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25 May 2007 Fri 06:38 pm |
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Quoting KeithL: I don't know the religions of the ancient turkic tribes. The religions of the American Indian Tribes of North America all worship the earth. The sun, the wind, the rain, animals. But I think we can find these basic concepts in all ancient religions. Its all basically paginsim.
I do have a question though. I know several turks that really want this link between the two peoples to be true. I dont understand this part of it, on why they want this to be true. It seems to be some kind of romantic notion that they are the same peoples... |
Same as ancient Turanian people...I also dont know why Turks really want this link, maybe ill answer it with a Turkish motto "Belki kan çekiyordur"
let me quote a part of an article about the comparison of religions between ancient Turkic people and Native American...
Shamanism of Central Asia and North America
The ancestors of the Native Peoples of Americas are known to have migrated from Central Asia and Siberia to their new homelands in the Americas. Like the ancestors of Turks, they also have shamanistic beliefs. This is another area in which one can search for the representations of shamanistic sky, moon and sun gods. Since the Native peoples of the Americas have migrated from Asia to these continents, it is likely that we may find representations of these astral deities being the same or similar to those found in Central Asia. In searching their culture, we find, for example, the following shamanistic representations:
a) An Altaic shaman's map of his visionary journey to the god "Ulgen" is shown in a figure by Joseph Campbell, [JC, p.158, Fig. 276]. In this figure, the shaman's journey starts from his tent and goes via a world (cosmic) tree, then ascends toward the god Ulgen which is shown at the very top of the ascending path. The god Ulgen is represented in the form of a man radiating light all over like the sun.
b) In another figure, "A Chukchi map of the heavenly ways" is shown by Joseph Campbell, [JC, p.158, Fig. 277]. In this map, a sun, a crescent moon, Pole star together with other stars and the Milkyway are illustrated.
c) In the words of Joseph Campbell, we have: 'a colorful yarn painting of the shamanisic visionary journey is given as a New World counterpart to that of the Central Asian Altaic shaman', [JC, p. 159, Fig. 280]. This painting which belongs to the Shamans of the Huichol Indian tribe of Nayarit in western Mexico shows a crescent and a five pointed white star which is attached to one tip of the crescent. There are four wavy rays emanating from the star and also four wavy rays to the left of the star are the "fiery curtain of solar rays through which the shaman had to pass". The path of the shaman's ascent is indicated by footsteps shown on a crescent. This painting is by Ramon Medina.
According to the description given by Joseph Campbell: "this painting by Ramon Medina is of a journey inspired by a supernatural summons to bring back to earth, in the form of a rock crystal, the soul of an ancestral shaman wishing to return. The star is the rock crystal to be found. This visionary journey of a shaman from Mexico obviously resembles that of the shaman from Central Asia (276), even to the detail of the tree, which appears in the Altaic map at the start of the shaman's flight into space, and here in the Huichol painting at the center of the composition."
d) In the words of Mircea Eliade, we have: "The designs ornamenting the skin of the drums are characteristic of all the Tatar tribes and Lapps. Among the designs, are always the most important symbols, as, for example the World Tree, the sun and moon, the rainbow and others. In short, the drums constitute a microcosm: a boundary line separates sky from the earth, and in some places, earth from the underworld", [ME, p. 172].
e) To support this description of a shaman's drum, we have a picture of Lapp drumhead from northern Sweden, c. 1800, [JC, p.176, Fig. 306]. The drum's skin is divided into three segments by two horizontal lines. It is described by Joseph Campbell: "In the Upper World: the sun and moon (or, perhaps the sun setting and rising) are seen along with heavenly beings and their tent. In the middle (left to right): the Mistress of the Beasts sends animals to be hunted; a hunter shoots a reindeer; and a shaman, riding upward in a sleigh drawn by a reindeer, is followed by a dog. In the Lower world: three goddesses suggesting the Norns are pictured."
f) Again we have from Joseph Campbell's book the picture of the Yakut (Karagasy) shaman Tulayev, of Irkutsk, wearing his reindeer-leather swan costume. "On his cap of green cloth is sewn a wolf's muzzle with the moon above and stars on each side. ....", [JC, p. 177, Fig. 307].
g) Four buckskin tipi models, collected from the Cheyenne (Native Peoples) in 1904, are shown by N. Bancroft-Hunt and W. Forman [NBHWF, p. 106-107]. These tipi models show the types of sacred images applied to Medicine tipis. One of them, entitled as "Shining Bell's tipi" bears the images of Sun, Moon and Star and the sacred Eagle that carried prayers from Earth to the Sky, [NBHWF, p. 107].
On this tipi, the sacred images of Sun, Moon and a star are vertically arranged on the side of the tipi. Shown are a four- pointed star at the top, a crescent moon in the middle and a sun disk at the bottom. In this illustration of the shamanistic beliefs of astral gods by Cheyenne Indians, we again observe the crescent and star motif.
h) In a book entitled, "Myths of the World Gods of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas" by Timothy R. Roberts, MetroBooks, 1996, [TRR, p. 56], there is shown an Aztec headdress, which is said to be the only surviving example of Aztec feather work and is made of hundreds of quetzal feathers, is adorned with many golden or gold colored crescents and sun disks. This headdress is presently in the Museum fuer Voelkerhunde, Vienna, Austria. In the same book, twelve major Aztec gods are depicted by pictures [TRR, p. 58-59], one of which (#6) has a sun symbol where between the rays showing the four directions, there the three-pointed sun rays between four directions. Similarly, on the Aztec god represented in this (#7), there is the eight-pointed star symbol. So, it is seen that these sun, crescent and eight-pointed star symbols are all associated with Shamanic religious concepts.
i) In the same book by Timothy R. Roberts, [TRR, p. 90], there is the picture which depicts "Coya Mama, the wife of Manco Capac, the last Inca ruler". In this picture, Coya Mama is holding a mirror reflecting the sun and the mirror represents her husband as the descendent of the sun. This is a Shamanistic concept. Additionally, Coya Mama has a white robe over her shoulder. On the right shoulder, there is a "an eight-pointed star embraced by a crescent symbol.
In all of these examples of shamanic beliefs, both in Altaic Shamanism and the Shamanism of North America, the sacred representation of sky, moon, sun, star or Venus are illustrated on shaman's maps, tipis, drums and costumes. The crescent and star motif seems to be a prominent motif among the sacred representations. Additionally, in all of these cases, the North American Shamanism and the Altaic shamanism seems to point to a common origin in Central Asia. Since the ancestors of the Native Peoples of Americas have migrated from Central Asia and Siberia to the Americas, finding this common origin among them is quite natural and expected.
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