In world culture, the cave symbolizes, above all, the womb of Mother Earth (with which the mother complex is connected). The Chinese, for example, identified it with the feminine principle “Yin” and the mountain with the masculine “Yang”. According to the ideas of the ancients, this is the place where new life begins and where they go to the world of the dead. Initiation or initiation rites often took place in the caves – it was like entering the other world, only to be reborn as a different person in a different status. In such rites, the cave functioned as a place of mystical initiation, where the neophyte, forgetting his former life, “is “reborn” in a new spiritual quality from the “womb.”
According to the Turkic mythology, the goddess Umay hides/keeps the souls of unborn children in caves, and in the cave, according to the genealogical legend, nine sons of the she-wolf (Böri-ana, “mother – mother wolf” and Ashina – the first ancestors of the Turkic people – were born. The Buryats still believe that the caves can give children to infertile women, and the very authentic name of the cave – umay – in the Korin drills means the reproductive organ, the womb. Here the symbolism of the cave as a womb becomes particularly clear.
Among the Kazakhs there is a tradition of worshipping caves. An example is the cave Chak-pak-ata (South Kazakhstan), Qonyr-äulie (East Kazakhstan), the cave Shaqpaq-ata (West Kazakhstan) and others. Women still come here to pray for their infertility, and people in general for their health.
