Theme
Myth and Belief
The religious world of the Turkic peoples of the steppe: Heaven and the powers beside it, the spirits of places, the shaman, the rites of sacrifice and of death, and the signs read in bone and stone. The Göktürk inscriptions name Tengri, Umay and the sacred Earth-and-Water. Much of the rest is known from Chinese, Byzantine and Arabic reports and from the ethnography of the Altai and Siberia, written down centuries later. This page gathers the articles of the atlas on all of it.
The belief systems
- Shamanism Practice of a ritual specialist who enters a trance to treat the sick, foretell the year and deal with spirits, recorded on the steppe since the Xiongnu. Tengrism grew out of it and rests on it.
- Tengrism Modern name for the sky-centred religion of the Old Turkic peoples. Its attested core is Tengri, the fortune he grants, and the sacred Earth-and-Water.
- Turkic Mythology Stories of origin, divine powers and the order of the world among the Turkic peoples. Its oldest figures are the she-wolf of the Ashina, the tree of the succession, Heaven, Earth-and-Water and Umay.
- Animism Modern name for the belief that places, waters, mountains, fire, animals and the dead have spirits or owners. It is the base layer under shamanism and, through it, under Tengrism.
