Fertility and the Sacred Feminine in the Central Asian Healing and Ritual Practices

Medical Anthropology and Bioethics E-Journal

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Issue 5. January, 2014 http://www.medanthro.ru/

Fertility and the Sacred Feminine in

Central Asian Healing and Ritual Practices

Olga Gorshunova

Svetlana Peshkova

Abstract: It is known that in Central Asia, women, not men are traditionally responsible for

procreation. The absence of children in a family is usually associated with a woman’s inability

to conceive. As a result, it is often women, not men, who seek solutions to the childlessness

problem and turn to a variety of ways to augment their fertility. These patterns could be

explained through a local understanding of motherhood as the meaning of womanhood, or

through existing religious sensibilities supporting patriarchal social structures, which, in turn,

continue to sustain existing gender ideology endowing women with responsibility for their

ability to procreate (e.g., Akiner 1997; Sultanova 2011; Tabishalieva 2000). But we find such

explanations insufficient and offer a different approach, which contributes to the understanding

of primordial reasons of this differentiation and stereotypical attitudes towards women’s fertility

in Central Asia. Based on an analysis of ethnographic material, our investigation reveals the link

between the existing views on women’s fertility and the female deity worship, going back to

prehistoric times. This article is part of a joint project, based on the authors' independent

ethnographic field research in the Fergana Valley in the first decade of the 21st century.

Keywords: fertility, beliefs and practices, Central Asia, cult of saints, nature veneration, sacred

feminine

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Olga Gorshunova - Associate Professor, Institute of Arts, Moscow State University of Design and

Technology

Svetlana Peshkova – Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of New Hampshire

O. Gorshunova, S. Peshkova. Fertility and the Sacred Feminine in Central Asian Healing and Ritual Practices

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S. Peshkova: In the summer of 2001, I, an anthropologist fresh from a course about

ethnographic methods at a graduate school, visited a sacred place in the Fergana

Valley in order to re-enact, experience, and participate in a ritual expected to augment

women’s fertility. I have heard stories about a particular sacred place called Yuvosh

ota-pirim in the village of Kuva where one could get a lock of hair made by braiding

neonatal hair and cotton from a keeper of the place (sheikh). This amulet, which is used

to enhance female fertility may be obtained in exchange for a piece of cloth, some

money and / or food. I visited that place and got a lock of a child’s natal hair. It was

wrapped in a white cloth, and I was told that after I would give birth to a child, this

cloth should be given to a mullah, who, in turn, should recite the Qur’an over my newly

born child. Till then, I was instructed to keep the amulet in a safe place. When I would

get pregnant I was expected to bring a lock of my own child’s natal hair to this or some

other sacred site and, at some point in the future, to bring my child to this sacred place

for a blessing.

This story began as an experiment, a re-enactment of what other women do, as

an exercise in participant-observation. Meanwhile at the end of December 2002 I got

pregnant, and in September 2003, I gave birth to a healthy boy. A year after, I cut off a

lock of his natal hair and sent it to a friend in Tashkent who, during a trip to the

Fergana Valley, gave this lock of hair to a keeper at a sacred place.

Other women are not as lucky as I am. I met Sumaya at her brother’s wedding in

the summer of 2001 in Fergana. She was hiding behind the piles of fabrics, clothes, and

scarves, the newlyweds’ presents in a room in the part of house that will become the

newlyweds’ living quarters. The groom’s mother, who invited me in to see the presents,

introduced her, “My daughter, Sumaya. She is not well. She has a headache.” When the

old woman left the room, I turned towards Sumaya. I wondered why she was not among

the guests celebrating her brother’s wedding but hiding in this room. The reason, she

said, was infertility.1

Sumaya got married a year ago, when she was twenty two years old. She and her

husband did not use contraception, yet she could not get pregnant. A local gynecologist

diagnosed the woman with an ‘undeveloped’ uterus. Sumaya reckoned it was a medical

issue: it was not a curse or God’s punishment. But after a year of various medications,

injections, hospitals, and reassurances, she still could not conceive. “The only thing I

want is to have a baby”, she said. “I am afraid I will not be able to though.”

