All this is done generally without any apparent inward emotion
or outward agitation; but, on some occasions, his countenance
becomes fierce, and as it were inflamed, and his whole frame
agitated with inward feeling; he is seized with an universal
trembling, the perspiration breaks out on his forehead, and his
lips turning black are convulsed; at length tears start in
floods from his eyes, his breast heaves with great emotion, and
his utterance is choked. These symptoms gradually subside.
Before this paroxysm comes on, and after it is over, he often
eats as much as four hungry men under other circumstances could
devour. The fit being now gone off, he remains for some time
calm and then takes up a club that is placed by him for the
purpose, turns it over and regards it attentively; he then looks
up earnestly, now to the right, now to the left, and now again
at the club; afterwards he looks up again and about him in like
manner, and then again fixes his eyes on the club, and so on for
several times. At length he suddenly raises the club, and, after
a moment's pause, strikes the ground or the adjacent part of the
house with considerable force, immediately the god leaves him,
and he rises up and retires to the back of the ring among the
people (vol. i. pp. 100, 101).


The phenomena thus described, in language which, to any one who
is familiar with the manifestations of abnormal mental states
among ourselves, bears the stamp of fidelity, furnish a most
instructive commentary upon the story of the wise woman of
Endor. As in the latter, we have the possession by the spirit or
soul (Atua, Elohim), the strange voice, the speaking in the
first person. Unfortunately nothing (beyond the loud cry) is