18
STEPHEN MORRIS
omens warning him against some action, he has only himself to blame if he becomes ill or meets an accident.
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On most occasions it is the human being who is the offender; but it does sometimes happen that a spirit gratuitously attacks a man, or it may even be that a spirit takes a liking to some human, and in order to make him aware of the fact will cause him to fall ill; so that he is obliged to call in a shaman, who through his own friendly spirits can get in touch with the one who is causing the trouble and make the situation known to the patient. Sometimes the spirit will tell the sick man why he is ill and what he has to do in order to be cured. Sometimes the disrespect; the breach of proper boundaries between the different classes of being is the work of an animal. Crocodiles, for example, have the power to entice the soul of a human and keep it, knowing that unless something is done the body will follow, looking for the soul, and provide a meal for the crocodile. The symptoms of this kind of theft, paleness, lethargy, fatigue, are usually indistinguishable from those of an attack by a spirit or any other cause for the soul's departure from the body. Only a shaman, with the help of his spirit friends and guides, can diagnose with any certainty what has happened.
Finally there are some illnesses caused by witchcraft or sorcery. Witchcraft, in the sense of malice projected symbolically without the use of material means, by a living member of the victim's society is rare among the Melanau; and it occurs only when a shaman's moral character is not sufficiently strong to control the potentially nasty habits of his spirit friends. They persuade him to send his head out at night to suck the blood of victims, and so feed the spirits. A weak or a bad shaman is not strong enough to prevent that kind of thing. The result is what I suppose we should call anaemia; and it is eventually followed by death, if the shaman is not stopped in time - usually in former days by killing him. Illness can also be caused by sorcery (though not often I think) by carving images of particular spirits, bringing the carvings to life, and then ordering the spirits to disregard the rules of the ader and hunt down the sorcerer's enemy.
To summarise what I have been saying: the principal causes of illness in a Melanau diagnosis on the basis of symptoms are
(i) Improper relation of hot and cold elements in the body.
(ii) An act of disrespect that flouts the proper order of things, usually an action by the sufferer but sometimes by another being - a spirit, an animal, or even another human.