Bio-Social Reproduction

Ethnographic research shows that in Central Asia it is often women, not men,

who are held responsible for children. In childless couples, it is women, not men, who

are stigmatized for their inability to conceive and thus seek transcendental intersection

to augment their fertility. These patterns could be explained through a local ideological

understanding of motherhood as the meaning of womanhood, or through existing

1The native peoples of Central Asia believe that childlessness is like infectious disease that can be

transmitted from a childless woman to other women through physical or visual contact. It is also believed

that brides are particularly susceptible to this “disease”, therefore childless women are usually not invited

to wedding ceremonies.


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religious sensibilities supporting patriarchal social structures, which, in turn, continue to

sustain existing gender ideology endowing women with responsibility for their fertility

(e.g., Akiner 1997; Sultanova 2011; Tabishalieva 2000). We find both such explanations

of gendered social responsibilities in Central Asia insufficient.

If biology determines individual capacity for procreation, historical continuity of

ideological connection of female qualities with life-giving and preservation of offspring

both encourages and enables women to augment their reproductive capacities. We agree

with Linda Alcoff, who argues that our sexed identities, the way we embody our

biological capacities, vary, but for women, the knowledge about the physiological

possibility of bearing and having a child creates a set of experiences that must be dealt

in a different, ‘at least not in the same’, way from those ‘who grow up male’ (Alcoff

2006: 176). Women’s procreative responsibilities in the areas where we conducted our

research are but one example of dealing with this knowledge and overcoming biological

capacities by any means necessary.

As it is known, social life of the Central Asian population is gendered. There

both traditional institutions and national ideologies emphasize women’s role as a

foundation of society (cf. Ahmed 1992; Najmabadi 1998; Tohidi 1999). In light of this

women are expected to act as the caretakers and teachers of future generations and

therefore, creators of the future moral/national/local community. But more importantly

they are biological beings who have a capacity to bear children. From this perspective,

female fertility becomes especially poignant; it not only connects daily life and social

benefits, but also links female procreative abilities to social reproduction at large (cf.

Inhorn 2006).

‘Home with children is a bazar (market) but without children it is a mazar

(graveyard)’, an Uzbek proverb says. This allegory is quite accurately reflects the

stereotypical attitude towards posterity among indigenous peoples of the region, where

the importance of having children is caused not only by individual desire for procreation

and companionship but also by ideals about life-cycle, which is first of all oriented to

marriage and multiple children. Having children determines social status of a family,

therefore, in most cases, childless unions do not last. Sometimes to avoid such a

problem a couple unable to have biological children adopts their relatives’ child. In the

case of a wife’s infertility, a husband can also marry again. In a polygynous marriage,

the childless wife would become a social mother of the offspring. Divorced women, left

by their husbands due to her infertility, could marry divorced or widowed men with

already existing children (Gorshunova 2006: 149-50).

Biological capacity for reproduction is critical in formation of individual

identity, as humans live in biologically sexed bodies. As Linda Alcoff write, ‘we

should underrate the role of biology in individual experiences of their sexed identities’;

having knowledge ‘that one may become pregnant and give birth to children in the

future affects how one feels and thinks’ and ‘provide the constraints on undecidability

and total fluidity for the development of female and male sexed identities’ (Alcoff 2006:

176). Although childless marriage is distressing for both spouses, its consequences


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affect women more than they do men (Gorshunova 2006:150). Motherhood is

considered to be central and the most important role played by a woman during her life-

cycle. From early childhood girls are taught necessary skills associated with taking care

of their offspring. Thus, their social horizons closely reflect their biological capacity to

bear children.

