SURV · RITUAL ACCESS
Ancient practice. Modern access. On the next full moon, your name and intention are prepared, translated, and carried to an existing Buryat ritual practice near Olkhon.
Next access window · the coming full moon over Olkhon · $80 a moon
ACCESS TO RITUALS THAT STILL LIVE
You may already have thought about it, written about it, prayed over it, or tried to resolve it alone.
Here, your intention is given direct ritual access. It leaves your everyday life and travels to the shores of Lake Baikal, where another human being receives it, remembers your face, and carries your name into ritual.
One name. One intention. One fire, on the night of the full moon.
RITUAL ACCESS
Five movements, between the evening you request access and the morning after the moon.
01
Write the name to be spoken and the matter in which you are asking for assistance — or send the name alone, and let the shaman do the work. A photograph, if you choose to entrust one, lets him see the person behind the words.
02
The intention is prepared in Buryat and carried to the ritual circle near Olkhon.
From wherever you are standing to a shoreline in southern Siberia.
03
Each trance is entered for one name. Before it, the shaman takes your intention in his hands — and your photograph, if you entrusted one — looks at it, and holds you in memory. Then the drum begins: your name is spoken and your request is presented to the spirits.
04
The shaman asks the spirits to recognize you and assist you in the matter you entrusted to the circle.
05
Sometimes a shaman speaks during the trance, sometimes only after it, and some nights give no words at all. Whatever he reports, Denis — the coordinator who carried the list to the fire — takes down beside him, and the available record is then placed privately in your member space.
One trance carries one name, and a shaman rests before he takes the next into his hands. The night is long, and it is used whole: each of the five carries at most ten names between dusk and morning, and the circle will not push past that. Fifty names; that is the whole fire.
THE COMING FULL MOON
Each month the circle lights one fire. Access is limited; the fire is shared, and the trance within it is entered for you alone.
01
Your name and intention carried to a living ritual near Olkhon on the night of the full moon.
The ritual requests spiritual assistance on your behalf. No particular outcome is guaranteed. You can cancel online at any time — and if you cancel the same day, the cycle you paid for is still carried, with no penalty.
02
The same fire, once: your name and your intention carried into one full-moon ceremony, with the record that follows it.
Charged once; nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel. If your intention cannot be carried in that cycle, the payment is refunded.
A private video connection with the circle. By the shamans' understanding, filming and recording during the ceremony can disturb the ritual and turn the spirits away, so no video, audio, or live link is offered today. We are looking, with the shamans, for a form that respects the tradition; nothing opens until they agree to it.
A small accompanied journey to Olkhon — local guides, the route, and presence at the circle itself. When it can be arranged safely, lawfully, and with respect for the place, expect the full arrangement near $4,800. Nothing is sold until the route is properly arranged.
Priority access does not reserve a place, a price, or a night.
THE CIRCLE
Five shamans carry the trances on the shore of Baikal. Shown here are the one who leads the circle, the one who carries the lists, and the one in Paris holding the other end of the line.
ZAARIN BOO · TENGERI ASSOCIATION · ULAN-UDE
Bair leads the circle. Before each trance he takes one intention — and one photograph, when it is given — looks at the face, and enters the trance for that person alone.
“No words are needed; the spirits see you. Sit, close your eyes, and listen to my drum. I will speak to the Tngri and your ancestors. Let me do the work.”
He did not choose this. He was a veterinarian until 1992, when the seizures began — up to nine a day, and no treatment for them. A doctor told him it was the shamanic illness, which medicine does not cure. His grandmother had carried the drum before him; she sent him to find a master in Mongolia, and after the second ceremony the seizures stopped. In the circle the spirits choose, and he was not able to refuse.
He has practised since then — more than thirty years — and holds the rank of Zaarin Boo, the highest of the degrees a Buryat shaman passes through. He directs Tengeri, the shamans' association in Ulan-Ude, which he has led since 2003, and each summer he opens the tailgan on Olkhon.
THE COORDINATOR · IRKUTSK
Denis is the link on the ground in Irkutsk. He receives the names, coordinates their preparation, and brings them to the ritual circle.
The list leaves Irkutsk with him and arrives at the fire in his hands.
