Identifier: handbooktoethnog00brit (find matches)
Title: Handbook to the ethnographical collections
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: British Museum. Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography Joyce, Thomas Athol, 1878-1942 Dalton, O. M. (Ormonde Maddock), 1866-1945
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Publisher: (London) : Printed by order of the Trustees
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Yia. 34.—Ceremoniiil mask from New Ireland. nnuiicate with spirits by theinselves, the tendency to compli-cate the means necessary to this end soon led to the growth ofa professional class of mediators. These men are the so-called shamans, medicine-men, or witch-doctors, who existamong all primitive ti-ibes. Fasting and hardship had earlyacquainted primitive man with trance, and with thosedelirious states in which subconscious ideas come to thesurface. What more natural then than that the strange andaltered tones, the voice low and out of the dust (Isa.xxix. 4), with which a man speaks when in such a condition,should be attributed to his posse.s.sion by an immigrant spirit INTRODUCTION 39 or god ? He is then the vehicle of a divine message, an ideaconcisely expressed by the Polynesian words describing a priestas pla atua, or god box . Accordingly^, the power of throw-ing themselves into a state of ecstasy is practised by allshamans, who further profess not only to speak with thevoic

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