The Ko'mak Concept of Spirit
The people of the northeastern coastal forests and the inland steppe of Mikramurka, Matar, collectively known as the Ko'mak Group, or simply Ko'mak, agreed to a period of participant observation. After nearly two years, enough data, history, and context had been collected to begin to construct an accurate image of traditional Sebiestor shamanism as practiced by the people of the Vajkaa clan, a Northern dialect speaking, primative Clan of some 240 odd individuals. In particular, one extended familial group was worked with exclusively. During the period, much was learned about the religious beliefs, cosmology, and ritual practices of the Vajkaa, which translates to “Late-Rise”. In particular, their image of the spirit of the individual is of intense interest, as this idea is central to their entire religion, which pervades virtually every facet of life. What follows is a very short summary of the key points of their religion.
Much of what I learned came from the group's shaman, or seida, a middle aged Sebiestor woman of mixed ancestry named Kyllsa. Pronounced
cool-saw, she proved to be very patient with me, and spent much of her time ensuring that I was getting along well, and that I was grasping what she had taught me. All information here was observed firsthand, and every explanation or description has been proofread by that same shaman, to guarantee my own biases and imperfections do not manifest themselves in this work.
The Late-Rise, and indeed most of the Clans of the Ko'mak region, believe in a pantheon of spirits, which are literally countless; some of these spirits are malevolent, some benign, and all are capable of interacting with humankind to a greater or lesser extent. Certain entities, or spirits, grow important enough to merit individual naming, and appear throughout Matari faith; Matar, who is seen as a nurturing mother figure, and Patar or Pator, her consort, and who is seen as a dedicated guide and father. This duality – of things occurring in twos – is a recurring theme in their belief. When a child is conceived, it is Matar who shapes them, who creates their physical body, their sex, health, and all other physical attributes. Pator shapes the child spiritually and psychologically, and gives the child its personality and gender. Importantly, the Ko'mak people do differentiate sex and gender, and their society recognizes gender as a continuum, not one of two options. Pator and Matar are the father and mother spirits of all of creation, and as such, are especially revered.
As Pator and Matar create a person, they forge for that individual a spirit comprised of two distinct, and indeed disjoint, parts, which Kyllsa informed me were named elaki and joita, which translate quite nicely to “life” and “breath”. Life is the life force, the essence of the physical self; it cannot leave the body, save in death. Breath, however, is far more important; this part of the spirit can freely leave the body, to visit the spirit-world, to wander the material world, and so on. Rituals exist concerning both spirits, and they are designed to bring about different effects. Rituals of the elaki deal with sickness, injury, and other problems of the body, such as sleeplessness. Rituals of joita deal with the psyche, and are primarily concerned with allowing the spirit to wander, or to contact other spirits for guidance. A person can not live without both parts.
The family, or seidi is seen as likewise being comprised of two parts; the living and the dead. The dead can be contacted through rituals of varying sorts – which will be outlined later in this work – or through unintentional means, such as dreams, visions, and signs in nature. Every family will set a place at their table, daily, for all the dead members, and they will be given bread, beer, fruit and sweets. These deceased members of the family are as valuable a part of the seidi as the living members; they provide protection, guidance, and companionship, and they keep watch against malevolent spirits and magicks.
The breath-spirit can leave the body to wander either the material world or the spirit world – the trunk of the world tree the pathway from one to the other – and can also leave the body during waking times. This is the role of the Shaman; to wander to the spirit world when needed, seeking guidance from spirits beyond the family. This is the idea behind altered consciousness induced trance; through dance, rhythmic chant and drumming, or even through physical stress, such as sleep deprivation, the breath-spirit can be freed from the usual limitations placed upon it during waking hours; the Shaman then becomes a conduit of sorts, both able to speak with the spirits and able to relay messages from them, back to the members of their family. These special rituals – the trance, the vision quest, the exhaustion of the self, and the casting of runes or other divinatory tools – are unique to the Shaman herself. She goes through extensive training to learn to conduct the rituals, and to speak with all the myriad spirits, from animal and weather spirits, to the more common spirits of the deceased, to the whole pantheon of nature spirits. Each will bring their message in a unique way, and the Shaman must be able to interpret them.
Ritual singing and drumming are practiced by virtually all Sebiestor, though the Shaman's songs and drum are seen to be capable of more than the performances of the leity. The songs are equal parts art and ritual, and music will never be played for its own sake; the song will always have a purpose, an animal or object or spirit that it honors. One might sing and drum for the wind, or for a sick child, or to the fish, but it will have a purpose; music for music's sake is seen to demean and weaken it. Some music may rarely be played on other instruments, but a skin and frame drum is owned by virtually every member of the Clan, and an individual who never partakes of this form of expression is seen to be “off balance” somehow, and will almost certainly have concerned family singing for them.
Every family will maintain a special burial ground for their dead, and will locate this site on an island if it is at all possible, as the water forms a boundary over which only the spirit can pass following death. This can prevent the working of certain types of malevolent spirits who may seek to corrupt the bodies of loved ones buried in lesser locations. Death is not the end; death is simply the continuation of life on the other side of the material barrier, on the other side of the “mirror”. When a person dies, their spirit is now free to join with the spirits of their loved ones and the world around them, and the circle begins again. The role of these artifacts, however, will be explained in further depth in the next section.
This has been a very brief introduction into the few different sorts of entities that may be referred to as a “spirit” in this form of Shamanism.
- Dr. Jon Briselle, Dept. Of Anthropology, U.O.C.
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Topic: The Sebiestor Religion in Traditional Nomadic Clans - A brief introduction (Read 1051 times)