Behind shamanism: Changing voices of Siberian Khanty cosmology and politics

Sot. SCI. .Med. Vol. 24. No. II. pp. 1085-1093. Printed in Great Britain. .A1 rights reserved

1987 Copyright

0277-9536 8’ 53.00 + 0.00 S 1987 Pergamon Journals Ltd

BEHIND SHAMANISM: CHANGING VOICES OF SIBERIAN KHANTY COSMOLOGY AND POLITICS IMARJORIEMANDELSTAMBALZER Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, The Wilson Center. Smithsonian Institution. Washington. DC 20560. U.S.A. Abstract-Siberian shamanism has roots in hunting traditions. kinship organization and soul beliefs which have changed under Soviet rule. Aspects of shamanic epistemology and curing survive. although native medical logic sometimes clashes with modem positivist medicine. Assumptions behind Siberian, particularly Khanty. shamanism are examined throug,h analysis of training. seances and cosmology. The changing social context of shamanism is explored m a framework of Soviet pressure to reject shamanic ‘superstitution’ and ‘exploration.’ Shamans themselves have adapted their politics, diagnoses and symbolic actions to an increasingly cold social climate. Data results from ethno-historical and field research. including a summer 1975 trip to the Ob-Ugrian Khanty (Ostiak). Kqv words-shamanism,

cosmology, medicine. Siberia

INTRODUCTION

only to give texture

In the northern Ob River region of Siberia, a Khanty woman exclaimed to me “How can people say there are no shamans? Of course there are,” as if shamans were as natural as the sky [l]. But the social and political climate of Siberian shamanism has grown increasingly cold in the Soviet period. My consultant

went on to lament: I had a brother who was sick and we invited a shaman, but my brother died. The shaman came in his own clothes, and tried to collect the evil spirits causing sickness, in order to shoot them with arrows. The shaman tried to touch the areas where brother was sick and draw out the evil spirits, but on the fourth day, my brother died. I do not know-1 was very young. Shamans are no kind of help.

The skepticism of this modern Khanty woman is shared by many who have had bad personal experiences with shamans, and who have been especially receptive to Soviet propaganda accusing shamans of evil and cynical exploitation of the sick for material gain. My title thus has a double meaning. For Soviet authorities, physicians and some Khanty, shamanism represents a defunct and discredited system of irrational belief that has been surpassed by Soviet positivist medicine. For other Khanty and some anthropologists, shamanism also represents a complex system of values which are worth probing to reveal ancient and continually creative ways of thinking about human and supernatural interrelationships and about the body in relation to the universe. My approach to shamanism is syncretic, merging analysis of its social roots, symbolic significance and changing contexts. Focus is on shamanic training, seances and cosmology, in order to understand values implicit and explicit in soul and spirit belief. Khanty shamanic epistemology can then be seen as the interaction of popular belief, knowledge at a specialized level, and experience. Two main goals underlie this essay. The first is to let the Khanty, to the degree possible, speak for themselves. Quotes and native texts are meant not

but to aid interpretation. Secondly, data should demonstrate that shamanism has

been far more than a medical system to many Khanty believers. It is a system attempting to perpetuate the well-being not only of individuals, but of their community (21. Yet, like other medical systems, it is also believed capable of powerful harm. This weming paradox is not resolved by attributing all negative interpretations to recent times. The paradox is epitomized by a reluctance of many novice Siberian shamans, even in earlier periods, to take on the obligations, dangers and ambiguities of shamanic power. THE SHA>lANIC CALLING

Traditional Khanty apprentice shamans were often initially unwilling participants in training for shamanic knowledge. Energy and time required to develop skills to battle frightening spirits of sickness and famine were considerable. Spiritual risks were grave, and the social hazards of shamanic competition, or client suspicion, were well-known. But within families of shamans, a son or daughter usually succumbed to a shamanic call and to subsequent training by a relative. In some cases, more distant relatives felt the call. A reluctant target of the calling was sometimes subject to spirit attacks, fainting fits, convulsions, and uncontrollable bouts of singing. In the 192Os, the shaman Andrei Prasin told a Soviet ethnographer: I began to shamanize-elra-when I was still a young man. My father had also been a shaman. For a.long time, I was seriously ailing, and had attacks. [In such attacks]. you fall in the purr (house]. beat yourself, cry, and then. when all strength is spent, sleep like the dead, for nearly the whole day. Once during a dream, a horrible noise descended, the whole Burr moved and I heard that I was obligated to shamanize. This was ordered by Ah-Iki [the Great Elder] himself-Toorum [the Chief Sky God] himself. When I awoke, I was covered with sweat, had wet myself and could barely move. I told everything to my family. [and] began shamanizing. And I still shamanize, when I’m invited by elders (31.

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This process oi healing oneself through the agreement to heal others is superficially reminiscent of a v.estem psychoanalyst’s preliminary regime of required therapy. But a crucial distinction is that major spiritual guidance came from within the candidatecurer in a predominantly self-conversion process. The shaman was ‘born again,’ in order to control spirits and souls. Certain categories of shamans could traditionally only be men. One type, named arelihta-ku, or legendsinging man. received his strength through his ability to play a stringed zither-like instrument, the pannniukh. In 1976, in the northern Khanty village of Tegy. the one player of this instrument (also called narsus) was known for his memory of legends and his knowledge about spirits, but not for his curing ability. In other areas, the instrument was still associated with curing and prophesy. Those attempting spirit contact through this sacred instrument went to a grove or promontory far from human settlement. The procedure was still recalled recently in the Vasiugan region: It was necessary to stay there alone for twelve days and nights. During that period. there occurred a pact by the given person with specific categories of spirits. who could gibe him musical strength. If the person did not uphold that promise. then three days and nights later he died [4]. The legend-singer’s promise was for service to the community to memorize traditions and epics, and to monitor breaches of taboos. Some candidates had their fates as legend-singers foretold by a senior nrri&ru-krc, with whom they then worked to learn Khanty lore. A key responsibility which young apprentices vowed to uphold during their spirit vigil was attending to the afflicted, at least to predict the outcome of illness, if not to cure. For this, the singer learned to recall, with his instrument, the spirits which had initially appeared to him. To predict the outcome of illness, the arekhra-ku learned to throw a long wooden trowel-like object, which had one side of fur and one covered with the images of spirit helpers. During seances, this was spun three times. If the image side came up, then the sickness was believed curable. If not, then death was pronounced likely, and the singer-curer might trample on the messenger-trowel. After a cure was foretold, the singer spent a night-long seance singing to his patient [A. p. 481. This essentially roulette-like approach to illness illustrates that shamans (at least those of lesser strength) were constantly aware there were afflictions they could not cure. It is likely that they practiced how to spin their instruments of augury for particular results, so that an interesting question becomes how well they came to diagnose particular problems, in order to credibly predict their outcomes. Another type of shamanic curer learned to use dreams for dtagnosis and curing. This type was and is likely to be an older woman. well-versed in relating dreams to personal or social realities, through long experience. She is called ulom-terra-ni (dreamsdoing-woman) in eastern Khanty dialects. Dream interpretation is more a shamanic technique than a rigidly defined profession. Certain standard interpretations of dreams were and are common among

