The Shamanic Story: A Chechen Example

First of all, some background information on Chechnya and its people, so that the story that will be presented and analysed can be placed in some kind of context. (The source for much of this information was http://www.amina.com/article/br_hist.html [accessed 5/5/08]).

The Chechens live in a small territory called Chechnya bordered by Daghestan to the East and Northeast; Ingushetia and North Ossetia to the West; Russia's Stravrapol Province and Cossack region to the North; and Georgia to the South and Southwest. The Caucasus Mountains, which stretch along a line 1,100 kilometres long between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, protect them not only from enemies but from outside influences in general. The Chechens therefore have retained many traditional customs and practices. Not only has the mountainous terrain long been strategically important for Chechnya, but it also supports sheep farming-the traditional Chechen occupation.

It is said that

when God created the world, he sprinkled nations over the globe, but clumsily dropped his shaker over what ancient travellers called the ‘mountain of languages’. Pliny wrote that the ancient Greeks needed 300 interpreters to conduct business in the North Caucasus, while later, ‘we Romans conducted our affairs there with the aid of 130 interpreters.’ Today the mountains remain a living language laboratory. In Dagestan, one village may speak Avar, the next village Darghin, the next Lezghin. There are three main linguistic groups: Turkic, such as Karachai and Balkar; Indo-European, such as Ossetian, which is related to Persian; and the truly indigenous Caucasian tongues. The Caucasian languages, which are not found anywhere else in the world, are themselves divided into two branches: the eastern, such as Chechen, Ingush, and several Dagestani languages, and the western Adygei dialects, spoken by the Adygei, Cherkess, Kabards and Abkhaz (Smith, 2006, pp.7-8).

Contrary to popular misconception, the Chechens are not Slavs and they are not Turkic in origin either, despite the fact that Turkey unites all North Caucasus Muslim into a category which is related to them. In fact, they are not even "Chechen" as this was a term coined by the Russians after the name of a village (Chechen-aul) where the Russians first encountered the people in the early 16th century. The first written mention of the inhabitants of the region was in the 7th century, when they were known as the "Noxche" (pronounced "No-h-chee" with the "h" pronounced as if one was gargling from the back of the mouth: very similar to one of the ancient Aramaic letters).  Ethnically, they are related to other ethnic groups throughout the Caucasus, most closely with the neighbouring Ingush. Together, the Noxche and Ingush people have been called the "Vainaikh" which means "Our People." They have lived where they are now since prehistoric times, and while the Mesopotamians, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Slavs and others have greatly influenced the region with their wars, conquests and trade, being fiercely proud and protective of their ethnic roots and background, the inhabitants of Chechnya have remained ethnically the same for thousands of years.

Legend has it that

all Chechens came from the locality of Nashkh; hence the name “Nakhcho” the Chechens gave themselves. All “pure” Chechen kins (taipes) assert that they have come from Nashkh. It is also said that in the village of Nashkh there was a huge copper kettle riveted of separate copper plates, on which the names of all Chechen taipes and tukhums (allied tribes) were engraved. If anybody started an argument about the “purity” of any Chechen tribe, people could go to Nashkh and prove the correctness or incorrectness of the consideration (Anchabadze, 2001, p.38).

As for the Noxche language, it is considered to be both one of the most difficult and oldest languages in the Caucasus. Its roots can be traced most closely to the ancient Mesopotamians. A cuneiform-style of writing is evident on some of the stone inscriptions, dating at least to 2,800 BC. The Noxche language, as we know it today, is most linked to some of the words used by the ancient Akkhadians, and can be traced at least to 1200 BC. It is not related to Russian, Slavic, Indo-European or Turkish languages. But linguistic influences from invaders and traders over the centuries, including Mongolian and Arabic, are evident in many words. Linguistically, the Noxche language belongs to the Nakh branch of Caucasian languages, which include Ingush (galgai) and Batsbi (found in present day Georgia). Until Islamic tradition came in and words were transcribed phonetically into Arabic it was purely an oral language. In the early 19th century the Russians changed it to Latin, and then the Soviets in the 20th century changed it to Cyrillic. However, it is now written in Latin again.

The history of the Noxche, and their land, is filled with rich and colourful stories, which have survived for thousands of years through oral traditions, passed down generation by generation through clan elders. However, legends have blended with actual events so that the true history is difficult to write. During the 19th century, several Chechen writers tried to preserve the history in massive volumes. Some still survive, despite Stalin's purges between 1939-1944, which ended with the exile of all Chechen and Ingush peoples as well as the removal of all references to the Chechen people from maps, history books and more. The 1994-1996 war destroyed most of Chechnya's treasured archaeological and historical sites, though fortunately ancient burial sites, architectural monuments and several prehistoric cave petroglyphs still remain in the mountains. These valuable relics, coupled with the histories and stories of the elders, provide the people with virtually the only remaining evidence of who their ancient ancestors were.

