The chiltan, 'the Forty', are a collective of forty invisible righteous ones in Uzbek and wider Central Asian belief, holy and shape-shifting spirit-beings who move unseen among humankind and are held secretly to sustain the order of the world. Encountered by chance they may bless or destroy, and they are central to the shamanic vocation: the chiltan appear to a chosen individual, often after a forty-day ordeal, and bestow the calling, the helper-spirits, and the power to heal of the baxshi or parikhon. Layered over an older Iranian and Sufi conception of hidden saints, they exemplify the fusion of Islamic and shamanic thought in Central Asian religion.