Tengrism

• Ancestor Cult The reverence of forefathers and the dead among the Xiongnu, Göktürks, Uyghurs and Kirghiz: the cave of the forebears, funeral offerings, memorials at the grave, and the law of the forefathers.
• 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.
• Asena the She-Wolf (Gök Börü) Ancestor in the Chinese accounts of Göktürk origins, golden head on the standard, name of the khan's guard. In the Göktürks' own writing the wolf is a simile for an army.
• Ay Ata The moon as a male deity of the Turkic peoples, the Moon Father beside the Sun Mother. Xiongnu rulers bowed to it, Göktürks raided as it waxed, Uyghur khagans bore it in their titles.
• Burial and the balbal What the Göktürks did at a grave. The body lay in the tent, and the mourners rode seven circuits and cut their faces. Then the burning, in its season, and the line of stones running east.
• Dochia minimal The Göktürks' own word for the rites owed to the dead, preserved once, in Greek, by Menander. He heard it at the mourning for Istemi in 576.
• Erklig The lord of the dead in Old Turkic Buddhist and Manichaean texts, and an ordinary adjective for power in the older language. Absent from the Göktürk inscriptions.
• Fire Worship Reverence for fire among the Göktürks. A Chinese pilgrim saw it at the western court, where no one sat on wood because wood held fire, and Theophylact put fire first among the powers they honoured.
• Following in Death Retainers who took their lives after their lord's death. The Tang histories record two Göktürks who followed Ilig Khan in death after he died a captive at Chang'an in 634.
• Gaoche Thunder Rite Rite of the Gaoche at a place struck by thunder, recorded in the Wei Shu. In the autumn after the strike they buried a ram, lit a fire and rode a hundred circuits while a female shaman prayed.
• Göktürk Face-Cutting The Göktürk mourning rite: the kin of the dead cut their faces with knives until blood and tears ran together. Described by the Zhou Shu and the Sui Shu, and performed by Roman envoys in 576.
• Horse Sacrifice Killing of a horse as an offering among the steppe peoples. The Chinese histories give it at the sacrifice to heaven, at funerals and at oaths. The full rite, with its birch, its goose and its journey through the heavens, is known from the Altai of the nineteenth century.
• Kam (Turkic Shaman) The Old Turkic ritual specialist. Chinese observers describe the office, and a Byzantine embassy saw it at work once, in 569.
• Kün Tengri The sun as a divine power among the steppe peoples, and the god of the sun in the titles of the Uyghur khagans and in the Old Uyghur texts. The Xiongnu chanyu bowed to the rising sun, the Göktürk khan's tent opened to the east, and the Uyghur khagans ruled by the god of the sun or of the moon.
• Omens and Divination Signs and their interpretation among the Göktürks. Theophylact gives them priests who foretold the future, and the Chinese histories record a divination at a khan's court and portents before khans died.
• Purification by Fire Göktürk rite of cleansing by fire. In 569 men of the tribe censed a Roman embassy's baggage with burning frankincense and led the envoy Zemarchos through the fire.
• Raiding at the Full Moon minimal Göktürk custom of timing raids by the moon. The Sui Shu says in one sentence that they waited until the moon was nearly full and then rode out to plunder.
• Raising on the Felt Göktürk installation of a new khan. His ministers carried him on a felt, turned him nine times with the sun, half-strangled him with silk and asked how many years he would reign.
• Riding Round the Dead Funeral act of riders circling the dead. Jordanes records it at Attila's funeral in 453, the Zhou Shu among the Göktürks, who rode seven times round the tent in which the body lay.
• Sacred Mountains The mountains that the sources of the Göktürks, Uyghurs and Kirghiz set apart: the sacred Ötüken forest, a bare mountain called the spirit of the earth, and the sacred heads of the inscriptions.
• Sacrifice and the year The Göktürk ritual year as the Chinese record it. The cave of the ancestors once a year, the sacrifice to heaven in the middle of the fifth month, and a reckoning by the greening of the grass.
• Scapulimancy Divination from the cracks in a sheep's shoulder blade held in fire. Attila's soothsayers read scraped bones before the battle of 451, the Mongol khan Möngke consulted charred blades before every undertaking in 1254, and Kirghiz, Mongols and Altaians still read them in the nineteenth century.
• Soul Words The Turkic words for breath, soul and life force: tın, kut, sür, süne, tyula and üzüt. The inscriptions of the Göktürks use Kut for the fortune of a khan, the Old Uyghur texts add tınlıg and üzüt, and the Altaians of the nineteenth century named six souls, each with its own task.
• Stone Figures Carved stone statues of the early medieval steppe, mostly a standing man with a cup, a belt and a sword, set at the east side of memorial enclosures from the Altai to Semirechye.
• Strava minimal The funeral feast that the Huns held over the tomb of Attila in 453, with great revelry and lamentation. Jordanes gives the word as their own.
• Sword of Mars minimal The ancient sword that a herdsman found and brought to Attila, sacred to the Scythian kings and dedicated to the god of war. Priscus heard the story at Attila's court in 449.
• Tengri The sky of the Old Turkic inscriptions, and the power that installs and deposes khans. The one divine name the Göktürks themselves wrote.
• The three worlds The tiered cosmos of upper, middle and lower world in the reconstructed Turkic religion, set against the two-part cosmos the Göktürk inscriptions actually describe.
• Ulukayın (Turkic World Tree) The tree at the centre of the world in the reconstructed Turkic cosmology. The Göktürk-period sources give one tree only: the tree of the succession contest in the Zhou Shu.
• Umay The goddess of birth and of children. The Kül Tegin inscription names her once, in a comparison to a queen mother; the Tonyukuk inscription names her with Tengri and the sacred Earth-and-Water among the powers that gave victory. She is the only female divine figure in the Göktürk corpus.
• Water Cult Reverence for rivers, lakes and springs as powers with owners: the sacred Earth-and-Water beside Heaven, a river of sacrifice in the Zhou Shu, and the water that Theophylact has the Göktürks revere.
• Yer-Su Spirits The sacred Earth-and-Water of the Göktürk inscriptions. The land itself is a power that speaks beside Tengri, and a possession that can be left without a master.
• Yol Tengri The road-god of the Irk Bitig. His name is ambiguous: yol is both the road a man travels and the fortune he meets on it.

← All religions