Erlik

Erlik is the sovereign of the lower world in Tuvan belief, the dark pole of a cosmos whose bright pole is the celestial Kurbustu. The dead are sorted by their conduct: those who lived righteously pass to a paradise called Duwaaschan, while the souls of the wicked are drawn down into Erlik's subterranean kingdom. Disease, misfortune and untimely death are laid to his account and to the emissaries he sends into the middle world, and it is the lower-world shaman who must journey down to argue, bribe or wrest back a captured soul. His name is shared across the Turkic and Mongol peoples, where he stands as the archetypal ruler of the dead; in Tuva his cult is inseparable from the shaman's role as psychopomp and healer.

Domains

• underworld
• judgment of souls

Powers

• rules the land of the dead
• sends sickness and claims souls

Epithets

• Эрлик-Ловун-хаан — Erlik the dragon-khan, lord of the deadHeissig, W. (1980). The Religions of Mongolia. Berkeley: University of California Press (Erlik/Erlig Khan in the Mongol-Turkic world). (secondary)

Sources

• Erlik is the lord of the Tuvan underworld and judge of the dead, to whose land the souls of the wicked descend.: Mythlok, 'Tuvan Mythology: Shamanic Legends of Southern Siberia'. (secondary); Heissig, W. (1980). The Religions of Mongolia. Berkeley: University of California Press. (secondary)