The knowledge about women’s ability to bear children informs not only their

psychological health but also their social status. Individual inability to procreate results

in social stigma; childless women are often avoided because they are thought to be able

to ‘infect’ other women with infertility through physical contact or the emotional

jealousy they are said to feel towards fertile women. Even though some studies show

that fifty percent of cases of couples’ infertility are caused by men’s inability to

conceive, similar to other socio-historical contexts, in Central Asia, women are often

held responsible for the couple’s inability to conceive (Inhorn 2006:218). Therefore,

mainly women seek transcendental intersection to augment their fertility.

Although biological reproductive capacity sets parameters for social

reproduction, women and men’s desire of offspring leads them contest these parameters.

They seek medical treatment, and use other means, such as IVF, which is utilized, in our

experience, only by elites. Every woman of childbearing age in the valley is supposed to

have access to ‘women’s consultations’ (zhenskie konsultatsii) that are medical clinics

that monitor and advise on reproductive practices. In order to overcome infertility, aside

from the above, childless women visit sacred sites. The folk healers and religious

practitioners offer treatments of infertility as well.

Remedial Procedures and Ritual Practice

Inasmuch as infertility can be a tragic experience, sometimes it is taken to be a sign

of a special mission; a sign of God’s will for an individual to devote her or his life to

spiritual leadership or healing (Gorshunova 2006: 151). But this understanding of

reason of infertility is rare and mainly extended to a group of individuals (sayyid) who

claim to descend from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima.

Sometimes infertility is interpreted as God’s punishment. In most cases, however, other

explanations prevail including ‘sleeping fetus’, ‘catching a cold’, and being possessed

by spirits.

Healing: The different categories of male healers (talyb and duakhan), and

especially female healing practitioners referred to as momokamper or karakamper

(elderly women who practice ‘magic’) are said to possess special knowledge and

powers.

In cases when female infertility is explained as the result of ‘cold’ (sovuklyk)

women are given a ‘hot’ treatments (issiklyk), such as the warm sand baths, and ‘hot’

diets, added to a vaginal massage and other procedures aimed to recover the balance of

cold and hot in a woman’s body. These procedures are accompanied by prayers and


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ritual slaying of a chicken or other domestic animal.

Some females unable to conceive are said by local healers to have a ‘sleeping

uterus’, which must be ‘awakened’; other women are believed to be really fertile but

the fetus is stuck to the walls of the stomach and needs to be unstuck (see also

Gorshunova 2006: 151). ‘The shaking the stomach’ is a method that is thought to cure

infertility, to wake up the fetus, or to prevent a possible miscarriage. During this

procedure a female healer palpates and then shakes the patient’s stomach. In addition a

healer might prepare a black chicken’s egg, which is warmed up and cracked. The yolk

of the egg is inserted into a female’s vagina that is said to ‘sack in the yolk’ and is

thought to awaken the uterus and enhance female’s fertility (Peshkova 2005).

One of the causes of infertility that are mentioned by healers is a woman's

possession by spirits such as Sarykiz and jinn, among others. To augment the woman's

fertility the spirits needs to be exorcised and, if the procedure does not work, the

woman has to 'accept' the spirits to control them, that means she must become a

bakhshi [shaman] (Gorshunova 2006: 151).

Pilgrimage to sacred places (ziyarat). The most popular form of infertility

treatment is to perform a series of rituals accompanying prayers to a local saint at his or

her worship place. The Arabic term mazar (‘place of visit’) is commonly used to refer

to a holy place in the Fergana Valley and in other parts of the region. At a sacred site,

women-pilgrims come early in the morning and stay at the place for several hours

though some stay overnight. They bring to the place a domestic animal for sacrifice, and

baked goods that are left at the site. A piece of cloth (often white in color and about

three meters long) and some money are given to the keeper of the place (sheikh). The

meat of the slaughtered animal are used to cook a ritual dish, such as osh (rice and

lamb) or domlama (vegetables and meat). Before the food is cooked and consumed,

women clean around the saint’s grave. They sprinkle

water and sweep the ground that demonstrate

women’s recognition of the saint’s power and are

meant to purify both holy ground and women’s

bodies ridding them from malicious spirits and

averting an ‘evil eye’ often believed to affect

women’s ability to conceive. The prayers are

followed by women’s requests for pregnancy that are,

in turn, followed by promises to thank a saint and to

sacrifice another animal if the request will be heard

and answered.

