The Journey of Evenk Girl Heladan
Religious Fables, Folklore, Legends, and Stories
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Submitted by: Yuri Klitsenko

Russians and Siberian Natives thought the bear was their ancestor. To symbolize the problems of the Russian Federation my Evenk friend made a bear who is strong, aggressive, arrogant and lazy, but at the same time poor and humiliated.

rf-thejourney

The bear is begging and crying "GIMME".

The myth about Heladan deserve reading and studying it.

The journey of Evenk girl Heladan

The old man sends his daughters to bring water; all have refused. The old man goes to drink from an ice-hole, but when he started to drink he got frozen to an ice.

To be released, the old man started to talk to the ice.  He offers the ice one of his daughters. The ice agreed to take his youngest daughter called Heladan.

The old man sends Heladan to play with her toys on the ice. The ice gets broken, and the girl fails under the ice. Heladan and the ice reach the invisible river, Engdekit.

During the journey via the river, Heladan sees underworld - darkness, blood, fecal, excrements, parts and skeletons of dead men… No shaman is able to help Heladan.  Eventually shaman-woman granted with ten shaman's drums helps the girl to escape from the ice.

After escaping from the ice, the girl is still in the underworld. She meets the bear called Ngamondri. Ngamondri reveals to Heladan bear rituals, and ask the girl to sacrifice him.

Parts of sacrificed bear turn into underworld humans and reindeer. Small reindeer helps the girl. After passing through nine underworld tents Heladan safely reaches her home.

[Ed. Note]  This is another of those religious stories that shows how humans try to justify degrading and killing other animals, and goes so far as to say that the animals want to die, or in this case be sacrificed to the ice god.  Nothing is further from the truth; animals want to live just as much as we do.  All religions need to wake up to the fact that both humans and other animals are living souls, created by God, and deserving of the respect and rights that God created them to have.

Yuri Klitsenko is a Russian living in Moscow.  He works for the Russian Orthodox Church.

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