An American in Mongolia: Part I

 
I went to Mongolia in the spring of 2008 through the School of International Training’s study abroad program for undergraduate students.  The program included excursions, nomadic and urban home stays, lectures, and classes in language, fieldwork, culture and development.  Through the program I became acquainted with Mongolian people, culture, art, religion, NGO’s and history.  The program also contained a fieldwork component a month in length: too short to constitute as a good fieldwork period in the real world, but just enough time to collect material to include for writing an undergraduate thesis. During this time, I interviewed shamans and observed their ritual in Ulaanbaatar and two other aimags (provinces), Dornod and Khentii, from whence the legendary Chingiss Khan hath cometh. The writing that follows is just a little sliver of what I’ve been able to integrate and articulate since my return.

Figure 1.

Glossary of terms: Technical terms, Mongolian words

Aimag-The Mongolian word used to describe the equivalent of a province or state.

Soum-The Mongolian word used to describe the equivalent of a county.

Chanar- An annual ritual held between May 22 and September 14 while the “sky door is open” during which new shamans may be initiated and already practicing shamans become more powerful through repeatedly calling their ongod. It was described to me by my advisor Bumochir Dulam, a Mongolian anthropologist, as “a big party for many spirits.”   From what I understand it is traditionally a Buryat rite, however the chanar that I observed in Bayan Uul was modified to include Khalk shamans as well.

Ongod- The ancestral spirit (often of a deceased shaman), who temporarily replaces one of the three (or five, depending on the ethnic belief system and mythology) souls or suld of the shaman during partial possession or trance.

Shamanic Color Identification- Within today’s Mongolian shamanist tradition there are three primary colors that shamans refer to themselves as:

           

            Black- Acknowledged as the most ancient of the three color identifications, by Professor Purev, black shamans are noted for their ability to call forth the most powerful and sometimes sinister of ongods and nature spirits, cast curses, and perform potent magic.

            White- Usually shamans who identify as white also often identify as being black shamans.  White shamans can call benevolent ongods to perform healing magic, such as bone setting and headache and stomachache curing, as well as curse lifting. 

            Yellow- An identification that has become more popular in correlation with the historical introductions of Tibetan (Mahayana) Buddhism in Mongolia in three major waves (during the 4^th century AD when early spiritual and political alliances with Tibet were formed, under Khublai Khan in the 14^th century, and again under Zanabazar of the Golden Horde in the 17^th century), yellow shamans incorporate Buddhist objects and symbols as components of their costume and paraphernalia, and their ongods sometimes also include (usually wrathful bodhisattvas) Buddhist deities. Some self-identifying yellow shamans also identify dually as white or black or both.

Shamans’ Sickness- If a person (who is usually talented, clever, and moral) is unaware that they have been chosen by ancestral spirits to become a shaman, the ongod will attempt to communicate in a variety of ways unusual to laypeople that may manifest as visual and auditory hallucinations, and repeated “blackouts.”

Eventually an ongod may become more demanding of acknowledgment from the individual, and increasingly aggressive spiritual maneuvers might cause major, inexplicable behavioral changes within the chosen person, often clinically non-diagnosable. In an extreme case when the ongod continues to go ignored, the un-pleasantries escalate, eventually causing chronic life-ruining-quality bad luck and incurable and apparently origin-less diseases.  Once a person suffering shamans’ sickness starts the process of becoming a shaman, these symptoms just as quickly and enigmatically disappear.

Trance/Partial Possession- When a shaman ritually calls on an ongod or spirit of land and water to inhabit their body for a limited time and to varying degrees in one of a variety of different ways depending upon ethnic tradition, color identification, and purpose of the ritual.

A shaman may call a spirit while in or out of costume (which is both spiritual armor for the shaman and also alive and usually includes a headdress, del, battag and sometimes boots), depending upon whether the shaman is conscious and communicating with the spirit (s) within their own brain (trance) or if one of the shamans’ souls is traveling to make space for the spirit to fully utilize the body and brain (partial possession).  The shaman does this using various implements such as drum or mouth harp or cane, designed to serve the dual purpose of both transporting one of the shamans’ souls and summoning the incoming spirit.

Because the shaman is summoning the spirit to her/his being, if the spirit arrives the two have entered into a consensual agreement wherein the shaman is inviting the spirit to liberally to use the shamans’ body as a vehicle. I’m told that spirits love to inhabit human bodies because it reminds them of their time in our middle world/light world, and gives them an opportunity to perform magnificent feats using the shamans’ body without it hurting the shaman when their soul returns. The spirit uses the shamans body as a vessel to interact with other carbon-based beings or ethereal beings (but usually human beings) for a number of supernatural purposes such as: healing, giving advice, delivering messages between worlds (such as greetings, warnings and prophesy), cursing, lifting curses, and divination.  Anthropologists classify this consensual arrangement of bodily occupation between the host shaman and the ongod as partial possession, because the shamans’ body is not being hijacked forcibly by a malevolent intruder, as in the case of someone “possessed” and in need of exorcism.

Battag-A tool of the shaman that is used to ward off bad energy on several spiritual planes that is often made of bone, khaddag, horse hair, and metal ornaments that are symbolic miniatures of weapons.

Khaddag- A kind of a special silk scarf that is usually blue, but also comes in all of the primary colors and white (all colors have their own symbolic purposes and meanings) that is often used in the rituals of Buddhism and shamanism.

Ovoo- Seemingly impromptu structures found throughout Central Asia that are cites of worship for the local deities found there, they are remnants of animism that have also been incorporated into Buddhism. Characterized by cylindrical piles, usually of rocks, they indicate that a natural feature or area of land is exceptionally sacred.

Joyful Awakenings

            It was only mentioned in passing that there might be a drop of Mongolian blood in me.  Something about the slant of my expatriate Russian grandfather’s eyes, and his sister’s too, on my mother’s side.  

Figure 2.

I deduced that my Mongolian blood could have been a rape in the family somewhere along the line (it seemed to be more recent than the legendary Genghis Khan’s seed spreading), or a secret transgression.  Or perhaps it was Euro-centricity in my family that made it shameful to imagine that a once very powerful empire with a very unique and well-preserved culture of individualism had touched and tainted an ancestor of ours.  But growing up in a postmodern world, where multiculturalism is the vogue, the possibility that I might have a even a remote genetic link to Mongolia (or more specifically, the Tatars that settled in Russia or the Khazars absorbed into Russia) was such an illuminating concept that I couldn’t help but revel in it, and sometimes even flaunt it.  “Yeah, that’s right, I’m a 16^th Mongolian, that’s why I have an affinity for these furry hats.  Pretty hardcore, huh?”

There wasn’t any real proof that it was even true, I just felt it in my bones. For some reason I sensed a connection and a need to identify with a culture that was completely alien to me, and certainly completely different from the Eastern European Jew story I had been hearing for so long. Only after my aunt pulled a photograph to show me of my Menshevik great grandparents a few winters ago, after my grandmother died and she had been picking through her collection, did the reality sink in.  Sure enough, my great-grandfather’s eyes had a particularly Asiatic look about them, and his skin was a little darker than that of most Russians, even ethnic Jews in the region.