Magic words to bring seals
Shaigshalasha she who is below us,
The sea-bed dweller's her father
Down here (on the floor) coming
Is outside our house encircling us.
Shaigshalasha she who is below us, her father,
Dweller of the sea Let him rise up
Here his breath I wish to hear!
Rasmussen, 5th Thule expedition vol #9
The Sea Spirit Nuliajuk
the Mother of the Sea Beasts
Once in times long past people left the settlement at Qingmertoq in Sherman Inlet. They were going to cross the water and had made rafts of kayaks tied together. They were many and were in haste to get away to new hunting grounds. And there was not much room on the rafts they tied together.At the village there was a little girl whose name was Nuliajuk. She jumped out on to the raft together with the other boys and girls, but no one cared about her, no one was related to her, and so they seized her and threw her into the water. In vain she tried to get hold of the edge of the raft; they cut her fingers off, and lo! as she sank to the bottom, the stumps of her fingers became alive in the water and bobbed up round the raft like seals. That was how the seals came. But Nuliajuk herself sank to the bottom of the sea. There she became a spirit, the sea spirit, and she became the mother of the sea beasts, because the seals had formed out of her fingers that were cut off. And she also became mistress of everything else alive, the land beasts too, that mankind had to hunt.
In that way she obtained great power over mankind, who had despised her and thrown her into the sea. She became the most feared of all spirits, the most powerful, and the one who more than any other controls the destinies of men. For that reason almost all taboo is directed against her, though only in the dark period while the sun is low, and it is cold and windy on earth; for then life is most dangerous to live.Nuliajuk lives in a house on the bed of the sea. At the bottom of the sea there are lands just as on the earth above the sea, and Nuliajuk lives in a house that is arranged in the same manner as those that humans live in. In her house Nuliajuk lives remote from all, hasty in her anger and terrible in her might when she wishes to punish mankind.
She notices every little breach of taboo, for she knows everything. Whenever people have been indifferent towards her by not observing taboo, she hides all the animals; the seals she shuts up in her inaut ( a drip basin that she has under her lamp). As long as they are inside it, there are no animals to hunt in the sea, and mankind has to starve; the shamans then have to summon their helping spirits and conjure her to be kind again.
Some shamans are content to let their helping spirits work for mankind, they themselves remaining in their houses summoning and conjuring in a trance, whereas others rush down to her themselves to fight her, to overcome her and appease her. But there are also some who draw Nuliajuk herself up to the surface of the land. They do it in this way:
They make a hook fast to the end of a long seal thong and throw it out of the entrance passage; the spirits set the hook fast in her, and the shaman hauls her up into the passage. There everybody can hear her speaking. But the entrance from the passage into the living room must be closed with a block of snow, and this block, ukaq, Nuliajuk keeps on trying to break into pieces in order to get into the house to frighten everybody to death. And there is great fear in the house. But the shaman watches the ukuaq, and so Nuliajuk never gets into the house. Only when she has promised the shaman to release all the seals into the sea again does he take her off the hook and allow her to down into the depths again.
In that way a shaman, who is only a human being, can subdue Nuliajuk and save people from hunger and misery by means of his words and his helping spirits.
In her house Nuliajuk is surrounded by a lot of frightful beings. Just inside the entrance to her house passage sits kataum inua, the ruler of the passage, who keeps an exact record of all the breaches of taboo committed by mankind up on earth. Everything he sees and hears he passes onto Nuliajuk, and he tries in every possible way to scare the shamans who want to go in to her, so that they will abandon their intention of mollifying her.
A long way in the passage itself there is a big black dog, and he too keeps watch to see that none but the greatest shamans, of whom he is afraid, get into the house.
Nuliajuk herself lives with Isarrataitsoq: “the one with no wings, or the one with no arms” – a woman, but nobody knows who she is. She has the same husband as Nuliajuk, and he is a little sea scorpion.
A child, too, lives with Nuliajuk; she is called Ungaq: “the one who screams like a child”; it is a baby that was once stolen from a sleeping mother when her husband was out hunting at the breathing holes.
This is all we know of Nuliajuk, the sea spirit, who gives seals to mankind, it is true, but who would much rather that mankind, from whom she once received no pity when she lived on earth, perished too.
Told by Nalungiaq
~ ~ ~
The powers that rule the earth and all the animals and the lives of mankind on earth are the great spirits who live in the sea, on land, out in space and in the Land of the Sky. There are many, and many kinds of spirits, but there are only three really great and really independent ones, and they are: Nuliajuk, Narssuk and Tatqeq. These three are looked upon as directly practicing spirits, and the most powerful of them all is Nuliajuk, the mother of animals and mistress both of the sea and the land. At all times she makes mankind feel how she vigilantly and mercilessly takes care that all souls, of both animals and mankind, are shown the respect that ancient rules of life demand.She rulers through to-nrat, both the ordinary to-nrat and to-nrat kiglorigtut: the evil spirits. By means of these she either makes the animals visible and easy to hunt, so that people have food enough and clothing and warmth, or she makes them invisible, lets them disappear entirely, so that mankind has to go hungry and cold.
Through the same spirits she can influence wind and weather, especially persoq: blizzard, which prevents hunting trips and hunting at the breathing holes.
Narssuk or Sila, and Tatqeq or Aningait, are more subordinate; nevertheless, they work quite independently, especially Narssuk out in space; for Tatqeq in the Land of the Sky seems mostly to serve the souls in the Land of the Dead and therefore is the least feared.
In consequence, life on earth is a constant alternation between evil and good, between mankind and the universe, the powers of the sea, the land, space and the Land of the Sky. Mankind is held in awe through its fear of hunger and sickness.
I once asked the following question of Qaqortingneq:
“What is it you desire most of life?”
He answered:
“I would like at all times to have the food I require, that is to say animals enough, and then the clothes that can shield me from wind and weather and cold.“I would like to live without sadness and without pain, I mean without suffering of any kind, without sickness.
“And as a man I wish to be close to all kinds of animals that in the hunt and at all kinds of sports, I can excel over my countrymen.
“All that I desire for myself I desire also for those who through relationship are near to me in this life.”
“What will you do to attain all this?”
“I must never offend Nuliajuk or Narssuk.
“I must never offend the souls of animals or a to-nraq so that it will strike me with sickness.
“When hunting and wandering inland, I must as often as I can make offerings to animals that I hunt, or to dead who can help me, or to lifeless things, especially stones or rocks, that are to have offerings for some reason or other.
“I must make my own soul as strong as I can, and for the rest seek strength and support in all the power that lies in the name.
“I must observe my forefathers’ rules of life in hunting customs and taboo, which are nearly all directed against the souls of dead people or dead animals.
“I must gain special abilities or qualities through amulets.
“I must try to get hold of magic words or magic songs that either give hunting luck or are protective.
“If I cannot manage in spite of all these precautions, and suffer want or sickness, I must seek help from the shamans, whose mission it is to be the protectors of mankind against all hidden forces and dangers of life.”
5th Thule Expedition, Knud Rasmussen, Vol. #8
Nunavut region