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Updated: June 26, 2025
He wanted to go into the quaggi, the Singing-House, when the hunters gathered there for their mysteries, and the angekok, the sorcerer, frightened them into the most delightful fits after the lamps were put out, and you could hear the Spirit of the Reindeer stamping on the roof; and when a spear was thrust out into the open black night it came back covered with hot blood.
"I knew you had a seal," said the angekok, pausing between bites, after the edge of his appetite had been taken off; "my torngak told me you had found one at last." "Did he tell you that I had also found a bear?" asked Okiok, with deeper simplicity than ever. The wizard, without raising his head, and stuffing his mouth full to prevent the power of speech, glanced keenly about the floor.
"But but I am not a wise man, you know," Ippegoo ventured to remark. "True; but when I have made you an angekok then you will become a wise man don't you see?" As the word angekok signifies "wise man," Ippegoo would have been a fool indeed had he failed to see the truism. The sight raised his spirits, and made him look hopeful. "Well, then, stupid one, speak not, but listen.
When an angekok has sufficient courage to undertake this journey, his torngak, after giving him minute instructions how to act, conducts him under the earth or sea, passing on the way through the kingdom of those good souls who spend their lives in felicity and ease.
"Mother!" exclaimed the youth remonstratively, "Ujarak an idiot? Impossible! He is to make me an angekok to-night." "You, Ippe! You are not more fit for an angekok than I am for a seal-hunter."
Immediately Segulliak, the Angekok, plunged into the water and brought them successively on his back to the shore; he afterwards carried them to his tent, caused his wife to procure them dry garments, and spread a skin on the floor for them to sit and sleep on. The tent was soon crowded with people, who frequently asked them if they were not afraid?
He did so all the more readily that he himself aimed at the high and dignified office of an angekok, an aspiration which had at first been planted in him, and afterwards been carefully encouraged by his deceiver, because it made his dupe, if possible, a blinder and more willing tool.
The ideal heavens of modern poets and novelists, and of ancient priests, come no nearer than the drugged dreams of the angekok and the biraark of Greenland and Queensland to that rest and peace whereof it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive. To the wrong man each of our pictured heavens would be a hell, and even to the appropriate devotee each would become a tedious purgatory.
In Greenland the Angekok, acting as the interpreter or mouthpiece of a supernatural being from whom men learn how they may be fortunate, foretells the condition of the weather and the fortunes of fishing. A similar combination of the offices is found among the Ainu, and apparently among the Cakchiquels, among whom the divining function is said to have related particularly to war.
Now he is getting strong, and will soon be able to join in kick-ball, and pull-over, and he may perhaps, before long, teach your great angekok Ujarak some things that he does not yet know!" As this was said with a motion in one eye which strongly resembled a wink, the audience burst into mingled applause and laughter.
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