AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh 2 www.allatra.org

AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh
Rigden: Well, not only Yakuts, but many other peoples have such records about this. In
particular, they believe that a shaman possesses assistant spirits which in ritual chants
are called “the force”, “the suite”, “the army”. They are mostly represented in images of
animals, fish, birds or spirits which travel to another world for the purpose of conducting
a certain deed: they negotiate with other spirits, conjure, fight with illness spirits; they
prophesy, obtain genuine objects, etc. The Knowledge about the four Aspects may also
be found in symbolical schemes, for example, in shaman clothing elements which can
help to determine, speaking in military attributes language, the shaman’s “rank”, the
level of his “astral feats” and so forth.
Thus, at Ural foothills the most widespread composition schemes on ritual clothing
elements and “icons” of Permian shamans are: birds (the Front aspect), pangolins (the
Rear aspect), two mythical creatures of nearly the same nature (the lateral Aspects), and
the shaman himself in the middle. Moreover, on the pangolin body they sometimes drew
seven fish, underlying also the connection with the water element, with dimensions and
with the memory of the acquired information. It should be noted that only adult people,
i.e. those who already had the past, were depicted standing on the pangolin. The two
mythical creatures were usually drawn on each side of the shaman. In some cases this
was a direct indication of the Right and Left aspects by the use of traditional elements
marking the Animal nature – cloven hooves (much later they started to depict the lateral
Aspects as two animals, or humans with axes, knives, arrows, weapons in their hands).
In other cases such symbols were functionally directly opposite, meaning the heavenly
mistresses of the world who combined elements of a female body and an elk cow (the
honoured sacred animal) in themselves. It was considered that their power could transfer
the shaman to other dimensions including the higher ones. Sometimes the Allat symbol
(the up-horned crescent) was placed on such characters, because it was believed that
thus the shaman could additionally increase his power. Later on, due to the desire of
overriding the lateral Aspects, say, for terrestrial purposes, people began to mix these
notions, and this can be traced by drawings found on various archaeological artefacts.
1
www.allatra.org