A Shaman's Journey to the
Sea Spirit Takanakapsaluk
The girl who was thrown into the sea by her own father and had her finger joints so cruelly cut off as she clung in terror to the side of the boat has in a strange fashion made herself the stern goddess of fate among the Eskimos.
From her comes all the most indispensable of human food, the flesh of sea beasts; from her comes the blubber that warms the cold snow huts and gives light in the lamps when the long arctic night broods over the land. From her come also the skins of the great seal which are likewise indispensable for clothes and boot soles, if the hunters are to be able to move over the frozen sea all seasons of the year. But while Takanakapsaluk gives mankind all these good things, created out of her own finger joints, it is she also who sends nearly all the misfortunes which are regarded by the dwellers on earth as the worst and direst. In her anger at men's failing to live as they should, she calls up storms that prevent the men from hunting, or she keeps the animals they seek hidden away in a pool she has at the bottom of the sea, or she will steal away the souls of human beings and send sickness among the people. It is not strange, therefore, that it is regarded as one of a shaman's greatest feats to visit her where she lives at the bottom of the sea, and so tame and conciliate her that human beings can live once more untroubled on earth.
When a shaman wishes to visit Takanakapsaluk, he sits on the inner part of the sleeping place behind a curtain, and must wear nothing but his kamiks and mittens. A shaman about to make this journey is said to be Nak'a'3:cq: one who drops down to the bottom of the sea. This remarkable expression is due perhaps in some degree to the fact that no one can rightly explain how the journey is made. Some assert that it is only his soul or his spirit which makes the journey; others declare that it is the shaman himself who actually, in the flesh, drops down into the underworld.
The journey may be undertaken at the instance of a single individual, who pays the shaman for his trouble, either because there is sickness in his household which appears incurable, or because he has been particularly unsuccessful in his hunting. But it may also be made on behalf of a whole village threatened by famine and death owing to scarcity of game. As soon as such occasion arises, all the adult members of the community assemble in the house from which the shaman is to start, and when he has taken up his position-if it is winter, and in a snow hut, on the bare snow; if in summer, on the bare ground-the men and women present must loosen all tight fastenings in their clothes, the lacings of their footgear, the waistbands of their breeches, and then sit down and remain still with closed eyes, all lamps being put out, or allowed to bum only with so faint a flame that it is practically dark inside the house.
The shaman sits for a while in silence, breathing deeply, and then, after some time has elapsed, he begins to call upon his helping spirits, repeating over and over again: "The way is made ready for me; the way opens before me!"
Whereat all present must answer in chorus: "Let it be so!"
And when the helping spirits have arrived, the earth opens under the shaman, but often only to close up again; he has to struggle for a long time with hidden forces, ere he can cry at last:
"Now the way is open."
And then all present must answer: "Let the way be open before him; let there be way for him."
And now one hears, at first under the sleeping place: "Ha-lala-he-he-he, halala-he-he-he!"; and afterwards under the passage, below the ground, the same cry: "Halele-he!" And the sound can be distinctly heard to recede farther and farther until it is lost altogether.Then all know that he is on his way to the ruler of the sea beasts.
Meanwhile, the members of the household pass the time by singing songs in chorus, and here it may happen that the clothes I which the shaman has discarded come alive and fly about round the house, above the heads of the singers, who are sitting with closed eyes. And one may hear deep sighs and the breathing of persons long since dead; these are the souls of the shaman's namesakes, who have come to help. But as soon as one calls them by name, the sighs cease, and all is silent in the house until another dead person begins to sigh.
In the darkened house one hears only sighing and groaning from the dead who lived many generations earlier. This sighing and puffing sounds as if the spirits were down under water, in the sea, as marine animals, and in between all the noises one hears the blowing and splashing of creatures coming up to breathe. There is one song especially which must be constantly repeated; it is only to be sung by the oldest members of the tribe, and is as follows:
We reach out our hands /to help you up;/ We are without food, /we are without game. From the hollow by the entrance /you shall open, /you shall bore your way up. / We are without food, and we lay ourselves down / holding out hands /to help you up!An ordinary shaman will, even though skillful, encounter many dangers in his flight down to the bottom of the sea; the most dreaded are three large rolling stones which he meets as soon as he has reached the sea floor. There is no way round; he has to pass be- tween them, and take great care not to be crushed by these stones, which chum about, hardly leaving room for a human being to pass. Once he has passed beyond them, he comes to a broad, trodden path, the shaman's path; he follows a coastline resembling that which he knows from on earth, and entering a bay finds himself on a great plain, and here lies the house of Takanakapsaluk, built of stone, with a short passageway, just like the houses of the tunit. Outside the house one can hear the animals puffing and blowing, but he does not see them; in the passage leading to the house lies Takanakapsaluk's dog stretched across the passage taking up all the room; it lies there gnawing at a bone and snarling. It is dangerous to all who fear it, and only the courageous shaman can pass by it, stepping straight over it as it lies; the dog then knows that the bold visitor is a great shaman, and does him no harm.
These difficulties and dangers attend the journey of an ordinary shaman. But for the very greatest, a way opens right f rom the house whence they invoke their helping spirits; a road down through the earth, if they are in a tent on shore, or down through i the sea, if it is in a snow hut on the sea ice, and by this route the shaman is led down without encountering any obstacle. He almost glides as if falling through a tube so fitted to his body that he can check his progress by pressing against the sides, and need not actually fall down with a rush. This tube is kept open for him by all the souls of his namesakes, until he returns on his way back to earth.
