The Daughters of Erlik, born of the underworld's lord, wait in the darkness below to waylay shamans on their spirit journeys — beautiful, beguiling, and utterly treacherous.
The Sons of Erlik dwell in their father's sunless palace beneath the earth, dispatched by Erlik to the surface world to spread disease and drag the souls of the dying down into the underworld.
Tengri, the Eternal Blue Sky, and Erlik, lord of the underworld, stand as the supreme cosmic opposition in Altai Turkic tradition — heaven's light against the darkness below, order against corruption, each contending for the souls of humankind.
Ülgen and Erlik, once creator and companion upon the primordial waters, became the supreme antagonists of Altai cosmology — Ülgen ruling the light of the upper world, Erlik commanding the darkness below, their eternal opposition defining the boundary between life and death.
The körmös serve Erlik as agents of disease and soul-theft, rising from the underworld at his command to afflict the living — an invisible army of evil spirits answering to the dark lord below.
Erlik commands the Sons of Erlik as agents of his will, dispatching them from Tamag to the world above to bring sickness, steal souls, and carry out the dark errands of the underworld lord.
Erlik reigns over Tamag, the sunless underworld, from an iron throne in his lightless palace — every soul that descends below falls under his dominion, and shamans who journey there must offer him gifts of araky and sacrifice to bargain for the dead.
Ülgen fashioned Erlik as his first companion upon the primordial waters, but Erlik's pride and disobedience during the creation of the earth brought ruin — he hid stolen mud in his mouth and spat out mountains and swamps, and for this betrayal Ülgen cast him beneath the earth forever.
⚠ Some Altai traditions attribute Erlik's creation to Kayra Han or to Tengri directly rather than Ülgen; the identity of the sky-god creator varies across regional versions.
Erlik, the dark lord of the underworld, is the same deity in both Turkic and Mongolian traditions — the rebel who defied the sky god during creation and was cast beneath the earth, ruling the dead from his iron throne in both the Altai shamanic corpus and Mongolian shamanic lore.
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