Note 64 — The Cycle of Life
Reading edition
When this has been done, a medium seats herself in front of the body; and, covering her face with her hands, begins to chant and wail, bidding the spirit to enter her body. Suddenly she falls back in a faint, while suppressed excitement is manifested by all the onlookers. After a moment or two, fire and water are placed at her head and feet, “in order to frighten the spirit away,” and then the medium gives the last message of the dead man to his family. This is, except for very rare exceptions, the only time that the spirits of the deceased communicate with mortals; and it is, so far as the writer has been able to learn, the only occasion when the medium repeats messages given to her. At other times she is possessed by natural spirits,64 who then talk directly with mortals.