Department of History and Ethnology, Ob-Ugric Institute of Applied Researches and Development, Khanty-Mansiysk, Russian Federation, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Introduction: this work is a continuation of comparative studies of folk traditions associated with the belief in the reincarnation of ancestral souls. For comparison, only the key features of the phenomenon under study were taken: the archetypal model, ideas about life forces, its generic nature, methods of determining a reincarnated ancestor, as well as an archaic motif associated with the possibility of temporary incarnation of the human soul in an animal and a plant.
Objective: identification of the main features of the ancient system of ideas about reincarnation that has developed in Eurasia, based on preserved traditions in the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.
Research materials: collections of folklore, published materials on the ethnography of the Ob Ugrians.
Results and novelty of the research: the revealed close analogies in the concepts of transmigration of ancestral souls and related traditions allow us to attribute them to one type of belief, which differs from the well-known views on reincarnation in other worldview systems. Among the key signs of the reconstructed phenomenon are the ancient belief in reincarnation in Northern Eurasia: the archetype of the ancestral tree with the mother goddess and ancestral souls in the form of birds; the division of vital forces into a reincarnating principle (soul-breath) and its derivative (soul-shadow); the definition of a reborn soul through dreams and fortune-telling, spontaneous “memories” children and their similarity to the incarnated ancestor; the existence of ideas about the possibility of a temporary stay of the human soul in the bodies of animals and plants.
Key words: indigenous peoples of the North, reincarnation, ideas about the soul, Tree of Life, ancestor cult
For citation: Voldina T. V. Reincarnation as the most ancient type of beliefs among the peoples of the North // Vestnik  ugrovedenia=Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2024; 14 (3/58): 529–541.