Tungusic shamanism
Anatoly Afanasyevich Alekseev is a Ph.D. of Historical Sciences, a well-known researcher and lecturer on the topic of shamanism of peoples of Siberia and the North, a professor of the Department of World, Russian History, Ethnology, Archaeology of the Faculty of History of the M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University. The professor comes from the village of Sebyan-Kyuel, Kobyaisky district, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), in his youth he was engaged in reindeer breeding, then he entered the history department of Yakutsk State University and since then he has been teaching for 35 years. He has lectured at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where he was awarded the nomination ‘Best Lecturer’ for his speeches on the traditional culture and religious beliefs of the Even. The professor himself was an assistant to the strongest shaman Savei (Semyon Stepanovich Vasiliev) for several years. Recently, Anatoly Afanasyevich published his long-standing ethnographic study ‘Tungusic shamanism’.
The following is a generalised text from the interview. In the 20s and 30s of the XX century in Yakutia about 4,500 people engaged in shamanism, folk healing and, in general, crafts that did not conform to the Soviet ideology were repressed. Shamans were deprived of documents, voting rights, and official employment, which effectively left them out of society. According to the idea of Soviet ideology, there was no place for shamanism and other supernatural beliefs in society, so the Soviet generation was brought up in a spirit of atheism. In the 1980s, having read many scientific works on the subject of shamanism, Anatoly Afanasyevich recognised that it was not a simple phenomenon. He came to a conclusion: this phenomenon is connected with nature, cosmos. And its basis is the unsolved by science mystery of mankind.
The professor notes that religious traditions and beliefs of Eastern peoples, including the peoples of the North and Siberia, correspond to the irrational method of cognition of the world, including such elements as magic, spirituality, mysticism, mythology. When as a Westerner, inclined to recognise only the material, it is not easy to accept an irrational approach. Thus, the professor suggests that traditional religious beliefs, Hinduism, Lamaism, and shamanism have a basis in paganism. These prerequisites exist in the religious beliefs of the indigenous peoples of the North and Siberia, which are based on animism, totemism, and fetishism. In this case, animism contains the concept of ‘spirits’, and it is they who teach the shaman supernatural abilities. As it is known, spirits are worshipped by many northern peoples, it is believed that every thing in the world has a soul. The material form of spirits-helpers of the shaman is reflected in his special clothes as metal figures, for example - animals. As a rule, they come to life at the beginning of the shamanistic ritual (kamlaniye). Therefore, the whole system of religious beliefs of northern peoples refers to the supernatural, which science cannot explain, simply because there are no such methods and in principle it is impossible within the materialistic approach to the study of shamanism. Anatoly Afanasyevich relays the words of the shaman Savei: ‘Not shamans treat people, but spirits through shamans’. The impossibility of a full-fledged study is due to the fact that materialistic science is limited in time and space. Modern science recognises that we know only a minuscule part of the truth, and the rest embodied in phenomena such as dark energy, dark matter remain unexplored. It is these points that are connected with the supernatural, the professor believes that in our century will open new methods for qualitative research of shamanism.
For practice it is necessary to know the theory. Anatoly Afanasyevich states that a shaman, especially a strong one, understands cosmic processes, celestial bodies, stars and star systems very well, this knowledge is symbolically reflected in the attributes of the shaman and in the mythology of the people. That is, without any technical means, scientific approaches, complex mathematical calculations, the shaman has been familiarised with the physical processes of the cosmos since ancient times and can successfully operate them for the purposes of his practice. And on the basis of these abilities the shaman moves to the lower and higher worlds.
The book is aimed at researchers and lovers of shamanism, the content reveals a new perspective on shamanism in the context of our century. According to the professor, in his research he did not make big conclusions, the work is largely observational in nature, Anatoly Afanasyevich passed on the words of shamans and his observations of their practice without distortion. But in the course of his research he came to the conclusion that shamanism, especially the practice of shamanism, has a connection with quantum physics. For example, in shamanic practice it is expressed by the spiritual operation of transplanting the heart of some beast to a human being, thus increasing the vital tonus of a person. Such ability is not available to every shaman, it requires not only a high level of skill in the shaman, but also in the spirits-helpers. Helping spirits are very powerful and supernatural beings, so their power seems to be infinite. They also teach shamans to move in space, to other planets or systems, to teleport, but this does not happen actually, but spiritually - it is not the shaman's body that moves, but the astral, spiritual body through entering a trance state. At the end the professor noted the importance of spiritual and religious understanding of life as a holistic perception of the world on a par with scientific. He expressed hope that the book will tell the readers how multifaceted the world is.
The book contains a historical background on shamanism, a summary of research on shamanism, biographies and practical experience of shamans who worked with Alexeev Anatoly, cultural and spiritual traditions associated with shamanism among the Tunguses (Even and Evenki of Yakutia) and personal notes of the professor.
Photos from the personal archive of A.A. Alekseev.
Asya Konstantinova,
leading specialist of the UNESCO Chair of M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU)