Yanzhima's Rock

Posted on June 9, 2014 by calderong

If you read Lily’s blog, then you’re already familiar with the beauty of the Barguzin Valley.

These snow-capped mountains are unforgettable.

Driving through this stretch of land, you might chance upon herds of horses, a winding stream or two, or, as we did, a newly-built datsun.

According to our guide, a few years ago, an image of the dancing goddess Yanzhima was discovered on a rock in this area (Yanzhima is the goddess of fertility in the Buryat Buddhist tradition). Childless couples began flocking to this area, praying for fertility. When the area saw an increase in child births, the area was declared sacred and a datsun was soon built.
Since then, Yanzhima’s rock has gained much attention and attracts thousands of hopeful couples. Countless toys have been placed on the rock as offerings to the goddess.

Visiting sacred places, I always get the feeling that they’ve always been there, perhaps for thousands of years. Seeing this datsun, however, shows that sacred places are still springing up, perhaps a result of a very active religious community.

Giving to Baikal: The Good and the Not-So-Good

Posted on June 6, 2014 by moreesandersa

Lake Baikal is comprised of an amazing array of ecosystems – a freshwater sea, an island, and mountains. However, pollution threatens to disrupt these delicate relations. Tourists and local residents visit sacred sites, leaving garbage behind, whereas worshipers try to leave their mark in a more environmentally friendly manner.

One of the key ideas of shamanic ritual is to give back to nature. A modern circuit of the Baikal area will inevitably expose visitors to some of the most beautiful natural scenes in the world, along with special spiritual places marked by bright scarves, called ‘himurin’. These spiritual places receive gifts from those following shamanic customs of giving back to nature. Passersby wishing to show respect frequently stop at the side of the road and sprinkle water or vodka on the ground of a spiritual place. Alternatively, when we cook outdoors, we will give a portion of the food, whether leftovers or scraps, back to nature.

Ritual poles, called serge, decorated with himurin.

Like any area inhabited by humans, however, Baikal is in danger. Spending more time here exposes the issues threatening the lake, such as the open-air dumps, and the factories pumping out chemicals that can stream into the water. Where people once left offerings of food and milk, now the ground is littered with garbage. The lake cries out with a critical question: just what are we giving back to Baikal today?

The view from one of the many sacred cliffs on Olhon Island.

The shamanic practice of leaving offerings represents the most basic concept of conservation: when we take something from nature, give back something that will contribute. Sprinkling water or leaving decomposable gifts will promote further growth on that spot, ensuring its beauty for future visitors. While our modern movements for conservation are only decades old, these shamanic practices have lasted for thousands of years.

Along with the breathtaking views and hopeful rituals, though, we have noticed something sad. At overlooks, beaches, and picnic spots all around the lake, we found piles of litter ranging from empty vodka bottles to rusty wrenches and broken bricks. Some residents and visitors here may continue shamanic rituals of giving back, but that conscientious attitude is not always shared by all people around Baikal.

Lake Baikal is renowned for its ability to cleanse itself, but how long can this last? No one knows exactly how much Baikal can handle, but everything we put into the lake or its watershed brings us closer to that limit. Open air dumps leave plastic bags blowing in the wind, and hardly a street can be found without empty bottles. Even inside the Pribaikalsky National Park, signs of littering or abandoned construction accompany every scattered table or gazebo. The mark of human habitation can be found almost everywhere with a close look.

Garbage on the shore of Baikal.

But humans give back the worst indirectly, for most of the pollution in the lake itself comes from industrial waste. The Baikalsk Paper Mill has attracted environmentalist attention for failing to keep up to water contamination limits. Likewise, the many factories on the Selenga River, Baikal’s largest tributary, release a huge variety of harmful chemicals into the water.

Nearby residents and factories may be the main concern, but we realize that as visitors to the lake, we are also part of the problem. Since we come to appreciate Baikal’s magnificent beauty and learn about it, we want to make sure we can give back and keep it pristine for future visitors.

What can we, as tourists, do to fix this pollution problem?