BALZER

the Khanty: “A red berry signifies mechanical injury to the body. sleds and journeys on reindeer (signify) freezing. .‘. [1. pp. 52-531. The specialist in dream interpretation is attuned to multiple meanings behind his or her own dreams, and also those of patients. This sometimes requires dreaming. during an evening session uhile lying next to a patient. so that the dream specialists can visualize the spirit carrier of a particular sickness requiring attention. If that sickness-spirit is under the control of the curer, further measures can be taken. involving either seances or medicinal cures. More powerful intercessors with spirits, called isyl’ra-krc or is!l’ta-ni (crying man or woman). have reputations for curing people by ‘eating’ their illnesses and taking bodily harm upon themselves. An eastern Khantv isvl’ta-ku named Alekssi Kunin described his iniiial -call: The person destined for this has a dream uirh orders from Torum(the Chief Sky-God). The future is.rI’rJ-X-umust sew eight identical robes out of white cloth. Sexen of these are to hang in the forest on the east side of a birch tree. The eighth is to stay with the isyl’ra-X-u [4. p. 561.

The long white robes seem to serve as a constant symbolic connection between the curer and his forestdwelling helper spirits, while the birch tree is associated with particular patrilineal groups. The curer must wear the eighth robe during future curing sessions, as a mark of purity and readiness for contact with spirits. According to Aleksei Kunin, the Sky--God relays explicit directions concerning methods ot curing only after the robes are ready. Occasionally a second message can take two or three years. The delay ensures that the chosen person “doesn’t appear just crazy” [4. p. 561. An isyl’tu-ku claiming to have powers from the Sky-God without a spectfic dream message could die, or could be hounded out of the community. Shamanic power identified with the isyl’tu-ku is believed most useful against those diseases, especially fevers, thought to be caused by evil spirits inhabiting the body of a sick person. The isyl’ra-ku becomes skilled in either eating sickness sptrits or having a helper spirit, often in the form of a snake or lizard, eat the offending spirits, in order to thoroughly destroy them. Inherent in Khanty medical thought has been a fatalism defined by the general belief that the SkyGod, or, in some areas, the Birth-Mother, controls the length of one’s life. Shamans thus strove to ensure that clients did not die before their time. This required extraordinary measures and preparation. A few specialists. such as the iql’tu-ku and the elta-ku, were trained in their youth to do particularly arduous self-inflicted harm to their bodies, or to display sleight-of-hand skill which left audiences and patients gasping. Cleverness in learning sleight-of-hand tricks (such as appearing to cut oneself) to impress audiences and patients, did not necessarily diminish a shaman’s basic confidence in the spirit system: the tricks would not work if they were not meant to. Similarly, endurance drumming for a full-night seance could not produce results unless the particular helper spirits evoked by drumming cooperated.

Behind shamanism Action reinforced belief. except, perhaps, for the most cynical shamans. In sum. training involved the accumulation of knowledge and experience in both worldly and supraworldly spheres, to the point where a fledgling shaman could control helper spirits and know in which areas of cosmos to search for roots of clients’ problems. In some local areas, such as on the Vasiugan River, helping spirits were consistently of the opposite gender to that of the shaman, making their tie akin to the supernatural marriages found elsewhere in Siberia. Like many Siberian shamans, the most powerful Khanty shamans, especially the elm-ku, had true spirit initiations, which occurred in a state of trance or ecstasy, when spirits of accreditation, usually directed by the Sky deities, tore apart the candidate’s ego-like earth-bound soul and remade the novice into a “shaman able to ‘see’ and ‘hear”’ (51. For this reason, northern Khanty call those who they consider true shamans semuoian, or “seeing one.” The process of symbolic rebirth could be agonizing, with spirits believed to strip a shaman to the skeleton or to pierce a shaman with arrows. Suffering from spirit torture by the shaman was then sometimes repeated or reenacted during curing seances. The message of pain perhaps reassured onlookers of a curer’s sincerity, but, more importantly, it may have convinced the shaman of his or her own seriousness and value. SEANCES: DRAIMAS FOR TRANSLATING BELIEF INTO ACTION

The range of Khanty seances, like seance variations for other northern Siberian natives, defies construction of a neat typology. When a Khanty shaman, dressed in dangling iron or brass ornaments and beating a large, flat, symbol-laden drum, dances into ecstasy around a fire in a darkened room filled with awed observers-many different outcomes evolve. These vary in accordance with: the original purpose of the seance; the personality and power of the individual shaman; the particular local social and cosmological traditions a shaman has experienced and assimilated; and the degree of Christian and Soviet influence affecting belief and action. The Khanty discuss seances according to the tasks attempted, and the spiritual clout of particular shamans. A unifying theme is the perceived need to deal with spiritual emergencies. In crises of illness, or of poor fishing and hunting, lost possessions and general community malaise, shamans traditionally were expected to judge what kind of seance could benefit both individual clients and the community as a whole. Given political tensions and shamanic competition, this was not always possible, but it remained an ideal. Helping spirits, usually in the form of spirit birds, horses, bears, hares or snakes, guided the shaman toward battle or mediation with spirits in multiple realms: layers of the underworld, dimensions on the earth (including the forest, the graveyard, the village and the body), and levels of the sky. Diagnosis of a given problem determined the arena of supernatural action.

