Among the sacred boulders, scattered in large numbers both over the territory of Russia and throughout Northern Europe, investigators stand as a separate group. If "ordinary" sacred stones perform a utilitarian function - they drive away enemies, heal diseases and realize desires, then the trackers are also a religious symbol, an object of worship, bearing the traces of a deity's touch. The famous ethnographer Aleksey Popov agreed to tell about the stone riddles.
Aleksey, why did you choose Karelia to study this phenomenon?
- The fact is that Karelia (north-west of Russia) can be called a full-fledged megalithic region, since the cult of stones in these territories in ancient times not only had its own specific features, but has always been an important part of the cultural landscape as a whole. It bore the imprints of a living tradition of interaction between man and nature, coming from the depths of millennia …
Official science confirms the unusual properties of boulders?
- The modern attitude of science to sacred stones sounds like a sentence. "Given the current state of the sources of the scientific base, a significant part of the so-called" sacred "boulders should be withdrawn from scientific circulation due to the unverifiability of information about them and the impracticability of a comprehensive study of objects." Many stones have already died: they were broken, buried, drowned. They are dying today. Enthusiasts try to save the relics by creating gardens and stone museums. But a boulder torn from its place loses its "sanctity", loses its legend.
Where did the cult of stones come from?
- In the II century A. D. e. the ancient Roman philosopher-encyclopedist Celsus wrote: "There is an original teaching, which was occupied by the most ancient peoples, states and wise people - the Egyptians, Assyrians, Hyperboreans, Celtic Druids and Getae …" Very few material symbols of this "original teaching" have survived to this day, and some of the most curious - boulders, which once performed religious, astronomical and magical functions, which served, as modern research shows, for contact with the powerful and completely real "hidden forces of Nature".
What megaliths are we talking about?
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- The most widespread is, undoubtedly, a specific type of revered stones with images, which in Russia was called investigators. They can be very different both in size and in ethnographic evidence, and even in the nature of the images themselves, which vary in a wide range from clearly artificial, with a clear study of the contours, to low-expressive and almost certainly natural. In the popular perception, these images are traces of the Mother of God or various saints. But sometimes also demonic or devilish. There is a lot of evidence of the exceptional "vitality" of the tradition of carving footprints in stone, the very appearance of this tradition should probably be attributed to the Neolithic era.
- Tell us about the most famous investigator
- There are a lot of "officially registered" stones in Karelia. The most famous are the carriers of the famous petroglyphs of the White Sea. For example, on the rocks at the mouth of the Vyg River there are about three hundred interconnected images dating from the end of the 3rd - the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. - the so-called "Devils Sledki". For the most part, these are drawings related to the theme of hunting (moose, seals, bears, fish). Against the background of this diversity, a chain of footprints stands out, leading to the image of a large humanoid figure, presumably the symbol of a certain deity.
Who exactly?
- The picture shows a certain person standing on one leg with his left hand raised and one eye closed. This peculiar pose, despite the fact that it is well known in the history of European shamanism, has not received serious understanding among Russian researchers. So, for example, among the Celtic peoples, it was called the Luga pose or the Cuchulainn pose. The symbolic figure of the petroglyphs is associated with the extremely archaic cults of the gods of death and magic. Compare her with the one-eyed Scandinavian Odin, the bouncy Baba Yaga, and the one-legged guardians of the Other World in the Welsh epic. In ancient times, it was believed that a magician who assumes the Luga pose is in both worlds at once and, accordingly, sees the manifest world with an open eye, and the world of spirits with a closed one.
It is believed that it is this image that opens "a certain path" to the sacred secrets of the White Sea, which testify to the distant Hyperborean past of the Russian North. Therefore, the chain of footprints carved on the rocks fulfills its very specific role, not understood by scientists, but perfectly understood by the local people: dolmens, seids, stone labyrinths, trackers - all these are entrances to the invisible world of the mysterious spiritual forces of the ancients.
Local legends confirm your hypothesis?
- Completely! Around these monuments, for centuries, a rather stormy ritual activity, including healing, was conducted - medicinal properties were attributed to the stones. Most of the trackers lie near trails or roads. In ancient times, when great sorcerers lived on earth, people not only understood the language of animals and plants, but could also change the structure of the stone, making it soft, like raw clay. This is the legend that still exists in Karelia. Of course, this has nothing to do with science, but, as the old people say, "it has to do with life." There is a lot of evidence for the healing properties of tracers. According to local residents, the liquid accumulating in the depression can heal various skin conditions. Many village residents of Karelia believe in the magical power of stones. It is not clear what the original purpose of the stones was,moreover, there are no written sources and cannot be. Although a number of serious researchers associate their appearance with the most ancient Aryan cults, in particular with the legend of the three steps of Vishnu, symbolizing the movement of the sun from sunrise through a point at the zenith to sunset. Tracer stones are mute witnesses of the ancient advance from North to South of an archaic common Indo-European culture, with its characteristic beliefs.
Interviewed by Dmitry Sokolov