Siberian Mythology – Where the Word Shaman Was Born
The Oldest Root
The word “shaman” was not born in a self-help book. It was not born in a spiritual retreat in California. It was not born in an Instagram hashtag. It was born in Siberia — in the Tungusic languages of the peoples who inhabit the taiga, the steppe and the tundra since times that written memory cannot reach. “Šaman” meant, in its origin, “one who knows.” And what he knew was something that modern civilization has forgotten: that the visible world is only the surface of something much larger, much more alive and much older than the rational mind can map.
Siberia is the cradle of shamanism. Not the only one — shamanic practices exist on all continents, in diverse forms and with different names. But it is here, among the Evenki, the Yakut, the Buriats, the Altai, the Tuva and dozens of other peoples, that shamanism as an organized spiritual system took shape. And with it, a mythology that is at once cosmology, map of the invisible and survival manual for a species that needs something more than food and shelter to stay alive.
This article is about that mythology. About the worlds that stack upon each other like floors of an infinite house. About the gods of the sky and the lords of the underworld. About the Tree that connects everything. About the animals that are more than animals. And about the drum — the simplest and most powerful instrument that human beings have ever invented to travel without leaving the place.
The Land That Shaped the Myths
To understand Siberian mythology you must first understand Siberia. And Siberia is difficult to understand because it is difficult to imagine. Thirteen million square kilometers — larger than any country on the planet if it were independent. Temperatures ranging from minus fifty in winter to forty in summer. Endless taiga, frozen tundra, steppes that stretch until the horizon disappears, rivers so wide that the other bank seems like another continent.
In this immense and relentless territory, dozens of distinct peoples developed cultures, languages and spiritual traditions over millennia. The Evenki in the eastern taiga. The Yakut (Sakha) in the Lena plains. The Buriats by Lake Baikal. The Tuva in the southern mountains. The Altai in the mountain range that divides Siberia from Mongolia. The Khanty and Mansi in the northwest. The Chukchi and Koryak in the far northeast, almost touching Alaska. Each people with their own variant, their own pantheon, their own rituals — but all sharing a recognizable cosmological structure and a relationship with the spiritual world that unites them like branches of the same tree.
And that metaphor is not accidental. The Tree is, literally, the center of everything.
The Three Worlds and the World Tree
Siberian cosmology sees the universe as a three-layered structure. Not two, like the Christian sky and earth. Not one, like the flat universe of materialist science. Three. And the three are connected by a vertical axis — the World Tree — that runs through everything from top to bottom like a cosmic spine.
The Upper World — Üst Dünya
The Upper World is the domain of the celestial gods, the luminous spirits and the creative forces. It is governed by Tengri, the god of the blue sky, or by Ülgen, depending on the people and the tradition. It is here that the shaman travels when seeking divine guidance, spiritual healing or knowledge about destiny. The Upper World is associated with light, order, creation — but it is not “good” in the Western moral sense. It is simply the upper half of the universe, and the forces that dwell there are powerful, not necessarily benevolent.
The Middle World — Orta Dünya
The Middle World is where we live. The earth, the air, the rivers, the mountains, the animals, the humans — everything that can be touched, seen and felt dwells here. But the Middle World is not merely physical: it is also inhabited by spirits of nature — the owners of rivers, the lords of mountains, the spirits of trees and animals. For Siberians, there is no “dead nature.” Everything is alive. Everything has spirit. Everything observes, listens and responds — if we know how to ask.
The Lower World — Alt Dünya
The Lower World is the domain of the dead, the shadowy spirits and the chthonic forces. It is governed by Erlik, the lord of the underworld. It is not equivalent to the Christian hell — it is not a place of punishment. It is simply the other side of existence: the place where the souls of the dead go, where ancestral spirits reside, and from where both disease and hidden wisdom emerge. The shaman who travels to the Lower World is not descending into evil: he is descending into the deep. And the deep, like any root, sustains what grows above.
The World Tree — Aal Luuk Mas
At the center of everything is the Tree. Called Aal Luuk Mas by the Yakut, Bai Kayın by the Altai, or simply the World Tree in countless traditions, it is the axis that connects the three worlds. Its roots plunge into the Lower World. Its trunk crosses the Middle World. Its branches reach the Upper World. It is along this Tree that the shaman travels — ascending to meet the gods, descending to meet the dead, always returning to the trunk, which is where we are.
