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.Indeed, I suspect that we are approaching here theultimate sanctuary and wellspring of the whole world and wonder all the magic of the gods.Said the Tungus shaman, Semyonov Semyon:Up above there is a certain tree where the souls of theshamans are reared, before they attain their powers.And onthe boughs of this tree are nests in which the souls lie andare attended.The name of the tree is "Tuuru." The higherthe nest in this tree, the stronger will the shaman be who israised in it, the more will he know, and the farther will he see.The rim of a shaman's drum is cut from a living larch.The larch is left alive and standing in recollection and honorof the tree Tuuru, where the soul of the shaman was raised.Furthermore, in memory of the great tree Tuuru, at eachseance the shaman plants a tree with one or more cross-sticks in the tent where the ceremony takes place, and thistree too is called Tuuru.This is done both among us hereon the Lower Tunguska and among the Angara Tungus.TheTungus who are connected with the Yakuts call this plantedtree "Sarga." It is made of a long pole of larch.White clothsare hung on the cross-sticks.Among the Angara Tungus theyhang the pelt of a sacrificed animal on the tree.The Tungusof the Middle Tunguska make a Tuuru that is just like ours.According to our belief, the soul of the shaman climbs upthis tree to God when he shamanizes.For the tree grows SHAMANISM 257during the rite and invisibly reaches the summit of heaven.God created two trees when he created the earth and man:a male, the larch; and a female, the fir.30The vision of the tree is a characteristic feature of the shamanismof Siberia.The image can have been derived from the great tradi-tions of the south; it is applied, however, to a distinctly shamanisticsystem of experience.Like the tree of Wotan, Yggdrasil, it is theworld axis, reaching to the zenith.The shaman has been nurturedin this tree, and his drum, fashioned of its wood, bears him backto it in his trance of ecstasy.As Eliade has pointed out, theshaman's power rests in his ability to throw himself into a tranceat will.Nor is he the victim of his trance: he commands it, as abird the air in its flight.The magic of his drum carries him awayon the wings of its rhythm, the wings of spiritual transport.Thedrum and dance simultaneously elevate his spirit and conjure tohim his familiars the beasts and birds, invisible to others, thathave supplied him with his power and assist him in his flight.Andit is while in his trance of rapture that he performs his miraculousdeeds.While in this trance he is flying as a bird to the upper world,or descending as a reindeer, bull, or bear to the world beneath.Among the Buriat, the animal or bird that protects the shamanis called khubilgan, meaning "metamorphosis," from the verbkhubilku, "to change oneself, to take another form." 31 The earlyRussian missionaries and voyagers in Siberia in the first part ofthe eighteenth century noted that the shamans spoke to their spiritsin a strange, squeaky voice.32 They also found among the tribesnumerous images of geese with extended wings, sometimes ofbrass.33 And as we shall soon see,* in a highly interesting paleolithichunting station known as Mal'ta, in the Lake Baikal area, a numberof flying geese or ducks were found, carved in mammoth ivory.Such flying birds, in fact, have been found in many paleolithicstations; and on the under-wings of an important example foundnear Kiev, in the Ukraine, in a site called Mezin, there appearsthe earliest swastika of which we have record a symbol associated(as we have already remarked) in the later Buddhist art of nearbyChina and Tibet with the spiritual flight of the Buddha.Further-* Infra, p.330. 258 PRI MI TI VE MYTHOLOGYmore, in the great paleolithic cavern of Lascaux, in southernFrance, there is the picture of a shaman dressed in bird costume,lying prostrate in a trance and with the figure of a bird perchedon his shaman staff beside him.The shamans of Siberia wear birdcostumes to this day, and many are believed to have been conceivedby their mothers from the descent of a bird.In India, a term ofhonor addressed to the master yogi is Paramahamsa: paramountor supreme {paramo) wild gander (hamsa).In China the so-called"mountain men" or "immortals" (hsien) are pictured as feathered,like birds, or as floating through the air on soaring beasts.TheGerman legend of Lohengrin, the swan knight, and the tales, toldwherever shamanism has flourished, of the swan maiden, are like-wise evidence of the force of the image of the bird as an adequatesign of spiritual power.And shall we not think, also, of the dovethat descended upon Mary, and the swan that begot Helen of Troy?In many lands the soul has been pictured as a bird, and birdscommonly are spiritual messengers.Angels are but modified birds.But the bird of the shaman is one of particular character andpower, endowing him with an ability to fly in trance beyond thebounds of life, and yet return.Something of the world in which these wonder-workers move anddwell may be gathered from the legend of the Yakut shamanAadja.His fabulous triple-phased biography commences with atale of two brothers, whose parents had died when they were veryyoung; and when the elder was thirty and the younger twenty, thelatter married."In the same year," we then are told,a red piebald stallion foal was born, and the signs all pointedto this foal's becoming a beautiful steed.But that same fallthe younger of the two brothers the one who had marriedfell sick and died.And although he lay there dead, he couldhear everything that was said around him.He felt as thoughhe had fallen asleep.He could neither move a limb norspeak, yet could distinctly hear them making his coffin anddigging his grave.And so there he lay, as though alive, andhe was unhappy that they should be getting together to buryhim when he might very well have come back to life
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