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The underworld In traditional Khanty medical belief, one of the primary causes of illness. likely to be manifest as lethargy and loss of appetite, was related to soul loss. Individual patients were commonly deemed to suffer from lost souls which had been stolen by underground, recently deceased ancestors longing for their company. Dreams in which patients had eaten meals with the dead were taken as clues by the shaman that a ‘sickness soul’ (is-i/r or i/as) had been stolen [6]. Such dreams suggest the ambiguity of a patient’s relations with the dead, as well as unsettled feelings about death. In the 1970s some Khanty still took their dreams, particularly those about the deceased, quite seriously. Most northern Khanty also paid close attention to keeping ancestral spirits content with elaborate burial and memorial rituals. They related personalized and legendary stories of ancestral shades (and other mischievous spirits) wandering at night, capable of stealing souls. I was told “To see a spirit means trouble: you or members of your family may die.” A shaman was believed capable of sending his own ‘sickness soul’ to rescue the stolen soul of a patient. In eastern Khanty seances on the Tremiugan River, the shaman. after taking the hallucinatory mushroom amanita muscaria (mukhomor) and warming his drum over a fire for an all-night session, sent either his own soul or a messenger in the form of a dead man past various guardians of underground river crossings, until the offending ancestor was found. The shaman, or his proxy, promised the deceased keeper of the patient’s soul an appliqued shirt and a meal from a horse or reindeer sacrifice. In serious cases, violence or deception was necessary, with the aid of a helper bear spirit. (The bear spirit had been hidden on the shaman’s breast for the journey.) The bear engaged the deceased in conversation, until it suddenly sprang for its quarry and frightened the thief into releasing the soul from his or her mouth or hand. The shaman could then grab the soul in a fist and blow “the soul into the right ear of the patient” [7J. The loss of another soul, called Iii, was and is considered by the Khanty to be cause for the greatest alarm. The lil, or breath soul, keeps a person alive. Fainting or death result from the loss of /il. Yet traditionally, when a person appeared dead, there was still sometimes hope that the lif could be recovered by a shaman before it settled in the underworld. A practicing curer explained to the Soviet ethnographer Kulemzin that the Khanty believe people can fall into the hands of the God of the Dead, KallokhTorum, earlier than the Sky-God decreed [4, p. 591. A shaman could thus bargain or fight for the almost dead by appealing directly to the main spirit lord of the underworld. To revive the dead, a shaman emptied the victim’s house of relatives, closed the door, and covered himself with the newly made shroud. He laid beside the patient for three days, since the journey to the underworld took one and a half days. The curer begged Kallokh-Torum to release his patient, if there was a chance the life’s term had not ended. Sometimes the ‘deceased’ slowly revived and began to talk. Relatives were not allowed back into the house until the patient could speak “coherently and with his full voice” [4, p. 591.

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After such a recovery. as can well be imagined. great rejoicing occurred, with food, clothes and wine given to the curer. (Wine was customarily not given before, since it could impair the curer’s abthties.) Shamanic preoccupation with revivals of the ‘dead’ was known throughout Siberia. This may have been an adaptive response to the problem of premature burial. In some cases, shamans of various levels of expertise were hired for repeated curing attempts, even after obvious signs of life had gone. Beliefs about the lil hovering near the deceased on the first night and starting reluctantly for the land of the dead on the second day meant that the Khanty usually did not attempt burial until after the third day [8]. These beliefs also enabled shamans to make their last-ditch attempts at revivals. Earthly action On the earth. certain categories of spirits. called menk and mis. were and are associated with patrilineal phratries [9]. They inhabit the forest and monitor the social-moral-religious behavior of affiliated members. Confessions elicited by a shaman could point to illness being caused by a Khanty family’s disrespect for these important symbols of phratry and lineage prestige. A middle-aged mother explained “The shaman did try to cure. He would go to people in the village and try to find some sort of reason for sickness.” Respect and implicitly health, were maintained by Khanty men through propitiation of spirits in special groves where carved wooden images of past leadershamans mingled with certain sacred trees. For example, the Por or Bear phratry. was linked with cedar and spruce, while birch trees were associated with the Mos or Wild Hare people. Birch was also common in separate women’s groves where prayers and cooked offerings were made to Birth-Mother spirits (Pugos-imi or Vanin-imi) to ensure family unity and successful childbirth [IO]. A shamanic seance involving special appeal to phratry spirits to release captured souls or alleviate hunger required conjuring these spirits through trance or song to promise them elaborate applique materials, horse or reindeer sacrifices, and sometimes alcoholic spirits. Such seances and subsequent animal sacrifices were usually performed by reputable male shamans with multiple spirit helpers. An institutionalized version of this, focusing on the renewal of phratry harmony with forest, tundra or river spirits (and featuring cathartic confessions) occurred during regular phratry ceremonies, such as the seven-year ‘bear festivals’ of the Por phratry, which were probably also once male initiations [I I]. Other earthbound shamanic efforts, like the unsuccessful one for a brother’s illness mentioned in the introduction, focused the action of the seance directly on the patient’s body. The crux of a cure was the removal of specific sickness spirits. Kulemzin posed as a patient with the curer Alekxi Kunin, in order to understand how the extraction of such evil spirits was accomplished. At first, Aleksei circled around Kulemzin, swaying slowly and building up rhythm with a chant: Finally his gaze rested on me. the cries increased and the cast of his eyes changed. [He tore open his shirt and] asked for

a knife lying on the table. I gave him the least dangerous thing-a file. which he took in his nght hand. He traced the file point along the body and made a motion. as if exertmg pressure with the lile, doing this with a noise. as if the file had gone into flesh. The file was taken out with the same kind of sound [which Kulemzin thought was made by Alexei’s teeth grinding]. A red spot was left on the body. Alexei said that he had created only the appearance of a wound. but in any case had installed in himself a spirit-a snake. ‘Now I could cure.‘ he said, ‘if you were sick. The spirits have come to me’ [1. pp. 56571.

