Observations placeholder
Goldi shaman - Siberian Shamanism - The spirit helper
Identifier
004605
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The Goldi or Nanai people are a Tungusic people of the Far East, who have traditionally lived along Heilongjiang (Amur), Songhuajiang (Sunggari) and Ussuri rivers on the Middle Amur Basin. The ancestors of the Nanais were the Jurchens of northernmost Manchuria. The Nanai/Hezhe language belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic languages.
A description of the experience
From ‘the Divine Election in Primitive Religion’ – the autobiography of a Goldi shaman
Once I was asleep on my sickbed, when a spirit approached me. it was a very beautiful woman. Her figure was very slight, she was no more than half an arshin (71 cms) tall. Her face and attire were quite as those of one of our Goldi women. Her hair fell down her shoulders in short black tresses. Other shamans say they have had the vision of a woman with one half of her face black and the other half red. She said,
‘I am the ayami of your ancestors, the shamans. I taught them shamaning. Now I am going to teach you. The old shamans have died off and there is no one to heal people. You are to become a shaman’…………….
Sometimes she comes under the aspect of an old woman, and sometimes under that of a wolf, so she is terrible to look at. Sometimes she comes as a winged tiger. I mount it and she takes me to show me different countries. I have seen mountains, where only old men and women live and villages where you see nothing but young people, men and women, they look like Goldis and speak Goldish sometimes those people are turned into tigers.