The Enarei was a privileged caste of hereditary androgynous priests and shamanistic soothsayers who performed Artimpasa's cult and played an important political role in Scythian society as they were believed to have received the gift of prophecy directly from the goddess Artimpasa. The Enarei belonged to the most powerful Scythian nobility who wore women's clothing and performed women's jobs. a custom which Herodotus understands as being reflected in the title ena-rei, glossing this as ἀνδρό-γυνοι or "man-women".
The nature of the Enarei was that of a shamanistic were affiliated to an orgiastic cult of Artimpasa their androgyny, which according to shamanic traditions were considered transformed shamans who changed their sex, signaled them as being the most powerful shamans, due to which they inpired fear and were thus accordingly given special respect in Scythian society. The Scythians themselves attributed the androgyny of the Enarei to a curse of a "female disease" causing impotency given as punishment to the perpetrators of the Scythian sack of the sanctuary of Astarte in Ascalon and their descendants.
The method employed by the Enarei differed from that practised by traditional Scythian diviners: whereas the latter used a bundle of willow rods, the Enarei used strips cut from the bark of the linden tree (genus tilia) to tell the future.
