The Sedna myth gives rise to the taboo, and the practices of the Sedna ceremony. The aboriginal theory of things (the origin of the sea creatures, the cause of storms, etc.), leads to aboriginal methods of dealing with them “On (close) acquaintance, such as perhaps is to be obtained only on the field,” says Dr. Marrett, “the savage turns out to be anything but a fool, more especially in anything that relates at all directly to the daily struggle for existence ... common sense is no monopoly of civilisation,” although the educated application of it to the material and spiritual needs of life may easily be so. The interest of the primitive theurgist is a practical one, and the elements in his problem are only two, namely, a supernormal power to be moved and a traditional rite that promises to move it. The special function of the conjuror or the medicine man among aboriginal peoples is to grapple with the abnormal, and “this ever tends to constitute for the savage a distinct dispensation, a world of its own.” There is in such a story as the Sedna legend some groundwork of common sense and verifiable experience; and in the practices which arise out of it, this has to be taken into account, together with some very real occult content (whether of suggestion or hypnotism, the most modern of sciences alone could say), and some conscious fraud no doubt on the part of the conjurors. Prior, however, to an account of this ceremony, it will be as well perhaps to devote some space to the conjurors themselves. For, among the Eskimo, as among other primitive peoples, the typical “medicine man” is a specialist, trained for his vocation and initiated into an exclusive guild. He is by no means necessarily a fraud and a charlatan. Normally, the primitive faith healer has as much faith in himself and his methods as his patients have, and between the two of them—when it is a question of a mental reaction to be obtained—there is no reason why absolute success should not crown his efforts. In the sphere of material results these amazing methods seem to be wholly empirical, and yet it cannot be denied that the Eskimo conjurors sometimes produce effects comparable only to some of the well-known demonstrations of the “magic” of the East. CHAPTER XIV THE CONJURORS