Despite the fact that the people are predominantly Sunni Muslim today, that was not always so. Before the adoption of Islam, the Noxche people practised their own blend of religious traditions and beliefs. Like so many ancient cultures and civilizations worldwide, archaeological evidence and modern day practices suggest that their ancient religion was based on cycles of nature and astronomy, with many gods and complex rituals. Artefacts and monuments, as well as burial and sacrificial sites, tell archaeologists a lot about the religious beliefs before Islam and Christianity. Petroglyphs in underground caverns high in the mountains, dating from at least 4,000 BC, depict solar signs, anthropomorphic animals, and use of plants for rituals. Ancient underground burial vaults from approximately 2600 BC have carved niches and unusual stones with concentric circles in a variety of manners. Different underground dwellings dating from 1200 BC until the 9th or 10th centuries A.D. suggest a wide variety of gods associated with forces of nature and the stars. Islam was slowly introduced over a period of centuries, gaining converts by the 15th & 16th centuries, but not taking root until well into the 18th-mid 19th centuries, with the mountain regions last.

Then, after the tsarist era, instead of the freedom they had been led to believe would be theirs, the people got Communist atheism, Russian language, Russian officials and brutal land collectivisation. Mosques were either shut down or destroyed, and the mullahs arrested or shot.  However, new mosques sprang up under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost thaw in 1987, and by the 1990s could be seen everywhere. Along with the mosques came Islamic schools, or medressehs, a renewal of Arabic studies, and even pilgrimages to Mecca, However, “Many people across the region were so ignorant about Islam that this was often less a revival than a rediscovery. The middle-ages had grown up in an atheist state, while their children were just as likely to be inspired by the thought of making money and becoming post-Soviet consumers as they were by the mosque” (Smith, 2006, p.75). So what we find today in Chechnya are ancient traditions and superstitions blended with traditional Islamic beliefs and practices, and post-Soviet consumerism. It is a unique mixture and unlike any other.

What the majority of the people actually practise is a localised Sufi tradition and, as a result and contrary to popular misconception, the puritcanical Islamicists in practice have almost no support from Chechen society in general. And the fact that they follow the Sufi tariqat, or religious path, has stood them in good stead in that it has proved to be

the ideal form of religion for facing outside cultural and military pressure. Sufism has no need for formal buildings such as mosques, and its undocumented but fanatically loyal members can easily go underground or surface whenever they choose. … The zikr ritual formed an unbreakable shield around these people’s sense of identity and self-confidence. The tightly knit groups which gathered everywhere, and still gather, to perform the zikr were perfectly equipped for battle. Many were unafraid to die, because they felt close to Allah, and their training in brotherhood had prepared them to act as a group, with the discipline vital to fighting (Smith, 2006, p.40).

The fact that they follow the Sufi religious path is also means that entering trance states is something they are familiar with, and of course the ability to enter such states is traditionally one of the defining characteristics of the shaman too.

Historically, the people’s lives revolve around their village and clan structures, and this has been the case since ancient times. Taips, or clans, consist of several villages with a common ancestor, and each village can have anywhere from 10-50 families. There are more than 125 clans among the Noxche people, and all are categorized by a specific "Tukum", which is like a tribe. There are 9 Tukums and legend has it that they all share a common family ancestry of 9 brothers, hence the nine stars on the Chechen flag. Members of the 9 tukums unite to help one another, just as the legendary 9 brothers did thousands of years ago.

While the clans share a common history, language, religion and culture, each taip has their own elder council, court of justice, cemetery, customs, traditions and adats (which were customary laws). Leadership is by election and each clan, or taip, is self sufficient and self contained. The unity of clans, despite blood feuds, has traditionally been strong, and it remains strongest in the mountain regions. The clan structure has protected the people for thousands of years, and is one of the main reasons why foreign invaders, and later Russia, could not penetrate and conquer the people. As elders ruled in ancient days, today they are the backbone of village and clan life, and have the respect of all the people. Not only do the Chechen elders often act as intermediaries between feuding families but they even acted as intermediaries between villages and besieging Russian troops during the recent war, sometimes even deciding whether their village would fight or not (see Smith, 2006, p.23). Consequently, even though an elected government now exists, it is still the elders and the taips which truly rule. And the 9 tukums unite them all.

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Let us move on to consider what is meant by the term “shamanic story” and why the tale chosen for analysis in this paper can be said to exemplify the genre.

