offering-trees

Sacred tree near Suottu with cloth ribbon offering, April 2011

The Sakha countryside (as well as the margins of the city) is replete with three sorts of trees: the pine (bes), the birch (khatyng) and the larch (tiit). All trees are sacred in Sakha belief, but these common Siberian trio are especially so; and when wandering in the woods, one can often find evidence of offerings made to these trees, which represent the connection between the upper, middle, and lower worlds, as well as a source of souls.

The offering-tree, near Suottu, April 2011

Near the ethnographic museum at the village of Suottu (Sottintsy), high up on the muran (cliff) stands one of these offering-trees. A distinctively twisting pine, shaped by the winds that blow along the riverbanks, it is marked by a simple wooden fence, and festooned with hundreds of torn cloths, with coins and candies pressed into the bark crevices and strewn at its base. The tree itself has a spirit, and to honour the tree is to honour its ichchi, the spirit of the place. This is a very important and serious gesture, that one must do if they come upon a tree like this. To ignore it can be risky. When I visited this tree, the girl I was with told me a story about how she was remembering to be extra respectful with remembering offerings.

She had been travelling out to a faraway region (30 hours away by car) from Yakutsk a few weeks earlier. As is custom, she and the other travelers had been remembering, as they passed from ulus (region or district) to ulus, to get out of the car near the regional borders, find the nearby offering-place and leave a little something so the land would be favourable for their travels. However, as they passed into the last region, it was the middle of the night and they were all tired, and they forgot to ask their driver to stop & let them out to leave something at the border. Not an hour later, around 5am, their driver fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a snowbank. Everyone was safe, but shaken, and it was an ordeal to dig themselves out and continue on; she took this as a sign that she should be vigilant in remembering to acknowledge the places she was passing through.

Pine-cones, Suottu, Uus-Aldan ulus, April 2011

I've learned a little bit about the history of Sakha tree-beliefs this year from different people, as these tree-beliefs are still very much a part of contemporary practices. I've heard that there are strong ties, almost umbilical, between people and trees; when an old tree dies, it means that somewhere, that tree's person has died; if a young tree falls, its young person has died an untimely death. This is because trees are full of souls--often seen as the leaves or cones, or as perching birds--waiting to be reincarnated in the Middle World.

Offering-tree, Suottu, Uus-Aldan ulus, April 2011

It is said that a small child, up until its first year of age, remembers the tree in which its spirit would alight in the shape of a bird. If a baby dies very young (before it has grown teeth), it is said to still belong to nature, to the world of trees, not humans, and so in the past such children were wrapped in birchbark and returned to the branches where it was thought to have originated.

Offerings: flowers, cigarettes, cloth, and a blue pen, Suottu, Uus-Aldan ulus, April 2011

Shamans also use trees as a place to hang the souls of those they are protecting, and to replenish their own strength. In the Olonkho (Sakha epic poem) shamans are often referred to as having 'branches' instead of arms or legs, further associating them with trees. A tree that has been struck by lightning and remained standing is often seen as a shaman tree because it has survived its own 'initiation', just as a human-shaman would.

Looking out toward the Lena from under a pine, Suottu, Uus-Aldan ulus, April 2011

It's a lovely, calming thing to leave a wee bit of chocolate or cloth or a (Canadian!) coin at the base of one of these trees, to remind oneself where we are travelling, where we are passing through as guests on the land, and also to remember trees as both literal and metaphorical sources of life: leaves expiring oxygen, souls like birds perched in the branches, waiting to blossom and breathe.