Leave our picnic sites cleaner than we found them, making sure our candy wrappers don’t get taken by the wind
Make an effort to stay on established trails whenever possible
Collect only dead wood for fires, or even better, bring our own firewood
Avoid driving around when we can walk

A small group of Carleton students can’t possibly solve all the problems facing the lake, but we can do our best to minimize our impact.

We love Baikal! Photo: Rada

Faith in Practice

Posted on June 6, 2014 by landk

Lake Baikal is considered to be one of the most sacred places in the world to the Buryat people and to many Russians as well. We explored some of these places during our two week visit to Siberia. On Olkhon Island, located nearly in the middle of Lake Baikal, our hotel was next to the sacred Cape of Burhan. On a hill outcrop overlooking the cape is a row of wooden poles decorated with bright pieces of silk or cotton. These poles, known as сэргэ (sergei) in Russian after the Buryat word, are signs that there is a хозяйн or spirit-host located at a particular site. A faded sign located directly in front of the poles informs visitors who are patient enough to make out its message that trespassing on the site is strictly forbidden. Clearly most people had not read the sign because many people were walking around the sacred poles and taking pictures. This experience caused me to begin thinking about the problems associated with visiting religious sites when one is a tourist, particularly when one is of a different faith than the sites one is visiting.
The first time I encountered this issue was back in Moscow when we started visiting Russian Orthodox churches. While I have attended many church services back in the United States, going to church in Russia is a completely different experience. From the decorations to the method of worship to the smells of the incense, the churches in Russia are far from the stark stained glass windows of the church I attended growing up. I am never sure how to act at these churches. I wish to be both respectful (in showing that I understand the traditions, such as covering my head) without overstepping the boundary of being overly involved in a religious practice that is not my own.

The sergei (sacred poles). Photo credit: tripadvisor.ru

The sergei at the Cape of Burhan (sacred poles). Photo credit: tripadvisor.ru

The issue of faith in practice came up again on our tour of Olkhon Island. Our tour guide, who practices Shamanism, was very distressed at the appearance of rock cairns at many of the sacred sites on the island. These rock cairns are built over time by people adding one rock when they visit a site to slowly build a pyramid. When we first saw the pyramids, I thought they were a pretty addition to the landscape. However, our tour guide started knocking the cairns over, clearly distraught at their appearance at some of the most sacred sites. She explained to us that these pyramids are not part of Shaman tradition and that to those who practice Shamanism, every rock has its own unique spot on the earth and to move it is to perform a sacrilegious act. While to us it is perfectly natural to bend down and pick up a rock, to our tour guide this act was highly offensive. I can understand her frustration; however, I also understand the motives of tourists who helped build these pyramids. Most likely, they did not understand the traditions and felt motivated to participate in what they thought was part of the traditional way of worshipping at these sites.
The ways of showing respect vary from place to place. However, I believe that sacred sites are sacred for all, regardless of religious affiliation. Everyone can experience a holy site; it is the role of a tourist to do a little research to understand how to experience the holy (or whatever one would like to call it) in a respectful way.

Three Faiths

Posted on June 6, 2014 by akgundud

For a while, I couldn’t understand how someone could practice three different religions and somehow be okay with it. After having spent only two weeks in Siberia, I still do not quite understand how the Buryat are so accepting, but I guess I’ll try to explain to you what I took from my experience.

The Ivolginsky Datsan near Ulan Ude.
Photo Credit: Gisell Calderon

It appears to me that over the course of many years pre-dating the arrival of Christianity in Siberia, the native population was able to integrate Shamanism and Buddhism, and you can see how well these two religions have managed to work together. On our last day in Ulan-Ude, we saw a Shaman priest practicing and helping a family at a Buddhist holy site. In fact, Shamans such as Valentin Vladimirovich, who we had the pleasure of getting to know on Ol’khon, see Shamanism as a universal and accessible religion by all since it only requires your respect and dedication to your ancestors and nature. They find that Shaman ideals and beliefs do not actually require anything that is contradictory to other world religions.

