Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/254

242 shadows, The bechoe of women who have died in childbed are supposed. to seize men's arms and. try to twist them around and set them wrong side foremost. A kind, of angelic being is appointed to convey the souls of the dead back to the soul-stock or string from which they were cut off and allotted to their personages at the time of their birth. Next in order are those ancestors who are honored on special occasions, and after them the near ancestors, of whom images are made, which the mŏkŏmŏkŏ accepts as its abode. Offerings are made most usually in a propitiatory shape, as when Latoere is asked to choose another man instead of the one he has made ill, or the shadow of a pig or of a hen is offered to the bechoe instead of the shadow of a man.

The priests form a separate class. The sign of the calling to the office is a fit of insanity or some illness. After a spell of wandering, the candidate qualifies himself for his functions by means of a short course of instruction from an active priest.

The minor divinities, or adoes (idols), are very numerous; and in order to make sure of accosting the right one for a particular occasion, the priest institutes a kind of ordeal. One of the test-forms is to name the list of the divinities while trying to make an egg, rest on a bottle: the one at whose name the egg stands is the right one. A new adoe or idol has to be carved for every case of illness; and the offering is made while the patient is holding the image in his hand, with drumming and prayers. In invocations of Latoere, three mediators are employed between the priest and the god; the adoe, which is asked to transmit the matter; Salio, who was formerly a man on the earth, but has been translated to the sky, who intercedes with the third mediator, a being whose part in the affair is not very clear.

If the prayers find a hearing, Saho reveals the. sign, which is manifested in a great wave or cloud floating above, but can be received only by sunlight. The priest intercepts it with a cloth, upon which it is reflected, in a shape like that of a glow-worm, and puts it upon the patient's brow, whereupon he is made well. This sign, called soemange, is also received in answer to many other offerings which are not made to Latoere, but it always comes from him, upon whom life or death ultimately depends. Offerings to the ancestral gods are seldom made in cases of illness, but usually to ask a blessing or avert misfortunes, or on special occasions, as the birth of a child or a marriage, in the way of announcement. These divinities are held in very high honor, and all manner of evil is predicted against any one who renounces them and goes over to Christianity.

A sin-offering is made for a chief who in any affair or case of offense has not done right, and is afraid that he will be made