Siberian Expeditions

Russia, Mountain Altai. Flowering "maralnik" (Ledebur's rhododendron) against the background of the water surface of Lake Teletskoye, one of the deepest lakes in Russia (max. depth 325 m).
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Picture from a tour with a guest from India in May 2021

Skiing (almost skitouring) in Kuzneckiy Alatau mountains, Siberia.

I translated into the text a lecture on Khakass (Siberian) shamanism for my Swiss friends, for their article in the Geneva Journal. The lecture was recorded at the Kazanovka National Khakass Museum. I think it will be interesting to all my friends and partners who are interested in the culture of North Asia - Siberia.

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Photo:
1. From Kazanovka Museum. The world of Khakassian shaman.
2. Valeriy Chebochakov, modern khakasian shaman (from Internet)
3. mnt. Borus

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Who is a shaman, who can become a shaman? We (among the Khakassians) regard the shaman as a mediator between spirits, gods and people. Maintain a certain balance between nature and man, or between spirits and man. It can be called this way and that. And the most important predestination of the shaman (practical) was the physical, moral and psychological health of each clan. That is, shamans have always been clan, not family, but only clan.

Not every person could become a shaman. Nowadays there are many such people who believe that they can become shamans. Such people even come to our museum. They say they are shamans and they cure people. And we ask them how you became shamans, how did you come to this? Very often you can hear that "I have read many books and I know everything about shamanism and can heal." But in traditional shamanism it is believed that a person who has a special gift for this can become a shaman. And this gift is passed on only by inheritance. And even such a gift is not enough ...

When they say that a gift is passed down from generation to generation, they mean that the helping spirits are passed on. A shaman cannot become a shaman without the helping spirits. That is the clan must have such spirits.

Only these spirits awaken shamanic abilities in the future shaman. This can happen at absolutely any age, in early childhood, adolescence or old age, only the spirits decide that the time has come.

After such a decision, a person begins "shamanic disease". This manifests itself in different ways. Most often it looked like crazy, inadequacy. In modern times, such a person would inevitably end up in a psychiatric clinic. A person could forget who he is and what is happening around, go for a walk in the winter barefoot and do various other crazy actions. Epilepsy may begin. At the same time, he may begin to see very strange visions, hallucinations, for example, seeing himself from the side and seeing some strange creatures.

And then one day he sees his main hallucination. Two black people come to him, or rather, two black entities. They grab him and place him in a boiling vat of water and boil it. The man tries to get out, but the "blacks" hold him, drown him in the water. And when they think the man is ready, cooked, they pull him out and shake him hard. The bones fall down, and they throw away the meat and skin. Then these black entities collect all the bones and begin to count them.

A person who can become a shaman must have one extra bone. This is a prerequisite. Sometimes this extra bone is visible in life, for example, six fingers on one hand. If they find an extra bone, they take it and run to show it to the patron of all shamans, Adam Khan. Only Adam Khan has the final word. He says yes, this person is not an impostor and allows him to start shamanic activities.

If there is no extra bone, then the person is declared an impostor, the shamanic disease goes away and the person returns to his normal life.

To start shamanic activity, a shaman needs to master the basics of the profession, sew a suit and make a tambourine. His primary skills are taught by an experienced shaman of his klan (if there is one), he sees his costume and tambourine in dreams or hallucinations. He sees the material from which it needs to be made, sees the details, sees the drawings that should be on the tambourine.

But the shaman did not make the tambourine and the costume, it was done by relatives from the mother's side. Most often an uncle. In Khakassia, there was a very strong tradition that an uncle was like a second father for a person, this concerned all aspects of life, not only shamanism. Each shaman costume was different, but there were the same and obligatory elements. Such as bells, ribbons.

The new shaman received his primary training from a more experienced shaman, usually a relative. Initial training included prayers to gods, spirits, and rituals of goodwill. Various healing practices: herbal treatment, moxibustion, acupuncture (oriental medicine).

But the main strength of the shaman was in the help-spirits. The more there were, the stronger the shaman was. This spirits, it is important, was inherited in the first place.

When the shaman's costume and tambourine were made, the shaman had to perform a ritual of sacrifice to the supreme ruler of all shamans, Adam Khan, who lives on Mount Borus (this is the highest mountain in Khakassia, 2318 m). According to legends, Adam Khan lives on the top of this mountain in a palace, the columns of which go high into the sky, which is not visible at the end.

Usually a ram was sacrificed. The head of the ram was cut off and the head must necessarily lie on the red cloth.

Then the shaman actually went to this mountain with this sacrifice. This path was not easy. Various forces interfered with him: dark spirits and shamans from other clans. And after the shaman returned from this mountain he became a real shaman. This was the final chord.

The shaman began his practice. Families approached him, addressed individually. But above all, the shaman performed rituals for his clan. For example, if there was a long drought, the shaman turned to the Spirit of Water to send rain. Conversely, when the rain lasted for a very long time, the shaman again turned to the Spirit of Water to stop the rain.

The rite of appeal to the Spirit of Water was as follows. A three-year-old bull was sacrificed, and a raft was built. Then the killed bull was put on the raft and the raft was sent down the river. Ideally, if the Water Spirit heard the shaman, the raft would be sucked into a funnel in the water. That is, the Spirit of Water accepted this sacrifice.

