ZURICH.- The oldest shaman’s costume in the world, fully preserved, is lodging at the Museum Rietberg since this week for the next two years. The costume, which is made of reindeer leather, is richly embellished with textile and metal artefacts. They represent the shaman’s helper spirits who accompany him on his journeys to the realms of the beyond.

Made in Siberia, the costume came to Göttingen as a donation from Georg Thomas von Asch (1729 1807) in 1788. Von Asch, a physician and later field marshal of the imperial Russian army, presented the costume to the University of Göttingen in gratitude for the education he had received there. Because the building which holds the university’s ethnographic collection is presently being refurbished, the Museum Rietberg offered to provide a temporary home for this unique cultural property.

Everything in the world is animated because all things in nature – be they stone, plant, animal, or human being – are said to have a soul. This belief is the foundation of shamanism. In the shaman cultures of Siberia, the animated world is imagined as a cosmic space divided into three tiers: an upper world, a middle world, and an underworld. Shamans – these can be women just as well as men – possess the power to travel to these worlds. They act as mediators between the world of humans and the powers that populate the various spheres of the beyond, including the realm of spirits. Based on this strength, they lend support to members of their community, provide counsel, and cure sicknesses. To interact with these otherworldly powers, shamans put themselves into a trance, often involving ecstatic features, with the help of rhythmic drum beats and dance, allowing the shaman’s soul to depart from his body. In this altered state of consciousness, he communicates with the spirit world and receives messages which he then passes on to the people seeking help or counsel.

The shaman’s costume on display originally came from the land of the Evenk people, formerly known as Tungus, who populate wide areas in Siberia, Mongolia, and northern China. The costume, which is made of reindeer leather, is richly embellished with textile and metal artefacts. They represent the shaman’s helper spirits who accompany him on his journeys to the realms of the beyond. The roughly seventy metal objects include human figures, fishes, reindeers, birds, and other creatures. Metal disks represent the sun and moon, while brightly polished metal mirrors help to fend off evil forces. In the flickering light of the fire, the mask, made of wrought copper, lent the ecstatically dancing shaman figure almost supernatural quality. The shoulders are adorned with metal ornaments reminiscent of antlers; they symbolize the branches of the world tre