Udmurt
shamanism: my antiquity and my contemporaneity
Yuri Kuciran
The
Udmurt shamanism as a distinct form of faith was
repelled and ousted by Udmurt pagan priests (Vosyas’)
and later, in 17th–19th
centuries, by the expanding global religions of
Islam and Orthodox Christianity. However, in
modified and fragmentary forms the institution of Tuno
survived until the Russian revolution. There were
elderly people who told me about having seen village
people, more often men but sometimes women, too,
performing strange dances or something similar to a
dance on local holidays under the influence of the
Udmurt hallucinogen - araky or posyatem.
By
that time, shaman dances had already lost their
actual sacral meaning and the imitation of
shaman’s movements was perceived as comic. Nothing
disappears without leaving a trace; neither did the
Udmurt shamanism – a peculiar world of Tuno
– vanish totally. Some of its elements have
survived in folk songs and dances, in children’s
games, cumulatively recited songs and
tongue-twisters, as well as in the rites of
physicking called tuno-pelle and pellyass’kis’.
In the end of 1960’s as an eight-year boy I
watched a man performing a strange dance on the
holiday Nuny Syuan on the occasion of
a child’s birth. The dance included undressing,
rolling on the floor and screaming, with body
movements imitating passion and love-making (an echo
of the shaman’s initiation rite?), accompanied by
everybody’s joyful fun and laughter. Those village
holidays were unforgettable; particularly vivid was
the wedding ceremony. At the one moment a guest
could see the bridegroom strewing coins around to
the delight of children; other guests as well, old
and young, tried to pick up as many coins as
possible. The main thing was not collecting money
but enjoying the irrational and elevated festive
mood. During the wedding carnival, a horse was
sometimes brought into a house and given alcohol to
the common laughter. The village life was full of
pranks of that kind. Festivities were fascinating,
surprising and at times frightening. Such
impressions are hardly forgettable, especially if
perceived by a child’s curious and inquisitive
mind as something beyond comprehension but very
vivid and attractive. In my view, these impressions
serve as guides to the particularities of national
mentality: they come to mind in flashes and help to
preserve one’s ethnic identity.
Today
I conceive those village holidays as great shows, as
a model to follow in performances. This spontaneity
of feelings and variety of forms is regrettably
unattainable to us the young generation of Udmurts.
However, there is no reason to be pessimistic about
it. There are people like me who once saw those
mysteries; the crisp flow of ethnic identity was
transmitted to them. My performances help me to more
fully identify myself in the rapidly changing world.
I keep to the Udmurt, Finno-Ugric spirit and
interlace it modestly with emanations of other
cultures of the world – and the result attracts
and stimulates me. Taken that shamanism is now
popular worldwide, it may seem just a fashion to
make use of the theatrical side of shamanism on the
stage. Yet, neither audience nor actors take
pleasure in shamanism being treated in formalistic
way. The former dislike this; the latter know that
their karma, as well as mental and even physical
health may suffer. If I nevertheless stage these
performances, it is because I have really something
to say and because I want to share my innermost
feelings with others.
In
Udmurtia, the revival of interest to shamanism is
quite perceivable. It is due, above all, to the
worldwide-known Udmurt artist Olga Aleksandrova and
to the ethnofuturist movement. Shamanism is
revitalised by Olga Aleksandrova in its most archaic
form, in the person of a female; in the ancient
times of matriarchy the role of a shaman was
performed by a woman. Her monoperformance Kuin’
Syuan Gur’yes (“Three Wedding
Tunes”) had an effect of a bomb in the theatrical
world. This revivalist approach was continued by the
male group Katanchi who staged the play Ulon
– Pitran (“Life Is a Wheel”) based on
family, tribal and agrarian cults. The play was
clearly influenced by the art of Olga Aleksandrova.
My performance Kallen – Olle
(“Come On But Don’t Haste”) can be viewed as a
search for syncretism. I interpret the meaning of
different elements in the male costume by combining
elements of different religions. The play was meant
not only to be a universal medium of theatrical
self-expression but also to produce a strong
curative effect on the actor. The game covers –
through dressing, reciting and singing – the
period from birth to maturity, with the mystery of
death excluded intentionally to prevent unexpected
karma changes. I will continue performing this play
for all my life. It will help me better comprehend
my purpose in this life. During this play, with
passionate purifying gestures and hymns I conjure
away all the negative that has accumulated in my
life, and convey this catharsis to the audience.
Indeed, our destiny is granted to us from above and
we cannot change it radically; however, we can
adjust it to some extent.
It
is extremely difficult to play shaman performances
since the “Three Wedding Tunes” by Olga
Aleksandrova was staged, as she said nearly
everything in her work. Thus I search for completely
new forms of presentation.
The
performance Oti-Tati, Ottsy-Tattsy
(“Here And There, This And That”) is, too, tied
to shaman initiations and based on syncretism, yet
with a stronger effort to grasp the trinity of the
great mysteries of Belief, Hope and Love. The Love
is perceived as the natural emotion of love
revealing the poetry of spring; the Hope is
perceived as love between the kindred revealing the
poetry of childhood; and the Belief is the spiritual
love dipping us into the sparkling waves of
boundless poetry. The primeval, original harmonic
synthesis of genres of art – music, dance and
graphic images – focused in one person, creates a
favourable archaic shamanist aura of participation
with the mythological world of the Udmurts, of other
Finno-Ugrians, and of all other peoples in the
world. It is definitely this aspect in the shamanism
revival that will be given refuge in the Eternity
where the pure perfume of The Great Whole produces
the infinite Love. Here is our Divine Father.