The first and main assistant of the shaman is the raven. He brought him different messages, collected information.

The shamans were white and black. The latter (black) people were very afraid, they were also called shamans-devourers. But such shamans were also necessary. For example, when a person fell ill and no treatment helped, it was believed that his soul had been stolen. This could have been done by spirits or another shaman. In such a situation, only a black shaman could help. Only he could find the stolen soul and take it away from the one who stole it. For the sick person to recover, the black shaman could not return the soul, but take the soul away from another person, and then that other person could get sick or die. This was the price of recovery.

In Khakassia, in a village near the museum, there lived a very strong black shaman. One day he said to his wife: he will sleep like a dead person for seven days, but then he will wake up. He fell asleep, his wife checked that he was really asleep and could not wake up. Then she went to the villagers and said that the shaman was sleeping like a dead man and that he urgently needed to be buried in the ground. It turns out that everyone was very much afraid of this shaman (his wife too), people thought that children were dying in the village because this shaman was stealing their souls.

They put it in a box and buried the box in the ground. Seven days later, everyone heard a terrible roar and noise and realized that the black shaman had woken up and was trying to get out of his grave. To prevent him from leaving the grave and passing on his black gift by inheritance, the villagers pierced the box with a stake made of larch.

Shamans used masks or ribbons to cover their eyes. This is because when the shaman performed the ceremony, he did not need eyes. There is a written report from an Orthodox priest from Krasnoyarsk who was present at a shamanic ceremony in a yurt. A sick man lay in the middle of the room, the shaman's eyes were covered, but when he began his ceremony: he jumped, beat a tambourine, danced, he never touched a single object.

Zigzag ribbons could be sewn into the shaman's costume, this symbolizes those creatures, helper spirits, who help the shaman during the ritual. Different animals could be sewn, these are the animals into which the shaman could enter. The bird is the upper world, the snake is the lower world. In the shaman's costume, nothing was done just like that.

The goal and mission of the shaman is to maintain a balance between the human world and the spirit world, as well as support his clan so that there are as many healthy people as possible in it.

If it happened that there were no children in the families, then different rituals were performed, not only shamanic ones. For example, a woman went to a special tree (it was believed that one clan comes from one type of tree, birch, larch, cedar, fir, etc.). Among her type of trees, the woman was looking for a "husband's tree", this is especially a tree with unusual signs. For example, this tree had a nest-like growth. It was believed that the souls of children were stored in such trees. The woman brought gifts to this tree, sometimes she could imitate sexual in*******se with this tree.

For the same purpose, they used the services of a shaman. It was believed that the souls of children live in the upper world, bathe in a milk lake and then from there go down into the bosom of a woman. The shaman did the following ritual: he poured milk into a bowl, then took a red thread, tied a ring to it, and dipped the ring into the milk. This symbolized that children, through the red thread, descend into the future mother.

In all these rituals (shamanic or not), the name of the Goddess Umai was remembered. She had wings and a headdress with three horns. Sometimes she could sit in the lotus position. Often she was made in the form of a home idol made of wood, tese (in Khakassian)

Throughout his life, a shaman could have from one to nine tambourines, the more tambourines, the stronger the shaman was considered. The strongest tambourine was the ninth and it was bronze. Such a strong shaman was born once every one hundred or two hundred years. There were legends about such shamans. One such bronze tambourine from Khakassia is kept in St. Petersburg, in the Kuntzkamera Museum.

And of course, the number of tambourines depended primarily on the number of helper spirits, the more there were, the stronger the shaman was. they received them by inheritance from relatives or could take them away from a weaker shaman.

Now in Tuva there are shamanic clinics, shamanic societies where they work together. But in fact, shamans have never been friends with each other. They competed and even fought among themselves. Because every shaman wanted to become stronger and more powerful, this meant taking these helper spirits away from another shaman. And if the shaman lost all the helper spirits, then this threatened him with death.

the modern world, there are very few real shamans, but they do exist. Shamans had great abilities, but they had their limits. They could not heal themselves and their children.

The shaman was buried separately from all people, in a secret place, far in the mountains. Most often next to a tree, most often it was a larch. His suit and a tambourine, broken in half, were hung on a tree. This meant that the shaman's path was over, which means that his costume and his tambourine ended with him.

Tambourines were made from different animals, but the larger the animal was, the stronger the tambourine was considered. The tambourine is Shaman's riding horse. To revive the horse, the shaman waves a tambourine over the fire - he warms it up. And the "horse" comes to life. So that the horse has a lot of strength, he feeds him: he smears the inner side of the tambourine with butter, sprinkles on it with milk and milk vodka.

On the shaman's tambourine there were drawings, always individual, but there were also canons. Three worlds were often painted: the upper world (the world of the gods), the middle world (our world of people) and the dark world (the world of black spirits).

Nowadays there are shamans who have three or four tambourines, no more.

If a shaman refused to be a shaman, then he suffered from a shamanic disease all his life. The spirits did not leave him alone. There were several shamans in the clan, but it was so that there were none.

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Russia, Khakasia Republic,
Kazanovka Muzeum,
Jule 2021

In March 2021

Megaliths of Khakassia, the northernmost steppe of Asia. Located in the center of Russia (Siberia), it is an ancient country where there are thousands (!!!) of prehistoric megaliths like this one.