It was considered a bad omen for the patient if blood flowed during this early stage. The next step was to have the sickness carrier extracted in the form of a worm or lizard, which then needed to be swallowed to be properly killed. Sometimes the shaman’s spirit helper ‘fattened itself’ directly on the sickness spirit. In other cases, the curer had to feel a patient’s ‘hurt spots, ’ in order to lift the illness into the control of his helper spirit [4, p. 5S]. One of Aleksei’s satisfied Khanty patients described a cure: “Aleksei took out the evil spirit (Kyn’lung) in the form of a worm. [He] wound it around his finger, and he twisted it. Aleksei ate the worm, and my headache ceased” [4, p. 581. There is some question whether Aleksei or his spirit helper snake, ingested a very real worm, but little question that a memorable transference of pain was accomplished for the believer. The snake was given the same name (menk) as patrilineal spirits, and may have been brought in physical form. In the northern Ob River area. consultants explained that shamans brought “something like a frog or a cat to help cure,” as embodiments of spirit helpers. “Even now old people say ‘do not kill a cat or a frog-allow them to walk.“’ Such totem-like helpers were associated with specific patrilineal groups of the curers. The need to draw out illness, especially in the form of concrete, yet symbolic objects like a worm, hair or entrails, has sometimes been connected by the Khanty to shamanic foul play. This raises the delicate question of how shamanic power could be misused. Shamans with vendettas against each other or particular victims were and are believed to have immense potential power to harm. The definition of ‘community’ did not necessarily extend very far. In the 197Os, local Russians and Khanty in the village of Tegy feared one ‘swine shaman’ who lived as a recluse in the woods, literally and figuratively on the borders of village life. Some believed that “when he curses people they may die.” I was told this shaman had driven his brother-in-law to suicide with the chilling curse “May there be blood on your floors” [ 1, p. 6.51. An earlier case of shamanic misdeeds, reported in the 192Os, reveals the perceived manipulation of evil sickness spirits which are hard to kill: At the River Iugan a rich Ostiak whanty] lay near death. A shaman was called. He said “Yes, your death is certain if I do not shamanize. Give me your best length of cloth for clothes, and I will carry your sickness to another person.” The [patient] agreed and towards evening uas already cured. Then 35 kilometers away another [Khanty man] became sick and called another shaman, but that shaman was weaker and could not cure him. It was necessary to call still more. Only 12 shamans, of lesser strength. saved the patient from

Behind shamanism death. But they. in their turn. transferred the sickness to a third person.. who died with particularly heavy suffering [l?]. Mixed dependency and fear are depicted in this account of serial afflictions, which significantly describes variations in shamanic strength causing the need for collective seance effort. It also indicates the relatively large numbers of shamans who were present in Khanty communities in the early Soviet period. Mixed feelings about shamans were played upon by Soviet authorities in the 193Os, with mixed results. In the Kazym area, Soviet agitation backfired when the first group of Khanty school children to be sent to a Soviet boarding school at the Kazym ‘culture base’ became victims of a smallpox epidemic. Infuriated parents, galvanized by cooperating local shamans, demanded that their children be released. But the children were quarantined. Meetings and seances were held in a nearby sacred grove. Children who recovered were eventually released and taken by their parents deep into the tundra. Several leaders of the school revolt were arrested, and, to get them back, a group of Khanty men including shamans, captured as hostages a high-level team of Soviet trouble-shooters. When this ploy did not work, at least three Soviet hostages were killed. It took months for police using helicopters to capture some, but not all. of the many actors [l3]. This tragic case combined Khanty notions of illness with opposition to Russians. The Khanty believed that smallpox, as well as certain other ailments like syphilis and swamp fever, were themselves specific evil spirits. Smallpox and syphilis were associated with too much contact with Russians. Thus when the children fell ill, traditional ideas were dramatically reinforced. How alive have these ideas been recently? Khanty children have long since attended Soviet schools, learning among other things the benefits of modern Soviet medicine. A few have become trained doctors, and some of the grandchildren of the Kazym protesters have become local Soviet officials. But paths to this point have not been fully controlled by the Soviets. In each generation, a few Khanty children of shamans have learned incantations to summon helper spirits. Curses have remained frightening and soul beliefs are still viable keys to health. In the 1950s. the first young Khanty to leave the Kazym area for a Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad were given bird (~ursik) tattoos on their shoulders, to guard against soul loss [l4]. This was to ensure they would remain not only healthy, but Khanty, and that they would return to their native area. It was done by older Khanty women, with shamanic reputations, who ordinarily used the tattoos as preventative medicine for securing the souls of the elderly. In the 197Os, some Tegy and Kazym parents still taught their children to be respectful of spirits (lung, mis, men&), for their control of a separate dimension of power on the earth. Certain spirits were said to live hunting, fishing and reindeer breeding lives, similar to humans. They range from the considerate and the cooperative to the ‘hooligan,’ like humans. “Their eyes are like the moon glowing. People think sometimes they see the moon, when actually they see

