Spiritual culture

In general, the traditional worldview of the Chulyms was close to one of their closest relatives, the Turki of southern Siberia. In brief extant descriptions of their religious beliefs (very few had survived by the time the systematic ethnographic research began), we find references to the fact that the supreme deity was Ulgen (or Kudai , a name common to the Turki of southern Siberia and borrowed from the Iranian “xwadāy,” which means “God”, “Lord”); his antagonist, the master of the underworld of the dead, was named Erlik .

The Chulym shamanism existed until the 1930s, although a few shamans performed rituals up until the 1980s. Andron Shumilov, one of the key interviewees of Eleonora Lvova, was a great-grandson of a shaman couple.  He, according to some sources, knew how to perform rituals himself, drawing on the knowledge of his family, and described a complex, rich system of hierarchy and initiation of shamans.  The level of shamanic power is reflected both in the number and the material of the bracelets that shamans wear (a few copper ones indicated the bad, weak shamans; many gold ones were reserved for the good and strong ones), the number of the monchak beads, the number of the rings on the shaman’s tem rattle, the number of rings on the fingers and the number of the dolls in the shaman’s “toolkit” (denoting either protector spirits, or the cattle being blessed, or the patient being treated by the shaman).  In addition, the shaman always wears a special shirt that allows him to “fly” to the Upper and Lower worlds.

However, the descriptions of the 1930s present a different picture: the shaman of this period, described by the eyewitnesses of the rituals, is a poor, often destitute man, who drinks heavily and the surrounding community is usually skeptical about his powers.  He wears no bracelets nor does he carry dolls of any kind; instead of the shaman’s shirt he wears an ordinary city shirt or jacket, the monchak beads are of the simplest kind (a couple of threads), the number of rings on the tem reflects the weakest level of shamanic skills, there is only one ring on his finger. In sum, one gets the impression that a considerable part of the specifically shamanic worldview had been almost lost in the Chulym area back in the 19th century with some portions of it having survived almost by chance, for example, thanks the fact that one of Eleonora Lvova’s informants happened to belong to an old shamanic family.

The surviving field data, however, complement the existing observations. According to it, the world is divided into three main parts, the Upper, the Lower and the Middle worlds. It is not Erlik, however, who is mentioned as the master of the Lower world. Although the myths undoubtedly refer to him, he is called by a different name, Chär-ezi , “Master of the Earth,” or Ulug-chak , “the Great/Chief Chak.”  The master of the Upper World is not mentioned by name at all. The shaman can descend into the Lower World in search of the soul of the patient (if, of course, the spirits subordinate to Chär-ezi are to blame for its loss), or can rise for protection “on an invisible horse above the nineteen clouds” to the master of the Upper World.

In addition to deities and people, the world of the traditional Chulym culture is inhabited by spirits of various powers, characters and degrees of benevolence. The name of the spirit common to the Chulym dialects is chak/jak , which is also present in the Shor and Altai languages (and, according to one hypothesis, goes back through Buddhism to the Sanskrit name for the violent yaksha demon). There are many chaks, they are varied and multi-formed; they can be human-like or invisible, or simply described as “small, his legs do not reach the ground, flies on one wing, shaggy, looks like a monkey,” clearly inspired by the ideas about evil spirits of folk Orthodoxy.

However, the Chulym magical universe is not limited to chaks . The traditional worldview also included a separate category of the ezi spirits (“master-spirits”), for example, Taiga ezi , taiga master; Sug ezi , water master (aka Jus ezi , master of the Chulym); Òp ezi , house master (who bears very little resemblance to the good-natured Slavic household spirit ( domovoy ) and is more like a malicious poltergeist). There were also taiga-kizhi , “the taiga people,” who were more like Scandinavian trolls or Slavic “fairy people” and “ chud. ” They live in the taiga, can be invisible to humans, and possess supernatural abilities. At the same time, they look like humans, except being very tall. They live in families, have children, celebrate weddings, and die (sometimes at the hands of humans). Finally, there are spirits of diseases, which are numerous and very harmful.

An important part of the traditional Chulym culture were (similar to the other Turki of the Tom region) domestic dolls stored in the attic or in a separate barn-like building by the house. The chief figurine had the shape of a bird, was carved from wood, with the wings and the tail made of real bird feathers - the so-called chak-kush , “the bird of the chaks ”; the other dolls, according to the data, depicted people and livestock.

On certain days, senior family members, usually women, came alone to visit the dolls, fed them porridge and vodka and asked them to ensure the well-being of the family, the safety of livestock and home, and the health of the children.

Certain rituals were also performed in the yard outside the house. Here, the shaman determined which horse pleased the protector spirits; subsequently the owner would keep this animal apart from the others, freeing it from hard labour as it was now considered a sacred animal izykh (coming from the ancient Turkic idik , “sacred”) or uyuk , bringer of luck to the owners and prosperity to the livestock. In the yard, the shaman would hang ribbons of different colors, also called uyuk , which were also considered symbols of good luck for the family and home.

Finally, each clan, or, according to other sources, each village, had its own family tree. It was located in the taiga near the village with a kuzhenek hung on it, which was a box made of bark containing sacred family objects and a doll depicting the protector of the clan. For the descendants of the hero Tutyshkabyrg , for example (the Shumilovs, Budeevs, Skoblins), it was a fox; for his descendants of his heroic father-in-law Atnel-atezi (the Tamychevs, Tamachakovs, Tolbanovs) it was a Siberian weasel. The children and even the adults were not allowed to be near the sacred tree without clearing it with the shaman; only the shaman himself could approach the tree without fear. Every spring, rituals for a successful hunt were held by the tree at which a motley bull was sacrificed.