He is the guide and the organiser — the reason a name written in another country reaches a shoreline in Siberia on the right night. He is also, most nights, the writer at the fire: whatever a shaman gives — during the trance, after it, or nothing at all — Denis takes down, and the record your note is written from begins in his hand.
THE BRIDGE · PARIS
From Paris, Aleksandr maintains the connection between each member and the people carrying the ritual near Baikal.
Born in Irkutsk, close enough to the lake that it never felt far away.
He is the one who answers when you write. His letter is below.
Five shamans stand at the fire each moon. Bair — Zaarin Boo, director of the Tengeri shamans' association since 2003 — leads the circle and answers for every name carried in it. The shamans beside him are drawn from the association and may change from one moon to the next, as the practice allows; the trance is the same work, in the same order, whoever carries it.
The revival of Buryat shamanic practice they belong to has been written about by researchers who were not paid by us. Start with Bair — named, photographed as himself, findable — and weigh the rest the way you would weigh any circle led by a man who signs his name.
FROM THE FOUNDER
I was born in Irkutsk and grew up with Baikal never feeling very far away. Buddhist prayer drums, shamanic rituals, mountains, family stories, and practices nobody stopped to explain were simply part of the landscape around me.
You turned the prayer drums, and then you were told to crawl underneath something — a table, or something like a table. Nobody explained why, and I did not think to ask. It was simply how you passed through a place that was listening.
I left at twenty and eventually built my life in Paris, but there were moments when I still needed to send something home—not a parcel or a message, but a request.
The first one I sent was for my mother. I asked Denis to carry her name to the full moon. I have kept asking since — for my family, and for myself — because being able to send something home steadies me.
SURV grew from that need. It gives a person far away direct access to people who can physically carry a name and intention into ritual near the lake.
The arrangement is two years old: the lists, the translation, the agreement with the shamans, the journeys we take people on. The practice it rests on is not two years old, and neither are the men who carry it. The young thing here is the organisation, not the ritual.
The company in Paris that holds the arrangement, and everything legal about it, is set out on the Company Information page.
Before it was published, this page was translated into Buryat — the language of the ceremony — and read by Bair. Your intention makes the same journey: translated first, then carried to the fire.
Aleksandr Kovalev
Irkutsk · Paris
AFTER THE MOON
Sometimes the words come during the trance, sometimes after it, and some nights bring none at all. Whatever a shaman gives, Denis takes down at the fire, and only that travels back to you — placed privately in your member space the morning after the ceremony, in your own timezone.
What reaches you is short and unforced: a few sentences in English, written from what that night actually gave. When a night gives no words, your note says so, rather than filling the silence.
The circle has carried intentions to this fire since 2024 — through its first two years, mostly for members in Europe. This season, for the first time, it opens to the American public. The list is capped at fifty names in every cycle; no words are attributed to anyone who did not say them, and no photograph on this page was staged.
Enter the next ceremony ↗
Fifty names, five shamans, one trance for every name. If your intention cannot be carried in the cycle you paid for, that cycle is returned to you rather than quietly rolled forward.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
One name and one intention carried to the full-moon circle near Lake Baikal: written onto the list, translated into Buryat, shown with your photograph to the shaman if you send one, and carried into a trance entered for you alone, where your name is spoken and your request is presented to the spirits. You may also send the name with no intention at all, and let the shaman do the work. Afterwards, the available record of that night is placed privately in your member space.
Lake Baikal is in Russia. We would rather write the word plainly than make you read around it — and one more thing should be just as plain: this circle stands with the Buryats, not with any state. The lake's western shore is the homeland of the Buryats, an indigenous people whose shamanic practice was carried through the Soviet period and openly revived from the 1990s. What you support by joining is the continuity of that practice and the people who hold it — not the Russian state, and none of its actions. You are paying a French company, in France, for a service; your card details stay with Stripe and never cross a border. What travels east is short: a list of first names, intentions translated into Buryat, and the practitioners' share — sixty percent — sent by lawful transfer to an established company in the Buryat Republic, which pays them locally. The office in Paris takes full responsibility for that route and for who finally receives the money, and stands guarantor that not one cent of it goes toward military action. If in any cycle the route cannot be kept lawful, the cycle is refunded rather than carried unpaid.