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spirits in the woods.. Sometimes fires in the woods are the fires of spirits.” One older woman. after telling a tale of spirits in the forest and graveyaid, stressed “if a person is lost in the woods, that person can easily be taken by spirits.” Belief was not restricted to the elderly. A young girl explained how her grandfather had died: “Our grandmother saw in the night a moving red glow on the wall, and woke her husband, who tried to shoot the spirit. After that, grandfather died.” Such beliefs translate into ritual wariness when entering empty houses, into caution in the forest, and into care for traditional sacred groves and graves. With these beliefs. Khanty villagers have cause to turn to shamans as their mediators with the unpredictable, yet partially mirror-image spirit world. In the 197Os, a few male and female sacred groves still existed, where token offerings to spirits were made. One male elder in Kazym explained: “Those who do not love the ancestors, maybe it will be bad for them.” Sk,v flying Traditionally, the ultimate shamanic mediation occurred in the realm of the Sky-God, called the Supreme God (Numi-Torum) or the Greatest Elder (Me-lki), and his pantheon family. When a crisis of illness persisted, or when crucial community decisions were required during famine, the strongest available Khanty shaman sent his soul, along with a helper spirit, through seven layers of the sky. Sometimes these were seances of final appeal, including some which involved a second night of shamanizing. This virtuoso spirit mediation has faded with the decline of the most powerful shamans. On the Vakh River in 1926, the Soviet ethnographer Shatilov interviewed three shamans, elfaku, who he called sorcerers. One powerful and elaborately dressed shaman, Andrei Prasin, consented to perform a seance in which he consulted with the Sky-God about the future of the Khanty. This seance fit a pattern in which, along the way through ‘many suns,’ the shaman encountered various difficulties with evil spirits who tortured him into cries and contortions. If this had been a curing seance for a specific patient, the evil spirits would have blocked him in his attempt to appeal to the Sky-God for intercession with their masters, Kyn ‘lung and Kallokh-Torum. But in this case the patient was the Khanty people [l5]. During the seance the shaman sat on his eaglespirit helper (kurok) and flew to the edge of the sky. He passed a birch tree stretching through the sky, and tricked seven evil wolverines into opening seven doors to the upper sky. In many repetitive flights, the eagle and shaman visited six suns and moons. avoiding hunting and fishing traps set for them. Each bright sacred level of the sky became more splendid, but encounters with successive elders in the sky houses did the discouraged shaman no good. In one of his early meetings, with a sympathetic mythical couple, Iki- Vanin and Imi- Vunin, he explained, “I am a.. Khanty-ku (Khanty man), and I live on land where everything is bad, [where there are] few fish, few animals. We probably should find another land.”

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Near the sixth level, the shaman asked himself “What if everything is in vain?” A voice told him to go on, and they continued searching for the sacred houses of the Greatest Elder, Me-Iki: We fly. WC fly Reaching that place where brightness is nowhere better. Seven suns shine, and seven moons. Silver flows like a river. A house of gold stands there. In this house sits the great elder Ale-Iki. the Eldest Elder. looking like the White Snow Elder Nagi-Iki. Dismounting from his bird, the shaman sits on a stone. He gathers his courage and enters the house, with bows and prayers. Having prayed and prayed, he says “There, where our land is, it is bad to live. For some, there are no fish, birds or animals. Some are ailing and some have actually died. The Russian elder (&f-IX-i) has sent me here to learn where we can live better.” Bowing on all sides, he continues: “Me-Torum, I have come to ask you. since on our [Khanty] land it is difficult to live. [since] people are ailing, could you, Iki, become aware of us?” Torum then answers “I myself know who lives how. who suffers, who is healthy, and what you have told me. Go back home and tell the people that everything will be line.” [They fly back]. faster than an arrow shot from the tautest bow [and land on a sacred island

God with their more complex and manipulable cosmology. just as they adopted the miracle-working St Nicholas as a spirit-helper. By the 1970s. food was as likely to come from tins of eggplant as from hunting and fishing. But some Khanty villagers still believed IVumi-Torum and others of his pantheon were forces to assuage and manipulate, through prayer. offerings and seances. In a grove near Kazym, food offerings were left for Numi-Torum. as well as other more accessible spirits. My most striking experience of .Vumi-Torum’s reality for some Khanty came literally with a thunder clap. Just prior to a storm, the elderly woman I was visiting jumped up with great alarm. and ran out of her cabin. There she stood. with arms outstretched, appealing to the Sky-God to spare her house and children. She had earlier explained “I am still afraid of thunder. Last year a house near here burned from thunder.” COKLLSION: TRADITIONAL VALtiFS AND NEW CIRCUMSTANCES

of the swamp hair people] [3, pp. 127-1281. This marathon seance is based on a formulaic legend that the performer had learned from his shaman father. It is filled with wide-spread shamanic symbolism like the ‘world tree,’ the number seven, the eagle guide, and the many suns with gold and silver. Yet aspects of Andrei’s shamanic behavior were adaptive. The source of his commission, the ‘Russian elder’ Shatilov, was unconventional but easy to accommodate, since their mutual concern was the wellbeing of the Khanty. Many Russians were not perceived as allies. Implicit in this seance, and others of its time, is resentment of local Siberian-Russians, newly granted access to hunting and fishing sites, who were living better than the Khanty. Andrei’s concern with problems of hunting and fishing escalated with the chaotic conditions of the early Soviet period. The need to attain the highest level of the sky was merited by the gravity of the changes in Khanty social, economic and political life. Andrei asked for new land, as a way out of the poverty and starvation of a people already pushed northward by Russian settlement. This must have been similar to other times when shamans used seances as a way to lead their people to new sites. Such seances could legitimize the authority of risky decisions. On their return from the sky, shamans usually became peddlers of hope, rather than prophets of doom. Primarily, Andrei asked for divine recognition in crisis. Through the 193Os, shamans like Andrei attempted to stop the new Soviet organization of collectives, culture bases, and schools by advocating massive animal sacrifices, movement of the already partially nomadic population to remote areas, and school boycotts. They led such earthly political movements in the name of Torum, often without a realistic sense of their Soviet opposition. Emphasis of the Sky-God stemmed originally from Russian Orthodox missionaries who glossed their single Christian God as Numi-Torum or Me-Torum for the Khanty. But the missionaries clearly had no intention of direct seventh sun visitation to their God. Khanty shamans syncretized the idea of a Supreme