Another datsan near Ulan-Ude, more recently built.
Photo Credit: Gisell Calderon

What was difficult for me to initially understand is the Buryat ability to integrate Buddhism/Shamanism with Russian Orthodoxy. I learned on this trip that Buddhism is a monotheistic religion: there is one main god with smaller gods. I thought that Buddhist belief could translate to how Christianity sees God and His angels. I think the Buryat see it as practicing the same religious ideals, but calling it different names.

Odigitrievsky Cathedral in Ulan-Ude

For me, that weirdly makes sense, and I kind of understand how the people of Buryatia do not have a problem with being baptized and praying at datsans. I find it to be wholesome and highly tolerant. I think that the world has much to learn from the Buryat. Siberia is a place where traditional religions of the east and west can merge and coexist in unity. And that is rare.

Watery Gods and a Sacred Rock

Posted on June 3, 2014 by eisenthall

Father Baikal is a mighty sea. A long time ago, he was happy, and so were all of his 336 river-children – all except the beautiful Angara, who Baikal loved the most. He wanted her to marry the calm Irkut, but she wanted nothing to do with him. She had fallen in love with a strong and swift warrior river named Yenesei. One night, while Baikal was fast asleep, Angara ran away to be with her lover. Baikal awoke and became angry, stormy and rough. He broke off a chunk of mountain in a rage, and hurled it at Angara to block her path. Angara flowed into the arms of Yenesei, and Shaman Rock landed in her waters.
That’s how the legend goes. Or at least my version – like a good mythical tale it has its variations. The other day, we were able to look at Shaman Rock from the bank of the Angara River outside of Irkutsk. Shaman Rock is one of many sacred places on and around Lake Baikal, and has traditionally served as a place to make offerings to the Lake. Hearing the story of daughter Angara got me thinking about river-gods or spirits. In Buryatian legends, lakes and rivers are gods with human-like personalities and desires. It reminds me of the warring rivers of Homer’s Iliad, and of a monument that we had seen in St. Petersburg. At the base of the Rostral Columns sit Russia’s four major rivers – the Volga, the Dnieper, the Volkhov, and the Neva – in human form.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
It’s interesting to think of a body of water as one living organism – it breathes in and out and it moves, and it’s easy to imagine the ice-cold and beautifully clean Baikal watershed as supernatural.

In my dreams of river-gods and Old Father Baikal, everything is on a gargantuan scale, so seeing Shaman Rock in person was strange. I squinted out onto the water, wondering where it was. Could that really be it? That little thing? It turns out that during the 1950s, new hydroelectric dams raised the water level and submerged most of the rock (Thomson, 171).
Thomson, Peter. “Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Bad Roads are Good for Baikal

Posted on June 3, 2014 by aldrichc

Tour guide Andrei Suknev, quoted in Peter Thomson’s book Sacred Sea, utters the above noble truth about the roads around Lake Baikal. During his travels around the lake, Peter Thomson encountered the same kind of bone-rattling trails that we traversed a week ago at Ust-Barguzin. To our dismay, it turns out that the infrastructure is largely the same around all of Baikal.

The roads aren’t THAT bad.

Yesterday, we took a whirlwind tour of the sacred sites on Olkhon, the largest island in Baikal. Before hopping in the bus, we popped a motion-sickness pill, somewhat standard procedure on these awful roads. Little did we know they would be worse than we could have ever imagined.

We climbed into two ice-cream-bar-shaped army buses, which sped, lurching, dipping, and weaving, across a system of dirt trails that cut through the forest and criss-crossed the hilly grasslands.

The original Russian roller coaster

I say trails because they’re really not roads, just places where past tires, hooves, and feet have tread. Clearly, our driver was top-notch. He was driving a stick shift across extremely difficult terrain. The tall hills that offer gorgeous panoramas of Olkhon also demand the most out of vehicles on the climb up; thankfully coasting down the other side is both easy and extremely fun. We lovingly referred to our trek as the Russian roller coaster, which you can get a taste of below!

