ABSTRACT
For many centuries archaic cults such as ancestor veneration, sun worship, a fertility cult or various kinds of magic had been predominant in the Kalmyks’ worldview. The cult of the sun is a basic one among all Mongolian peoples, and in many cases it was transmuted into a cult of fire – as a manifestation of the sun. Right up to the present time there is much in the Kalmyk culture that is subordinated to the regulations of the solar cult. Movement in the same direction as the sun is one of the mandatory rules of folk etiquette: to come up to the nomad tent, to depart or to pass on something in a circle could only be done according to the movement of the sun, in a direction from left to right. A breach of the solar order, movement contrary to the sun’s direction, was tolerable only on breaking the usual pattern of life – for example, if a divorce was at the woman’s initiative she was compelled to circle a temple three times in the opposite direction to that of the sun.