Belief often stimulates action, regardless of the possible roots of that belief in what Marx termed ‘false consciousness.’ Whether in prayers to the SkyGod or in tatoos for protection of souls, the Khanty in the Soviet period have demonstrated a spiritual reliance on some of the principles behind shamanism, even as many shamans themselves have been discredited as ‘counter-revolutionaries.’ Seances, as dramas for translating belief into action, have proved extremely adaptable and powerful over the centuries. There is still room for a spirit-world dimension of Khanty reality affecting what Hallowell described for the Ojibwa as “the self in its behavioral environment” [ 161. Behavioral environment for the Khanty includes ancestral spirits as well as germs. The longevity of the shamanic ethos should not surprise, given its historically syncretic strength and its orientation to both individual and community survival [ 11. Traditional Khanty ideas about the roots of illness and affliction are multiple, complex and not necessarily systematic. They are ‘traditional’ in varying degrees. The main causes include: soul loss from ancestral or spirit theft; discomfort caused by breach of taboos; sickness caused by specific named evil spirits, such as the spirit of fever or hunger; injury through cursing or through the malicious sending of foreign objects into the body; illnesses. like smallpox and syphilis, thought caused by too much contact with Russians; and finally, physical problems of broken bones, dislodged joints and soreness, occurring naturally. According to both my consultants and those of Kulemzin, only with the last category, emphasizing symptom over cause, are Soviet doctors considered expert at curing [4, p. 101. The category may be expandable, but not at the pace physicians would prefer. This presents a dilemma for Khanty who still believe in some traditional illness etiologies and corresponding ways of maintaining psychophysical health. Although their faith in traditional doctors has been shaken, their confidence in modern Soviet curing can

is still not complete.

only

be filled

The resulting

by sensitivity

medical

to traditional

gap values

Behind shamanism which have linked individuals to their community and to time honored ways of adapting to their environment. Values most supported by Khanty shamanism are patriarchalism, community involvement in curing, respect for ancestors, and ecological prudence. They survive in various degrees and forms in small Khanty villages, and among the few Khanty who are still nomadic reindeer breeders. They are more likely to be integral to the lives of older Khanty women than men. Patriarchalism is indicated by a Khanty social organization in which men were encouraged to be the strongest community leaders, the main propitiators of ancestral spirits and the best shamans. Traditionally, the shamanic call from spirits including Numi-Torum was made to both men and women. Men acquired the greatest numbers of helper spirits, and men were most likely to travel to the Sky-God in seances. Men gained wider reputations for curing, and so their practices more often transcended the family or local level. Only after menopause did a few Khanty women gain powerful status as shamans. As shamanic prestige has waned, more women have continued shamanic traditions [ 181. Spiritual motivation, sometimes stimulated by the curing process itself, seems to be present in greater numbers of women than men. Training in myths, symbols and pharmacopoeia recently has been passed along female lines--especially to daughters in families with strong reputations for shamanism. Unlike in the past, few outsiders would want to become shamans. I was told: “Not all, even in a family, are shamans. But it is within the family, to each other, that they pass their knowledge.” Such families are no longer in the vanguard of community social and political life. The value of community involvement in curing has also changed, given the political atmosphere and Soviet medical advances in the North. Most seances are no longer mobbed with a social support-group of intense spell-bound well-wishers boosting patient morale. Shamanic sessions are likely to be held in secret, or with only immediate family involvement. This nearly eliminates one of the most crucial psychological dimensions of traditional shamanism: its provision of a hope-producing atmosphere which triggers patient confidence in a cure. Declining social orientation may also undermine the Khanty’s previous easy merging of body and mind, or spiritual and physical concepts. There is some irony in traditional, communal medicine becoming isolated and individualistic, while Soviet ‘collective’ medicine provides modem services which focus on individual illnesses from ‘objective’ causes, often divorced from family or social psychology [19]. The declining social orientation of shamanism in Siberia is not, however, uniform. Occasionally stories surface of shamans who are respected in their communities. In 1980, film-makers attempted to capture the seance of a Siberian shaman, only to be prevented from filming by a group of villagers determined to protect their shaman. Respect for ancestors may be one of the most viable Khanty values, for it is linked with ideas of reincarnation and the soul. A Khanty friend explained: “When a child is born, Khanty mothers

1091

believe that maybe their child is a reborn relative. Perhaps it is all just talk, but when we die, then we will really find out. Maybe a second life will be better for me.” Reincarnation is a powerful belief supporting not only the continuity of the extended Khanty family, but also the future of the Khanty as an ethnic group with a past worth remembering. Elaborate burial rituals, remembrance feasting and sacred grove worship follow from respect for ancestors. Shamans in the past have played key roles as founders of sacred groves, as ancestor-heroes and as communicators with ancestors. Shamanic involvement in ancestor reverence is not crucial, however. Khanty do not need to be members of shamanic families to say “those who do not love the ancestors, maybe it will be bad for them.” A significant aspect of traditional shamanism was its attempt to preserve harmony with the environment. Health depended primarily on decent food supplies, especially during the lean and dangerous ice-bound months of early Spring. Shamans, by cultivating contact with the spirits who controlled food supplies, were the community members perceived best able to do something about famine. The sacred groves which social groups (and shamans) maintained also served as ecological game preserves where no hunting or fishing was allowed. The island to which Andrei Prasin returned after his flight through the sky was probably such a preserve. This system, and the distribution of fishing and hunting yields through loosely-defined ‘family territories,’ was disrupted by collectivization. A few territories were still held by family elders in the 1970s but the land was to be passed to collectives in the next generation. Ecological prudence (including restraint in the numbers of fur and game killed to meet five-year plans) is now the responsibility of the Communist Party. In an age of monumental plans to divert Siberian rivers and increase energy development, Khanty leaders in responsible local positions must try to transfer this traditional shamanic value into public policy. The history of medical values in Siberia provides a perspective on cultural pluralism. New approaches have been accommodated but not homogenized. This affirms the great Siberianist Shirokogoroffs early prediction that shamanism, as an adaptive ‘psychomental complex,’ may function differently with different ‘ethnical situations’ and pressures [20]. Across Siberia, the acclaimed birth place of traditional shamanism, curing has taken many syncretic forms. Examples include the Tungus, with merged Chinese and Russian traditions; and the Turkic Yakut, with Yukagir, Mongolic and Russian influences. Soviet rule has changed each shamanic tradition radically, and somewhat differently. An appropriate anthropological task is to understand how that has occurred, given what Jean Comaroff terms a “dialectic between personal experience and cultural order, held up for scrutiny in healing processes” [2, p. 541. In its adaptability, shamanism has been more than simply a reflection of traditional social orders. Not only patients, but also their communities and their shamans have participated in critical processes through shamanism. Although shamanic attempts have recently been held up for scru-

MARJORIE

1092 tiny and cultural,

often found multilingual

wanting. Siberia remains and multimedical.

