Alleged practices of magical assault and vampirism are a recurrent feature of popular explanations of misfortune in Tuva, South Siberia. Based on a field study of healing practices in an “Association of Shamans”, this article analyses rituals of redressing curse afflictions in the context of Russian political domination. A central purpose of this discussion is to foreground the centrality of...
Alleged practices of magical assault and vampirism are a recurrent feature of popular explanations of misfortune in Tuva Republic, South Siberia. Based on a field study of healing practices in an “Association of Shamans”, this article analyses rituals of countercursing one’s antagonists in a context of Russian political domination. A central purpose of this discussion is to foreground the...
This article foregrounds an unofficial, “dark” strand of shamanic revival, which lies at the interstices of local inspirational religion and the state’s law in a Siberian periphery. Focusing on consultations concerned with ritual healing and counter-cursing in the Russian Republic of Tuva/Tyva, southern Siberia, the article documents a field of metaphysical disorder which is governed by shamans...
This dissertation examines suspicions and accusations of affliction with curses in the Republic of Tuva, south Siberia (Russia). Based on a sample of consultations between shamans and clients regarding curse-inflicted misfortunes, as well as on sociological and statistical sources about post-Soviet Tuva, this thesis identifies a significant incidence of curse accusations in contemporary Tuva. I...