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Updated: May 10, 2025
Among the Kayans the professional soul-catcher, the DAYONG, is generally a woman who has served a considerable period of apprenticeship with some older member of the profession, after having been admonished to take up this calling by some being met with in dreams often a dream experienced during sickness.
The soul seems to be rather an inextended invisible principle; for, as the procedure of the soul-catcher shows, it is regarded as capable of being contained within, or attached to, almost any small object, living or inert.
"Who in the foul fiend's name have we here?" he called out as soon as I was come in, using many other oaths beside, which I have no need to set forth. "Is this some sprouting soul-catcher come to bestow upon us a word in season? Speak, boy, your name and business? Show your colours, d'ye hear! Or will you mount the table and pitch up a godly psalm for our sinful ears?
In mild cases the fowl may be merely waved over the head of the patient without being killed. This ceremony clearly involves a curious confusion of symbolical and descriptive acts, which are not ordered in strict consistency with any clearly defined theory of the nature of the soul and of its relations to the body, or of the exact nature of the task of the soul-catcher.
But it cannot always stave off death. If, in spite of the operations of one soul-catcher, the patient's strength still sinks, some other practitioner is usually called in for consultation.
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