living man may transmigrate into the body of an animal. Hence, for example, the doctor is sometimes desired to extract the patient’s soul from the body of a fowl, in which it has been hidden away by an evil spirit.[1]
Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. In Melanesia a woman knowing that a neighbour was at the point of death heard a rustling in her house, as of a moth fluttering, just at the moment when a noise of weeping and lamentation told her that the soul was flown. She caught the fluttering thing between her hands and ran with it, crying out that she had caught the soul. But though she opened her hands above the mouth of the corpse, it did not revive.[2] The Salish or Flathead Indians of Oregon believe that a man’s soul may be separated for a time from his body without causing death and without the man being aware of his loss. It is necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found and restored to the man or he will die. The name of the man who has lost his soul is revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform the sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like loss at the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man, and all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these soulless men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and singing. Towards daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed up so as to be
- ↑ J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane en Bila-stioomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,” in Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschapy, ii. de Serie, dl. iii., Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2 (1886), p. 302.
- ↑ Codrington, “Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,” in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, x. 281.