MAXDELSTAM

multi-

~cknowledgemenu-Data for this essay derive from library and field research in the Soviet Union in 1975-76 and 1985-1986, including a summer field expedition to the northern Ob River area sponsored by Leningrad University in 1976. An earlier version of the arttcle was read at a panel organized by Libbet Crandon, for the 1984 American Anthropology Association meetings. For support, I am grateful to the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Harvard Russian Research Center, the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia University and the Kennan Institute. I am also thankful to Khantyconsultants in the villages of Tegy and Kazvm. and to Rudolf Ferdinandovich Its (director of the Leningrad Institute of Ethnography) and to Valerian Alexandrevich Kozmin (Leningrad University professor and leader of our student expedition).

REFERENCES

I The Khanty are Ob-Ugrians. called Ostiak in some western sources. For analysis of Khanty curing in the context of western literature on shamanism, see Balzer M. M. Doctors of deceivers? The Siberian Khanty shaman and Soviet medicine. In The Anthropology o/ Medicine (Edited by Romanucci-Ross L., Moerman D. and Tancredi L.), pp. 54-76. Bergin/Praeger, South Hadley, Mass., 1983. 2. On the significance of native texts, see Boon J. Other Tribes, Other Scribes. Cambridge, New York, 1982. On community well-being, see Comaroff J. Medicine: symbol and ideology. In The Problem of Medical Knowledge. Examining the Social Consrruction of Medicine (Edited by Wright P. and Treacher A.), pp. 49-65. Edinburgh Universitv Press. Edinburgh. 1982. 3. Shatilov-M. B., Vakhovskie Ostiakr (Vakh Ostiak). Trudy Tomskii Kraevogo Mureia IV, 122, 193 1. 4. Kulemzin V. M. Shamanstvo VasiuganskoVakhovskikh Khantov (konets XIX -nachalo XXw). (Shamanism of the Vasiugansko-Vakh Khanty, end of the 19th to early 20th century). In Iz isrorii shamansma (From the History of Shamanism) (Edited by Lukhina N. V.). p. 52. Tomsk Universitet. Tomsk. 1976. Kulemzin’s fieldwork in 1969-73 in the Vakh-Vasiugan area, out of Tomsk University, is remarkable for its thoroughness and for his apparent rapport with Khanty curers. His eastern Khanty data (pp. 3-l 54). combined with mine from the northern Khanty, reveal the survival of some traditional medical beliefs and practises into the 1970s. Thus the ethnographic present here is the 1970s. 5. Karjalainen K. Die Religion der Jugra- Volker (Folklore Communications), Vol. 63. D. 282. Finnish Academv of Sciences, Porvod, 1927; Siikala A. The Rife Technique of the Siberian Shaman, Folklore Communications, Vol. 220, pp. 222 and 318. Finnish Academy of Sciences, Helsinki, 1978. 6 Chemetsov V. N. Ideas of the Soul among Ob-Ugrians. In Studies in Siberian Shamanism (Translated by Dunn E. and Dunn S., Edited by Michael H.). Anthropology of the North 4, pp. 13-14. University of Toronto, Toronto, 1963. (Originally Predstavleniia o Dukhe u Obskikh Ugrov. Trudy Insr. Elhnograf 51, 114-159, 1959.) 7 Compare Karjalainen K. [9, pp. 305-3821 and Siikala A. [9. p. 2241. For further analysis of this type of seance, see Balzer M. M. [I, pp. 59-651. 8 On Khanty burial, see Balzer M. M. The route to eternity: cultural persistence and change in Khanty burial ritual. Arcr. Anrhrop. 17, 77-90, 1980. On a legendary revival, see Nowak M. and Durrant S. The