The World Tree is not metaphor. For Siberian peoples, it is as real as the physical tree that is often used in shamanic rituals as a material representation of the cosmic axis. In many traditions, the central pole of the tent — the yurt — is considered a representation of the World Tree, and the opening at the top of the tent is the portal to the Upper World. Entire life is organized around this axis: the center of the house is the center of the universe, and whoever inhabits the house inhabits the meeting point of the three worlds.
This image — the Tree that connects everything — appears in mythologies all over the world. The Yggdrasil of the Norse. The Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. The Ashvattha of the Hindus. The Kalpavriksha of the Buddhists. It is not coincidence: it is memory. The World Tree is one of the oldest archetypes of the human psyche — and Siberia may be the place where this archetype first gained a name.
The Pantheon: The Gods of the Steppe and the Taiga
Tengri — The Eternal Sky
Tengri is the supreme god — and at the same time, Tengri is the sky. Not a god who inhabits the sky: the sky itself as divinity. Blue, infinite, eternal. Tengri has no human form, no temple, no idol. It is pure presence — the blue above your head that sees all, encompasses all, contains all. Tengrism — the religion centered on Tengri — is one of the oldest monotheistic beliefs in the world, predating Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Tengri does not interfere in human affairs the way Greek or Hindu gods do. It does not punish out of jealousy, does not conspire, does not throw tantrums. Tengri simply is. And it is this simplicity that makes it so powerful: Tengri is the order of the universe, the force that keeps the three worlds in balance, the breath that animates everything that exists. The warriors of the steppes — including Genghis Khan, who was a devotee of Tengri — did not pray asking for favors: they prayed declaring submission to the sky. “By the will of Tengri” was the phrase that preceded every conquest, every law, every decision. Not out of superstition — out of understanding that there is something above all kings and all empires.
Comparison: Tengri dialogues with the Hindu Brahman (the formless absolute), with the Chinese Tao (the way that cannot be named) and, to some extent, with the God of the Old Testament before being anthropomorphized. All point to the same intuition: there is a force that precedes and transcends everything — and the best thing one can do in the face of it is bow your head and respect.
Ülgen — The Luminous Creator
If Tengri is the sky as principle, Ülgen is the creator as person. In the Altaic tradition, Ülgen inhabits the Upper World, above the clouds, in a golden palace that shines like the sun. It is he who created the earth, humans and benevolent spirits. It is to him that the shaman turns when in need of guidance about healing, destiny or purpose.
Ülgen is good — but good in the cosmic sense, not in the sentimental sense. It is not “nice.” It is luminous, creative, generous — but also distant. It created the world and withdrew. It does not micromanage. It does not intervene in every problem. It gave human beings free will and expects them to use it. The relationship with Ülgen is one of respect and gratitude — not dependence.
Erlik — The Lord of the Underworld
Erlik is the other half. If Ülgen created the light, Erlik governs the darkness. Lord of the Lower World, judge of the dead, guardian of the secrets that are buried beneath everything. In some traditions, Erlik was the first being created by Ülgen — and rebelled, wanting to create his own world. He could not create from scratch, but he could corrupt: it is to him that disease, suffering and death are attributed.
But — and this is a crucial point — Erlik is not the Devil. That is a Christian reading imposed on a cosmology that does not operate in terms of good versus evil. Erlik is the darkness that complements the light. It is the decomposition that allows rebirth. It is the death that gives meaning to life. The shaman who travels to the Lower World to negotiate with Erlik is not making a pact with evil: he is descending to the roots to understand what is rotting — and rotting, in nature, is the first step of transformation.
Comparison: Erlik echoes Hades in Greek mythology — lord of the underworld, feared but not malevolent — and Kanaloa in Polynesian mythology, who governs both the deep ocean and the underworld. The difference is that Erlik is more personal, more negotiable: the shaman can argue with him, offer sacrifices, exchange favors. The relationship is tense, dangerous, but real.
Umai — Mother Earth
Umai is the goddess of fertility, childbirth and the protection of children. It is the maternal force of the universe — the earth that nourishes, the womb that generates, the arm that protects the newborn. In many Siberian traditions, Umai is invoked during childbirth and in the first years of a child’s life, considered the guardian of young souls that have not yet taken root in the Middle World.