Purchasing a lock of hair made ritually by

braiding neonatal hair (kokyl) at sacred sites is one of

the practices said to remedy female infertility or

prevent a miscarriage. This practice includes a

longitudinal set of rituals that start with the hair’s

purchase. Kokyl wrapped in a cloth is kept under the

1. Uzbek child with a ritual pigtail (kokyl)

that is a sign of his dedication to a saint.

Fergana, 1970. Photo Collection of the

Fergana regional museum.


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woman’s pillow for several days, and then put in a suitcase. If a female becomes

pregnant some time after the ritual, she has to demonstrate her gratitude to the saint by

visiting the place again and by an animal sacrifice. Her child’s natal hair is a sign of

devotion of the child to the saint. A small area on the top of the child’s head is kept

unshaved until a sequential ritual of shaving the hair is performed a year or more after

the child’s birth. On such occasion the woman’s family sacrifices a lamb and

redistributes the meat among their neighbors, relatives, and the poor, who are expected

to give thanks to God for this blessing, for the child’s birth. The elders of the family,

clergy such as otin (female religious leader) or mullah are invited to commit prays and

rituals. Later this day the unshaved piece of the baby’s hair is shaved off and brought

back to the sacred place where another childless woman may purchase it. (Peshkova

2005).

Sacred Imagery and Nature

There are different types of mazars in the region. Most of them can be divided into

two groups. The first one includes the sites where the central shrine is a saint’s grave.

These are burial places of local Sufi leaders and other authoritative religious

practitioners. The other group consists of holy sites where the tomb is absent, or there

is a structure resembling a vault or a mound that imitates a grave. These are so-called

‘fictitious’ graves. Mazars of this kind have a number of specific features. Their sacred

objects as a rule are trees, caves, water-springs or/and other natural objects. Although

they too are the places of saints the saints venerated at these sites were not real people,

but mythical personages. The absence of their life stories, as well as their particular

names (e.g., Lady Rebellious, Pregnant Elm, or Forty Virgin Spirits) confirms their

mythical origin. Their legends often have the same plot telling a story of a righteous

man or woman, the only inhabitant of a village, who survived enemies’ (kafirs’) attack.

The culmination of all these stories is a miraculous disappearance of the saint under the

ground or inside a natural object. The term goyib, which means ‘the one who has

disappeared’, is used to refer to this category of saints. The place of his/her

disappearance under the ground is usually marked by a fictitious grave. Otherwise, a

natural object that is believed to be the place of disappearance marks the sacred center

at these sites.

Sacred places with a natural object as a main shrine are particularly popular among

women. Most of them are attended exclusively or mainly by women and are called

‘women’s mazars’. The pilgrimage to these places is believed to heal female infertility

and\or invigorate bodies of children born weak or suffering from illnesses (Gorshunova

2008). To possess the holy nature objects’ life-giving power women perform rituals

and come into immediate physical contact with the objects. They touch, immerse into

or ingest water from the sacred springs, roll off the sacred rocks, rub into their skin the

sap of the sacred trees, and so forth. The initial semantic meanings of the rituals are

mainly lost under the influence of Islam. Yet, the perception of natural objects as a


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source of life-giving power, as well as some elements of the rituals and myths of saints

show that the basis of the mytho-ritual complexes of these places is the idea of the

sacred feminine, embodied in nature.

This connection is easily found at a 'female mazar' known as Hurkyz (‘Heavenly

Virgin’) near the Shahimardan town in the southern mountains of the Fergana Valley.