BALZER

Tale of the ‘Ylsan Shamaness: A .Wanchu Folk Epic. University of Washington. Seattle, U’ash.. 1977. 9. I am using the term phratry here, following the work of Soviet scholars Chernetsov V. N. Fratrial’noe ustroistvo Obsko-Ugorskogo obschchestva (Phratry organization in Ob-Ugrian society). Socersk. Efnograf 2, 2011, 1939; and Sokolova Z. P. Perezhitki religioznykh verovanii u Obskikh Ugrov (Survivals of religious belief among the Ob-Ugrians). Shorn. .Muz. Anrhrop. Emograf. 27, 211-239, 1971. Sokolova argues in Sotial’naia organisatsiia Khanrop i Mansi c XVII-XIX L’C. Problemy frarrii i roda (Social 0rgani:ation of rhe Khamy and Manri in the 18th IO 19rh Cenruries. Problems of Phrarry and Clan). Nauka, ~~OSCOW, 1983 that the term clan is misleading for the more loosely organized local sub-groups of Khanty phratries. and that the two main phratries function like exogamous moieties. In effect, Soviet anthropologists have recapitulated western debates about social structure and social organization using Siberian data. 10. Although sacred groves have greatly diminished in numbers and use, they still exist. See Balzer M. M. Rituals of gender identity: markers of Siberian Khanty ethnicity, status and belief. Am. Anrhrop. 83, 85&867. 1981. Il. While bears are still revered and small festivals in Khanty territory have been reported as recently as 1983. this initiatory function has elapsed. See Chemetsov V. N. 19. p. 381; Chemetsov V. N. Periodicheskie obriady i tseremonnye u Obskikh Ugrov, sviazannye s medvedem (Periodic rituals and ceremonies of the Ob-Ugrians, connected with the bear). In Congressus Secundus Inlernationalis Fenno - Ugrisrarium. Pars II Acra Emologica. pp. 102-I 1 I. Societas Fenno-Ugrica. Helsinki. 1968; and Chichlo B. L’ours Chamane. Eludes mongoles 12, 35-l 12, 1981. 12. Startsev G. Osriaki: Sorsial’no-Etnograficheskii Ocherk (The Ostiak: A Social-Erhnographic Study), p. 93. Priboi. Leningrad, 1928. 13. Data on this 1933 incident come from Soviet historians Kopylov D. I. and Retunskii V. F. Bor’ba partiinykh organizatsii kraia za kollektivizatsiiu sel’skogo khozaistva i nastuplenie sotsializma po vsemu frontu (The struggle of the regional party organization for collectivization of agriculture and the offensive of socialism on all fronts). In Ocherki isforii parriinoi organizatsii Tiumenskoi oblasti (Historical Studies on the Party Organization of the Tiumen Oblasr) (Edited by Smorodinskov D. A.), pp. 168-169. Sredne-Ural’skoe Knizhnoe Izdat, Sverdlovsk, 1965; Budarin M. E. Ryli o Sibirskikh Chekismkh (Tales of the Siberian Cheka), pp. 214-227. Zap.-Sibirskoe Knizhnoe Izdat, Omsk, 1968; the local schoolteacher Panov I. Gorod v lesu (Town in the forest). In Narody Secernogo Urala (Peoples of rhe Northern Urals) (Edited by Popov V. A.), pp. 97-l 19. Sredne- Ural’skoe Izdat, Sverdlovsk, 1937; and Kazym consultants. When the Kazym culture base was first established, local Khanty associated the Russian slang for ‘culture,’ kul’r, with the name of one of their evil spirits. A recent Soviet film called The White Shaman depicts a similar early school rebellion in Chukotka. 14. Chemetsov V. N. [IO. p. 161 learned this from Soviet ethnographer Prytkova N. F. after her fieldwork in the Kazym area in the 1950s. recorded a full seance IS. Shatilov MM.B. [3, pp. l2>129] chant of his main Khanty source, Andrei Grigorievich Prasin. I have tried to keep my translation of this song-legend-seance as close to Shatilov’s as possible, including switches in tense and in person. See also Shatilov M. B. Dramaticheskoe iskusstvo Vakhovskikh Ostiakov (Dramatic art of the Vakh Ostiak). In I: istorii shamansrra (From the History of Shamanism) (Edited by

Behind shamanism

16. 17

18

19.

Lukhina N. V.), pp. 155-165. Tomsk Universitet, Tomsk. 1976. Hallowell A. I. Culture cmd Experience. pp. 75-l 10. Schochen, New York, 1967. See Furst P. The roots and continuities of shamanism. In Stones, Bones and Skin, Ritual and Shamanic Art, pp. 1-28. Arts Canada, Toronto, 1977. This is distinct from the social under-class theory of shamanic ecstasy developed by Lewis I. M. Ecstatic Religion. Penguin, Baltimore, Md, 1971. See Hamayon R. Des Chamanes Au Chamanism. Voyages Chamaniaues II. Etnographie 87-88, 13-48, &cially 46, 1982; Durrant S. The Nisan Shaman complex in cultural contradiction. Signs 5.338-347, 1979; and ’ wak b? M. and Durrant S. [8, pp. I-1661. It is inappropriate to analyse here the degree to which Soviet medicine is sufficient to cover the needs of Siberia. Statistics on medical progress and concern for development of hospital facilities and medical personnel are found in Diachkov V. I. Sostoianie i perspektivy razvitiia zdravookhraneniia v Iamalo-Nentskom i Khanty-Mansiiskom Avtonomykh Okrugakh Tiumenskoi Oblasti (Condition and perspectives on the growth of health care in the Iamal-Nenet and KhantyMansiski autonomous districts of the Tiumen Region). Zdravookh. Rossiisk. Fed. 4, 20-24, 1979; and in Kretinin V. N. Organizatsiia meditsinskoi pomoshchi naseleniiu krainego Severa Tiumenkoi Oblasti (The organization of medical aid amongst the population of the northern Tiumen Oblast). Zdruvookhr. Rossiisk.

1093

Fed. 1, 15-18, 1982. A serious issue is whether the priorities put on building boom towns for the energy industry have put a strain on medical facilities in communities remote from these industrializing sites. Soviet medicine is not entirely congruent with wqstern medicine in some of its underlying assumptions. This particularly regards the limited role of psychology in curing. For more on Soviet science and phiiosophy, see Graham L. Science and Philosophv in the Soviet Union. ’ I Vintage, New York, 1974. 20. Shirokogoroff S. The Psychomental Complex of the Tungus, pp. 25, 336, 425. Kegan. Paul, Trench & Trubner. London, 1935. See also Hamayon R. [18, pp. 13-48; Humphrey C. Theories of north Asian shamanism. In Soviet nnd Western Anthropology (Edited by Gellner E.), pp. 243-254. Columbia University Press, New York, 1980; D’iakonova V. P. Nekotorye etnokul’tumye paralleli v shamanstve Turkoiazychnykh narodov Saiano-Altaia (Some ethnocultural parallels in the shamanism of Turkic speakers of the Altai-Sayan). In Etnokul’turnye kontakty narodov Sibiri (Ethnocultural Contacts of the Peoples of Siberia) (Edited by Its R. F.), pp. 30-49. Nauka. Leninerad. 1984: Gurvich I. S. Iaku&ko-Iukagirskii predan& od OS, (YakutYukagir legends about Smallpox). In Sotsiul’naiu organizatsiia ganization

i Kul’tura and Culture

narodov Severa (Social Orof the Peoples of the North)

(Edited by Gurvich I. S.), pp. 249-269. Nauka, Moscow, 1974; Chichlo B. [I 1, pp. 35-l 121.