Spirits in Tusheti

From Omalo, the central village of Tusheti, it is a two-hour ride on horseback to Shenako. The winding road first descends steeply into the valley of the Pirikita Alazani river, then, after crossing the bridge – for this you have to dismount and lead the horse by the bridle, as it can easily startle on the rotting wooden structure – it rises steeply again towards the castle of Diklo on the Dagestani border.

Approaching Shenako, an old cemetery looks down on us on the right side of the hill. Its graveposts are simple stone blícks without inscription, rectangular mounds made of slate, or just an irregular slate slab stuck upright in the ground. Only one tin plate, Sara Chvchitidze’s headboard, bears the date of 1900-1983. No one has been buried here in a long time. As the inhabitants of the village, except for two families, gradually moved down to the foot of the Great Caucasus, the Alazani plain seventy kilometers away, from the 1970s, it is not even certain whether anyone is still buried here in the village. At the edge of the cemetery there are some khatis, low square pillars built of slate slabs, topped with the horns of sacrificial rams, and with an opening on the side, in which they used to light candles. Not for the memory of the dead or for their salvation, as in the church, but as a sacrifice to the spirits protecting the cemetery.

Looking down to the left, the valley below us is lined with the ruins or bare foundations of destroyed houses. The village of Shenako once stood there, in the fertile valley, along the stream, but during the century-long war between Tusheti and Dagestan, the invading Lezg troops destroyed it at the beginning of the 19th century. In the direction towards Omalo, where we are coming from, new economic or weekend houses were erected on the old foundations during the peaceful decades of socialism, but in the part towards the Dagestani border, you can see only bare foundations. If we continue another two kilometers to the southeast, high above the river – which, after the cconfluence of the two Alazani rivers, already bears the Dagestani name Andis Koisu, and which, flowing out into Dagestan, opens an ideal gate for the Muslim invaders – there stand the ruins of the watchtowers of the destroyed Ageurta village, whence they kept watch over the road along the river.

The new village was built on a more defensible hill. After a bend, it rises suddenly in front of us, with slate-roofed houses creeping up the hillside, and a Georgian church with a domed tower at its highest point, like a small Italian mountain town. The walls of the houses are of slate, with massive wooden rafters on them to support the heavy slate roof. On their loger sides, a projecting wooden balcony runs along the entire length of the building, with sawn decoration on its railing.

The church built on the hilltop, in a field surrounded by houses, is the only functioning Christian building in Tusheti. There is only one other church in the entire region, in the medieval village of Dartlo, founded in the 12th century. However, it is in ruins and is now used for the practice of pre-Christian cults. In the isolated northern valleys of Georgia, many customs of the pre-Christian religion are still alive today. Moreover, since the weakness of the Georgian central government and the Persian and Turkish occupation of the country did not allow priests to be sent here for about six hundred years, so for centuries this was the only religion practiced by the people living here. Its cults merged with Christian traditions, its gods took the names of Christian saints, and they are still practiced in parallel with Christianity today, in a syncretistic way, tolerated by the Orthodox Church. In Svaneti – as I have already written about – it is customary in several places that on major holidays a priest celebrates a Christian liturgy in the church, while the local shaman asks for the help of the spirits in the southern vestibule or at the gate of the church. Here in Shenako, on top of a small hill behind the church, there is a field for non-Christian rites. In the forefront stands a meter-high khatis made of slate. Apparently, the church itself was built here to counterbalance the sacred field in 1834, when the Russian state church wanted to extend its control over the previously pagan territories. After the bolshevik occupation in 1920, however, the church began to fall into disrepair, while the sacred field continued to be used continuously. Only in the early 2000s was it restored and decorated with traditional Orthodox frescoes by a local painter, the son of Garsevan Kurgelaidze, the great Georgian researcher of the Antarktis, who lived here.

Colorful knitted socks, wool vests, and traditional jewellery hang on the strings stretched across the façade of the old house opposite the church. The sign on the porch advertises cold beer and hot tea. We enter. The hostess speaks a beautiful Russian. “You should know that you are the first Hungarian guests here at my place. God brought you.” She serves the beer and then sits down among us. At first she asks about what has changed in our country since Communism, but when she sees that we are no better off than they are, she switches to a more pleasant subject, and starts talking about the spirits.

