Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/329

 provided with a knife, the magician himself makes his appearance carried in a net, decked with precious stones, feathers, &c. The assembled people receive him with singing, dancing, and shouts of joy, which are accompanied by a barbaric, deafening, hideous kind of music, which is supposed to occasion the entrance of the spirit which has passed away, into the Singhilli; he himself entreats the spirit to enter into him. This accomplished, he rises and gesticulates quite after the manner of one possessed, tears his garments, rolls his eyes, bites and scratches himself; while doing so, he expresses the dead man’s desires, and replies to the questions of those who inquire of him about their own affairs. The speaking dead threatens the survivors with distress and misery, wishes them all kinds of mishaps, inveighs against the ingratitude of his blood-relations in having given him no human blood. Cavazzi says, “The working of demoniacal fury shows itself in him, and he yells in a frightful manner, takes the blood by force which is not rendered to him, seizes a knife, thrusts it into some one’s breast, cleaves heads, rips up bellies, and drinks the blood which streams forth. He rends the bodies and divides the flesh among those present, who devour it without remorse, although it may be that of their nearest relatives; they know beforehand that this is how the thing will end, but go notwithstanding to the gathering with the greatest rejoicing.

“The Gagas imagine that the dead feel hunger and thirst. If any one becomes ill, or especially if he has visions or sees apparitions and dreams, he sends for a Singhilli and questions him. The latter inquires into all the circumstances, and the result is that the apparition proves to be that of one of his deceased relations who is present there, and he is told that he must go to another Singhilli in order to have it driven away, for each Singhilli has his own special business. This last now conducts him to the grave of the person who appeared to him, or who is