SHAMANISM UNDERGOES A SPIRITUAL REVIVAL ACROSS RUSSIA

By Colin McMahon, Tribune Foreign Correspondent, October 15, 2000

YELANTSY, Russia -- Once considered enemies of the Soviet state, the shamans of southern Siberia are now tourist attractions.

They travel to exhibitions across Russia, sometimes to explain their complex, pagan beliefs, sometimes just to promote tourism to Lake Baikal. Shamans post their pictures and philosophies on the Internet and draw up price lists for services, from seances to healing rituals. In the land some consider its birthplace, shamanism and its oral traditions and rituals are undergoing a revival.

And they are helping some of Russia's ethnic minorities recapture a spirituality stifled by Soviet repression, as well as a sense of identity.

Shamanism can differ from continent to continent, from region to region, tribe to tribe, even shaman to shaman. Non-believers, especially Westerners, can find its concepts hard to understand.

At the core of Siberian shamanism is reverence for Mother Earth and Father Heaven, for animals, for all of nature.

The goal of life is to live in balance with the world. Humans live in a middle world, but there are upper and lower worlds as well. Only shamans can find the doorways to these spiritual worlds.

Sometimes the shaman eases such transitions with the help of hallucinogenic substances or alcohol. Indeed, alcoholic spirits play an integral role in many shaman ceremonies. Participants drink vodka during rituals, making sure to offer frequent drops to the gods. At some prayer sites overlooking Lake Baikal, vodka bottles, ruble coins and cigarette butts--all offerings--litter the ground.

"A shaman should have a social role beyond the religious role," said Valentin Khagdayev, 41, an ethnic Buryat shaman in the dirt-road town of Yelantsy. "People would not understand me if I just cast spells and prayed for rain."

About 350,000 Buryats live in Siberia, with roots in the empire of Genghis Khan. Having spent centuries under Russian czarist and then Soviet rule, the Buryats have been mostly assimilated. Even the name "Buryat," is a Soviet creation, a tag applied during the 1930s to separate them from their ethnic brethren and their southern neighbors in Mongolia.

Many of the people speak the Buryat language, which resembles Mongolian, but relatively few read and write it.

Khagdayev is trying to change that. In the towns and villages near Yelantsy, about 160 miles northeast of Irkutsk and a short drive from majestic Lake Baikal in southeastern Siberia, Khagdayev runs a museum dedicated to shamanism and teaches youngsters about their ethnic history, religion and language. Even in Khagdayev's house, Russian competes with Buryat as the everyday language of his wife and children.

"Valentin is one of the most progressive shamans," said Yevgeny Sheremetoff, who runs a tour company in Irkutsk that arranges visits to shamans. "A lot of the older shamans are more traditional. They cannot deal as well with young people or outsiders."

Some older shamans have misgivings about reaching out to foreigners and tourists. They worry that ancient rituals are being commercialized. The shaman is a priest, after all, not a showman.

But Khagdayev believes it important to explain shamanism not only to the younger Buryat generation but also to Russians and foreigners who may be prejudiced. Khagdayev has distributed more than 500 copies of his graduate dissertationthat compares shamanism with Buddhism and Christianity.

Khagdayev added that reported rifts among shamans are exaggerated. In fact, most shamans do not get too worked up about much of anything in this world.

"I do not criticize others," Khagdayev said. "Let each do what he feels is right."

The shaman is not special for who he is. He is special because he has been granted an ability to navigate among the spirits. He is a kind of doctor of souls--shamanists believe we have more than one--charged with restoring balance when something goes wrong.

Adherents of Lenin's scientific communism did not embrace such views.

In the 1930s, Stalin had killed or imprisoned hundreds of shamans. Those who survived went underground, and shamanism suffered a deep decline throughout the Soviet years.

Buddhism, which in this area is influenced by shamanism, also suffered under Stalin's purges and Soviet hostility. It, too, has made a comeback in the region and is now the dominant religion among the Buryat people.

The descendant of a long line of shamans, Khagdayev was born with a split thumb on his right hand, a kind of sixth finger that is considered a sign of the shaman spirit.

As a boy, he was sent off to live in near-seclusion with some elders. He grew up in a yurt, a traditional Mongol dwelling similar to a teepee, learning the shaman ways.