Shamanic attributes of the Evenki‑Orochon people

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Shamanic attributes of the Evenki‑Orochon people

Date:

08.09.2021

Annotation:

Shamanism among the peoples of Siberia is considered a classic phenomenon of worldview, characterized as a holotropic type of relationship between humans and the cosmos. In it, the shaman’s personality plays a special role; the shaman has the ability to enter an altered state of consciousness — including ecstasy — during the ritual shamanic action known as kamlanie. Kamlanie is usually performed in a shaman’s yurt by the light of a campfire in the dark. In particularly difficult situations – such as a serious illness, an epidemic, or the death of a person – the shamanic ritual was performed at shamanic prayer sites, with the construction of a shamanic tent featuring galleries – passages between the worlds of the upper and middle worlds. The shamanic tent itself represented a model of the world, along which the shaman performed spiritual flights during the ritual. During a shamanic ritual, the shaman would invariably put on a special costume — shamanic attire, which symbolized the universe and the bird‑beast, the shaman’s ancestor; he would also use various ritual objects — a drum and a mallet, a staff, a mask, and amulets.

RUS:

Шаманские атрибуты эвенков-орочон

About collections

This catalogue presents the shamanic collections of the Siberian collector D.M. Golovachev (1910), A.A. Makarenko, a staff member of the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum (now the Russian Ethnographic Museum), and the Moscow researcher and anthropologist M.G. Levina (1927–1928) from the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum.

They comprise rare and unique objects from a shamanic burial site on the Nercha River, near the village of Kykery in the Transbaikal Region, dating from 1910, and a shamanic prayer site from Transbaikalia and Northern Baikal, dating from 1927–1928. The former were collected from an aerial arangas structure near the underground burial site of a large Orochon shaman. The Transbaikal collection includes a shaman's caftan with two breastplates, a shaman's iron crown, a headdress, footwear, a copper mask, a drum with a mallet, a wooden staff with a bone top shaped like a horse's head, and three hunting amulets.

The most valuable remains of the shaman's costume are a single-piece garment made of elk suede, dyed orange, with fringes and cords, giving the costume the appearance of a bird and a deer. The caftan is embroidered with numerous iron pendants—in the form of an ancestor's skeleton, an arcalana back pendant depicting animals—birds, deer, horses, and bears—as well as cosmic objects—symbols of the sky and the sun and passage to the underworld with guardian spirits. The caftan dates to the early 19th century based on an inscription on the bell and the presence of bone pendants in the form of circles—solar symbols and birds. This is a unique shaman's costume, preserving relic symbols and pendants.

The collection from the shaman's burial site near the Ashinkan area on the Angara River was assembled by Levin from the arangas burial of the great shamaness Odokon. The catalog features items primarily from the collector D.M. Golovachev and several items from the collection of A.A. Makarenko from the shaman's tent, as well as from M.G. Levin's arangas burial.

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