In her paper “South Siberian and Central Asian Hero Tales and Shamanistic Rituals”, the Leipzig researcher Erika Taube suggests that 

Folktales–being expressions of early stages of the development of human society–reflect reality: material culture, social relations, customs, [and] religious beliefs. When folktales were being formed and appeared as vivid forms of spiritual and artistic expression in correspondence with the general social development, those elements, which nowadays are usually regarded as fantastic creations of human mind, were strictly believed phenomena, i.e. they were accepted as facts. Therefore, it is not at all a new idea that such tales sometimes reflect shamanistic beliefs and conceptions (Taube, 1984, p. 344). 

If they were forms of “artistic expression”, however, then they could well have been regarded as such by those they were told to and we actually have no way of knowing whether they were “accepted as facts” or not. On the other hand, what we can show is that they do reflect shamanistic beliefs and conceptions, and this becomes apparent once we start to analyze them.

Sir James Frazer made a similar claim in his abridged version of The Golden Bough, first published in 1922: “folk-tales are a faithful reflection of the world as it appeared to the primitive mind; and that we may be sure that any idea which commonly occurs in them, however absurd it may seem to us, must once have been an ordinary article of belief” (Frazer, 1993, p.668). In reality, however, there is no way we can be certain that any idea that appears in such tales must once have been an ordinary article of belief as, not being able to get inside other people’s minds, we cannot possibly know what was actually the case[1].

On the other hand, as Emily Lyle (2007) points out in the abstract to her paper “Narrative Form and the Structure of Myth”, what we can be reasonably sure of is that “At each stage in transmission of a tale from generation to generation, modifications take place but something remains. Thus there is a potential for material to be retained from a time in the distant past when the narrative was embedded in a total oral worldview or cosmology.” In view of the fact that in the past shamanism was widely practised in the region where the tale presented here originates from, it should therefore come as no surprise that a shamanic worldview and shamanic cosmology is to be found embedded in it.

Stories have traditionally been classified as epics, myths, sagas, legends, folk tales, fairy tales, parables or fables. However, the definitions of the terms have a tendency to overlap (see Berman, 2006, p.150-152) making it difficult to classify and categorize material. Another problem with the traditional terminology is that the genre system formed on the basis of European folklore cannot be fully applied universally.

Consider, for example, Eliade’s definition of myth. For Eliade the characteristics of myth, as experienced by archaic societies, are that it constitutes the absolutely true and sacred History of the acts of the Supernaturals, which is always related to a “creation”, which leads to a knowledge, experienced ritually, of the origin of things and thus the ability to control them, and which is “lived” in the sense that one is profoundly affected by the power of the events it recreates (see Eliade, 1964, pp.18-19). However, many stories are “lived” in the sense that one is profoundly affected by the events they recreate without them necessarily being myths. Moreover, many shamanic stories could be regarded as having the above characteristics but would still not necessarily be classified as myths.

Another problem encountered is that a number of the definitions of what a myth is are so general in nature that they tend to be of little value. For example, the suggestion that a myth is “a story about something significant [that] … can take place in the past … or in the present, or in the future” (Segal, 2004, p.5) really does not help us at all as this could be applied to more or less every type of tale.

Mary Beard, considering the significance of distinctions between such categories as myth, legend, and folk-tale, concludes that in fact no technical definition distinguishing these is wholly plausible, since matters of technical definition are not really the issue. “For these are value judgments masquerading as professional jargon; they are justifications of neglect – the dustbin categories for all kinds of mythic thinking that we would rather not treat as ‘myth’” (see Winterbourne, 2007, p.15).  Be this as it may, it is surely indisputable that we need some form of labelling for the categories in order to be able to refer to them, and the argument being presented in this study is that the time has come to revise them. 

For this reason a case was argued in Berman (2006) for the introduction of a new genre, termed the shamanic story. This can be defined as a story that has either been based on or inspired by a shamanic journey, or one that contains a number of the elements typical of such a journey. Like other genres, it has “its own style, goals, entelechy, rhetoric, developmental pattern, and characteristic roles” (Turner, 1985, p.187), and like other genres it can be seen to differ to a certain extent from culture to culture. It should perhaps be noted at this point, however, that there are both etic and emic ways of regarding narrative (see Turner, 1982, p.65) and the term “shamanic story” clearly presents an outside view.   It should also be pointed out that what is being offered here is a polytheitic definition of what the shamanic story is, in which a pool of characteristics can apply, but need not.

Characteristics typical of the genre include the way in which the stories all tend to contain embedded texts (often the account of the shamanic journey itself), how the number of actors is clearly limited as one would expect in subjective accounts of what can be regarded as inner journeys, and how the stories tend to be used for healing purposes.

