Religious Rituals of the Chuvash //Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia. N.Y.: Sharp, 1996. Vol. 34. № 3: 68-89.
Analysis of all these protective rituals reveals the rich spiritual world of the traditional Chuvash people. Rituals, prayers, and sacrifices reveal the worldviews of people as they confront realities of nature. Illnesses result from spirits who dwell in the sky, in fields, earth, water, fire, and buildings. The spirits must be calmed, propitiated, frightened, or cheated. On a microlevel, the rituals reflect the general human idea of an incapacitated person. They are a valuable set of date to reconstruct early stages of the Chuvash people’s history, from which no material monuments remain. Life-crisis and youth-fertility rituals also provide similar sources of data.