Should a great shelter wall be built, outside the house of Takanakapsaluk, it means that she is very angry and implacable in her feelings towards mankind, but the shaman must fling himself upon the wall, kick it down and level it to the ground. There are some who declare that her house has no roof, and is open at the top, so that she can better watch, from her place by the lamp, the doings of mankind. All the different kinds of game: seal, bearded seal, walrus, and whale are collected in a great pool on the right of her lamp, and there they lie puffing and blowing.
When the shaman enters the house, he at once sees Takanakapsaluk, who, as a sign of anger, is sitting with her back to the lamp and with her back to all the animals in the pool. Her hair hangs down loose all over her face, a tangled, untidy mass hiding her eyes, so that he cannot see. It is the misdeeds and offenses committed by men which gather in dirt and impurity over her body. All the foul emanations from the sins of mankind nearly suffocate her. As the shaman moves towards her, Isarrataitsoq, her father, tries to grasp hold of him. He thinks it is a dead person come to expiate offenses before passing on to the Land of The Dead, but the shaman must then at once cry out:
"I am flesh and blood" and then he will not be hurt. And he must grasp Takanakapsaluk by one shoulder and turn her face towards the lamp and towards the animals, and stroke her hair, the hair she has been unable to comb out herself, because she has no fingers; and he must smooth it and comb it, and as soon as she is calmer, he must say:
"Those up above can no longer help the seals up by grasping their foreflippers."
Then Takanakapsaluk answers in the spirit language:
"The secret miscarriages of the women and breaches of taboo in eating boiled meat bar the way for the animals."
The shaman must now use all his efforts to appease her anger, and at last, when she is in a kindlier mood, she takes the animals one by one and drops them on the floor, and then it is as if a whirlpool arose in the passage, the water pours out from the pool and the animals disappear in the sea. This means rich hunting and abundance for mankind.
It is then time for the shaman to return to his fellows up above, who are waiting for him. They can hear him coming a long way off; the rush of his passage through the tube kept open for him by the spirits comes nearer and nearer, and with a mighty "Plu-a-he-he" he shoots up into his place behind the curtain: "Plu-plu," like some creature of the sea, shooting up from the deep to take breath under the pressure of mighty lungs.
Then there is silence for a moment. No one may break this silence until the shaman says:
"I have something to say."
Then all present answer: "Let us hear, let us hear."
And the shaman goes on, in the solemn spirit language: "Words will arise."
And then all in the house must confess any breaches of taboo they have committed.
" It is my fault, perhaps," they cry, all at once, women and men together, in fear of famine and starvation, and all begin telling of the wrong things they have done. All the names of those in house are mentioned, and all must confess, and thus much comes to light which no one had ever dreamed of; everyone learns his neighbors' secrets. But despite all the sin confessed, the shaman ma: on talking as one who is unhappy at having made a mistake, and again and again break out into such expressions as this:
"I seek my grounds in things which have not happened; I speak as one who knows nothing."
There are still secrets barring the way for full solution of trouble, and so the women in the house begin to go through all the names, one after another; nearly all women's names; for it always their breaches of taboo which were most dangerous. Now and again when a name is mentioned, the shaman exclaims in relief:
"Taina, taina!"
It may happen that the woman in question is not present, and in such a case, she is sent for. Often it would be quite young girls or young wives, and when they came in crying and miserable, it was always a sign that they were good women, good penitent women. And as soon as they showed themselves, shamefaced and weeping, the shaman would break out again into his cries of self-reproach:
"I seek, and I strike where nothing is to be found! I seek, and I strike where nothing is to be found! If there is anything, you mustsay so!"
And the woman who has been led in, and whom the shaman has marked out as one who has broken her taboo, now confesses:
"I had a miscarriage, but I said nothing, because I was afraid, and because it took place in a house where there were many.”
She thus admits that she has had a miscarriage, but did not venture to say so at the time because of the consequences involved affecting her numerous housemates; for the rules provide that as soon as a woman has had a miscarriage in a house, all those living in the same house, men and women alike, must throwaway all the house contains of qitupt:cq: soft things, i.e., all the skins on the sleeping place, all the clothes, in a word all soft skins, thus including also ilupErcq: the sealskin covering used to line the whole interior of a snow hut as used among the Iglulingmiut. This was so serious a matter for the household that women sometimes dared not report a miscarriage; moreover, in the case of quite young girls who had not yet given birth to any child, a miscarriage might accompany their menstruation without their knowing, and only when the shaman in such a case as this, pointed out the girl as the origin of the trouble and the cause of Takanakapsaluk's anger, would she call to mind that there had once been, in her menstruation skin (the piece of thick-haired caribou skin which women place in their underbreeches during menstruation) something that looked like "'thick blood." She had not thought at the time that it was anything particular, and had therefore said nothing about it, but now that she is pointed out by the shaman, it recurs to her mind. Thus at last the cause of Takanakapsaluk's anger is explained, and all are filled with joy at having escaped disaster. They are now assured that there will be abundance of game on the following day. And in the end, there may be almost a feeling of thankfulness towards the delinquent. This then was what took place when shamans went down and propitiated the great Spirit of the Sea.
from Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos, vol. VII, no. 1 of Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-1924. Knud Rasmussen.