Additionally, given that through the use of narrative shamans are able to provide their patients “with a language, by means of which unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be expressed” (Lévi-Strauss, 1968, p.198), it follows that another feature of shamanic stories is they have the potential to provide a medium through which psychic states that might otherwise be difficult to put into words can be expressed.

They are also frequently examples of what Jürgen Kremer, transpersonal psychologist and spiritual practitioner, called “tales of power” after one of Carlos Castaneda’s novels. He defines such texts as ‘conscious verbal constructions based on numinous experiences in non-ordinary reality, “which guide individuals and help them to integrate the spiritual, mythical, or archetypal aspects of their internal and external experience in unique, meaningful, and fulfilling ways” (Kremer, 1988, p.192). In other words, they can serve the purpose of helping us reconnect with our indigenous roots.

The style of storytelling most frequently employed in both shamanic stories and in fairy tales is that of magic realism, in which although “the point of departure is ‘realistic’ (recognizable events in chronological succession, everyday atmosphere, verisimilitude, characters with more or less predictable psychological reactions), … soon strange discontinuities or gaps appear in the ‘normal,’ true-to-life texture of the narrative” (Calinescu, 1978, p.386). It is the style of storytelling that we find in Timor, which has been translated from Russian by Troy Morash, and is presented below:

Timor: A Chechen Tale

Once there was a man that suffered from a sore old back and bad eyesight. It was more than he could bear, so he thought.

Without further delay, he sent his oldest son in search for a cure to his sufferings. Dutifully, the eldest traveled far and wide, for both a long time and a short time, until he came to what seemed to him to be one of the famed ends of the world where the snow was red. 'What a wonder! Such a sight I certainly have not seen before,' he thought.

Excited, he ran back home as quickly as he could with the red snow in his hand, hoping that this would cure the old suffering man.

As soon as he arrived, his father eagerly asked, 'Have you brought me a cure for my sufferings?' He felt like death was all around him.

'Yes father, yes father! I have brought you what eyes have never seen before, red snow.' The old man's son answered.

Needless to say the old man was quite upset with his eldest son. He then sent his second son in search of a cure for his ailments. Well the second son traveled far and wide for both a long time and a short time, traveling past the place where the red snow fell. He traveled quite a ways before he came to what he thought was most certainly one of the ends of the world. It was a wondrous place, where the grass grew white. With the white grass in his hand he ran home as fast as he could, thinking the whole time that this white grass that had never been seen by anyone would most certainly cure his old and ailing father.

As soon as he arrived his father asked him, 'What have you brought me for a cure for my sufferings?'

His son answered that he had brought white grass that had never been seen by anyone ever before. The old man was again upset and there was nothing left to be done but call for his youngest son.

The youngest son prepared himself for three days and three nights. His father made him jump with his horse over a stonewall just to see if he was big enough to set out on his own. He jumped easily over the stonewall three times. Then his father wished him a safe journey but forbade him to stop and pick anything up on the way or he would fall into the hands of misfortune.

The day came and the day went and by night the youngest son came to the place with red snow and then went on. He came to the place where the white grass grew and went on. He was riding along on his white horse when he saw a golden feather. He stopped his horse and picked up the golden feather. The horse said to him, 'you have broken your promise to your father. He distinctly forbade you to pick up anything along the way.'

However the young lad took the golden feather, hid it and rode on farther. 'He couldn't have meant anything as beautiful as this!'

The youth had traveled far and wide for a long time and for a short time when he came upon a golden ball of thread. He stopped the horse and picked up the golden ball of thread. The horse again said to him, 'you have again broken your promise to your father. He said, don't you remember, that you were to pick nothing up along the way. This golden ball of thread is only going to bring you misfortune.'

However the young lad took the ball of thread. 'What? Have you lost your mind? How could something as beautiful as this cause me misfortune?'

By sunset the youngest son had reached a strange and unknown land. Soon enough he saw a shepherd herding his cows. The young man asked, 'Who lives in this strange and unknown land with the reputation of being a virtuous man and kind to guests?'

The shepherd pointed to a very high tower off in the distance. He said that there, there is said to be a prince who lives with respectable people and loves guests. The youngest son went to this prince. After heavy questioning at the gates he was allowed to stay and he with the entire household went off to pray together.

When the youngest son was bending down to do his prostrations, the golden feather fell out of his bosom. The prince picked it up and begged the young man to find the bird to which this feather belonged. If not the prince said he would die. The young man said that he would have to consult with his horse otherwise he would not be able to give an answer. The son went to his horse and told it of the prince's request.

'Well let’s go and see what will come of all this,' the horse said. 'Have the king prepare a light and tasty meal for our trip. Let’s say a kilo of cornmeal and a pitcher of Karaki.'

