cover image SHANAR: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman in Siberia

SHANAR: Dedication Ritual of a Buryat Shaman in Siberia

Virlana Tkacz, with Sayan Zhambalov and Wanda Phipps. . Parabola, $39.95 (182pp) ISBN 978-0-930407-57-5

The Buryat are a people indigenous to eastern Siberia, living mainly in the area near Lake Baikal called Buryatia. In 2000, a Shaman named Bayir Rinchinov invited Tkacz, Zhambalov and Phipps, translators of Buryat poetry, to the Siberian town of Ust-Orda to document a Shanar, the dedication ritual for a new shaman. This lucid, day-by-day account of the Shanar begins with the cleansing of the participants and the preparation of ritual objects (such as the initiate's goatskin drum and headdress) and continues through to the climax of the ceremony, a ritual called Bring Up the Dust, in which ancestral spirits enter the initiate (in this case, a man named Volodya) as he runs around a grove of birches. This particular Shanar turns out to be a difficult one: the spirits refuse to enter Volodya. The older shamans officiating the ceremony have to do a great deal of spiritual detective work to figure out what's gone wrong. After some back and forth with the spirits (their conversations are transcribed), it turns out that Volodya had slighted one of them with his inept performance of an earlier ritual, and appeasements are in order. As she describes these lively proceedings, Tkacz explains the beliefs of the Buryat and the role of shamans in the village (Rinchinov does healing, for instance, but only for those who can't be helped by Western medicine—he tells a villager with a toothache to "stop wasting his time and go to a dentist"). The authors have also translated the ceremony's ritual chants. This glimpse of Buryat culture does not aim to be comprehensive, but it will be fascinating to those interested in Eastern religions and anthropology. Of particular note are the hundreds of full-color photographs that grace the handsomely produced volume; there's also a useful glossary. (Dec.)