Ülgen- Turkic GodDeity"Lord of the Upper World"

The Climb

The shaman begins at the base of the birch. Its lower branches have been stripped, and notches cut into the trunk, one for each layer of the sky. He beats his drum and climbs. At the first notch he calls out what he sees: the spirits and obstacles of that celestial layer. At each level he pauses, chants, describes what lies before him to the community gathered below. One of Ülgen's sons may meet him there, or a servant spirit that must be sung past.

Higher. The drum never stops. The shaman's voice grows hoarse and his body shakes with exhaustion. Nine notches, or seven, or sixteen, depending on the tradition his people follow. When he reaches the last, he collapses. He has arrived at Ülgen's throne.

What the shaman reports seeing there varies by community and by individual. But the accounts recorded by Radloff, Verbitsky, and Anokhin among the Altai peoples in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries share common elements: a golden throne radiating light almost too bright to bear. Ülgen himself, Bay-Ülgen, the Generous One, seated above the highest layer of heaven. The shaman delivers his community's petition for health and protection from Erlik's spirits below. He receives the answer and descends.

The White Horse

The most solemn offering to Ülgen was a white horse. The animal was chosen well before the ceremony, marked with ribbons, and kept apart from the herd. On the day of sacrifice, the community gathered. The horse was killed and its hide hung on a pole facing east, toward the rising sun and the upper world.

Radloff observed the ceremony among the Altai Turks in the 1860s and published his account in Aus Sibirien. The ritual lasted several days. The sacrifice was understood not as destruction but as a gift: the horse's spirit would carry the community's prayers upward to Ülgen, a messenger between worlds. The flesh was shared in a communal feast. The bones were preserved whole, because in Altai belief an animal sacrificed properly could be reconstituted in the spirit world.

The Making of the World

In Altai creation myths recorded by Verbitsky and Anokhin, Ülgen made the earth by sending a bird to dive into the primordial waters and bring up mud from the bottom. From that mud he shaped the land. He made human bodies and breathed souls into them, dispatching each soul from the upper world to inhabit its body before birth.

When a family wanted children, the shaman climbed the birch to petition Ülgen to release a soul. Every human life began with Ülgen's consent, a thread running from the golden throne down through the celestial layers to the newborn in the tent below.

Erlik was once part of this upper world. In some Altai tellings he was Ülgen's companion in the work of creation, who fell through pride or disobedience. Ülgen cast him down. Erlik became lord of the dead, ruler of the subterranean world, source of disease and corruption. The cosmos split: Ülgen above, Erlik below, and the middle world of humans caught between them. The shaman's entire vocation existed in that gap, climbing toward one power, defending against the other.