Jokes aside, it’s actually a very good thing that asphalt hasn’t reached most of the island, as well as Lake Baikal as a whole. Although the lake is massive, the ecosystem of Baikal is delicate. Scientists aren’t sure how much waste and pollution its waters can take on before environmental disaster. Tourism is increasing in the area, and it presents a new set of issues: are tourists’ contribution to the local economy justifiable when considering the waste they inadvertently generate? This is the dilemma facing tour guides like Andrei and conscientious visitors like ourselves. If the roads were improved, there would be thousands more tourists crowding the lonely cliffs of Olkhon. Although the washboard gravel is hard on passengers, it actually protects the shores of the great lake from an inundation of development and industry. And for that, we will endure the headaches and motion sickness without hesitation.

The Cleanest Water in the World

Posted on June 1, 2014 by calderong

There’s something magical about water, I think, and I’ve been fascinated by it all my life. On family trips to Lake Michigan, I was always the first one in the water and the last one out; baths were always a momentous occasion for me; and I still love going to the car wash, putting the car in neutral, and sitting back to watch the water spray over all the windows.
I’m not the only one fascinated with this mysterious force. Images of water occur over and over again in literature, representing birth and death, peace and violence, and an unchanging, sustaining, yet destructive force. It is also essential to mankind’s existence, used not only for cleaning, transportation, and manufacturing, but also (most importantly) for drinking. However, although 70% of the Earth is covered in this life-giving substance, only 3% of it is drinkable. 77% of that is frozen, and one can only imagine the effects pollution has on these numbers. There is one region in the world, however, that has held its own against these statistics.

Lake Baikal is located in the southern region of Siberia, between Irkutsk and the Buryat Republic. It is the deepest lake on Earth, as well as one of the most ancient, estimated to be around 25-30 million years years old. It’s most remarkable characteristic, however, is its cleanliness. You can drink this pure water straight from the lake. This is due to a unique group of organisms, Epischura baicalensis. Belonging to the zooplankton species, these tiny animals are responsible for keeping the lake clean of impurities and are unique to Baikal—they cannot survive in any other body of water. Thousands of species inhabit this lake, most of them endemic. This includes our class favorite, the nerpa seal.
It is clear that this body of water is sacred to local inhabitants. One of our guides, Evgeny Dmitrievich, told us that most of them don’t carry bottles of water, finding no problem in drinking straight from one of the many streams that run from the lake. Another guide from the Baikal Museum proudly boasted that the people who inhabit the Baikal region live longer, healthier lives.
Because the lake is so life-giving, many myths and legends exist. For example, if you dip your hands into the lake, you will be rewarded with 1 extra year of life. Dip your feet, and you get 2 extra years. Dunking your head into the lake will grant you 5 extra years of life. Full submersion will extend your life by 25 years. That is, if the cold doesn’t kill you first.
Baikal contains 20% of the world’s unfrozen freshwater. Currently, many research projects are being conducted, studying the ecology of the lake and its creatures, trying to unravel the many mysteries of this sacred sea.

Our first time setting foot on the shore of Lake Baikal.

James getting ready to dip his

We got a chance to jump in the lake a few days later.

The temperature that day was about 38 degrees fahrenheit. This was maybe a little too cold for Chet.

Luckily, we were able to warm up in a nearby hot spring.

The Melting Pot of Religion

Posted on May 28, 2014 by browninj

Historic Buryatia is a crossroad of religion. Native polytheistic shamanism was joined and accommodated by Tibetan Buddhism in the early 1700s. The Orthodox Church, originally discouraged from activities in Siberia because conversion would prevent tribes from paying their lucrative tribute to Moscow, was also finally allowed to begin operations under the reign of Peter I in 1710.¹ Old Believer schismatics were added to the mix several decades later when Catherine II removed them from parts of the western empire and placed them in Siberia because their reputation for being diligent workers along with their historic opposition to the seat of Russian power seemed an apt solution to Siberia’s underdevelopment.

One of the many sacred sites along the shores of Lake Baikal.

