The Ingush believed that individual families, villages and societies had special patrons - divine beings or saints. Their name in Ingush is “tstsu” or “yerdy”. Some of these deities acquired general Ingush significance and were equally honored by all Ingush, while others (and these were the majority) were purely local, family or clan patrons.

Public places where deities are honored are usually tracts on elevated places (which, however, is not obligatory), sometimes close to the village, sometimes at a considerable distance from it.

The center of veneration is “elgyts” - a temple or sanctuary - a small building with an inner room, often enclosed by a fence.

Groves are also among the venerated tracts. Thus, in various places in Ingushetia we can point to protected and sacred groves (for example, in the areas of the villages of Furtoug, Khuli and Khairakh).

It was forbidden to enter the sacred grove or to let livestock into it; no trees could be cut down in it. If necessary, the priest gave special permission for this or that.

The veneration of groves and trees was expressed in a number of cultic actions: large trees were chosen, altars were placed under them, offerings were hung on the branches - horns of deer, aurochs, rags and rags, etc., festivities were organized, the so-called Khirkh-erdy.

Here we shall also mention that a number of objects used in cults were connected in different forms with the fact of veneration of groves or trees in general.

The four-sided shaft of the beirah, the sacred flag, which appeared at almost all great festivals, was usually made of a pole cut from a protected grove. The priest, who for the most part held his office for life, had to mark each annual celebration by cutting on the same edge of the shaft. After the death of the priest, his successor made the same cuts on the second edge, and so on. A shaft that had outlived four priests, and therefore had cuts on all four sides, had to be replaced by a new one. It was either stuck behind the ceiling beams of the elgats, as an unnecessary, but still sacred, object, or burned, if the period of its existence was unlucky (diseases, drought, bad harvest, etc.). A rod for a new shaft was cut, on behalf of the priest, in a protected grove by a single guy of chaste behavior. He had to go silently into the forest, silently and with one blow of the axe to fell the tree and silently return and hand the shaft to the priest.

In the cult of Magi-erda there is a rite of throwing linden staffs by old men...