The Shamans of Tuva: Dancing with the Spirits

I. V.Oktyabrskaya, A. V. Shapovalov, Photos by V. Dubrovsky

Tuva is an enormous territory, inhabited from ancient times, with a total area of one hundred seventy thousand square kilometres and having a variety of landscapes (forests, plains, and mountains). It is situated in the geographical centre of Asia, on the border of Russia and Mongolia. Despite the complicated historic, social, political and economic developments of the last two centuries, the natives have preserved their traditional way of life. The uniqueness of the spiritual culture of this region of Siberia was determined by centuries-long interaction of Buddhism/Lamaism and the Pantheism of the nomads and shaman practices, rooted in the Siberian Paleolithic. At the beginning of the twentieth century more than twenty Buddhist monasteries with four thousand lamas were in action here, along with about two thousand shamans.

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