Umai is not merely the goddess of human fertility: it is the fertility of the earth, of herds, of harvests. Everything that is born, grows and multiplies is under her protection. In some traditions, Umai is associated with the fire of the hearth — the flame that warms the yurt, that cooks the food, that keeps the darkness outside. The connection between the human mother and the domestic fire is profound: both sustain life within the protected space.
Comparison: Umai resonates with Papa in Polynesian mythology (the Earth as generating mother), with Greek Demeter (fertility and protection) and with Andean Pachamama (the living earth that sustains). What distinguishes Umai is her intimate dimension: she is not a distant cosmic goddess — she is the presence felt by the fire, by the cradle, by the baking bread.
Other Spirits and Divinities
Beyond the greater gods, Siberian mythology is populated by a constellation of spirits that inhabit each element of nature. The Eze — owners or lords — are spirits that govern specific places: the spirit of the lake, the spirit of the mountain, the spirit of the forest. They are not gods: they are presences. And interacting with them requires respect, offering and care. Entering a forest without acknowledging its spirit is like entering someone’s house without asking permission — and the consequences can be proportional to the lack of courtesy.
The Buriats recognize the Tngri — fifty-five celestial spirits that govern specific aspects of life, from war to metalworking. The Yakut have the Aiyy — luminous spirits associated with creation and fertility — and the Abaahy — shadowy spirits associated with disease and chaos. The Tuva venerate the spirits of mountains and rivers with ovoo rituals — mounds of sacred stones where offerings are deposited and colored cloth ribbons are tied to the wind.
This richness of spirits reflects a view of the world where nothing is inert. Each stone, each river, each animal, each tree is inhabited by a presence that deserves recognition. Not out of superstition — but out of understanding that life is broader than the human eye can see.
The Shaman: One Who Travels Between Worlds
The Siberian shaman is not a priest. Not a guru. Not a therapist. He is a traveler. His work is to cross the boundary between worlds — ascend to the Upper World, descend to the Lower World, negotiate with spirits, seek lost souls, heal diseases that are not of the body — and return. Always return. Because the shaman who does not return is the shaman who has gone mad or died in the journey. And both things happen.
The shamanic vocation, in the Siberian tradition, is not chosen: it is imposed. The spirits choose the shaman, not the other way around. And the choice is rarely gentle. The “shamanic illness” — a profound crisis that precedes initiation — involves hallucinations, fever, convulsions, isolation, experiences of death and symbolic rebirth. The future shaman is dismantled by the spirits — literally, in visions, his body is torn apart, his bones are counted, his organs are reorganized — and then reassembled as something new. Something that can see what others cannot.
This initiation has nothing romantic about it. It is traumatic, dangerous and involuntary. Many future shamans resist the call — and resistance, according to traditions, results in chronic illness or madness. Accepting the vocation is accepting a burden: the shaman serves the community, not himself. He is doctor, priest, psychologist, diplomat between worlds. And the price is living permanently on the frontier — never fully in the common world, never fully in the spiritual world.
The Drum: The Shaman’s Horse
If the World Tree is the path, the drum is the vehicle. In the Siberian tradition, the shamanic drum is not a musical instrument: it is a horse. Literally. When the shaman beats the drum at the right rhythm — a constant, hypnotic beat, between four and seven hertz — he “mounts” the drum and rides between the worlds.
The making of the drum is, in itself, a sacred ritual. The wood comes from a specific tree, chosen by the spirits. The skin that covers the frame comes from an animal sacrificed ritually — deer, elk, horse, depending on the tradition. The drum is painted with cosmological symbols: the World Tree, the sun and moon, the shaman’s auxiliary spirits. Each drum is unique, made for a specific shaman, and when the shaman dies, the drum is destroyed or retired — because it belonged to him and no one else.
Modern science explains part of the effect: the rhythmic beat between four and seven hertz induces theta brain waves, the same state reached in deep meditation or in the moments between waking and sleep. It is the frequency of lucid dreaming, of hypnosis, of trance. Siberians did not have electroencephalograms — but they knew, thousands of years ago, that that specific beat opened a door. And it did.
Spirit Animals: Guides, Protectors and Teachers
In Siberian mythology, animals are not inferior to humans. They are different — and, in many cases, superior. Each animal carries power, knowledge and a specific way of relating to the world that humans can learn, if they know how to observe.
