20
STEPHEN MORRIS
and calling them up. A spirit, as one shaman said, may not be just casually summoned: it would be like making unintelligible noises at people, and could be as dangerous as it would be to summon an aristocrat in the village without the proper courtesies. Even so, to summon spirits is always dangerous; and the shaman and the patient go into the ceremony armed with iron for strength, and only after the ritual area has been cleansed with water and incantations. When the ceremony is over the patient is only gradually re-introduced to the mundane world over a period of three days, during which he is required to observe taboos.
The curing ceremonies that a shaman can perform are three in number. The first, and by far the commonest, is what is called caring for the sick. This ceremony is the shaman's simplest routine for diagnosing and curing illness; it lasts only one evening. The shaman and his equipment—a drum, a spearhead, and a bunch of fresh green leaves with ritual qualities—are fetched by a member of the sick person's household. When the shaman and his patient are prepared and ready, the former covers his head and face with a cloth and beats his drum, chanting an invitation to one of his spirit friends to come and help. When the spirit arrives—signalled by a shaking of the head and a hissing—the spirit, speaking through the shaman, sometimes in another voice and even in another language, asks why he has been summoned. He is shown the patient and asked to help. The shaman, with the spirit in him, then examines the sick person. He may hold up his drum (which is open at one end) and place a lighted candle between the drum and the patient and look through it into the patient's body to see if the spirit can discover what is wrong. If the inspection is successful, the spirit, through the shaman, tells the assistant and the audience what is the matter. Everybody then asks him to help. He may refuse and depart immediately, in which case the shaman hisses violently and shakes his head until the spirit is gone. He then yawns several times and asks the audience what has happened. After some discussion the shaman then summons another spirit,
If, however, the first spirit does diagnose the cause of the illness, he will usually help cure it, though he may have to leave the shaman, still in trance, in order to fetch another spirit to help in the cure. This second spirit may not be one of the shaman's familiars. When the diagnosis and the treatment are both agreed on, the shaman holds up his open right hand and sings, asking for gifts in the form of invisible stones and flowers from sky spirits. When these are given he shuts