Tupilak- Inuit CreatureCreature · Monster

The Making

The angakkuq worked alone, far from the community, in darkness. Secrecy was the first requirement: if anyone learned what was being built, the magic failed. Rink's accounts from Greenland describe the shaman gathering bones from different animals and binding them into a single figure with peat and human hair. Seal and caribou were common. The most dangerous tupilait included parts from a child's corpse.

The assembled figure was rough, a composite thing that resembled no living creature. The shaman chanted over it, giving it purpose: a name, a target, a direction. Then came the final act. The angakkuq breathed an inua into the construct, a life force drawn from his own spirit. The bones stirred. The tupilak moved. It slipped into the sea or across the ice, and it did not stop until it found the person it had been made to kill.

The Reversal

A tupilak traveled great distances and could take the shape of a sea creature or a land animal during its journey. Only a shaman with powerful tuurngait could detect one approaching. For ordinary people, the first sign of a tupilak was illness, misfortune, or death with no visible cause.

But the construct carried its maker's fate inside it. Rasmussen recorded among the Iglulik that if the intended victim possessed stronger shamanic power than the tupilak's creator, the victim could seize the construct and reverse its purpose. The tupilak turned around. It crossed back over the same ice, through the same water, and arrived at the door of the person who had made it. The shaman who built a tupilak always knew this was possible. He had shaped the weapon, breathed his own spirit into it, and sent it out knowing it might come home.