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بس که کردم گریه رام من شد آن وحشی، کلیم

طفل اشکم از دویدن عاقبت آهو گرفت

The cult of the deer was widespread in traditional societies of deer hunters. This cult was connected with the worship of the deer or man-deer, the ancestor of people and deer, and a cultural hero, the teacher of deer hunting. The most important evidence supporting a deer cult in traditional societies are the totemistic mysteries connected with the reproduction of the deer, and magic hunting rituals. The most important participant in these rituals is the shaman. We hold the opinion that a shaman is a religious specialist whose power centred on healing, sorcery and prophecy, and who has the ability to associate with spirits (or animals-helpers) (obsession). In our article we shall address only the category of shamans connected with deer hunting. We shall try to reconstruct the phenomena of primitive spiritual culture on the basis of an interdisciplinary synthesis of ethnographic and archaeological sources