Traditional shamanism, firmly linked to the material
world, cannot behold the Divine Glory. People should
employ the blessed activities of ethnofuturist
movement to carry all over the Universe the Glory of
our Father that produces the boundless love.
In
mythology, the highest value was ascribed to the
point in the space where the act of creation takes
place. This point was perceived as the global
tree or the world axis, while in
shamanist performances it was the shaman’s body.
This point is the centre of the world, the hub of
the universe. It is the holiest point in the space.
It is in such places that people build a house and
erect a fireplace, as the shortest binding string
between the sky, the earth and the human goes there.
These places are also best fitting for prayer. The
place for prayer was divided into three concentric
circles, the inner circle being the most sacred. In
its centre, the sacral fire was lit.
It
is precisely in this place that the House of Love is
placed in Oti-Tati, Ottsy-Tattsy.
In the symbolic web of the play, the Udmurt
shamanist cosmology with initiations is easily
recognisable. According to it, the universe
consisted of three spheres and the connecting axis
penetrated all of them. The Udmurts believed that
this axis passed through cosmic trees – the fir,
the birch and the pine. The cult of these trees was
most common and they were associated with the triad
of supreme deities. Each deity had its own tree. The
pine was the tree of the supreme deity Inmar;
the fir was the tree of the deity of atmosphere and
weather Kuaz’; the birch was the tree of
the creator of the earth Kyldysin. The roots,
the trunk and the crown of trees symbolised
accordingly the lower, the intermediate and the
upper worlds. I would identity the tuno’s
body with the sacred tree. As the tuno I
present a pillar containing the life-asserting
beginning, the symbol of fertility and the symbol of
eternal life. In my ardent cosmic dance I offer to
gods and simultaneously act as the global tree, as a
person and as god. After all, god created me in his
own image. I love god and he loves me. I praise god
and his glory all over the Universe. My offer to the
upper world is named Vyle mychon; it
is directed upward and made by certain manipulations
with the dymbyr – the Udmurt drum similar
to the Mari tumyr but of a more oblong form.
To make the performance more vivid and
image-bearing, I use the instrument to denote
various things during the play. It is worth to
mention that I was the first performer to use the
archaic Udmurt drum. My performance made the groups Ekton
Korka and Marzan Gur’yes to start
playing the dymbyr.
My
offer to the intermediate world includes specially
dressed dolls, towels, ribbons and bright pieces of
fabric. Beer, kumyshka and melted butter are
offered to the lower world. I wish good and love to
all people on earth. This is accompanied by the
quiet chime of a set of bells named chingyli
that are attached to the Tuno’s clothes.
This chime is called Invu Utchan Gur (“The
Search For the Divine Dew”), as the archaic deity Invu
Mumy was the patron of the Tuno.
I
intentionally exclude some elements of the
traditional tuno rite that I consider to be
upsetting to modern civilised audience. To achieve
the trance, a shaman could manipulate with a knife
and injure his body. He might tie himself with a
towel or a braid, driving himself almost to syncope.
In
my mind’s eye I see the fantastic picture of the
world as perceived by the ancient Udmurts. It revolved around the cults of fire, water, the
earth, the sun and the moon, and the peculiar
notions of the life, the death and the soul. It
included worshipping the sky deity and the water
fowl (ducks, geese and swans), the cult of trees,
the cult of the sacred grove, and the concept of the
universe being divided into the lower, the
intermediate and the upper worlds, each of these
levels having the corresponding colour. Black stood
for the lower world and symbolised the beyond. Red
stood for the intermediate world, the world of
people. White stood for the upper world, the world
of gods. The water fowl (geese, ducks and swans)
were flying from the world of gods to the world of
the dead through the world of people. In the centre
of all this was the figure of Udmurt shaman, the Tuno
– with goose, ducks and swans, I suppose, to
assist the Tuno in keeping his unique
intercourse. I think of these birds as of thoughts
acquiring form: they were emitted by the Tuno,
the demiurge and the spirits in the cold realm of
the dead, all interflowed in the mystic intercourse
through the Milky Way, the passage of wild geese and
swans (Lud zazeg lobzon syures) linking the
three parts of the universe together. I imagine this
passage as the cosmic river flowing from the south
with its source in the world of gods, light and the
divine forces, to the north with its mouth in the
beyond, in the world of cold, darkness and the
malicious spirits.
I
owe this lucid and detailed picture of religious and
mythological ideas of the ancient Udmurts, which
once impressed me and, in a way, became my creative
outfit, to the book The Religious And
Mythological World View Of the Udmurts by
historian Dr.Phil., Prof. V.V. Vladykin, to the
findings made by philologist Dr.Lit., Prof. T.G. Vladykina-Perevoshchikova
and historians Dr.Phil. V.V. Napol’skikh and
Dr.Phil.candidate L.A. Molchanova, to the stage
innovations by O.Y. Aleksandrova, and to the
scientific researches carried out by folk
choreographer A.N. Prokop’yeva.
What
is it that makes the ethnofuturists so eager in
exploring the figure of the shaman in figurative and
stage art? I suppose it is the enigmatic and
mysterious air surrounding this figure that will
continue to excite artists and other people, and it
is the shaman’s aspiration for the future because
he can surmount the time boundaries of the universe,
which is really ethnofuturistic.
