root umāy originally meant 'placenta, afterbirth') is the goddess of fertility and virginity. Umay resembles earth-mother goddesses found in various other world religions and is the daughter of Tengri. Öd Tengri is the god of time being not well-known, as it states in the Orkhon stones, "Öd tengri is the ruler of time" and a son of Kök Tengri. Boz Tengri, like Öd Tengri, is not known much. He is seen as the god of the grounds and steppes and is a son of Kök Tengri. Kayra is the Spirit of God. Primordial god of highest sky, upper air, space, atmosphere, light, life and son of Kök Tengri. Ülgen is the son of Kayra and Umay and is the god of goodness. The Aruğ (Arı) denotes "good spirits" in Turkic and Altaic mythology. They are under the order of Ülgen and do good things on earth. Mergen is the son of Kayra and the brother of Ülgen. He represents mind and intelligence. He sits on the seventh floor of the sky. Since he knows everything, he can afford everything. Erlik is the god of death and the underworld, known as Tamag. Ay Dede is the moon god. The highest group in the pantheon consisted of 99 tngri (55 of them benevolent or "white" and 44 terrifying or "black"); 77 "earth-spirits"; and others. The tngri were called upon only by leaders and great shamans and were common to all the clans. After these, three groups of ancestral spirits dominated. The "Lord-Spirits" were the souls of clan leaders to whom any member of a clan could appeal for physical or spiritual help. The "Protector-Spirits" included the souls of great shamans and shamanesses. The "Guardian-Spirits" were made up of the souls of smaller shamans and shamanesses and were associated with a specific locality (including mountains, rivers, etc.) in the clan's territory. Non-human beings (İye), neither necessarily personified nor deitified, are revered as sacred essence of things. These beings include natural phenomena such as sacred trees or mountains. Three-world cosmology The Tengrist cosmology proposes a division between the upper worlds (heaven), the Earth, and the world of darkness (underworld). These worlds are inhabited by different beings, often spirits or deities. A shaman (kam) could through mental powers communicate with these spirits. The worlds are not entirely separated, they have constant influence on the Earth. In Turkic mythology within Siberian Central Asian religious systems there