Galsan Tschinag
Oracle Stones as Red
as the Sun:
Songs of
the Shaman
Translated by Richard Hacken
From Galsan Tschinag, Sonnenrote Orakelsteine: Schamanengesänge
(Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Waldgut
Verlag, 1999)
Words like
Wind
A Foreword by Amélie
Schenk
In the beginning is the word. The word is forceful;
it animates, it kills, it blesses, it damns. This is true for a people
unfamiliar with written language sharing orally transmitted epics, songs – and
stories in particular. We refer to the Tuvans of
Central Asia, whose smallest subgroup lives in the High Altai of Mongolia.
Language is
always something holy in older cultures. Cautious handling of language is
important. Children are told: “Listen carefully! Why do you have two ears and
one mouth?” Being able to listen is the art of life. The young have to listen;
only with age do they earn the right to speak.
“From
the mouth comes the future,” say the Tuvans. And so
one word pulls the next along after it.
Words flow into deeds; they are
deeds.
Certain
things that are great and grand – things honored and feared because they could
be dangerous – are not called by their actual name. Not the sky; not the holy grandfather
mountain which is neither climbed nor conquered; not the great river whose
actual name is Homdu –
one says “mother” instead, or “maternal sister.” To name something means to
awaken it, to create it. To name the wolf means to call him into your
presence. The word is forceful. And among shamans the spirits are not named
specifically; instead they say: “His things, they are coming.” Only the shaman himself may name the spirits
by name when he is calling them forth.
Underlying
all this is the shamanic worldview that leapfrogs over centuries of time and
nullifies causal connections, mentally condenses space, and regards
communication with and between all beings and all matter, indeed all existence,
as self-evident. All life is yoked into
an all-encompassing power field in which even the quietest thought moves the
entire universe, entirely within the sense of Einstein’s dictum: “When a living
being – such as a mouse – observes the universe, that changes the condition of
the universe.”
We
in our Western civilization are strongly inclined to the idea that, when all is
said and done, we are alone in a hostile universe and that all life and
activity are meaningless. The shaman
lives the aliveness of his being, weaving connective strands to various beings
and objects and helping to shape the great network that constitutes the inner
connectivity and the unity of all things.
He stands in the ancient tradition of philosophia perennis. Everything is bound up in everything else,
one thing stands for another, and the conscious being has access to all other
forms of consciousness.
With
words, with his song, the shaman pushes forward. For the word pulls something along behind it.
It has an effectual power. It is more than
a sound; it has weight, warmth and light: it carries life. Thoughts are energy; the word is solidified
energy. Words are energy transmitters. If something comes out of me – I can breathe,
blow air, whisper, read poetry, sing, cheer, blubber, shriek – in each case my
breath, the wind of my soul, my life energy comes out as well. Magical chants, incantations for healing,
prayers, words of blessing or curses precipitate an effect if they come forth
with the requisite amount of life energy.
The more weight behind it, the more effect.
Unique
for a Tuvan shaman is that each one is a poet, a
singer. Everything for him is song built on verse. The grand objects of this world are invoked
with an elevated language. Song is the
kindling, and it kindles with words, igniting its own creations, taking on
greater and greater heat, leading to ecstasy, to a trance. Thus proceeds the dialogue with spirits, with
the elements.
He
is at the mercy of the water, the wind, the fire, the earth – these elements;
they blow along and pass through him.
These are the forces of nature that bring man into movement, and soon he
is bobbing down the stream like a piece of driftwood. That’s when song is born. His thoughts are driven onward by streaming
and foaming powers and he enters into the flow: his heart pounds, his breath
quickens, the song rises up. It
happens. Verses descend; the primordial
power is at work. One word yields the
next, tumbling onto the tongue; then the tongue passes it on, dragging that
word along and combining it with everything else, with the creator and whatever
surrounds him. The words have effectual
power and thus they create actuality, just as at the first hour of creation. That is the shaman’s song of power.