On Cloudflare's servers in the United States, administered by the team in Paris. Your account, your intention as you wrote it, your photograph if you added one, and every private record stay there; your payment details stay with Stripe, and this website never receives your card number. What is passed onward to the circle is only what the ritual itself needs: the first name to be spoken, the intention translated into Buryat, and the photograph, if you chose to send one. Nothing else is transmitted to anyone. The Privacy Policy sets out the detail.
So that you are a face and not only a line of text. Before your trance the shaman holds your portrait and keeps it in memory while your name is spoken. Any photograph in which you can be recognised is enough — it is not a document, and nothing is verified against it. It is genuinely optional, and most of the ritual does not depend on it: the name and the intention are what is carried. If you do send one, it goes to the circle in the Buryat Republic for that single purpose, is kept in private storage, and is never used in advertising. The Privacy Policy sets out the transfer terms.
After dark, on the night of the full moon, at the lake — which runs eight hours ahead of UTC. The moment the moon is full is astronomical rather than chosen: this site computes it from the standard lunar-phase calculation, and it can land at any hour, including the middle of the day at Baikal. The date shown is the night the fire is lit, not the minute of the calculation. Your private record follows the morning after, in the timezone you choose.
Buryat. Your intention is translated before it is carried, so that what is presented to the spirits is spoken in the language of the place. Your name is spoken as you write it, and you can tell us how it should sound.
Fifty at most: five shamans, ten names each, one trance for every name, with rest between — the night is long, and it is used whole. It is heavy work on the one who carries it, and the circle will not risk their health by pushing past that. If your intention cannot be carried in the cycle you paid for, that cycle is refunded rather than rolled forward in silence.
No. The subscription carries your intention each moon for $80 a month, and you may instead enter one single full moon for $120, once, with nothing renewing and nothing to cancel. Both are the same fire, the same trance, and the same record; the single entry simply ends by itself.
A short private note in your member space. Sometimes a shaman speaks during the trance, sometimes after it, and some nights give no words at all. Whatever he gives, Denis takes down at the fire; nothing is attributed to him that he did not say, and no note claims that the spirits, the fire, or the smoke said anything in particular. Your note is written by hand from that record and from the intention you entrusted — one person, one note — and placed in your member space the morning after. When a night gives no words, your note says so, rather than filling the silence.
Five Buryat shamans stand at the fire each moon, led by Bair Zhambalovich Tsyrendorzhiev: a Zaarin Boo, initiated in the early 1990s after the shamanic illness ended his work as a veterinarian, and director of the Tengeri shamans' association in Ulan-Ude since 2003. The shamans beside him are drawn from the association and may change from one moon to the next, as the practice allows; Bair leads the circle and answers for every name carried in it. Denis Sobakin, in Irkutsk, prepares and carries the lists, and takes down what the fire gives. Aleksandr Kovalev, in Paris, holds the connection between you and them. Everyone shown is named with his agreement, and photographed as himself.
The circle is not new to the work — only to America. This arrangement — the lists, the translation, the agreement with the shamans, the journeys — has been running since 2024, until now mostly for members in Europe; this season it opens to the American public. The shamans it depends on have been practising for decades, in a tradition that was carried through the Soviet period and openly revived from the 1990s. If you are weighing whether to trust it, weigh those two things separately.
Sixty percent of the subscription goes to the shamans; the remainder covers the cost of organising the circle. Payment is made by lawful transfer from the French company that operates this site to an established company in the Buryat Republic, which pays the practitioners locally. If a lawful route is unavailable for a given cycle, that cycle is refunded rather than performed unpaid.
Use Member access to open billing management or request cancellation, in one click, at any time. Data deletion follows the timing and legal exceptions described in the Privacy Policy and Refund and Cancellation Policy.
By the shamans' understanding, filming and recording during the ceremony can disturb the ritual and turn the spirits away. So no video, no audio, and no live connection is offered today — what returns from your night is the written record, and nothing else is pretended. We are working with the shamans on a form of live connection that would respect the tradition, and on journeys for those who want to stand at the fire themselves; if either opens, it opens first to its waitlist. Neither is sold until it truly exists.
SURV Ritual Access is operated from Paris, France by the registered French company named on the Company Information page, together with its registration number, VAT number, and contact route. Charges currently appear on your bank statement as BAIKAL CIRCLE. The spiritual terms of the service are set out in the Spiritual Services Disclaimer.
One name. One intention. One fire on the shore of Baikal.