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Mircea Eliade – Shamanism Archaic techniques of ecstasy

The Yakut believe that at the golden navel of the Earth stands a tree with eight branches; it rises in a sort of primordial paradise, for there the first man was born and he feeds on the milk of a woman who half emerges from the trunk of the tree.  As Harva remarks it is hard to believe that such an image was invented by the Yakut in the bitter climate of northern Siberia.  The prototypes are found in the ancient East, as well as in India (where Yama, the first man, drinks with the gods beside a miraculous tree) and Iran (where Yima on the cosmic mountain imparts immortality to man and animals).

The Goldi, the Dolgan and the Tungus say that, before birth, the souls of children perch like little birds on the branches of the Cosmic Tree and the shamans go there to find them………

Among the Osmanli Turks the Tree of Life has a million leaves, on each of which a human fate is written; each time a man dies, a leaf falls