The complex consists of three main natural attractions - a lake, a rock and a cave – that

are believed to possess life-giving power, since they all are related to the holy patron of

women and children. According to local legends, Khurkyz was a maiden who dedicated

herself to God. Once, when 'kafirs' attacked the village and killed all its inhabitants, she

took a newborn child and escaped from the village. Then she had disappeared inside a

cave. The cave that is the place of her miraculous disappearance is said to be her current

dwelling. A big and deep lake called Kourbankul' ('sacrificial lake') at its entrance is

believed to be formed by her tears. The rock known as Oltin Beshyk (‘Golden Cradle’)

is a cradle of the newborn, who was saved by the virgin.

The mytho-ritual complex of another sacred site, which is located near the

village of Jordan (Fergana district, Uzbekistan), also demonstrates the inextricable link

between the sacred feminine, personified in the holy female images, and nature. The

sacred space of the site is formed around a rock with unusual reddish surface, a cave

inside it, and the Oksu river at its foot. The cave is believed to be inhabited by the forty

female spirits whose collective name is Chi’ltan. Despite the fact that the path to the

holy place runs through difficult areas, it is a magnet for childless pilgrims and for

female religious practitioners who, from time to time, visit it to pray and perform

rituals, including a collective ecstatic ritual (zikr), dedicated to the spirits, and especially

to a female saint who is said to be ‘like a queen among Chil’tan’. The saint has no

specific name; the women call her Pirim (‘Our Pir’) and venerate her as the patrons of

women and children. The place is called Tugayotkan Ayot that literally means ‘a woman

giving birth’. This suggests that the cave together with other sacred natural objects at

the place, as well as other caves venerated by women initially could be perceived as a

divine womb. The hypothesis of the symbolic meaning of caves as the Mother Goddess’

womb in the prehistoric cultures has been sounded in “Religious Conceptions of the

Stone Age” by G. Levy (1963), and later it was supported by many other specialists in

the field.

This also gives a clue to understanding the primordial semantic meaning of

sacred ‘holey stones’ (teshik-tosh) that are found everywhere in Central Asia and attract

special attention of women. One of these stones is found in Shakhimardan (Uzbekistan)

at the place believed to be a burial of Hazrat Ali (Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the

Prophet Muhammad). During a ritual treatment procedure, childless women either have

a sit on the stone or lay down on it, in a way that the belly is positioned right over the

stone’s indentation. If a ritual is aimed at augmenting health of the newborn, the head of

the child is put inside this stone’s indentation.

Another holey stone with the similar function is found at the old cemetery near

the Iordan village located in the surroundings of Shakhimardan. According to a legend


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that also connects the stone with Hazrat Ali the camel that brought the chest containing

Ali’s body stumbled at this place. Trace of the camel’s knee has remained on the

ground, and then it has turned to stone. At this site, rituals aimed to treat female

infertility or to save sick newborns’ life are performed by an old woman who is the

guardian of this sacred object.

The ritual observed by O. Gorshunova at this place was aimed to increase female

fertility. It was attended by a childless woman and her female relatives who repeated

pray and spells after the guardian. In addition to these, the ritual included some acts

performed individually by the guardian who kneeled beside the stone picked up small

pebbles and threw them one after the other in the indentation in the sacred stone.

2. Sacred stone with a hole (teshik-tosh) used for ritual healing at the Yazrat Aly mazar.

Shakhimardan, Fergana district, Uzbekistan. 1970.

Photo Collection of the Fergana Regional Museum

The symbolism of this ritual action, which imitates seeding, points to its initial

connection with the cult of fertility. According to the guardian, during the Nawrooz

(New Year celebration by the ancient Iranian tradition) female religious practitioners

(otins) gather around this stone for spiritual exercises (zikr). Local women also reported

to hold ceremonies to venerate of Bibi Seshanbe who is a mythical personage well

known to all the peoples of the region as the holy patroness of children and women.

This fact in light of the studies that reveal the pre-Islamic origin of the saint leads us to

suggest that this sacred place was originally a site of a female deity of fertility.