On
the ninth day of the ninth month in the year nineteen hundred ninety-nine
Amélie Schenk
Chronicle
of Madness
Where animals enjoy respect but not love
And the laps of women are available to children
The end of the Year of the Blue Dog comes to an end
It takes a lot away with it, but leaves much more
behind
Above all a legend still in labor pains
I
The red-cheeked shepherd girl Galby
dips
Water from the milk-white River Ak-Hem
And sees not the mountains’ brightly bubbling blood
But little green fish pouring into her bucket
In an endless chain
Though the first winter month is long past
It’s raining, it’s hailing
And the grains of ice jump and twitch
While a white foaming stream retreats
II
Hail floods the ground and the pail
The fish leap out and swim away
Grow to yaks and dash away from each other
A cyclone, a piece of night, jumps into the fray
Rolling the stream up from one end
Bundling the shepherdess inside and swirling her
Past the scattering herd and away
III
Fish are running
Yak-like from each other
Yaks are swimming
Fish-like towards each other
Their fin-hairs stand on end
Flashing sharp as knives
And their edges morph into flames
Blowing and fluttering
IV
Like a rag she twirls
Above and below them
Stumbles across the flags
Is beaten lengthwise and crosswise
Cut by the knives, bleeds
Singed by the flames, burns
Suffers agonizing, most agonizing pain
V
Tumbling about, she arrives at the herders’ camp
Feels a hand grabbing her
Sees a figure stand before her
It is Pirvi
Grandmother and shaman
Who returned home
One winter and two summers ago
“Let nobody enter this place all night
Until I have purified it for you!”
She hears the friendly voice, rough and hoarse
VI
The door flies open
A surging body
With foaming mouth rushes in
And stands there
Face distorted
Eyes wildly fixed:
The quiet neighbor-child
Hut and hearth paralyze in horror
A dozen questions as from a single mouth
Not one answer
VII
The great and difficult moment
Of the mother has arrived
The great and beautiful moment
Of the child has arrived
Outsiders have to look away
The mother’s hand liberates and cleanses
The child’s body from its four-fold wetness
And holds it to her
The warmth of her skin
Quickly drives from the other
Coldness and all the other suffering
VIII
But then the mother wants to carry
The child to her own hearth
Opposing her
Every hair becomes an awl
Every finger, every tooth a knife:
“Nobody sets foot on the threshold
Until the morning sun
Has shone upon the door!”
IX
“Lay down and rest! Do you hear me, Galby?”
“She once was, but now she is no more!”
“Don’t talk like that, oh, my child…”
“I am not your child, I am your mother!”
“You poor…”
“Poor you call me?
You’re taking the Blue Sky
Much too much for granted!”
“Just what can I do?”
“Get me my cap!”
X
Under the morning’s climbing amber sun
A rider leaves the camp toward each point of the
compass
And the last of them returns
Just at the last ray of the sinking sun
Each appears with something
That the shaman possessed during her days on earth
But which she then, before the end,
Shared among those that remained behind
Besides the cap of red satin
There was an earring of white silver
Pea-sized oracle stones as red as the sun
Forty-one in number
Tied up in a piece of cloth
And an algae-green hip-flask
That holds three swallows more
Than other such containers
XI
Swung across clouds of juniper smoke
The items make their way
To the still raging woman
And behold: as each is received
The fire subsides by one bundle of flames
Until at last she becomes tranquil
Listens and yawns and
Blows out the newly lit candle –
Pauses and begins to sing
XII
Everyone is jolted with astonishment:
For it is the song of the shaman herself
The wise woman and the very voice of Pirvi
Familiar to the ear and also to the heart
Her daughter – previously her mother –
Groans, with shaking hands reaching to and fro
As she hurries to find
Milk for ceremonial spraying
Her son-in-law – previously her father –
Groans in the gathering darkness
As he hurries
To gather and orient stones together
In the same directions as the thirteen sacrificial
stone cairns of the Altai
Someone breaks out in tears
Others follow
Soon all are sobbing at the tops of their voices
They are like shouts of rejoicing
XIII
The song lasts for all the night
This full night no eyelids close
Into each ear penetrates
Like fat into leather
The tale of return
After four-hundred-twenty days
That follow after eight-two years
Spirits are called forth
Spirits seem to appear
At daybreak the figure becomes recognizable
Everyone is jolted anew with astonishment
It is HER, her indeed.
