Candidate of historical sciences, director Ob-Ugric institute of applied researches and development Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia [email protected]
Abstract. The concept of a soul is inextricably related to the notions about the essence of a man’s life path and is thus a fundamental paradigm of life. Developed among the Indigenous Peoples the ideas about a soul, give not only the mental stability of the ethnos, but also provide a functional unity of a man with the environment. The concept of a soul is to a certain extent the fixed portion of the traditional culture, which keeps the whole structure of traditional society from the disintegration. More than a century there were the attempts to investigate the classification of the souls, mainly on the material of the Khanty and Mansi. The article contains the author's field material on the forest Nenets, which gives reason to say about the dominant position of the soul-breath and the movable soul-shadow (winged) in the hierarchy of other human souls. Moreover, just these two souls show a strong tendency of gravitation to each other, with the only difference that the first one can reincarnate, and the second one - flies to the upper worlds of the Universe.