Enaree
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Enaree

The Enarei, singular Enaree, were Scythian priestesses and shamanistic soothsayers who played an important role in the Scythian religion. The Enarei were assigned male at birth but considered to have undergone a divine/religious transformation of their sex, after which they assumed feminine roles and lived as women. They served the Snake-Legged Goddess and the goddess Artimpasa.

The English name Enaree is derived from the Ancient Greek name recorded by Herodotus of Halicarnassus as Enarees (Ἐνάρεες), itself derived from the Scythian term Anarya, meaning "unmanly." The term anarya is composed of the elements a-, meaning "non-," and narya, which was derived from nar-, meaning "man." The name Anarya was more accurately represented in Ancient Greek by Pseudo-Hippocrates as Anarieis (Ἀναριεῖς).

The Enarei were Scythian, yet most of these names were recorded by Greek writers and thus may not reflect the names that the Enarei or their society used to describe themselves. Importantly, many of these Greek writers disapproved of the Enarei and blamed them for sacking the temple of Aphrodite Ourania at Ascalon, describing their origins negatively. Their original names have not been recorded.

The Enarei were affiliated with an orgiastic cult of two closely related goddesses: Artimpasa and the Scythians' ancestral Snake-Legged Goddess. The forms of the goddesses the Enarei served were strongly influenced by Near Eastern fertility goddesses. Thus the rites of the Enarei combined indigenous Scythian religious practices of a shamanistic nature, which were themselves related to those of indigenous Siberian peoples, as well as ones imported from Levantine religions.

Some modern scholars believe the Enarei served largely similar purposes in the cult of Artimpasa as priests of other genders. There is limited written evidence, but a wider body of archaeological evidence, that depicts the Enarei's roles in rituals and the more general role of the cult.

One ornamental panel from the 3rd or 4th century B.C. shows an Enarei priest serving wine for a holy communion alongside the chief priestess of the goddess.

The Enarei likely also led Scythian funeral rituals. After the mummification and burial of the deceased, involved priests ritually cleansed themselves with the vapour of cannabis, in a shamanic ritual. Herodotus described this as a tent-based cleansing that would cause the priests to howl with laughter. Funerary practices are also attested archaeologically in Saka tombs from Siberia, which contained tripods, braziers, pelts, and charcoal containing remains of cannabis leaves and fruits. A pot from one of the Pazyryk burials contained cannabis fruits, as well as a copper censer used to burn cannabis. Although this documentary and archaeological evidence does not explicitly link Enarei to these rituals, it confirms the involvement of at least some priests in the cult of Artimpasa.

Cannabis was likely used for both communal and funerary or psychopompic rituals, making these priests among the earliest spiritual practitioners to have used cannabis to achieve altered states of consciousness.

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