She recounts that there are spirits in Tusheti which sit on the chests or necks of people at night to suck life force from them and even suffocate them. But if you only feign sleep and manage to cut off a nail of the spirit, you can make it your servant for life. The nail must be kept in the sheath of the knife worn on the waist belt, this binds the spirit to its owner forever.

Once, a spirit sat on her daughter as well. The girl shouted desperately from the other room that the spirit was sitting on her and what should she do. Oddly enough, her answer was not to cut her nail, but to sing. From this the spirit knows that she is not sleeping, and it leaves.

Spirits have long white hair that almost glows in the dark. For this reason, a century ago, a girl from Shenako was able to single-handedly put into flight an entire Dagestani raiding party. She was working in the fields near a watchtower when she noticed horsemen approaching in the valley. She ran up to the top of the tower and waved her untied long blonde hair in the wind. The Lezg robbers were terrified and turned back. “This woman was my husband’s great-grandmother”, she adds for authenticity.

Spirits often only manifest through their influence. The sacred field behind the church, for example, constantly radiates strength to the men who pass by. But only to men. A woman cannot even enter the sacred field, least she destroys the source of power.

“No entry to women.” Ad hoc sign on the fence of the sacred field in another Tush village, Dartlo, which now also includes the ruins of a 12th-century Christian church

When a big storm is nearing – she continues –, the men go out to the sacred field, where they ask the spirits to avert any calamity. But they also go out to beg for rain in times of drought. Both usually work. She recounts all of this with such devoted, clear faith, as the village women in our region recount the miracles of this or that saint, or the believers of conspiracy theories recount their own evidence. “I believe that with you this does not exist any more. In Europe, this knowledge has been lost. But here with us, especially in the northern valleys, Tusheti, Khevsureti, Svaneti, they still know and apply it.” I wonder for how much longer. When Georges Charachidzé wrote his opus magnum Le système religieux de la Géorgie païenne in 1968, he still was able to draw examples from everyday life in Tusheti and Khevsureti. However, the inhabitants of these two valleys have by now largely moved to the foot of the mountains, and the memory of the sacredness and cults associated with the landscape naturally fades among them. But in Svaneti, the population still practices them on the spot. That’s why I try to record it there and report on it while they are still there, while they’re still alive.

You might ask, then, whether these people are Christians or pagans? But this is no question for the locals. They consider themselves Christians, since they believe in the Christian God, respect the icons and the patriarch, perform the appropriate rites e.g. the crucifixion in front of a church, they go to liturgy on major holidays. But just as when the animal is sick, they not only pray for its healing, but also turn to a veterinarian or a medicine woman, so they also consider the world of spirits a similar “field of expertise” whose expert handles the related problems in the same professional manner. In addition, spirits are mostly named after saints or angels, which legitimizes calling them for help. And the Orthodox Church seems to tacitly accept this for the sake of acculturation.

“Have you seen Mimino?” she changes topic. This most popular Soviet Georgian film comedy (Georgi Danieliya, 1977), about which I have written before, begins in Tusheti, and its protagonist is the pilot of the helicopter flying here on schedule from Kakheti. The film begins with the helicopter flying over Abano Pass into Tusheti, flying past the Omalo castle, where we left this morning on horseback, approaching Shenako, reaching the church and turning over the sacred field, so that you can even see the tiny khatis, and lands in the meadow below the village.

“Of course we have seen it”, I reply to her surprise, since we are foreigners, but then she continues: “The Tushetian scenes of the film were shot in several places, but two, were the child is learning Russian, and where the pilot’s father encourages his son, were shot right here, in Shenako. If you want, I’ll show you where.” I happily agree. I already know what it is about, and I have told my companions so much about the film that they will definitely watch it after the tour. We don’t have to go far. We get there in a few minutes across the narrow passages between the houses. It is an old house with a porch, uninhabited today, but still in good condition. I hope the owners will come back in the summer, or it will find a new owner.

On the way back we follow the footpath. Its side is full of flowers, as are all the fields in Tusheti. She warns us to only walk on the road, not to step on the roadside flowers, since spirits live in them, too