As to the profession in general, a small number of wizards—wizards by vocation—may be strongly persuaded of the genuineness of the art; a much larger body mingles credulity in various proportions with fraud; and not a few are deliberate cheats. Some of the greatest masters of wizardry are dissatisfied with their own colleagues: that eminent shaman Scratching Woman said to Bogoras the traveller, “There are many liars in our calling.”[501] On the other hand, the wizard who demonstrated the “pointing-stick” to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and having no object upon which to discharge its Magic, thought it had entered his own head and thereupon fell ill, was certainly a believer;[502] and so was the wizard who felt that he had lost his power after drinking a cup of tea, because hot drinks were taboo to him.[503] Now a cheat needs no explanation—at least no more on the Yenisei than on the Thames; and the variety of those who mingle credulity with fraud is too great to be dealt with. What chiefly needs to be accounted for is the persuasion of those who—in spite of so many circumstances that seem to make disillusion inevitable—are in some manner true believers—in the manner, that is to say, of imaginative belief, founded on tradition and desire, unlike the perceptual belief of common sense. (_a_) Men under a vocation to wizardry, of course, begin with full belief in it. Probably they are possessed by the imaginative and histrionic temperament, which we have seen to be favourable to eminence as a wizard. Their vocation consists in the warm sympathy and emulation with which, before their own initiation, they witness the feats of great practitioners, and which generally imply a stirring of their own latent powers; just as many an actor has begun by being “stage-struck.” A man of such temperament is prone to self-delusion not only as to his own powers, but in other ways. The wizard often begins by fasting and having visions; thereby weakening his apprehension of the difference between fact and phantasy. The fixed idea of his calling begets in his imagination a story of what happened at his initiation, manifestly false, but not a falsehood—a “rationalisation” according to wizardly ideas of what he can remember of that time. If initiated with torture, which he endures for the sake of his vocation, he is confirmed in it. When called upon to perform, he “works himself up” by music, dancing and whatever arts he may have learned or discovered, into a state of dissociation, during which his judgment of everything extraneous to his task is suspended; and his dramatic demeanour uninhibited by fear or shame, unembarrassed by any second thoughts, makes, by vivid gestures and contortions and thrilling tones, a profound impression upon patients, clients and witnesses. His performances may derive some original traits from his own genius; but must generally conform to a traditionary pattern and to the consequent expectations of the audience.