Şule GÜMÜŞ

Metaphysical force-based applications such as sorcery, magic and fortune telling have always had an impact over faith and culture of people since the early days of civilizations. Whereas the innate desire to have control over events and situations kept sorcery and magical applications alive, the curiosity about future made the people prone to fortune telling. Within faith and cultural applications of The Turkic World, which consists of Turkic people, sorcery, magic and fortune telling practices and beliefs which are closely related to those practices exist. Through power of sorcery, magic and fortune, life changing competencies including treating diseases, overcoming enemies, having control over life and thought of people, are thought to be possible to be achieved.

The magic / sorcery and fortune telling practices that have taken place in the world of belief and social life of Turkic people are also used as motifs in epics, which are the mirrors of the culture. It is possible to determine the common culture, beliefs and practices of the Turkic people that make up the Turkic world by examining the epics that reflect the cultural codes and belief world of the society from which they come from. Thanks to this determination, the spiritual unity of Turkic people, whose roots are in Central Asia and lived in various geographies of the world, will be revealed.

In this paper, the reflections of sorcery, magic and fortune telling applications, which exist within the spiritual world of Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uighur and Uzbek Turks, in epic stories are determined. As a result of the comparative studies, within the epic stories of these tribes who originate from the same cultural roots and have the same spiritual background, similarities and sameness were determined in terms of presentations of sorcery, magic and fortune telling patterns.

Key Words: Magic/Sorcery, Fortune Telling, Faith, Epic, Turkic people