The association of natural objects with a female body or its parts that symbolize the

femininity and fertility is a widespread phenomenon in Central Asia that is reflected in

informal local oronyms. Examples of this include hills and semicircular rocks are called


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‘a pregnant woman’. This can also be found on the plains, where most of natural shrines

are trees such as elms, mulberry, and sycamore trees (Rakhimov 2009). The holy trees’

distinctive features such as their unusual forms or huge sizes give rise to different

associations in pilgrims’ imagination and define the features of ritual practices. Hollow

cavities of the trees are often used as special premises for praying and conducting magic

or/and healing procedures. Regardless of the shape and size of trees, pilgrims’ rituals

and magic manipulations are aimed at taking possession of the miraculous power of the

trees. The pilgrims contact the trees by touching and then holding palms on their face

and body; they hug the trees’ trunks and get under the roots towering above the ground.

3. Holy tree and its guardian at the Bibi Uvayda mazar.

Fergana district, Uzbekistan, 2004. Photo by O. Gorshunova

A remarkable tree at the Khodji Baror’s sacred place in Akhunbabaev district in

the Fergana region shows signs of natural objects, in which the idea of the sacred

feminine and fertility is embodied. It is the biggest and oldest among holy elms at this

mazar; and this is the only dry wood. The age of the elm and holes in its trunk for

extracting sap give grounds to believe that tree was an object of veneration and ritual

practices several centuries ago. Unlike the other trees, the elm is walled by a high fence.

It is a women’s shrine that is not available to men. The elm is called Bogoz Kayragach

(‘pregnant elm’) because of a large semi-spherical growth on its trunk formed by

solidified sap flows. Female pilgrims hang votive objects on its dry branches and then

hug the tree’s trunk, clinging to its ‘belly’. Although the women's ritual manipulations

aimed at the possession of the miraculous power that is believed to be contained in the


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tree, are a form of contagious magic, this shrine is perceived by them rather as a divine

being, but not as a fetish. They address their prayers and requests directly to the tree,

and vow to sacrifice a lamb or a chicken, if their prayers will be heard and answered (cf.

Friedl 1989, 2000). These prayers and actions are accompanied by wailing and

lamentations to show sincerity of their desires and the depth of their grief.

While this elm is not personified, sacred trees at the other 'women's mazars' in

the Fergana Valley, such as Kyzlar Mazar (‘maidens’ mazar’), Childuhtoron (‘forty

spirits’), Zurek Momo (‘mother Zurek’), as elsewhere across the region, are often

associated with particular female saints. For example, forty one symbolical trees at the

Childuhtoron sacred place near Kokand town in the Fergana district are identified with

a group of female saints. The eponym is derived from the collective name of the forty

virgin spirits - Chil’tan - that were mentioned above. Forty holy fig trees at the mazar

are believed to be the living embodiments of these virgins, while the mulberry tree

among them is said to be the virgins’ mistress.

4. The Childuhtoron Mazar. Holy trees inside it are identified with female saints;

an mound marks the place of miraculous disappearance of the saints under the ground .

Fergana district, Uzbekistan, 2004. Photo by O. Gorshunova

Different saints, divine patronesses of women and children, are venerated in

Central Asia. The most well-known of them are Bibi Seshanbe (‘Lady of Tuesday’) and

Bibi Mushkilkusho (‘Ledy who solves difficulties’). Among the Tajiks living in the

mountains the saint called Dev-e Safid (‘White Deity’) is particularly popular (Andreev

1927). Despite the presence of some individual features, these saints’ images show a

number of similarities found in their appearance and attributes described in legends and

stories of the custodians of sacred sites and female practitioners, who usually performs


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rites and rituals honoring the saints (Gorshunova 2012: 153). This suggests that the

tradition of the female saints’ veneration had been formed and developed in the local

cultures in the framework of a single polytheistic system. The importance of natural

objects in veneration of these saints points to archaic nature of the system of beliefs and

rituals, on which the holy patronesses' cults are based. Similar beliefs and practices have

been recorded by ethnographers in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, in the religions of

the Nuristani peoples, formerly kafirs (‘infidel’), including a small community of the

Kalash, whose polytheism through the gods’ essential identity with nature suggests a

form of pantheism in which everything is considered divine, and life is not understood

as something separate from nature (Ferlat 2005: 951).

