaw at theshaman s heart, while more powerful spirits in the form of bulls, stallions, elk, or bearsmake raucous demands of food.Sakha shamans reported not only being able to see theirown yekyua through their gift of supernatural vision, but also those of other shamans, andwere said to be able to recognize the rise of a new shaman in the vicinity by the arrival ofnew yekyua [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]