Tengri is the sky, and in the political theology of the steppe empires he is also the source of legitimate rule. That combination is the distinctive thing about this tradition: it is a religion in which the relationship between a supreme power and a ruler is stated as an operating principle rather than a myth.
Below Tengri stands the earth, and with it the spirits of place, water, mountain and ancestor that ordinary observance addresses. The structure is a high god with a working order beneath him, but unlike the withdrawn creators of West Africa and the Caribbean, Tengri is directly invoked, and the invocation is public and political.
There is no generational succession and no assembly of gods with portfolios. The Orkhon inscriptions, carved for Turkic rulers in the eighth century, state the arrangement plainly: heaven above and earth below were made, and between them a ruler was set over the people. Failure is explained as heaven withdrawing its favour.
The route by which a person enters this order is ancestral. Rulers become the object of continuing regard after death, and Chinggis Khan is the largest instance, with a cult attached to him that has persisted for centuries.
Tengrism has been consciously revived across Central Asia and among Turkic and Mongolian peoples since the end of the Soviet Union, often with an explicitly national character.