It has become a tradition to relate the religious beliefs in the Steppe lands with the religion of Shamanism. The conviction that the ancient Turkish belief was based on Shamanism had become established as a result of the researches carried out among the Central Asian Turks in the 2nd half of the previous century. Actually, it has been observed that especially Yakut and Altay people were the believers of this religion for a long time. However, any of the rumours about the creation of the world and human being were not the outputs of the imagination of the Turks. They constituted a pattern of imagination that came into existence as a result of the combination of the influences from various religions. For example, the specific names that were cited in the rumours are nearly foreign names with a few exceptions. Kuday, Kurbustan, Körmüs, Maytere, Mangdaşire, Burkan, Matmas, etc.
These foreign issues included the motives that reminded the story of Adam-Eve and the forbidden fruit, some terms (for example; Tamu= hell), and the rumours of the Doomsday and the Deluge. As it has been stated by the experts, the Central Asian religious traditions were composed of the traces of particularly Buddhism and the Indian, Iranian, Greek and Jew legends together with some of the ancient Turkish descriptions and the combination of various stories that were rumoured in the Mongolian period. It is nearly impossible tp distinguish the essential images of the shamanism pertaining to Altay and Yakut people, in other words, the religious information and thoughts pertaining to the Shaman Turks.
M. Eliade who has made the most thorough and detailed researches about the religion of shamanism stated that the shamans were not "executor" in all of the religious activities among all of the central and northern Asian communities. He also stated that the Shamans would not participate in various ceremonies, for example, in the presentation of the sacrifices to the God. Similarly, he added that each chief of the families could perform this work. Furthermore, the magical religious life was not only composed of Shamanism and each magician was not considered as a "Shaman". Although restoring the health of the patients through healing constituted one of the main elements of the shamanism, it cannot be defined with each "shaman".
However, various "ecstatic" states that were observed in the history of the religions and the anthology of religion were not included within the shamanist "ecstasy". First of all, the shaman was a "trance" (transcendence) master that walked on air or under the ground and travelled in these places and felt that his spirit that got separated from his body within an "ecstatic" state that he was involved through his special procedures.
Meanwhile, he was not an instrument of this trance. On the contrary, he could establish dominion over the spirits and get into contact with the dead, the devils, the djinns and the fairies. Thus, he could heal the patients (whose spirits were stolen), perform the demands of the dead and prevent its harms, and enter the presence of the gods in the sky and under the ground in order to present the complaints and demands of the people and to act as a mediator between the gods and the people. With these characteristics, Shamans had aroused a fear and respect over the primitive communities. As the "expert of the human spirit", shamans took care of the spiritual values of the groups of people. However, the functions of the shamans were not so comprehensive as the degree of the representatives of the other general religious-magical systems. The shaman had not had any work to do in case there were not any illness (loss of spirit), death or misfortune where the spirit could not be mediated or if any "ecstatic" technique (travel to the sky or under the ground) was not used in a sacrifice ceremony. (Shamanism was present in all the tribes and primitive communities of the ancient periods in every place of the world and it had been diffused from the southern regions of Asia towards the central and northern Asian Turkish countries.)
As it can be observed, the Shamanism displayed principally a magical character and it was not actually a steppe religious system. The history of the Shamanism was not related with the beliefs of "Tanrı" (God) and "yer-su" (ground-water) that were observed in the Turkish communities as we will state below. An ancient allegation that impressed the possibility of such a relation stated that the "kam" with the meaning of the religious leader in the Turkish language was the same as the word of "shaman". This allegation has lost its validity upon the discovery of the existence of the term of "shaman" that was determined in an Indo-Iranian language. However, there has been an interesting adaptation between the ancient Turkish beliefs and the Shamanism. This situation had an effect in the adaptation of the "Shamanist" characters within the cult of ancestors, the eagle beliefs, the ironmongery and the sacrifice of horses.
Actually, the biggest character of Shamanism was the capability to play the role of the spiritual world over the regional people that were under the influence. The issue about the travel of the spirit and relation with the gods in the "ecstatic" state got use of the latent forces that the ancient Turkish people attributed to the nature. These beliefs developed gradually and new elements were added to them. Therefore, this system succeeded to include the entire spiritual world within a single cadre and it attained the religious strength. However, this external influence is not only peculiar to the ancient Turkish religion. According to the historians of religion, these sorts of influences, combinations and innovations have been observed in every religion.
It is possible to classify the characteristics of the religion of Steppe Turks under three main issues.