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Mircea Eliade - Eskimo rebirth experiences
Identifier
011496
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Mircea Eliade – Shamanism Archaic techniques of ecstasy
According to the traditions of the Altaian shamans, the spirits of their ancestors eat their flesh, drink their blood, open their bellies and so on. The Kazak Kirgiz baqca says ‘I have five spirits in heaven who cut me with forty knives, prick me with forty nails and so forth.'
The ecstatic experience of dismemberment of the body followed by a renewal of the organs is also known to the Eskimo. They speak of an animal (bear, walrus etc) that wounds the candidate tears him to pieces or devours him; then new flesh grows around his bones. Sometimes the animal that tortures him becomes the future shaman’s helping spirit