Ülgen, Altaic God of Light and Creator of the Upper World

Ülgen is a specialization of the high-deity complex Tengri within the Altaic, Telengit, Shor, and Tuvan religion.

While Tengri encompasses the entire vault of heaven, Ülgen inhabits the uppermost nine heavens and is regarded as a personally addressable creator agent. Anokhin described him in 1924 as “the high god of the Altai peoples who is actually invoked.”

Within the Siberian-Tengrist tradition, Ülgen is the upper apex of a multi-tiered pantheon of gods; Erlik Khan is his dual counterpart, Yer-Sub his earth-bound complement.

The religious-sociological significance of Ülgen is that, unlike the remote Tengri, he represents an active creator agent who can be directly invoked.

He thereby fills a gap that the deus otiosus Tengri leaves open; in this function he is typologically more comparable to the Greek Zeus or the Norse Odin than to the immeasurable sky itself.

The word ülgän / ülgen is Old Turkic and is associated in scholarship with the meanings “great, sublime, mighty”; in some lexicons also “the distributor, the apportioner” (from ülē- “to divide, to distribute”), which fits the conception that he distributes life-portions to human beings. Related forms are Khakas Ülgän, Shor Ülgen.

Among the Mongols, no direct equivalent appears; there the role is partly taken over by Möngke Tngri and partly by Bodhisattvas of Buddhist influence such as Khormusta. This asymmetry makes Ülgen a specifically South Siberian-Turkic phenomenon.

An alternative etymology connects the name with üligen, “the bestowing one,” which fits the mythological conception that Ülgen distributes wealth and fertility. Both etymologies are linguistically compatible and may have historically reinforced each other.

Ülgen is described as an elderly, white-bearded man on a golden throne in the uppermost heaven. He wears a cloak embroidered with the sun and moon, holds in his right hand a luminous bow made of rainbow material and in his left a cup full of mare’s milk. His messenger is the white eagle.

In the Altaic drum diagrams recorded by Anokhin and Potapov, Ülgen stands at the very top; below him branch nine daughters (the Kysh-Kyz) and nine sons who govern individual celestial domains.

This mythology of nine sons and daughters is a classic Siberian high-deity iconography that recurs in the tradition of Erlik Khan as well, though mirrored downward.

In the modern Altai Republic context, the iconography of Ülgen has been consolidated; a well-known mural in the cultural center of Gorno-Altaysk depicts him in the standard white-bearded form. This modern iconography draws on Anokhin’s ethnographic sketches and creates a coherent visual form that never existed in quite such unified fashion in the historical material.

The Altaic creation narrative describes Ülgen drifting alone on the primordial waters, commissioning a bird (sometimes a duck, sometimes Erlik in bird form) to fetch mud from the bottom, and shaping the earth from it. After Erlik has become separate, Ülgen creates the first human being from clay and animates him by placing the sun inside his head, a motif that has parallels in Christian creation thought but was certainly formulated independently.

A second narrative describes the erection of the world tree, a cosmic larch whose roots reach into Erlik’s realm and whose crown meets beneath Ülgen’s throne. Along this axis the white shaman moves during his upward journey. Mircea Eliade made this motif the central category of his shamanism model under the term “Axis Mundi.”

A third narrative describes a dispute between Ülgen and Erlik over the first human being: Erlik attempts to breathe his breath into the clay body, but Ülgen acts first. In his fury, Erlik creates the first diseases and mosquitoes, a typical etiological myth that explains the existence of evil without moral dualism.

The Ülgen cult was a public spring cult in the Altaic highlands.

On a sacred mountain in May a young light-colored horse (white or pale yellow) was sacrificed; shamans “rode through the nine heavens” in ecstatic sessions and conveyed the requests of the tribe to Ülgen. Anokhin documented one such session in detail (1909, published 1924).

In the personal sphere, Ülgen was the central invocation of the white shamans (aq kam), while the black shamans turned to Erlik Khan. His feast day often fell on the summer solstice celebration and overlapped with the later Naadam complex of Mongolia.

