Репрезентация архаического обряда испрашивания души ребенка в современном шаманском дискурсе (на материале северных районов Якутии)

Abstract

The article analyzes the shamanic ritual of requesting a child’s soul from the deity Aiyysyt in the traditional culture of the northern Yakuts. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the need to examine the regional specificity of ritual practice, which has preserved unique forms of existence due to the geographical isolation of the northern uluses, as well as by the importance of documenting the current state of the shamanic tradition. The aim of the article is to identify the specific features of the representation of the archaic ritual in contemporary shamanic discourse of the northern regions of Yakutia. The research objectives are: analysis of verbal codes and the poetics of algys; identification of the semantics of key archetypal images; tracing the diachronic transformation of ritual practice; and determining the degree of preservation of archaic folklore-mythological structures. The study employs a comparative method. The scientific novelty lies in introducing into scholarly circulation the author’s field materials collected in 2019–2026 in the Verkhoyansky, Aldansky, Zhigansky, and Kobyaysky uluses. The research material comprises published archival records of maternity ritual practices of the 20th century and the author’s field recordings of algys texts, as well as interviews with six bearers of the tradition. As a result of the study, the continuity of key elements of the traditional ritual has been revealed alongside the disappearance of a number of archaic components, as well as the formation of a layer of innovative shamanic practices.