Tengrism

The sky-worship of the Turkic and Mongol steppe, honoring Tengri, the eternal heaven.

c. 600 BCE – 1300 CE (revived today) · Central Asian steppe · Indigenous & Animist

Tengrism is the traditional religion of the Turkic and Mongolic peoples of Central Asia, centered on Tengri, the boundless blue sky venerated as the highest power, alongside the earth-mother Umay and a host of nature and ancestral spirits. Shamans mediated between the human and spirit worlds, and rulers claimed a heavenly mandate to reign. Displaced as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity spread across the steppe, it survives in folk practice and modern revivals.

Key figures

• Tengri (the eternal sky)
• Umay (mother goddess)

Texts

• Oral tradition; later Orkhon inscriptions

Beliefs

• Tengri, the eternal blue sky, as supreme
• Balance of sky, earth, and ancestral spirits
• Heavenly fortune (qut) granted to rulers

Rituals

• Sky offerings on high places
• Shamanic trance and drumming
• Veneration of ancestors and nature spirits

Grew from

• Animism & Shamanism

Connections in the atlas

• Ongon
• The Orkhon inscriptions
• Burkhan Khaldun
• The Church of the East to China
• The earth-diver
• The Slavs
• ? Where does shamanism come from?
• Herding land
• ▶ Land and belief
• Virgin birth of a hero or god
• Almas / almasty
• The Secret History of the Mongols