Toornarsuk, or Shamanism Upside Down

In our time “spirits” have been reduced to mythical beings often objectified in the form of masks. The mask-figure of Toornarsuk, this cunning and mischievous Eskimo shamanistic spirit-figure’, seems to offer us both a mirror image of the various ways shamanism has been observed and a reflection of the complex picture shamanism presents to contemporary researchers. Shamanism, like Toornarsuk, seems both to mimic and to make sport of people and their moral and social orders. This is why shamanism, for a long period of time now, has constituted a kind of counterculture for minority communities.