Oral stories about shamanic formation in the folklore tradition of Tuvans

The study examines the mythological conceptions and archaic beliefs of the Tuvans about becoming shamans, as presented in oral narratives. Two groups of texts have been identified in shamanic narratives, collected from shamanic practitioners and from ordinary people. In addition, the specificity of shamanic narratives in Tuvan culture was analyzed. A description is given of the main signs of shamanic illness in hereditary shamans who had a shamanic ancestor in their maternal or paternal line. Memoirs of hereditary shamans mark the stages of shamanic development in the lives of the ritual specialists, with an emphasis on confirmation of the shamanic gift by an experienced magic practitioner. The texts describe the stages that an ordinary person “chosen by the spirits” goes through when accepting to follow the “will of the spirits.” It is noted that when telling about shamanic illness, the narrators pay attention to the physiological changes experienced by the future shaman. As a result, the study has revealed the cases when ordinary people with no shamanic “roots” received their shamanic skills from spirits of the Middle World (aza, albys, diiren) or from the rainbow and lightnings. Oral narratives demonstrate that the shamans of this category did not exhibit the shamanic illness peculiar to hereditary magical practitioners. The sources for the study were published folklore texts and the author’s new field recordings collected from Tuvans in Russia and China in 2010-2020.

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