Shamans and Sacred Landscapes in Buriatiia

Abstract

T he three articles in this issue of Sibirica focus on the ways in which sacred landscapes have been (re)integrated into the ritual life of indigenous Buriats, as well as how they can become contested terrains.Once considered the opiate of the masses by Soviet leaders, religion is no longer "dangerous" in Russia.Decades of institutionalized atheism have taken their toll, however, as sacred sites have been secularized, shamans have lost links to their ongons, and Buriats have forgotten their clan affiliations.In the past decade and a half, shamanism has reemerged and practitioners are striving to revive and re-invent the practice to return shamanism to a central position in the everyday lives of rural and urban communities.Buriatiia has been central to discussions of shamanism in the post-Soviet period.In the three articles collected here, the authors tackle the theme of sacred landscape and shamanism in a variety of ways.Buck Quijada focuses on a ritual at a site made sacred for the purposes of reconnecting Buriats with the spirits, namely their clan ancestors.Jokic takes up more explicitly what Buck Quijada leaves implicit-a shaman's sacred landscape is not limited to the earthly realm.Rather, shamans move between worlds, appealing to and calling down spirits from their positions in the upper and lower worlds.Communication with the spirit world is achieved (or at the very least attempted) through trance.Metzo deals with a place in the sacred landscape in which shamans play virtually no contemporary role. 1 Nevertheless, local residents and Buddhist competitors continue the practice of shamanic offerings to the master spirits (ezhin).Each of the papers deals with various disjunctures produced by the transition from state socialism to capitalism, situating shamans and/or their clients within a sacred landscape.Two of the articles in this issue (Buck Quijada and Metzo) were originally presented at the American Anthropological Association meet-