Kyrgyzstan - Sacred Sites of Kyrgyzstan

A long way to the Shamshykal Ata Mazar... Mountain path carved out in the steep slopes, leads higher and higher. Experienced pilgrims say that they never get tired on their way to the sacred place. It is explained with a holiness of their quest and intercession of those, whom they are appealing to with a prayer. Beautiful landscapes rising to view do not represent their accustomed value here. They seem to serve as illustration and background to the action for which people come here. Since the end of 1990s the tradition of pilgrimage to holy places (ziyarats), known as mazars, returned to the Central Asian countries, including Kyrgyzstan. This tradition has never been interrupted completely. However, visits to the mazars and let alone worshiping were difficult and sometimes, impossible during the soviet times. Phenomena of the mazars take a central place in the Turkic culture. Mazars link the modern state of culture with antiquity incorporating in it, its Islamic and pre-Islatnic elements and touching upon various spheres - from traditional medicine to the story telling. Ethnographers divide mazars into the man-made (these are often tombs of the saints) and the non-man-made (caves, springs, lakes, boulders). Practitioners themselves, representatives of the popular culture consider mazars as the "bridges’' from the visible world to the "invisible” one - "kayip duinou.” In a Kyrgyz spiritual tradition, the Kayip duinou is understood as the invisible world, where some of the Exceptionals are accepted whilst alive as well. The lost world is indwell by the ‘pirs’, the owners of the mazars. For a long time natural mazars and graves of ancestors, not the mosques, served as places of the worship for the nomads of Central Asia, especially for the northern Kyrgyz and Kazakhs. Mazars were places for praying to the God, where the ancestors were remembered. There are organizations in Kyrgyzstan, activities of which are aimed at studying the sacred sites. One of them is the Aigine Cultural Research Center. Since 2004 in the framework of the mission of "Aigine" we have started research on the phenomena of the mazars. We had not found answers in scientific literature by that moment and that is why we started to conduct studies in this field. We applied to the State Commission for Religious Affairs, there is an information about Protestants, about the religious organization "Jehovah's Witnesses", but there is not a word about Mazars. Therefore, we began to study the holy places and have been doing this for 10 years. It was realized that there is a large number of the sacred sites in Kyrgyzstan. As a result of the research, we found thousands of such places and in 2014 generated the sacred map. Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the world that has such a map. Sacred sites are different, e.g., lake Issyk Kul has long been considered a sacred site, it is now forgotten, but older people still admire him and wash only the face and hands, not plunging fully. The reason behind the invocation to the God is a belief that spirits of the ancestors may help to a currently living people, give them the missing: the sufferers - health; the childless - children: to those, who are far away - safe journey home; good ruler. "Obo" ceremony - a worship to the sacred place. This ceremony had been widely circulated during a pre-lslamic period, when people worshiped to the Sun and the Earth. Those times, the Sun represented a paternal spirit and the Earth - feminine one. People worshiped equally to the Sun and the Earth. People come to the sacred places looking for a spiritual awakening and experience the unique energies residing around them. They come to pray in a memory of relatives who passed away. Special place in the Obo ceremony is attending water wells, springs. Water has been an object of worship since ancient times. There are plenty sacred sites connected with the water in Kyrgyzstan. They are called “bulak mazary”. The Kyrgyz has been worshiping to natural mazars - mountains, water wells. We are at the Toguz Bulak Mazar, meaning the “nine springs”. Each of these nine springs has its own higher purpose. One brings happiness, other - health, the third one – family wellbeing. Childless couples ask for posterity from the fourth one. It is customary that worshipers make wishes before attending the sacred place. Or it is even better, if they stay overnight here. Then they may have a prophetic dream in which they might find answers to their questions. This salutary impact is explained by a close and harmonious interaction between the man and the nature, which has always been attributable to the Kyrgyz. Those who come here react in different ways, some are crying, some - yawning and thus, getting rid of the negative energy.