Artist: DJ Furth
Edition: 1/1
Alexandr, also known as Sasha, is descended from a long line of Buryat shamans. His shamanic practice is that of the darkhan or blacksmith shamanic order, which involves licking and performing rituals with a red-hot iron.
Shaman Alexandr was generous enough to invite us along to witness a ritual performed at a sheep farmer’s (Portrait #16) home in order to help him find a bride. In this portrait, we see him blowing on fragrant dried grass from his hometown, the smoke of which is used to cleanse the ceremonial space.
He never expected to become a shaman and became gravely ill at which point he began having dreams where spirits spoke clearly to him and gave him the choice to either accept his fate as a shaman or die.
“I had this very interesting dream…I am sitting in this dark room, in the dark room where a stool is standing…there is this voice…this metallic voice…and they tell me bluntly and clearly: You have to choose,, either we take you or you take what we want to give you. And then that was it for me. I was already thinking — I’d better take what I am given.”
He spoke with passion and at length about the importance of ancestral knowledge and gratitude for his culture. “From childhood, it’s always being told to us, passed on, that everything in this world is interconnected…that is has a strong connection. That one should not forget this.”
As he said, “I am grateful to my ancestors…to the culture that had originally appeared. It has not disappeared. It is passed on by word of mouth. I express my gratitude to them for this. Because what has originally been is the most natural…I give thanks to what we have preserved and our opportunity to revive it.”
In his view, how we guide our lives depends on one critical choice. “A person decides how to live and how to die by themself. A person has to choose themself — if you chooses fear, that means you chooses death. If you choose courage you choose life…that is, you will live this life how you should live it and not in a way that someone else wants you to.”
He further added: “You don’t have to try, you just have to live and to have no fear. Everything else will be consistent.”
When asked about his perspectives on the region’s many forms of spirituality and religion, he explained, “We all do understand very clearly that there is one God, but our confession of faith goes through Shamanism, through Christianity, it goes through Islam, through Buddhism. So we do not have the right to divide God…Shaman, lama, priests, mullah — they all must help. They are not allowed to divide.”
As to what happens when he performs his shamanic ceremonies, Shaman Sasha told us this: “when you enter the connection with [the spirits], yes, you receive a strong burst of this energy, but otherwise… I wouldn’t say that anything particularly supernatural is taking place there, yes, they are whispering in your ear, that and that and that. But if we take the regular life then… I think they whisper in everyone’s ear, we simply don’t hear it, you know, we don’t let it kind of… we do not open ourselves.”
He was hopeful about the future, saying, “At this point it’s getting better. Traditions are beginning to revive…people start making their way to their roots…So now at this point we have well,, we kind of have a very beautiful period of time. I am very happy to exist at this point in time. Because everyone,, everyone, has the chance to contribute to it.”