XIV
The song continues
Now with pauses like breaths
Eighteen nights slip away
The people trade off waking and watching
But the shaman stays at her work without rest
The news is like a fire
Darting across grass
From near and far the people stream
On horseback, on foot and also on wheels
Convincing themselves that she has returned, she
Who had been such a final, worthy mother for the land
XV
In the nineteenth night
She awakens from her madness and falls asleep
Yet it is a short, troubled sleep
Interrupted by a dream
Requiring a decision:
To travel
But where?
To the place where the body lies
For the mirror must also be there
And it must be returned!
XVI
On wheels the shaman moves
Upward into the
Squatting between her mother-daughter
And the driver, who assumes every wheel
circumference
Of the way to be paved with banknotes
And he plies mother and daughter
With his mocking-merry sideward glances
And his calculating-demanding commentary
Beyond the windshield the snowstorm sweeps
Across the grass and gravel of the steppe
Quickly erasing all traces
But also throwing open the question
All the more bluntly: How will this trip end?
XVII
The man is a stranger to the area and blind to
faith
The woman knows the region only from a burial
But it was summer then
And in place of the present white-gray armor of ice
The steppe had rested then under a billowing green
sea
The soles of the girl’s feet have never touched
This spot of ground
And so a trio travels in search of a palm-sized
mirror
Of clumped and colored glass
They are not the first to seek
A sewing needle in a pile of hay
XVIII
Ever more sluggishly, the wheels break through the
icy armor
Until at last, robbed of power, they cannot
continue one finger-breadth more
The driver shovels and digs in vain
For only smoke and steam escape the spinning wheels
The shaman, like clouds floating
High above arduous but trivial troubles
Stares ahead and sings to herself
All of a sudden she sees
Her grandmother standing
Three lasso-tosses ahead in the snowy steppe
At once she rushes toward her
The latter disappears, but where she had stood
Something lies flickering and flashing
A light-green stone fish with eyes
Mouth, fins and a bright belly
XIX
She returns with the fish nestled in her arms like
a child
Climbs in and says: “Let’s drive on!”
The driver mocks her: “Fine, if YOU have all the
answers!”
But her certainty remains:
“Now you’ll be able to.”
With a powerful stomp he hits the accelerator
Doing so to show her it won’t work
In order to blaspheme even more rudely
With heightened rage
Against her and her spirits
Yet the vehicle leaps forward as
The ice cracks away under the wheels
The man stutters and trembles
But she has no time to pay attention
XX
In the very middle of the ocean of snow
She asks to come to a stop and tells
The other two to stay inside and keep quiet
She herself climbs out, moving off
To the side, singing, yelling and listening
She asks questions and answers them, waits and
walks
Keeps to the left, keeps to the right
Then steps straight ahead and bends down
The watching, waiting eye of the shaman
Peers forth from the snow: the mirror
XXI
With rejoicing she swirls back
When she’s halfway
A whirlwind circles in behind her
Shrouding her in white thunder
A blow strikes her
Echoing laughter is her reply
Then she sees the bullet fall to earth
That has just struck her:
Heavily gleaming silver in the size and shape
Of a sheep knuckle
“Hold on to it!” she hears a voice say
“And you will be released for now!”
To the
Storm
The reason I turn to you, here’s why:
My mother, your playmate
Has difficulty standing beneath her years
Has quaking, icy hands and feet
Leave the door flap at peace
Let it hang straight and
Allow the ever flighty warmth
No escape from the yurt
I beg you, friend
Sepp, sepp, sepp!