An Old Believer cross visible from the same sacred site.

Dilara has already written a wonderful blog on the concept of Dvoeverie, or the dual faith that arose when Orthodox Christianity was introduced to the indigenous polytheistic religions, but Buryatia takes this further. In Buryatia, these four ways of worship intermix into a culture that allows for a large amount of interchange. At a Buddhist Datsan, Rada, our dedicated and fantastic guide, explained that religions are just different paths to the same God.²The Old Believer priest who led us through his museum seconded this message when, after crossing himself before his church, he turned to us and said pray in anyway that you feel comfortable.

Part of the Ivolginsky Datsan, one of the many Buddhist temples found across Buryatia.

Strangely enough, this idea of mixing faiths seems embodied by the Soviet atheist museum that was located in Ulan-Ude’s Holy Trinity Cathedral. Here various elements of shamanistic rituals were preserved along side statues of Buddhist Taras in an Orthodox church. However, as Dilara yet again has noted in another post this juxtaposition took place as the government was trying to stamp out all religions in the region. In our few days here we have experienced all of these religions. We have visited Old Believers, circumambulated Datsans and given offerings to Baikal all in perfect harmony. There doesn’t seem to be any contest let alone conquest of religions, but rather peaceful coexistence and exchange.

Anna Reid. The Shaman’s Coat. (Walker & Company, New York, 2003). 46.
In the case of polytheistic shamanism, the multiplicity of gods fits into the Buddhist hierarchy.

Freemasonry in St. Petersburg

Posted on May 13, 2014 by kaspers

Yesterday was the second time that the topic of Freemasonry came up. In class, we had been discussing Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, and we briefly discussed a reference to the secretive Freemason society. The first time this topic came up was in St. Petersburg when somebody asked about the pattern above the grand entryway of Kazan Cathedral.

The back side of the Kazan Cathedral

Diane informed us that it was one of the Freemason’s symbols. The freemasons are a secret society (or rather, a “society of secrets”) whose members have been famous leaders, inventors, and politicians such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
Knowing very little about the Freemasons, I browsed the internet for general information and for Freemason symbols along with the structures that these appear on. One of their most famous symbols is the Eye of Providence:

Eye of Providence. From the Wikipedia Commons.

This symbol has appeared across the world. Take this church in Germany, which has the Eye of Providence above its roof:

Church of St. Peter (Church of Illumination) in Munich, Germany. Picture from http://www.thestillman.com/stillmanfiles/.

The Freemasons played a significant part in the American Revolution, and the Eye of Providence appears on the dollar bill.

The US dollar bill. Picture from listverse.com.

Eye of Providence has also been associated with the Illuminati, another secret society, making it difficult to determine whether this particular symbol belongs to the Freemasons or to the Illuminati.
Diane directed me to Nicolas Berdyaev’s The Russian Idea for some information about Freemasonry in Russia. The first masonic lodges (a lodge is a local, organized group of masons) emerged in 1731 during the reign of Catherine the Great. In 1738, Catherine suppressed Freemasonry, but when Alexander I came to power in 1801, bringing with him his Freemason connections, Freemasonry once again became popular with Russia’s intellectuals and political activists (such as those who classified as Decembrists in the revolt of 1825). On December 1 1825, Alexander I died from an illness. The people were shocked to find out that Constantine, the Alexander I’s successor, had secretly renounced his claim to the throne. And so, when Nicholas I claimed the throne, the Decembrists revolted, and among them were the Freemasons. During one of our walks around St. Petersburg, Diane referenced the Kazan Cathedral and its symbol of the Eye of Providence, informing us that the Freemasons in Russia played a part in the Decembrist revolt of 1825.

Kazan Cathedral

Freemasonry is a difficult topic to write about. Historically, it has been a secretive society, and to do it justice with this short post is impossible. My goal is to make a brief connection with the Freemasons, a group that has spread its influence throughout the world, to a beautiful and famous St. Petersburg building – the Kazan Cathedral.

Carleton Moscow & Beyond 2014

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