The prince had everything prepared and the next day the young son set off in search of the little bird.

He traveled far and wide, for a long time and a short time. Then he came to one of the ends of the world. The horse stopped high up in the mountains and said to the young son, 'If you throw your sight about a bit, you'll see a monster arising in the heavens. You see, doesn't that look like his tall fur cap?'

'Yes, I see.'

'That's the bird of which the prince was talking about. I will try to lead her this way and you better get in the mood to play a little game on her. She will ask you from which village you are from and you must answer that you are from the village where Timor lives. Then she will ask you how Timor is feeling these days. Then you must answer that Timor has hurt his back and his eyesight has gotten really bad. If the bird asks about Timor's horse answer that if her master is infirm, the horse can go to hell and not getting any older is put out to pasture, high and dry. It's better not to ask her anything about that though. The bird will then come down from the high mountain and start to bath in the river, to clean its plumage. That is when you must pour the sticky Karaki into the river and throw the cornmeal all about you.'

The young son did everything he was told. The bird started to bath in the river and then came closer to the youth to get a better look at him. The young son jumped on her and grabbed a hold of her. She wiggled in his hands but he didn't let her go. 'Is that you Timor?' she trembled.

The young son answered, 'I am Timor's third son.'

'Oh, I see. I must do my evening prayers and I must clean my plumage, please let me go,' the bird started to beg.

The young son let her go. The little golden bird bathed herself and then rested herself on the young son's shoulder. So with the bird on his shoulder and the sun sitting, the young man returned to the strange and unknown land where the prince lived.

A small time later when the young son was doing his prayers, the golden ball of thread fell out of his bosom. The prince took hold of the golden ball of thread and said, 'I will die, if the girl who wound up this sweet golden ball of thread is not brought to me.'

The young son consulted with his horse. The horse told him to have the prince prepare a light and tasty meal for the trip.

The next day the young son set off with his horse in search of the girl. He traveled far and wide, for a long time and for a short time. Soon enough he was at another one of the ends of the world. His horse then said to him, 'you see those tall mountains, and do you see the tower among them which has no entrance and no exit? Well at the top of that tower sits the girl who wound up the golden ball of thread. We'll have the ball seemingly unravel all by itself, although you secretly are behind everything. She will ask you how Timor is feeling and you must answer that Timor has hurt his back and that his eyesight has gotten bad. If the girl asks about Timor's horse, answer that if its master is infirm, the horse can go to hell and not getting any older is put out to pasture, high and dry. For her though, it will be a great joy. The girl will say that she is scared to come out of the tower because of Timor and that is why she is staying there and getting old. She will also say that she plays on the harmonica and will do so on the lower balcony if you are a good rider and will circle around the tower a few times on your horse. You must answer that you are in a hurry but in order to calm her heart you will ride around. We will ride around three times and on the forth I will jump up and get my hooves onto the balcony and if I don't gallop then you can tear off my front legs! Then you grab her.

Timor's son rode to the girl. She asked him, 'Where are you from?'

He answered, 'I am from the same village as Timor.' He was though admittedly a little nervous to be talking to such a pretty girl. The girl asked about Timor and the young man said, 'Timor is having a hard time these days. He has hurt his back and his eyesight is failing him. He fears that the legions of death are all around him.'

'What about his horse?' the girl asked.

'When its master is infirm, the horse can go to hell and not getting any older is put out to pasture, high and dry.' The girl was glad to hear this.

The girl went down to the lowest balcony and started to play her harmonica. She asked him to circle around the tower with his horse a couple of times. The young man and his horse rode around the tower three times and on the fourth round the horse galloped up and jumped landing his front hooves on the balcony. The youngest son grabbed the girl. She started to beat him with her hands but the young man held onto her with a tight grip even though his nose stung and his eyes curled.

'Are you Timor?' the girl asked.

'I am not Timor. I am his third son,' the young man answered.

'I gave an oath that I would marry the one who took me away from that balcony,' the girl said.

The youth held onto the girl and rode back to the prince. The prince went up to the girl and she said coolly to him, 'Unless you cleanse yourself with the milk of a sea mare, then you have no right to touch me.' She was firm on this point and everyone at court knew it not least of all, the prince.

The prince ordered everyone under his power to go out and find this special milk. His people however couldn't find this milk and said to the prince that the one who brought the golden bird and the girl may be able to find and bring this milk from a sea mare. The prince pleaded with the youngest son of Timor to help him find this milk. The youth said that he would have to consult with his horse first.

'Well, this was what I was afraid of all along,' the horse sighed. 'Have the prince kill three of his horses. From their hides make pieces of bright clothing and also have him give us some glue.'

