The shaman of Eurasian traditions never acts alone. In ethnographic descriptions he or she is always surrounded by a host of presences: spirits that protect, guide, carry, and help in fighting or negotiating. These helper spirits are one of the most characteristic elements of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism.
A useful distinction
Scholars often distinguish, with some simplification, between two kinds of spirits linked to the shaman:
- tutelary spirits, or protectors, who have chosen the shaman and accompany them throughout life, often identified with ancestors or with high-ranking powers;
- helper spirits in the strict sense, more numerous, who assist with specific tasks: flying, swimming, searching, defending.
The distinction is not always clear in the sources, and Siberian peoples used their own categories that do not coincide with those of anthropologists. It nonetheless remains useful for orientation.
The animals
Many helper spirits take animal form. The choice of animal is not random and reflects both the environment and the function:
| Animal | Typical function in the sources |
|---|---|
| Birds (eagle, goose, swan, raven) | flight to the upper world, messages |
| Fish and waterbirds | diving, travel downward or along the cosmic river |
| Bear | strength, protection, link with the forest and the ancestors |
| Reindeer, elk, deer | mount, guide on the journey |
| Snake | passage between worlds, transformation |
These animals appear on the costume, on the drum, in the songs. The shaman could imitate their calls and movements during the session, making their presence visible.
The Sakha animal-mother
Among the Sakha, or Yakuts, of north-eastern Siberia, ethnographers described the figure of the ije-kyyl, the shaman's «animal-mother». It is a spirit in animal form, often a bird, an elk or a bear, deeply bound to the shaman's soul. It was said that the animal-mother showed itself rarely and that its fate was joined to that of the shaman.
This figure shows clearly that the helper spirit is not a mere tool. It is a double, an intimate otherness, with whom the shaman shares something of their own existence.
The ongon
In Mongolia and among the Buryats the word ongon (plural ongod) refers both to a spirit, often that of an ancestor or a dead shaman, and to the object that represents and houses it. Ongon could be figurines of felt, wood or metal, pieces of cloth, small painted images, kept in the tent in a place of honour.
Food, milk and drinks were offered to the ongon; they were «fed» by smearing fat or milk on the figures. The relationship was reciprocal: the family cared for the spirit and the spirit protected the family. When Buddhism spread in Mongolia between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many ongon were gathered and burned as idolatrous objects.
How spirits are acquired
The sources describe different ways in which spirits come to the shaman. They may be inherited from a shaman relative, appear during the initiatory crisis, or be met during ritual journeys. In some traditions the shaman accumulated spirits over a lifetime, and his or her strength was measured partly by the number and quality of the presences accompanying them.
Not all spirits were benevolent. Some had to be kept in check, fed and respected according to precise rules. The relationship with the world of spirits was an ongoing negotiation, not guaranteed protection.
Animals and spirits today
In the contemporary world the idea of the «animal guide» as a personal symbol, chosen or discovered through meditation exercises, is widespread. It is an idea that derives partly from Western neo-shamanism and has little to do with the documented Siberian traditions, where the helper spirit was tied to a specialist, a community and a precise cosmology.
Anyone interested in these themes does well to keep the two levels apart: on one side modern symbolic use, on the other the historical traditions, which deserve to be known for what they were.
In short
- The Eurasian shaman always acts accompanied by tutelary and helper spirits.
- Many spirits take animal form, chosen according to environment and function.
- Among the Sakha the «animal-mother» is an intimate double of the shaman.
- In Mongolia and among the Buryats the ongon are both spirits and the objects that house them.
- The relationship with spirits was an ongoing negotiation, not guaranteed protection.