A special form of Ülgen veneration was the tagyl ritual: on a flat rock a small stone altar was erected and tended with mare’s milk and butter pastries.

Such rock altars are archaeologically partially preserved in the South Siberian highlands and may reach back to the Bronze Age, without the religious identification necessarily being continuous.

Protective practice within the Ülgen complex was positively connoted: the emphasis was less on warding off than on “setting things in order.” Apotropaic elements included tying white cloth strips (kyira) to larches at mountain passes, erecting small stone pyramids (obo), and avoiding noise and conflict on the passes.

In the case of a child’s illness, a white shaman could be called upon to ask Ülgen for the “return of a life-portion.” In conceptual terms this is a cosmic appeal for order, not a promise of healing.

From a religious-studies perspective, this practice belongs to the category of “restoration rituals” documented in many other indigenous traditions as well.

Central to understanding this is the distinction: Ülgen was the addressee of petitions, not the healer himself. Healing was the responsibility of the shaman as intermediary, an important religious-sociological distinction that Roberte Hamayon (1990) articulated sharply in her critique of Eliade’s model.

Structurally comparable to the Germanic Tyr, the Vedic Varuna in his light function, the Roman Iuppiter as god of law and order, and, in Siberia, the Yakut Aar Tojon.

From a phenomenology-of-religion perspective, it is notable that Ülgen, unlike the remote Tengri, possesses a concrete creation narrative without thereby becoming a creator-demiurge in the manner of Yaldabaoth in Gnosticism.

A close parallel is found in the Finnish Ukko, who likewise functions as a “more active high deity” beneath an abstract celestial layer. The Finnish Kalevala scholar Juha Pentikäinen drew typological comparisons between Siberian and Finno-Ugric high deities in Shamanism and Culture (1998).

The specifically Altaic feature is the strict division into “white” and “black” shamans with separate invocation addresses. This model is rare in Siberian comparison and makes Ülgen particularly interesting from the standpoint of the phenomenology of religion.

In modern Altaic cultural work, Ülgen has been reclaimed; he adorns postage stamps, folk festivals, and school textbooks of the Altai Republic. Scholarly standard treatments include: Anokhin (1924), L. P. Potapov (Altaiskij schamanizm, 1991), Mircea Eliade (1951), Vladimir Basilov (1984), and more recently Andrei Znamenski (2007).

The Finnish scholar of religion Juha Pentikäinen (Shamanism and Culture, 1998) situates Ülgen within a broader circumpolar series of light deities.

In the contemporary Altai context, the Ülgen cult exists in tension: on one hand it is positioned as “genuine indigenous religion” in contrast to Russian Christianity, while on the other hand it is itself overlaid with New Age elements not grounded in the ethnographic tradition.

Andrei Znamenski has analyzed this tension in detail in his Oxford volume.

A separate research strand concerns the archaeological traces of Ülgen-centered rituals; M. P. Gryaznov and V. D. Kubarev have documented rock images in Tuva and the Altai that have been interpreted as Ülgen riders, though the identification remains uncertain.

Three research debates shape Ülgen studies. First: is Ülgen a split from Tengri or an independent Altaic layer? Anokhin and Potapov tended toward the former reading, Roux and Hamayon toward the latter.

Second: how continuous is the veneration of Ülgen from the pre-Islamic period through the 19th and 20th centuries? Written sources are largely absent; the ethnographic tradition has only been systematically recorded since Radloff in the 1860s.

Third: what share does Russian collecting activity itself have in consolidating the image of Ülgen? Andrei Znamenski has offered an important self-critical reflection here: much of what we know about Ülgen is also a product of Tsarist and Soviet ethnography and not solely of the Altaic insider perspective.

A systematic comparison of Ülgen with other Siberian high deities is illuminating from a religious-studies perspective.

Compared to the Tungusic Buga, Ülgen is distinctly more personal and endowed with a richer mythology; compared to the Yakut Ürün Aar Tojon, he is conceived as more actively creative. Compared to the Mongolian Khormusta, the Iranian-Buddhist layers are absent.

