Shine a light: The shaman death experience among inuits. Among Inuit angakkuq (shaman) and specifica
Shine a light: The shaman death experience among inuits. Among Inuit angakkuq (shaman) and specifically the Iglulik shaman must be able “to see himself as a skeleton” and name all the parts of his body, every single bone by name in the sacred shaman’s language. This greatly recalls the “dismembering” of Siberian shamans. Also a kind of “worm test”, reminiscent of American Indians’ “ant test”, has apparently been known by the Eskimos. By letting worms eat the meat from the body the shaman became “light and shining”, as (the insanely good looking) anthropologist Knud Rasmussen was told in North Alaska in the first years of the 1900s. That the shaman is shining, or filled with an inner light, is a widely spread idea. In this way he was thought to be observed by his helping spirits. Photo taken of a shaman around 1890 in Alaska and a portrait of Knud Rasmussen in eskimo gear in 1906. Text reworked from Eskimo Shamanism written by Erik Holtved in 1967. -- source link
#knud rasmussen#shaman#death#inuit#inuit mythology