Shamanism Among Eskimo Peoples - Some Kinds of Magic Requiring Secrecy (or Novelty), and The Neutralizing Effect of Publicity

Some Kinds of Magic Requiring Secrecy (or Novelty), and The Neutralizing Effect of Publicity

It was believed in several contexts that secrecy or privacy may be needed for an act or an object (either beneficial or harmful, intended or incidental) to be effective, and that publicity may neutralize its effects.

• Magic formulae usually required secrecy and could lose their power if they became known by other people than their owners. For example a Chugach man experienced a sea otter swimming around, singing a song, a magic formula. He knew it is a help in hunting, whose efficiency will be lost for him if anybody else learns it.
• Deliberately harmful magical acts (ilisiinneq) had to be done in secrecy.
• If the victim of another detrimental magical act (tupilaq-making) had enough magical power (for example through amulets) to notice the act and "rebound" it back to the perpetrator, the endangered person could escape retribution only by public confession of his planned (and failed) sorcery.
• a rite of passage celebrating the first major hunting success of a boy often contained a "partaking" element: the whole community cut the dead animal or took part in its consumption. The function of this rite was to establish a positive relationship between the young man and the game animal; because the killed animal could bring danger to the hunter, this ritual lessened the danger by sharing the responsibility.

Some of the shaman's functions can be understood in the light of this notion of secrecy versus publicity. The cause of illness was usually believed to be soul theft or a breach of some taboo (such as miscarriage). Public confession (led by the shaman during a public seance) could bring relief to the patient. Similar public rituals were used in the cases of taboo breaches that endangered the whole community (bringing the wrath of mythical beings causing calamities).

In some instances, the efficiency of magical formulae could depend on their novelty. A creation myth attributes such power to newly created words, that they became instantly true by their mere utterance. Also in shamanic practice, too much use of the same formulae could result in losing their power. According to a record, a man was forced to use all his magic formulae in an extremely dangerous situation, and this resulted in losing all his conjurer capabilities. As reported from the Little Diomede Island, new songs were needed regularly for the ceremonial held to please the soul of the whale, because "the spirits were to be summoned with fresh words, worn-out songs could never be used...".