These comparisons show that South Siberian religion is not a homogeneous stratum but rather a spectrum of differently profiled high-deity figures, each with its own mythology, iconography, and ritual practice. Vladimir Basilov offered a first systematic comparative study in Shamanism in Siberia (1984).

From the standpoint of the phenomenology of religion, Ülgen is especially interesting because he fills the gap between the remote Tengri and the specific specialized deities. This intermediary role makes him one of the “most vital” high deities of Siberia.

Those wishing to study the Ülgen complex in its breadth will find on the overview page Siberian-Tengrist Tradition the most important cross-references to related figures such as Tengri, Erlik Khan, and the protective mother figure Umai.

A. V. Anokhin’s Materials on the Shamanism of the Altai Peoples (1924) is the most important primary source and provides detailed descriptions of six complete shamanic sessions that he personally documented. L. P. Potapov’s Altaiskij schamanizm (1991) is the most important Soviet-Russian synthesis.

For the circumpolar context, reference is made to Juha Pentikäinen’s Shamanism and Culture (1998), which situates Ülgen within a broader series of light deities from Scandinavia to Siberia.

Ülgen is an instructive example of the phenomenology-of-religion category “god of light,” which Wilhelm Schmidt elaborated in his high-deity doctrine and which Friedrich Heiler later developed in Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion (1961). Characteristic is the association of light, height, creation, and ethical order.

Compared to other deities of light, such as the Vedic Surya, the Egyptian Ra, and the Zoroastrian Hvar Khshaeta, Ülgen lacks direct identification with the solar disk; he is more the “luminous high deity” behind the astral phenomena.

This places him typologically closer to Indo-European high deities such as Varuna or Tyr than to Indo-Iranian solar deities.

The connection with the world tree is a core motif that decisively shaped Eliade’s concept of the “Axis Mundi.” Even if Eliade’s theory is now viewed critically, the material from the Ülgen complex remains one of the most compelling examples of vertical cosmic mediation structures.

Ülgen research raises several methodological problems. First: Altaic religion was recorded in the 19th century mainly by Russian Orthodox missionaries and somewhat later by Russian ethnographers. Both groups had interpretive preconceptions that distort the transmitted picture.

Second: Anokhin’s detailed session protocols (1909) are an outstanding source, but they are shaped by the presence of the observer himself. The methodological discussion around “participant observation” in the ethnology of religion bears directly on Anokhin’s material.

Third: the contemporary re-Tengrization in the Altai Republic is constructing a consolidated Ülgen image tradition that never existed in such closed form in the historical material. This construction is of sociological-religious interest, but should not be confused with the historical layer.

A central religious-symbolic concept in the Ülgen complex is the world tree, the baj-terek: a cosmic larch or birch whose roots reach into the underworld and whose crown meets beneath Ülgen’s throne. Along this axis the white shaman performs his ascent.

Mircea Eliade made this motif the central category of his shamanism model and systematically developed it under the term “Axis Mundi” in Le sacré et le profane (1957) and Le chamanisme (1951).

Even if Eliade’s model is now viewed critically, the Ülgen world tree remains one of the most compelling examples of vertical cosmic mediation structure in an indigenous religion.

Contemporary Altaic artists take up the world tree concept; it appears on numerous murals, souvenirs, and in folk-art exhibitions. This reception is of sociological-religious interest because it transforms a religious motif into a marker of cultural identity.

Contemporary Ülgen research stands within several productive tensions. On one side is the established Russian-Soviet school (Potapov, Tokarev), working with its wealth of empirical material; on the other is Western phenomenology of religion (Eliade, Pentikäinen), searching for general religious structures.

Both schools complement each other without being coextensive. Roberte Hamayon made their tension explicit in La chasse à l’âme (1990), arguing for a third, socio-economically grounded reading.

Andrei Znamenski, in his works since 2003, has systematically addressed the methodological problems of shamanism research: how much of the research image is itself an effect of the research? This reflexive turn now also shapes Ülgen scholarship. For young scholars of religion, this is an instructive example.