They traveled far and wide, for a long time and for a short time before coming to the coast of the sea. The horse told the youth to dig two holes big enough for them to hide in. The youngest son put glue on the bright clothing and wrapped them around the horse. After this was done the horse kicked his hooves in the water, neighed and hid in one of the holes.

Not soon afterwards, a sea stallion jumped out of the sea, neighed and rushed about the coast and then again back he went into the sea. 'Bloody fools, I thought they were all dead,' was all that could be heard of him.

The horse asked the youth, 'What was the stallion like when he jumped out of the sea and what was he like when he went back in again?'

'When he jumped out of the sea, there was a lasso with three knots around his neck. When he went back into the sea one of the knots had come undone.'

Again the horse went to the water and kicked his hooves in the sea, neighed and jumped back into the hole to hide. As before, the stallion jumped out of the sea, rushed about the coast and not finding anything, went back into the sea again. 'Bloody fools, I thought that they were all dead.'

The horse asked the youth, 'What was the stallion like when he came out of the water and what was he like when he went back into the sea again?'

The youth answered, 'When he jumped out of the water, two of the knots had come undone and when he went back into the sea only one knot was left.'

The horse went into the sea for a third time and kicked up the water with his hooves and then quickly jumped back into the hole to hide. The stallion again jumped out of the sea, rushed about the coast without any knots in the lasso around his neck and then sank back into the sea.

The next time the horse splashed in the sea with his hooves and stood his ground in the water. The stallion again jumped out of the water and started to fight with the youth's horse. The stallion ripped apart the horse's bright clothes. The horse however ripped apart the stallion at his turn and in this way the horse defeated the stallion.

'I have the power of this big earth and of this sea so please let me do all that you order,' the stallion begged.

'Drive out all the sea mares and the sea stallions otherwise I will pour all the water out of this sea.'

The stallion drove all the sea mares and all the sea stallions from the sea; the youth straddled his horse and arrived back at the prince with all the sea mares.

They boiled a large pot of the sea mares' milk. The prince suggested that the youth should cleanse himself first and then the prince would. The youth said that he would have to consult with his horse first. The horse said, 'Say to the prince that if your horse is close to the pot, then you will cleanse yourself.'

The youth said all this to the prince. The prince ordered that the horse be brought in and placed next to the boiling pot of milk. The youth started to get into the pot and with one breathe the horse cooled the milk in the pot. The prince saw all this and ordered that the youth's horse be placed next to the pot while he cleansed himself too. As he was getting into the pot the horse in one breath of hot air killed the prince.

Well with nothing more to talk about, the youngest son of Timor prepared to go home. He took with him the girl, the golden bird sat on his shoulder and the stallion herded all the sea mares. On the way though the son had lost a lot of weight. The girl asked, 'You have a golden bird, which no one had ever seen before, An entire herd of sea mares and me to boot, so why have you lost weight? There is nothing to worry about.'

'I was sent away from home to look for a cure to my father's ailments. I didn't find one single cure and so now I am losing weight as a result.'

The golden bird, which sat on his shoulder said, 'If you take one of my little golden feathers from my wing and run it lightly over your father then he will become younger than you.'

With nothing more to talk about, they arrived home. They arrived just in time as the old man was fighting death off with his bare hands. The youngest son took a feather from the right wing of the little golden bird and ran it softly over his father's eyes and back. The father quickly became younger than his youngest son. He turned over and saw the bird which he couldn't understand, a girl which he could never have had before and a herd of sea mares that he could only dream about. He said to his youngest son, 'You have far surpassed me in everything that I have done. You have done more than I and without any energy being spent it seems.'

The son smiled and thought nothing of it. The youth gave the girl to his father.

Seven days and seven nights they celebrated the wedding. They had prepared such tasty food that it is a shame that my teeth couldn't taste it. They had prepared such wine that my lips never got wet.

I was there and gave them each a whack and returned home. If you don't believe me, then go away.

© 2002 Troy Morash  Timor (retelling of a Chechen fable) / FABLES / Winter 2002

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Chechnya is a treasure chest of stories and it should come as no surprise for, as has been well documented, the Caucasus is steeped in myth and legend. “The Garden of Eden is said to have been in Abkhazia and Noah’s dove rested on Mount Elbrus. The ancient Greek hero Prometheus was chained to the Caucasus – either Elbrus or Kazbek, according to different versions–after he stole fire from the gods, and Jason landed on the coast of Georgia in search of the Golden Fleece” (Smith, 2006, p.13).