Three main goddess of the Hindu Kush’ pantheon have features in common with

the Central Asian saints, the patroness of women and children. All the three - the grain-

goddess Dizane, the fecundity goddess Nirmali who protects pregnant women, and the

goddess Kshumay who presides over the fertility of the goats – are believed to be the

embodiment of life-giving power. Each of the three are symbolically identified or

associated with natural objects. Myths depict the goddess Dizane either as a huge tree

(Eyetmarr 1986: 98-104), or in form of a tree trunk, the roots of which symbolize the

goddess Nirmali (Robertson 1896: 386). Cowry shells symbolize the goddess Kshumay

whose hat, according to a hymn in her honor, is decorated with these shells. The Kalash

women and girls wear similar hats ‘on the goddess's orders’ (Eyetmarr 1986: 114, 396,

373). This practice is also widespread in Central Asia among Uzbeks, Tajiks and

Turkmen who use cowry shells to decorate women's and children's headwear, where the

shells serve as amulets and magical means for increasing the vitality and ability to bear

children. The link between this custom in Central Asia and a local female saint was

discovered by G. Snesariev who reports that in Khorezm, the aft part of some river

vessels has the form of a woman's head; headwear on the 'heads' are decorated with

cowrie shells. In his opinion, these decorative elements depict the head of a local female

saint called Ambar-Ona, ‘whose image genetically traced back to the image of an

ancient goddess’ (Snesarev 1969: 247).

Short Detour into History

There is a widespread opinion that the prototype of popular Central-Asian

patronesses of women and children as well as of some female personages of the local

pandemonium (such as Momo, Albasty) is Ardvi Sura Anahita, the Avestan goddess of

fertility (Andreev 1953: 81; Snesarev 1969: 243-247; Gundogdyev 1998). Although the

Iranian origin of well-known female saints (Bibi Seshanbi; Bibi Mushkilkusho, Ambar-

Ona, and other) is not in doubt, there are a big collection of artifacts suggesting that the

local saint veneration tradition of has deeper roots going back to pre-Zoroastrian times.

The earliest evidence of the female deity worship in Central Asia was found at the

Altyn-Depe settlement in southern Turkmenistan and dated to the fifth millennium BC,


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the early eneolithic period. These are small clay nude

female figurines with a columnar base instead of feet.

M.G. Vorobjeva, while comparing these artifacts to

some images of goddesses found in the Near East, had

come to the conclusion that goddesses are embodied in

the Central Asian statuettes, in which the columnar

base can be interpreted as a tree trunk (1968:142).

Iconographic features as well as incisions and pinholes

in the lower parts of some figurines point to their ritual

use. For instance, one of them depicts a pregnant divine

with a swollen belly, covered with elaborate designs

carved with a sharp toll a deep incision in the lower

abdomen. This can indicate the use of the figurines in

magic practices aimed at facilitating childbirth

(Masson, Sarianidi 1973:11, 88) and/or increasing

fertility.

Terracotta figurines depicting the goddesses of

fertility were popular in ancient Bactria, a Bronze

Age civilization of Western Central Asia, dated to ca.

2300–1700 BC, located in present day

northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and

western Tajikistan. Many of the highly stylized flat statuettes discovered in southern

Turkmenistan by N. Masson and V. Sarianidi (1973) are decorated with symbolic

patterns of tree motifs. Some figurines of this

collection are decorated with are engraved with a

pattern imitating a plant or a tree, which

seemingly grows out of the symbolic female

triangle located below the abdomen, in the lower

part of the figurines. These figurines and the

designs that they bear give some ground to

assume that they reproduce an image of a deity,

which embodies the idea of fertility, as well as to

see in these artifacts a continuity of the tradition

of identifying a female deity with a tree. The tree

motifs are also found in engraved patterns of

stone statuettes discovered at sites of ancient

Bactria. These composite figures of soft green

chlorite or steatite, with heads of white limestone,

are assigned to the same period as the clay

figurines, and some iconographic similarities

suggest that these two groups of artifacts relate to

the same cult.

