FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE
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The typical history of a person who is ill is that he first goes to consult a herbalist; if he does not recover he then consults another expert, a carver of images who knows the shape and attributes of spirits. The sick person may indeed have consulted an image maker at the same time as he went to the herbalist. From the symptoms the carver decides what spirit may be attacking the soul of the patient. He makes an image of that spirit in the pith of a sago palm and spits betel nut juice at the carving and commands the spirit to enter it. If his guess about the spirit is right, the spell compels the spirit (who has broken the ader by trespassing on the human domain without justification) to enter the image and stay there for three days. The carver then holds the image over the sick person and pours water over it on to him, after which the 'live' carving is taken out of the village and put in the spirit's proper dwelling place in the river, in the forest, or hanging on a tree if it is an air spirit. This expert, who is not usually a herbalist or shaman, is not really concerned to know why the spirit has attacked the man, and, by injuring the soul, has frightened it away towards the land of the dead, thus also harming the body. He is merely concerned to guess from the symptoms what spirit has done the injury. By trial and error he may diagnose and carve the images of as many as ten different spirits before the patient decides he has had enough and had better take the next step and consult a shaman to get a better diagnosis.
A shaman is a man or woman who has entered a permanent relationship of friendship with one or more spirits on whom he can call for guidance and help in dealing with matters in which humans and spirits or even humans and animals are involved. These friendships of a shaman are in one sense improper, because the ader is designed to keep the different orders of being separate from one another; and someone who disobeys the rule is likely to be in danger himself and a possible source of danger to others. Unlike the herbalist or the image maker, the shaman does not diagnose the cause of an illness from the symptoms: he speaks to spirits, or they enter him in trance and speak direct to the patient or assistants and tell them what is wrong. The shaman's friendly spirit may, if it is necessary, go and fetch the spirit who is causing all the trouble, so that it may explain what the sick person has done and how things can be put right.
A shaman is able to approach other orders of being in safety only if he or she can rely on spirit friends who have chosen him or her and divulged their names and the proper ways of addressing them.