First Shaman

Siv Yis, remembered in English-language ethnography as Shee Yee, is the archetypal healer of the Hmong. When the death lord Ntxwj Nyug was killing more people than were being born, the benevolent creator Saub gave Siv Yis a share of his own power, together with healing spirits and ritual instruments, and sent him to protect humankind from disease. Siv Yis fought sickness and the schemes of the death lord, rescuing souls that had been carried off to the otherworld. Hmong tellings recount that when he finally withdrew again into the sky his tools remained among humankind, and those whom his spirits choose take them up and become shamans in their turn. To this day the shaman who mounts the wooden bench, veils his face and enters trance announces himself as Siv Yis, so that the first shaman is held to be present in every seance; the resident shamanic spirits a master serves are the same neeb that once served Siv Yis.

Domains

• healing
• shamanism

Powers

• to cure sickness by mastering the spirits that cause it
• to ride in trance into the otherworld and ransom captive souls

Relations

• subordinate to: Grandfather CreatorSaub, the kindly creator who periodically rescues humanity, entrusted Siv Yis with a portion of his own healing powers and sent him to defend humankind against disease.Nicholas Tapp, 'Hmong Religion', Asian Folklore Studies 48/1 (1989), 59-94 (secondary); Jacques Lemoine, 'Shamanism in the Context of Hmong Resettlement', in The Hmong in Transition (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1986) (secondary)
• enemy: Lord of DeathHmong tales cast the death lord Ntxwj Nyug as the adversary whose afflictions Siv Yis was commissioned to undo, and the two contend over the souls of the sick.Nicholas Tapp, 'Hmong Religion', Asian Folklore Studies 48/1 (1989), 59-94 (secondary)

Sources

• Siv Yis is the first shaman of the Hmong, entrusted by the creator Saub with healing spirits to combat the diseases sent by Ntxwj Nyug, and every Hmong shaman in trance identifies himself with Siv Yis and wields the tools he left behind.: Nicholas Tapp, 'Hmong Religion', Asian Folklore Studies 48/1 (1989), 59-94 (secondary); Jean Mottin, 'A Hmong Shaman's Seance', Asian Folklore Studies 43/1 (1984) (secondary); Jacques Lemoine, 'Shamanism in the Context of Hmong Resettlement', in Glenn L. Hendricks, Bruce T. Downing and Amos S. Deinard (eds.), The Hmong in Transition (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1986) (secondary); Dwight Conquergood, I Am a Shaman: A Hmong Life Story with Ethnographic Commentary (Southeast Asian Refugee Studies Occasional Papers 8; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989) (secondary)