Eternal Blue Sky 2.0

Abstract

The revival of shamanism in Southern Siberia is increasingly characterised by online forms of representation. Through digital ethnographic research conducted in Russian, this paper argues that the internet reproduces non-digital narratives and practices endowing them with global, immediate reach in a very widely recognisable form, thus contributing to the amplification, legitimisation and contestation of shamanic power. Analysing the websites of two Irkutsk-area ‘shamanic centres’, I consider how digitalisation is contributing to the process of institutionalisation of shamanism, reproducing and further legitimising post-socialist hierarchies and structures of power in Buryat shamanism, while highlighting the malleable nature of shamanic power and the web alike. Conversely, I recur to the Buryat concept of khel am (a form of ‘omnipresent witchcraft’) in relation to two recent news stories of national relevance in Russia involving Siberian shamans, to illustrate the challenge posed by the over-amplification of shamanic power through digitalisation to shamans and their institutions’ claims to power.