ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates a new generation of shamanic practitioners in the city of Yakutsk, in the Sakha Republic, focusing on the way that many younger, “new” ritual specialists incorporate varying attributes from historic shamanic traditions in Russia’s Far East. After providing a short overview of the history of shamanic revival in the post-Soviet era, the chapter presents five brief case studies of the practitioners. Through these portraits I examine the impacts of urbanization (and globalization) on contemporary shamanism in Yakutsk and the various forms their practices, both public and private, take. Are they rituals, psychotherapeutic sessions, or perhaps both? What are the tensions arising from some new practitioners sticking to the “historical” forms while others are choosing to modernize them? What elements of older Sakha cosmology remain?
