Together with the drum, the costume is the element that most struck travellers and ethnographers in Siberia. It was not a ceremonial garment in the European sense, that is, an elegant outfit for a celebration. It was rather a second body, charged with symbols, which the shaman put on in order to become, during the rite, something different from the everyday person.
A heavy garment
Many costumes preserved in museums are surprisingly heavy. On a base of hide or cloth, dozens of iron or other metal pendants, bells, discs and cut-out figures were sewn. Some examples weigh several kilos, and sources recall that wearing them and moving for hours during a session required strength and endurance.
The weight was not a flaw. The metal, its jingling and its value were an integral part of the meaning. Among many Siberian peoples iron and the smith's work were surrounded by respect and fear, and in several traditions smiths and shamans were believed to be linked by a symbolic kinship. A saying recorded by ethnographers among the Sakha states that the smith and the shaman come from the same nest.
Fringes and feathers
Along the sleeves, back and hem, many costumes have long fringes of hide or cloth. In several traditions these fringes are interpreted as feathers: the shaman, putting on the garment, takes on the nature of a bird able to fly towards the upper world. The bird theme also recurs in feathered headdresses and in bird figures hung on the costume.
The meaning was not the same everywhere. In some areas the fringes were read as an animal's hair, or as snakes, which in certain Siberian traditions are helper spirits. The same form could therefore carry different symbols.
The skeleton on the garment
One of the most unusual aspects of some costumes, particularly among the Evenki and neighbouring peoples, is the presence of metal elements reproducing bones: ribs, arms, legs, sometimes an entire stylised skeleton. The shaman thus appeared as a being reduced to its essential structure.
Scholars have connected this motif to initiation narratives in which the future shaman dreams of being dismembered by the spirits and then reassembled with new bones. The skeleton on the garment recalls that symbolic rebirth and the condition of one who has passed through death and returned.
The headdress
The headdress varied greatly from people to people. Among the Evenki and other taiga groups, iron antlers were common, imitating those of the reindeer or deer and evoking the animal as guide and mount. It is precisely a headdress of this kind that appears in Witsen's famous engraving of 1692.
Other headdresses were made of feathers, fur, or cloth with ribbons hanging in front of the face. These ribbons, or fringes over the eyes, recur in several traditions and often serve to cover ordinary sight, as if to indicate that during the rite the shaman sees with other eyes.
Spirits sewn onto the garment
Many pendants represent the shaman's helper spirits: birds, fish, bears, snakes, human figures. The costume thus became a kind of visible assembly of the presences that accompanied the shaman. Each new spirit acquired over a lifetime could translate into a new element sewn onto the garment.
For this reason no two costumes were ever identical. They told the personal story of the wearer, their relationship with the spirits and the stages of their path.
How to read a costume today
When standing before a shamanic costume in a museum, it helps to remember a few things:
- It was not a decorative object: every element had a ritual function.
- It was not interchangeable: it belonged to a specific person and their history.
- It does not represent «shamanism» in general: it is the product of one people, one period and one specific tradition.
- It often reached the museum in difficult circumstances, during campaigns of conversion or repression.
These considerations do not diminish the object's fascination, but make it more truthful.
The costume and transformation
Putting on the costume meant, in the language of many traditions, changing one's nature. The shaman became a bird to ascend, an animal to run, a skeleton to recall their own symbolic death. The garment was the place where the human body opened to the world of spirits. It is a theme that the study of esoteric traditions recognises in many forms: the robe as the visible sign of an inner transformation.
In short
- The Siberian shamanic costume was a second ritual body, often very heavy.
- The iron pendants recalled the symbolic bond between shaman and smith.
- Fringes and feathers often evoked the bird's flight towards the upper world.
- Some costumes reproduced the skeleton, in connection with tales of initiatory dismemberment.
- Each costume was unique and told the shaman's personal story.
