the ‘inside’ other 113
division of the world in three layers (Heaven, Earth, and Underworld)
and this strict cosmological scheme often put the khagan into direct
competition with the shamans and their ability to penetrate the worlds
of spirits and dead.^105
Unfortunately we do not posses enough sources for the period
between the sixth and the ninth century in order to draw a detailed and
concrete picture of this distinct group—among the nomad and semi-
sedentary communities in the Eurasian steppe. Most importantly, we
can not say for sure how it was perceived by own society and by for-
eign. We may suppose that the latter were afraid and sometimes even
disgusted by such not-own personages. Shamans possessed different
sacralized objects, in fact tabooed for the other members of the com-
munity; and at some of them ordinary people could not even stare.
The latter believed that if some of these artifacts (clothes, amulets, etc.)
were destroyed, the shaman power will disappear. Here the mutual
interrelation between symbolic and psychological could be seen and
it has to be remembered that precisely this close relation was used by
such liminal personages in order to spread fear and obedience among
people and to rule over and manipulate them.
The places (topoi) of shamans and magicians also provoked differ-
ent feelings and thoughts in ordinary people. They were a principio
marked by the otherness of the sacred and unusual, by some great
secrets and especially the sacred trees (most often woods) and how
they were cut down and burnt by Christian missionaries is common
place (topos) in many saints’ Lives. Such acts not only cleared the space
for the churches of the new faith but also destroyed the fear of old
religion and its attributes.
The shamanesses provoked mixed feelings among their own people.
The latter felt the shamanesses were not “just like us”, because they
had abilities to mediate, they used to talk with spirits; also, they were
masters of the diseases. Both the epic tales and the folklore constantly
impose the perception that their garments^106 had heavenly, divine ori-
gin and the shamanesses themselves were able to travel between the
worlds under the shape of different birds. There is a widespread notion
among the Altaic tribes in nowadays Siberia that the shamanesses are
(^105) Meserve 2000, 66. Also see, Gumilev 2004, 422.
(^106) See Prokof ’eva 1971, 23–67.