One of the first things we are informed of in Timor is that the three sons “travelled far and wide for both a long time and a short time.”  In addition to this being a formulaic device found in folktales from the region, this is also an example of what Eliade refers to as temporal dislocation. We also learn that the snow the oldest brother brings back is red, and that the grass the second son returns with is white, which is indicative of the fact that the style is best categorised as that of magic realism, which is also what one would expect to find in a shamanic story.

The old man’s three boys, in particular the youngest, play a significant part in the story, and there is a Chechen proverb about the importance of sons: “A man who has no son is like a tree without a crown, a sister who has no brother is like a falcon without wings. A falcon without a wing is easy to capture, a tree without a crown is easy to fell.” The Chechens also say “No son, no home,” and even in modern Chechen society, the birth of a boy is viewed as an especially important occasion. Family and friends hold celebrations welcoming the new son, but the festivities surrounding the birth of a daughter are much more modest.

The fact that the youngest son is forbidden to stop and pick anything up on the journey lest he fall into the hands of misfortune is also to be expected in an account of what is in effect a shamanic journey. When journeying in other realities, partaking of food is often forbidden, especially when journeying through the Land of the Dead (see, for example, Paul Radin’s account of the Winnebago Indian Road to the nether world in the Thirty Eighth Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, DC., 1923, pp. 143-4, which is reproduced in Berman 2007).  In Timur, the prohibition is applied to stopping along the way (getting distracted from the mission) or picking anything up, and acts as a reminder of the eristic nature of shamanic practice, often passed over by neo-shamanic practitioners on the workshops they offer.

The youngest son, however, cannot resist the temptation and picks up a golden feather he finds along the way. This is when the white horse talks to him for the first time.

“The human-horse relationship is clearly an important one ‘in a region with extensive uninhabited areas, in which one's horse may have literally meant the difference between life and death” (Dolidze, 1999, p.9), and the connection felt between mountaineer and horse in the Caucasus is probably as ancient as their myths. There is, for example, a Georgian legend that asks, “Who were my ancestors?” And the answer given is “He who pulled milk out of a wild mare’s udder with his lips and grew drunk as a little foal” Consequently, the fact that the horse plays such a significant role in the story should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with both the geography and history of the region.

Riding has always been a part of the job of sheepherding in Chechnya and also enjoyed as a sport. Traditionally, Chechens were sheep farmers, with men living a semi-nomadic life accompanying the herds through mountain pastures. In the twentieth century however, opportunities for education and urban employment grew, and many people chose to leave farming to work in the towns or cities, with oil refining becoming an important part of the Chechen economy, drawing many workers. Recreational riding features daring tricks on horseback, and is common among young people in the countryside.

The talking horse reminds us that one of the traditional attributes of the shaman is his or her ability to communicate with the animals, and the horse is also frequently the form of transport used by the shaman to access other worlds.

Pre-eminently the funerary animal and psychopomp, the “horse” is employed by the shaman, in various contexts, as a means of achieving ecstasy, that is, the “coming out of oneself” that makes the mystical journey possible. This mystical journey–to repeat–is not necessarily in the infernal direction. The “horse” enables the shaman to fly through the air, to reach the heavens. The dominant aspect of the mythology of the horse is not infernal but funerary; the horse is a mythical image of death and hence is incorporated into the ideologies and techniques of ecstasy. The horse carries the deceased into the beyond; it produces the “break-through in plane,” the passage from this world to other worlds (Eliade, 1964, p.467).

However, the infernal direction, contrary to what Eliade suggests, is not necessarily to the Lower World, just as Heaven is not necessarily only found in the sky. Moreover, the horse in this particular folktale would seem to play a slightly different role to the one Eliade describes The fact that the youngest son is advised by and consults the horse is an indication of how in Timor it takes on the role of a spirit helper. And the way in which the youngest son is set a number of tasks to accomplish on his journey can be likened to the tasks the shaman sets out to accomplish on the journeys he undertakes.

When the youngest son asks 'Who lives in this strange and unknown land with the reputation of being a virtuous man and kind to guests?', we are reminded of the role that hospitality plays in the region.  In a Chechen home, guests can expect to receive the best food and the most pleasant accommodations that the hosts can afford, and the importance attached to providing hospitality is reflected in Chechen proverbs: “Beauty lasts till sunset, kindness lasts as long as you live”, and “Serve a good meal to a bad guest but offer what you've got to a good man”. However, the younger generation today tends to have a much more casual and relaxed attitude toward the treatment of guests, which tends to irritate the older generation. Visiting remains an important part of Chechen social life though, and guests are still expected to return invitations and extend hospitality to those who have entertained them in the past.

