THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Often the shamans’ calling was bitter and unwilled.  In youth they became solitary and perhaps mad, suffered delusions, dreamt strangely, fell inexplicably sick.  Then, people knew that the ancestors had chosen them, and were whispering songs into their ear or brain.  Often they came of shamanic ancestry, and were taught by an elder, and their practice seemed to release them from some psychic burden, even to cure them.  Sometimes the learnt a secret language, or the speech of animals.  In their initiation they might undergo dreams of their own death, a traumatic dismemberment and decay.

Thubron/Siberia

The shamans emerged like casual wizards.  A young man in a quilted coat sauntered up to inspect us, his head bound by a soiled cloth with a feather sticking up behind.  He had small, heartless eyes.  They swept over us, then he vanished into an office.  I asked one of the women: ‘Where do these shamans come from?’ She answered nervously: ‘From the country.’

Thubron/Siberia