and habits of the superior being.  If it is a spirit supposed to dwell in Igorot or Kalinga land, she speaks in a dialect unfamiliar to her hearers, orders them to dance in Igorot fashion, and then instructs them in dances, which she or her townspeople could never have seen. [124] At times she carries on sleight-of-hand tricks, as when she places beads in a dish of oil, and dances with it high above her head, until the beads vanish.  A day or two later she will recover them from the hair of some participant in the ceremony.  Most of her acts are in accordance with a set procedure; yet at times she goes further, and does things which seem quite inexplainable.

One evening, in the village of Manabo, we were attending a ceremony.  Spirit after spirit had appeared, and at their order dances and other acts had taken place.  About ten o’clock a brilliant flash of lightning occurred, although it was not a stormy evening.  The body of the medium was at that time possessed by Amangau, a head-hunting spirit.  He at once stopped his dance, and announced that he had just taken the head of a boy from Luluno, and that the people of his village were even then dancing about the skull.  Earlier in the evening we had noticed this lad (evidently a consumptive) among the spectators.  When the spirit made this claim, we looked for him, but he had vanished.  A little later we learned that he had died of a hemorrhage at about the time of the flash.

Such occurrences make a deep impression on the mind of the people, and strengthen their belief in the spirit world; but, so far as could be observed, the prestige of the medium was in nowise enhanced.

Since most of the ceremonies are held to keep the family or individual in good health, the medium takes the place of a physician.  She often makes use of simple herbs and medicinal plants, but always with the idea that the treatment is distasteful to the being, who has caused the trouble, and not with any idea of its curative properties.  Since magic and religion are practically the same in this society, the medium is the one who usually conducts or orders the magic rites; and for the same reason she, better than all others, can read the signs and omens sent by members of the spirit world.

Magic and Omens.—­The folk-tales are filled with accounts of magical acts, performed by “the people of the first times.”  They annihilated time and space, commanded inanimate objects to do their will, created human beings from pieces of betel-nut, and caused the magical increase of food and drink.  Those days have passed, yet magical acts still pervade all the ceremonies; nature is overcome, while the power to work evil by other than human means is a recognized fact of daily life.  In the detailed accounts of the ceremonies will be found many examples of these magical acts, but the few here mentioned will give a good idea of all.