The shamanic journey frequently involves passing through some kind of gateway. As Eliade explains:

The “clashing of rocks,” the “dancing reeds,” the gates in the shape of jaws, the “two razor-edged restless mountains,” the “two clashing icebergs,” the “active door,” the “revolving barrier,” the door made of the two halves of the eagle’s beak, and many more – all these are images used in myths and sagas to suggest the insurmountable difficulties of passage to the Other World [and sometimes the passage back too] (Eliade, 2003, pp.64-65). And to make such a journey requires a change in one’s mode of being, entering a transcendent state, which makes it possible to attain the world of spirit. (Berman, 2007, p.48).

In Timor this barrier is represented by the tower among the tall mountains, “which has no entrance and no exit”, at the top of which is  “the girl who wound up the golden ball of thread.”

We then come to the confrontation between the horse and the sea stallion. When we consider the magico-religious uses of knots and bonds, we find a great deal of ambivalence. “The knots bring about illness, but also cure it or drive it away; nets and knots can bewitch one, but also protect one against bewitchment; they can both hinder childbirth and facilitate it; they preserve the newly born and make them ill; they bring death, and keep it at bay” (Eliade, 1991, p.112).  Generally speaking, however, we can say that magic bonds are either employed against human adversaries or as a means of defence. In the neighbouring country to Chechnya of Georgia, the magic bonds took the form of chains that were worn around the neck by the devotees of the “White George’ to honour or appease him, and the binding thus represented “a mark of vassalage” (Eliade, 1991, p.104). In Timur, the three knots around the see stallion’s neck would appear to provide it with protection, a means of defence, and it is only when they are undone that the horse is able to defeat him and help the youngest son.

On the journey home, the youngest son informs the girl that he “was sent away from home to look for a cure” to his father's ailments, but that he “didn't find not one single cure” and so he was “losing weight as a result.” And we are reminded here of the way in which initiates in shamanic cultures are traditionally affected by illness if they fail to answer the call they receive.

The fact that apparently no energy was spent by the youngest son on his mission, according to his father, is of significance too as traditionally the shaman does not use his or her energy for healing work, but that of his or her spirit helpers. And that is what the son can be seen to have done in this case.

It is also interesting to note that the celebrations after the wedding ‘went on for seven days and seven nights’, with seven surely not being an arbitrary number plucked out of the blue, but being included in the tale for a reason.

Seven is a mystic or sacred number in many different traditions. Among the Babylonians and Egyptians, there were believed to be seven planets, and the alchemists recognized seven planets too. In the Old Testament there are seven days in creation, and for the Hebrews every seventh year was Sabbatical too. There are seven seven virtues, seven sins, seven ages in the life of man, seven wonders of the world, and the number seven repeatedly occurs in the Apocalypse as well. The Muslims talk of there being seven heavens, with the seventh being formed of divine light that is beyond the power of words to describe, and the Kabbalists also believe there are seven heavens–each arising above the other, with the seventh being the abode of God (Berman, 2008, p.122).

Although the cosmology, described in Creation Myths, will vary from culture to culture, the structure of the whole cosmos is frequently symbolized by the number seven too,

which is made up of the four directions, the centre, the zenith in heaven, and the nadir in the underworld. The essential axes of this structure are the four cardinal points and a central vertical axis passing through their point of intersection that connects the Upper World, the Middle World and the Lower World. The names by which the central vertical axis that connects the three worlds is referred to include the world pole, the tree of life, the sacred mountain, the central house pole, and Jacob’s ladder (Berman, 2007, p.45).

As for the ending of the tale, it is a formulaic one, the Chechen equivalent of “They all lived happily ever after.”

As well as featuring a hero who has the ability to communicate with animals (the white horse and the golden bird), a Middle World journey to find a cure for the father’s ailment, an ascent to the Upper World (the tower in which the maiden lives), descent to the Lower World in the form of the sea, a meeting with a spirit helper, it is also worth pointing out the fact that the story only features a limited number of characters, and involves a healing. All this indicates that what we have here is essentially a shamanic story rather than what at first sight might appear to be just a simple fairy tale, and the same can be shown to be the case with many other tales from the region (see Berman, 2007, for two examples from neighbouring Georgia).

“Sceptics will argue that it is impossible to eliminate from analysis the Christian influence on what sources there are available to us, such that we can never be certain in any one case that we are indeed dealing with beliefs that are authentically pagan. This view is now so widely held that we can in justice think of it as the prevailing orthodoxy” (Winterbourne, 2007, p.24). And the same argument could be applied to the attempt to ascertain whether we are dealing with beliefs that are authentically shamanic in Timor. Nevertheless, just because a task is difficult is no reason for not attempting it. If it was, then no progress would ever be made in any research that we might be involved in. For this reason, despite whatever the prevailing orthodoxy might be, there is surely every reason to conduct such a study as this. 

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