Gods and Goddesses in Turkish mythology
In Turkish Altai mythology, there are many gods and goddesses and spirits, as well as gods such as Kayra Han, after him the god of good Ülgen and the lord of evil, Erlik. According to the cosmogony of the Turks, in essence, the highest of the gods is Tengere Kayra Han, the ancestor of human beings. As understood from the prayers and hymns of Altai Shamanists, the greatest god is Ülgen. Erlik Khan is the son of Gök God and the master of the underworld in Tengrism, the belief of ancient Turks.
Kayra Han
He was the absolute ruler and creator of the universe, but he was neutral between the light and dark sides and embodied both sides. Although he keeps the universe under his own dominion, he left the world and humanity to the struggle of Ülgen and Erlik. Kayra Han plants a tree with nine branches on the earth and creates seventeen layers of sky and settles on the seventeenth floor.
He places Ülgen on the sixteenth floor to rule the world and humanity, and Erlik to rule the realm he created underground. Thus, the struggle of the dark and the light, the sky and the underground, the living and the dead begins.
Ulgen and Erlik
According to Turkish mythology, the destination for people who have bad feelings and spend their lives in this direction is clearly next to Erlik. Because Erlik, like many other gods of the underworld and death, symbolizes bad feelings such as greed, greed, jealousy, and deceives people and enslaves those who look like him. Ülgen, on the other hand, is opposite the features it represents and represents goodness, compassion, generosity and efficiency.
How would Ulgen and Erlik be depicted as God?
Erlik; It symbolizes evil, greed, greed and all kinds of evil. Erlik chooses bad things and prefers to do bad things according to his own creation. It is against the foundation and root of good things, it opposes them spontaneously, the order does not want peace. His black, shiny and curly hair is long enough to hang from his shoulders to his waist. His long forked goatee reaches his knees, and his long drooping mustache hangs over his ears. The distance between their eyes is 6 meters, their eyelids are confused. His eyes and eyebrows are black as coal. Canine teeth protrude from his lip.
Ulgen; According to the view that Turkish mythology goes from monotheism to polytheism, Ülgen reflects the good and merciful side of Kayra Han. Kayra Han gradually became more obscure or identified with Ülgen. Helping people and making them live comfortably is the main duty of Ülgen. In appearance, it is usually depicted as a human being, but it is also known that it can transform into a white-and-grey wolf, eagle, goose, swan, and fallow deer. In the epic of creation, he is seen as a goose flying over the waters, and as a Gray Wolf while appearing to Shamans on earth. He is tall, long-haired and broad-bodied. His beard is so long that sometimes it can get caught on his feet and make Ülgen stumble. It is thought that he wore blue, traditional capak or cap, as he was a celestial hero.
The Rise of Ülgen and the Fall of Erlik
It is accepted as a monotheistic tendency in Turkish Mythology that Ülgen is superior to Erlik in every way, that Ülgen punishes him whenever he wants, and that evil never prevails. In the first versions of the epic, Erlik is a god just like Ülgen and has great power, although not as much as him. However, in Turkish shamanism, a belief system has been developed in which goodness is always dominant, good gods humiliate evil gods, good gods are reduced to absolute power and bad gods to only a spirit. The equal strength of good and evil is never seen in Turkish mythology.
In Veselovski’s compilation, Erlik is fully human and even referred to as “personality”. All this means that Erlik, which was a god in the past, becomes as simple as human, who is even lower than a metaphysical entity like the devil. Because the principles of monotheistic religions, instead of giving place to another god, have identified the devil and man or transformed the devil into a rebellious angel, that is, the devil we know.
With the spread of Christianity in Rome, the great and mighty god of the old religion became the devil of the new religion. Erlik also suffered the same fate in the monotheistic process of Turkish Mythology. Ünglen’s journey also developed in the same ways with the principles of monotheism. Kayra Han, who has absolute power, and Ülgen, who wants absolute good; The creator of everything that is absolutely good will unite under a single god and rise to the position of a single god and become Kök Tengri.
Tengri- Tengrism
Tengrism or Gök Tanrı was a common belief among Turkic and Mongolian peoples before they joined their existing belief systems. Tengri is the old pronunciation of the word “God” in Turkish used today.