The bear is perhaps the most revered animal throughout Siberia. For many peoples — Evenki, Khanty, Mansi, Ainu — the bear is ancestor. Not metaphorically: literally. The origin myths of several peoples describe a woman who united with a bear and gave birth to the first humans. Bear hunting is surrounded by elaborate rituals: the animal is treated with absolute respect before and after death, apologies are offered to its spirit, a feast is held in its honor, and the skull is placed in a sacred place so that the soul returns and is reborn. Killing without respect is to offend not just the bear — but the entire order of the world.
The wolf is the guide of the steppe. For Turks and Mongols, the wolf is a mythical ancestor — the she-wolf Asena who nursed the founder of the Turkish people. The wolf symbolizes collective intelligence, resilience, loyalty to the pack. It is the animal of the warrior who fights for something greater than himself.
The eagle is the messenger between worlds. In the Buryat tradition, the first shaman in history was an eagle — and when humans could not communicate with the spirits, the eagle transferred its power to a human woman, creating the shamanic lineage. The eagle flies higher than any other creature: it is the being that is closest to the Upper World while still belonging to the Middle World.
The deer and reindeer are the animals of the journey. In Siberian petroglyphs — stone carvings thousands of years old — deer with enormous antlers appear flying, carrying the shaman between worlds. The image of the flying deer is so central to Siberian iconography that many researchers believe the modern figure of Santa Claus — with his flying reindeer — descends directly from Siberian shamanic myths about the shaman who travels through the sky mounted on spiritual reindeer.
Each animal in Siberian mythology is a teacher. One does not venerate the animal out of superstition: one venerates it out of recognition that it knows something the human needs to learn. The bear teaches strength and respect. The wolf teaches community. The eagle teaches perspective. The deer teaches journey. And the human who listens — who really listens — becomes better for having listened.
The Cycle of the Soul: Life, Death and Return
In Siberian cosmology, death is not an end — it is a change of address. The soul leaves the Middle World and goes to the Lower World, where it is received by Erlik or by ancestral spirits, depending on the tradition. There, the soul rests, purifies itself and, eventually, returns — reincarnating in a new body, often within the same family.
Many Siberian peoples believe that humans possess more than one soul. The Yakut recognize three: the kut (vital soul that animates the body), the sur (shadow soul that can detach during sleep or illness) and the ije-kut (mother-soul, the essence that survives death and is reborn). When someone becomes ill, the shaman can diagnose that one of the souls has been lost — frightened by trauma, stolen by a spirit, or simply mislaid — and the cure consists of traveling to the spiritual world, finding the lost soul and bringing it back.
This practice — soul retrieval — is one of the oldest and most documented functions of Siberian shamanism. And it is remarkably similar to modern psychological concepts: dissociation, the trauma that “separates” a person from themselves, therapy as a process of reintegration. Siberians did not use the language of psychology — but they treated the same phenomenon thousands of years ago with a precision that impresses.
Siberian funeral rituals reflect this view. The dead are prepared carefully, dressed in their finest clothes, accompanied by objects they will need on the journey to the Lower World — food, tools, sometimes the faithful horse or dog. Death is treated as departure, not as an end. And mourning, though real and deep, is tempered by the certainty that the separation is temporary: the soul goes, but it returns.
Fire: The Center of Everything
If the World Tree is the vertical axis of the Siberian universe, fire is the horizontal axis of daily life. The fire at the center of the yurt is sacred — not by religious decree, but by existential and spiritual necessity. It is the fire that warms when it is minus fifty outside. It is the fire that cooks. It is the fire that illuminates. And it is the fire that connects the home to the world of spirits.
In many Siberian traditions, fire has its own divinity — Ut Ana (Mother Fire) among the Mongols, Od Ezi (Spirit of Fire) among the Tuva. Fire is treated as a family member: fed with care, never disrespected, never polluted with garbage or spit. Extinguishing the fire of the yurt is the symbolic equivalent of destroying the home. And when a new family is formed, the first act is to light the fire — creating a new center, a new domestic universe.
The reverence for fire in Siberia is so profound that it is reflected in everyday gestures that seem trivial but carry millennial meaning: offering the first portion of food to the fire before eating, sprinkling milk or tea on the flames as an offering, never pointing a knife toward the fire. Each gesture is communication with the spirit of fire — and each gesture says: I recognize that you are alive, that you sustain me, and that you deserve respect.