The reason I bother you again, here’s why:
My mother, your sister
Lies dying
Needs strength for her last heartbeats
Needs listening for her last words
Leave the ever shaky yurt
At peace
I beg you, brother
Sepp, sepp, sepp!
The reason I approach you again, here’s why:
My mother, your servant
The sacrificial object with whose pains
You satisfy your desires
The salt vessel from whose bitterness
You toughen your raw hide
Is now stone, now crags
Doesn’t need you anymore
Rage on, you blind deaf-mute, to wherever
Your evil reaches
May your deaf ear
Shred itself to bits
May your mute tongue
Dissolve
May your blind eye
Be crushed
Against the brow of stone
Against the ridges of rock
And may you die a miserable death, you monster
Happ! happ! happ!
To a Stag
Deer
Know this, brother
The imprints of your cloven hooves
Split the pathway under my calloused soles
I must turn
From the roe
From the fox
From the rabbit
And follow you
Unceasingly
Like a blue wolf
With its white incisors
I shall peel you
Off the gray rock
With its red warts
Off the black larch trees
With their green bristles and
Point my bared incisor
The long iron tube
With lurking lead in its throat
Directly at you
It is
Your red, pulsing meat
Drenched in streams
Of red, seething blood
Packed into taut patterns of deerskin
That I hunt
It is the voracious monster in me
The stomach, that must be satisfied
And it drives me after you
Without your pulsing red meat
Without your seething red blood
It will shrivel and dry up
And I will become food
For red foxes and black worms
Listen, brother
Your cloven hooves
Have splintered a spear
Along the pathway under my calloused soles
And now it is pursuing
You
Sharpened and ready
Afterwards,
When your patterned skin
Shows itself to my eyes
When my awakened nose
Catches a whiff of
The pulsing red meat
And the seething red blood
No time will remain
For words
So now in advance:
Accept my thanks, brother, and forgive me
I shall
Handle
Your taut skin
Your pulsing meat und
Flowing blood
With the same trembling hand
With the same numbing reverence
As I would my passing father
As I would my coming child
To the
Glacier
Ehi, great glacier, look here and listen
You are related to me
Let me tell you how that is:
You are white and dazzling
As the nit eggs laid
in my
grandson’s mouth
The mountain in a dream
Ehi, great glacier, look here and listen
You are doubly related to me
Let me tell you the reason:
You are white and melt away in various places
You change your color
Like mother’s milk
Which filled me
Raised me
Fermented to blood
Ran to flesh and
A wild autumn growth
At my temples
Where I am now
On my way to mountain
Ehi, great glacier, look here and listen
You are triply related to me
Let me tell you why:
You are white as what
Has arrived at the mountain
Left over from ancestors
And petrified
Ehi, great glacier, look here and listen
You and I can never run
From each other
Related, now water, later blood
From milk and
Previous flesh, finally stone
On legs
White is the color
In which our tribe
Flows and runs together
To the
Wolf and to the Horse
Ow-ooh-eh, wolf
Dog of the mountains and the steppes
Certified by the heavens to let blood
You are trained and find your place
In a chasm-funnel of fierce and concentrated force
But know this:
Four quick lean legs
And perhaps every hundred tries
A waving, black-bearded mane
Are given to you
As horse
Yet the hoof beat
That thundered here on the winter steppe
Breaks away from its stiffening
At the other end
And forces me, wandering fragment
To bear the noble deed
Across gaping distances
To other fragments bitterly missing me
And thus to restore the disturbed wholeness
Again and again
Before it consumes itself
This noble deed
Belongs only to
One
To your victim
That you cast from a swirling, heart-pounding life
path
To eat hollow and to leave
As rotting carcass
For jackals, vultures and worms
Ee-hah-ehi, horse
My companion, my second half
On the colorfully checkered paths and ways
Of fate
To me you are flowing wind –- milk
Aromatic wind –- flesh
Supportive wind –- ligaments and bones
Yet you must admit:
Over the stony, treacherous globe of earth
You flee
From your own shortcomings
On four quick, lean legs
As does the wolf
You are equipped
With sharp hooves
Making each of you capable
Of kicking to pulp
The thieving creature on wobbly stumps
Packed in bare, callused hooves
Overwhelming in your size
Your skull is like his
Sitting on a jaw with no less teeth
You have everything he has
Except for a bit of good fortune
Each of your encounters
With him
Why, oh why
Ends ingloriously for you
So I feel the need to howl for you
Wolf-like, man-like: ow-oo-eh,
ee-hee-eee!
