Master of the Forest (Kaigus)

Kaigus is the Ket spirit-owner of the forest and its game, one of the named 'masters' of the natural world in Ket hunting religion. Ethnographers record the being as gender-ambiguous: sometimes a male man-bear, sometimes a female 'forest-mother' who tests and then rewards a hunter. Kaigus stands at the centre of the Ket bear ceremony, in which the killed bear's bones are returned to the east so that the animal, and the master's bounty, may be renewed. Hunters secure his favour with offerings and ritual respect, and offend him at the cost of an empty forest.

Domains

• forest and wild game
• the hunt

Powers

• to grant or withhold success in the hunt
• to appear as a bear or man-bear

Sources

• Kaigus is the named master (owner-spirit) of the Ket taiga and of its wild animals, an ambiguous power sometimes met as a female 'forest-mother' or as a bear, who dispenses or denies hunting fortune.: Alekseenko, E.A. (1967). Кеты: историко-этнографические очерки [The Kets]. Leningrad: Nauka. (secondary); Vajda, E.J. (2011). Siberian Landscapes in Ket Traditional Culture. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center. (secondary)