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Paper short abstract

This paper offers a metaphorological reading of animistic cosmology in narratives ranging from Oghuz to Old Turkic and Altaic traditions. It analyses recurring metaphors of nature through the lens of Hans Blumenberg's metaphorology.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers a metaphorological reading of animistic cosmology in narratives ranging from Oghuz to Old Turkic and Altaic traditions. It analyses recurring elements of the natural world, including animals, plants/trees, mountains, and sacred waters, and shows how they function as absolute metaphors that orient social knowledge, ethics, and ontological meaning. Through the theoretical lens of Hans Blumenberg’s The Readability of the World, Sources, Streams, Icebergs / Quellen, Ströme, Eisberge and Paradigms for a Metaphorology, it contends that these narratives include recurrent metaphors of nature that have their roots in Turkic-Altaic cosmology. Although the importance of natural elements in Turkic-Altaic mythic narratives has been studied by prominent scholars, including Emel Esin, Jean-Paul Roux, Bahaeddin Ögel, and Uno Harva, Blumenberg’s idea of “the readability of the world” has not been examined in this context. By doing so, this study highlights Blumenberg’s relevance beyond European contexts and demonstrates how the frequent use of nature imagery and the fluid boundaries between humans and non-humans create an animistic way of reading the world. Turkic-Altaic metaphors of nature can be analysed as absolute metaphors that disclose the substratum of thought in bygone eras. Still, far from being relics of myth, they can provide us with frameworks of orientation that enable a way of reading the world as alive, relational, and ensouled.