Echoes in Other Mythologies
Siberian mythology does not exist in isolation — it is a knot in a network that extends across the entire Northern Hemisphere and, in many respects, across the entire planet.
The World Tree reappears as Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, with the same structure of three worlds (Asgard, Midgard, Hel) and the same vertical axis connecting everything. It is not coincidence: Germanic peoples and Siberian peoples share cultural ancestry that goes back thousands of years, and the image of the Cosmic Tree traveled across the steppes along with migrations.
The relationship between Ülgen and Erlik — luminous creator and shadowy lord, complementary and not antagonistic — echoes the duality of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu in Persian Zoroastrianism, and possibly influenced that tradition through contact on the steppe routes. The difference is that Zoroastrianism moralized the duality (good against evil), while Siberian cosmology maintained neutrality: light and darkness are forces, not values.
The spirit animals of Siberia resonate in the totems of the First Nations of North America — and the explanation is simple: the first humans who crossed the Bering Strait to the Americas brought Siberian cosmology with them. The totems, the spirit animals, the shamanic journey, the drum — all of this crossed the Bering Strait along with the peoples who colonized the New World. American shamanism is, to a large extent, Siberian shamanism transplanted and adapted to a new landscape.
And perhaps the most surprising connection: Siberian reverence for ancestors and the practice of consulting the dead resonate deeply in the Yoruba tradition of eguns and divinized ancestors, and in the spiritualist practice of communicating with the deceased. Cultures separated by oceans and millennia reached the same conclusion: the dead do not go away. They remain present. And listening to them is wisdom, not superstition.
A Tradition That Survived the Impossible
Siberian mythology has survived everything. It survived forced Christianization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Orthodox missionaries burned drums, prohibited rituals and demonized shamans. It survived the Soviet Union, which classified shamanism as primitive superstition, imprisoned and executed shamans, and attempted to eradicate all forms of traditional spirituality. It survived globalization, which brought television, the internet and mass culture to the most remote communities.
And it did not merely survive — it is being reborn. Since the collapse of the USSR in the nineties, Siberian shamanism has experienced an extraordinary renaissance. In the Republic of Tuva, shamanism was recognized as one of three official religions (along with Buddhism and Orthodoxy). In Yakutia, traditional rituals such as Yhyakh — the summer solstice festival — bring together hundreds of thousands of people. In the Altai, young shamans are resuming practices that their grandparents were forced to abandon.
This renaissance is not nostalgia: it is necessity. Peoples who lost their spiritual traditions during decades of Soviet repression faced crises of identity, alcoholism and despair. The resumption of shamanism is, for many communities, an act of collective healing — a way to reconnect the thread that was cut and remember who you are when everything imposed from outside is removed.
The Source of Everything
Siberian mythology is, in many ways, the mother mythology of world shamanism. Not because it is “better” than other traditions — but because it is the most documented among the oldest, and because the word we use to describe this entire family of spiritual practices was born there, on those frozen steppes, in the mouths of peoples who knew that the visible world is only half the story.
What Siberia teaches us — and what may be its greatest contribution to human spirituality — is that the boundary between worlds is not a wall: it is a membrane. Permeable, traversable, alive. That animals know things we have forgotten. That the dead do not go away. That the earth has a voice. That fire has a soul. That the drum, with its simple and hypnotic beat, can take someone to places that no airplane can reach.
And that the Tree — that immense Tree that connects the sky to the underground — is always there. At the center of the world. At the center of the yurt. At the center of the chest. Waiting for someone to remember to look up and realize that the branches never stopped growing.
What Comes Next
This article is the panorama — the general map of a vast territory. In the next articles in this series, we will dive into each element of this mythology with the depth it deserves. The story of Erlik and the creation of the Lower World. The journey of Ülgen and the shaping of the first soul. The Bear Cult among the Evenki and the Ainu. The Tuva tradition of throat singing as a spiritual practice. The petroglyphs of Siberia and what they reveal about the oldest shamanic journeys we have on record.
Siberia is not a footnote in the history of human spirituality. It is the first chapter. And that chapter is still being written — by the same peoples who began it millennia ago, on the same lands, under the same infinite blue sky that they call Tengri.
The drum beats.
The Tree grows.
And between the sky and the root,
the shaman travels — because someone needs to remember the way.
— Burrow of the Badger
