Enekan Togo
Enekan Togo — 'grandmother-fire' — is the personified spirit of the household fire in Evenki belief. The vital force animating the hearth was called togo musunin, placing fire among the beings that possess musun, the motive energy of all living things. Though addressed with a feminine, grandmotherly name, the fire-spirit was often understood as androgynous. She was treated as a living member of the household: given the first and best portion of each meal, consulted for omens read in the crackle and sparks of the flames, and relied upon to purify the dwelling and expel harmful spirits. A dense web of prohibitions guarded her — one must not spit into the fire, cut it or strike it with iron, or point a knife-blade at the flames, an act understood as putting out the grandmother's eyes. Ethnographers describe her as the hearth-level representative and most honoured helper of the celestial grandmother Enekan Buga, making the family fire the everyday link between the household and the sky.
Domains
- fire and hearth
- divination and foretelling
- purification
Powers
- to foretell the future through the crackling and behaviour of the flames
- to drive out evil spirits and cleanse the dwelling
- to carry the family's offerings and reports upward to the sky-grandmother
Epithets
- enekan togo
- togo musunin
Relations
- subordinate to: Sky-Universe
Sources
- Shirokogoroff, S. M. (1935). Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
- Vasilevich, G. M. (1969). Evenki: Istoriko-etnograficheskie ocherki (XVIII – nachalo XX v.). Leningrad: Nauka.
- Anisimov, A. F. (1963). The Shaman's Tent of the Evenks and the Origin of the Shamanistic Rite. In H. N. Michael (ed.), Studies in Siberian Shamanism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press for the Arctic Institute of North America.