Skala Bozh’yey Materi / Rock of Our Lady

Tired of heavenly work, the Mother of God decided to go down to the most beautiful and kind earth. She found it, and as soon as she sank, she took on the image of a rock, turning her face to where the sun rises – to the east. And every morning the first rays of the new day, appearing from behind the mountain, illuminate its face and palm, also facing the East. The Mother of God receives and sends heavenly light from east to west and to other parts of the Earth. And so that none of the foreigners would approach her and desecrate the place of the saint, Altai and its subjects built stone walls and erected a temple under her image, on a bulk foundation. They came here to pray, asked for her mercy… Centuries have passed, but even today some of the residents go to her. And once they saw a Tibetan monk dressed in robes, with a shaved head, sitting on a rock and beating a drum. “He sat on the mountain,” Ruslan, a school teacher of basic military training, told me, “and beat the drum. I tried to talk to him, but he was silent…”

Adilet Nyazbekov – Illustration to the legend “Rock of Our Lady”.