4. Bactrian Goddess. Clay; 16.5x7 cm.

Early 2nd millennium BC. Southern

Turkmenia, Altyn-Depe Settlement.

The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

5. Seated Goddess, Ancient Bactria, 2500-1500

B.C. Chlorite and limestone, Height: 5 1/4 in.

(13.33 cm). Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilisation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Asia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkmenistan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan


13

Numerous clay female figurines of antiquity and the middle ages were found in

other parts of the region, while excavating at Khorezm, Sogdiana, Khalchayan,

Dalverzintepa, Ildgynly-Depe Zartepa, Barattepa, Balkh and many other sites (see

Meshkeris 1965; Pugachenkova, Rempel' 1982; Solovyova 2005). They reflect the idea

of fertility through various symbolic attributes, such as a pomegranate, a cluster of

grapes, a trefoil and a tree branch. This over-abundance of artifacts demonstrates that

the female deity worship was extremely common in the period of antiquity and the

middle ages in Central Asia. Later, the tradition of making terracotta figurines depicting

the goddess of fertility has disappeared because of strengthening of Islam in the region,

and probably as a result of Islamic ideological prohibition of anthropomorphic

depictions thought to manifest idolatry. The echoes of this tradition, however, preserved

in Central Asia in the form of ritual dolls made of different materials and designed

mainly for wedding ceremonies and rituals associated with childbirth. These dolls bear

in themselves the original meaning of female figurines as the symbols of fertility (see

Peshereva 1957: 83).

Conclusion

The Central Asian societies, as it is well known, are characterized by the gender-role

differentiation, caused by the ethics of Islam as well as by social norms of customary

law (adat). Though the distribution of duties and responsibilities between men and

women extends to many areas of life and activities, the exclusive responsibility for the

procreation imposed on women in Central Asian societies, we argue, cannot be

explained only through the social and ethical norms and ethno-cultural traditions

(e.g.,Tabishalieva 2000). Analysis of empirical material leads us to conclude that

attitudes towards biological reproduction as the exclusively women’s sphere that are

typical for the Central Asian Muslim population is a transformed reflection of archaic

religious and worldview representations about the sacred feminine. The areal of

distribution of these representations in the past is not limited to Central Asia, as

evidenced by ethnographic and archaeological data (e.g., Adovasio, et al. 2007; Conard

2009; Dames 1977; Davies 2000; Gimbutas 1991; Mellaart 1963).2 Iconographic

features of the female figurines found in different parts of the region, indicate an

ideological link between the divine feminine, fertility and nature in the representations

embodied in these artifacts.

Our ethnographic research shows that the archaic beliefs connected to the sacred

feminine, embodied in divine female images, have not disappeared completely. While

transformed under the influence of other religions, widespread in pre-Islamic Central

2 For a psychoanalytic discussion of feminine and sacred see Kristeva 2001; Stone 1978;

Waraksa 2009.


14

Asia, and particularly in the result of Islamization of local cultures, they still are

manifested in healing practices, in the symbolism of sacred objects at holy places, and

are reflected in myths and mystic images of local pandemonium and hagiology. They

can also be traced in the rituals of female pilgrims at sacred places; they are manifested

in the pilgrims’ perceptions of natural objects as sources of life-giving power and in

their associations of these objects with motherhood and femininity. All this points to the

continuity of tradition originally focused on the goddess of fertility, which has been

identified with nature in different archaic cultures, including those existed within the

borders of modern Central Asia.

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Fertility and the Sacred Feminine in the Central Asian Healing and Ritual Practices

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