To the Sky
I have transformed myself
Because I had to
Into a tree
With all my branches
I glow
With all my buds
I blossom
Up towards you
Let the sun shine
Stretch your enlivening
Roots down to me
I have transformed myself
Because I had to
Into a river
Gurgling black water
I flow
Silent black fish
I swarm
Up towards you
Let your rain come down
Hold your freshening
Roots down to me
I have transformed myself
Because I had to
Into a mountain
My bare skull
Attracts the snow
Layering it up to a glacier
My crust catches the dust
Weaving it into braids
Let down your lightning
Send your scorching
Roots down to me
I shall
Because I must
Arrive where you are and
Join myself with you
So that I
Am more by as much
As you are
And you
Are more by as much
As I am
Song of
Farewell to the Teacher
You have been
The leaf of a tall tree
You have been
The stone of a great mountain
Hurai-hurai-hurai
You have become
A tree yourself
You have become
A mountain yourself
Hurai-hurai-hurai
Now you must go
Tree
To the trees
You must go
Mountain
To the mountains
Hurai-hurai-hurai
You leave behind
Leaves
You tall tree
You leave behind
Stones
You great mountain
Hurai-hurai-hurai
What I Am
I am grass that grows
In the harsh early spring
In the succulent summer
Then comes autumn
With its hoar-frost
Followed by winter
With its snow
With its storms
I am grass allowed to grow
That must dry
And be crushed
By the hoar-frost
By the snow
And the storms
I am storm that blows
Three days and
Perhaps
Three-times-three nights long
Until forced to shatter
Against the rocks
I am storm that blows and goes
I am rock that stands
Nine lives and
Perhaps
Nine-times-nine eternities long
Until forced to crumble
Under the stabs of grass
And the blows of storm
I am rock
That stands and passes on
Selling
Off a Simpleton Who Couldn’t Solve a Simple Riddle
[Note: For a
German-language explanation of
riddle-posing and riddle-solving
practices among the Tuvans, see: Erika Taube,
“Von den Rätseln der Tuwiner im
Altai,” Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde (52) 1988,
pp. 56-60.]
It is not the meanness of my tongue
Wanting to impose this
No, it is the shallowness of your own head
That brings it on you
Know this, little brother
If this evening
Should bring spice
Let tomorrow
Bring clarity
I intend to sell you off
Because seven times
Seven shameful, punishable times
You were unable to solve
The riddle given you
Now listen what I plan
To do with you
I shall dissolve you
Into hard, soft and flowing parts
And separate you
Into one-hundred-eight chunks
Of bone, gristle and sinew
Forty-nine clumps
Of skin, glands and fat
And twenty-one rivulets
Of water, mucus and broth
Which out of respect
Not exactly to you
Riddle-deaf and riddle-mute
But indeed to the other
Ears that hear
Noses that smell
Tongues that taste
Eyes that see
And skins that feel
I shall not name more precisely
And so I shall divide you up
And sell you
And whosoever wants some part
Let him speak up now
Here, dear customers, is the skull
That held fast
Against a watery brain
For all of sixteen years
It is round, made of heavy
Thick bone,
impregnable
To heat, cold or the tooth of any beast
Properly soldered at the seams
It could serve good and well
As a drinking cup or alms-collecting dish
For the gluttons of Lamas in their cloister
At the junction of the Rivers Ohy
and Ahy
Or as a piss-pot or spittoon