An American in Mongolia: Part XVIII

May 27-June 4:

Upon my return to Ulaanbaatar I scheduled a follow up interview with Deggie, a shaman who lives in Ulaanbaatar whom I met and spoke with at Harhira, and who agreed to a follow up clarification interview. Deggie clarified some of the ritual that I had witnessed as well as shedding some light on the origins of Tengereen Suld, and of course we exchanged photographs from the Harhira ritual grounds. I also got to meet with a shaman called Zaya who lives in Ulaanbaatar but is from Bayanhongor aimag. I developed a survey for laypeople and distributed it to artists while working on my prints at the artists union, and interviewed Ganbold the director of the Suki Theater.

I met Zaya through my tremendously helpful and caring host family in Ulaanbaatar. She is a young shamaness/hairdresser (her hobby is eyebrow, eyeliner, and lip-liner tattooing) who had the onset of her shamans’ sickness after the birth of her second child two years ago (as of 2008.) She was aware of her shamanic ancestry prior to the arrival of symptoms of shaman’s sickness; in fact she had witnessed the shamanizing of her ongod (her grandmother) when she was a little girl. She also showed me a number of beautiful talismans of ancient origins passed on to her as heirlooms, including a tiny chip of a meteorite and a bronze amulet that she incorporated into her shamans’ costume and her battag as protection from malevolent or unfamiliar spirits while she’s in trance. Zaya also told me that she found that she couldn’t shamanize in her apartment (although she has been looking into the practices of shamans around the world on the internet in her apartment), so she had built a ger specifically for the purposes of ongod worship. I wish that she had expounded upon this remark (Interview with Zaya in Ulaanbaatar, 5-29-08.)

While the responses that I received to my survey of laypeople were very interesting, they were very curt and the sample was too small, and therefore the results are inconclusive to include in this paper, but if the reader is interested, see the appendix for further information.

I watched the performance of the Moonstone at the Suki Theater and then interviewed Ganbold72, the artistic director of the show who was fascinating. The gentleman had evidently spent a great deal of time, much like an anthropologist, researching the subjects of mimesis. He told me about some of his research in preparation for the development of the costumes and choreography:

Shamanism began 5,000 BC, I researched the ancient shamanism of the Darhkad, Uriankhai, and the Tsaatan peoples, spoke with researchers of shamanism and read several books on the subject, as well as speaking with shamans themselves. From these experiences I learned that white shamans have 55 ancestral spirits; black shamans have 44 local spirits. The costumes of shamans are 80% different now than ancient shaman’s clothes, before 1930 they hadn’t changed/mixed with Buddhism. The costumes of ancient shamans were open in the armpit to connect with the sky; the drum is the shaman’s mouth, the stick the shamans tongue. All equipment is alive.

Shamanism’s not the kind of thing that can be studied in a book, rather one must have a special connection with the sky/some kind of sickness/a teacher. At first shamans use an old man’s cane, then drum after they have learned to use the cane--then they use an actual drumstick, designed for that purpose. On the drum there are pictures of animals the shaman has killed. Putting the picture of the animals on the drum makes the animal immortal. The drum is of course the vehicle that the shaman uses to travel in the spirit world. The most powerful drum is made out of moose skin. A black shaman uses a circular drum and a white shaman uses a more triangular one, the frame is made of a special wood. If there are 27 animals embroidered on the back of the shaman’s robes, then they are the most powerful. The left side of the shaman’s robes has good energy/luck for relatives. The right side of the shamans robes brings luck to regular people if you touch it. The back center of the costume brings luck and good energy to the nuclear family. Ancient shamans didn’t use a mirror to deflect bad spirits.


Despite Ganbold’s breadth of knowledge, the show was an artistic representation mimicking the sacred, spiritual, and nature-based act of ritual in shamanism that had been stripped of its symbolic and ritualistic meaning so that it would be digestible for tourists eager to glean a little bit of each aspect of Mongolia’s cultural history in an hour. It was an excellent aesthetic representation of shamanic ritual, and Ganbold was careful to say that while it was very highly choreographed, and based in the ancient history of shamanism as opposed to drawing from contemporary shamanic practices, it was attempting to balance the authentic with the aesthetic.

In the Moonstone a one hour performance shows tourists as much of Mongolian culture as possible in a short time. Black, white, green, blue colors are used in the shamanistic costume in the performance. I try to balance authenticity with aesthetics.

There’s a performance DVD focusing on shamanism, in August it will be ready.

I have seen shamanizing, and it is always different. I took general things like dancing, drumming, mouth harp playing, fire, etc. to recreate the dance in a performative context. The performance is one hour and fifteen minutes long, as for the shaman performance-it is difficult to use everything so we try to use as much as we can, for example becoming a shaman, shaman’s sickness, and women shamans (the first and now most powerful.)

My concern with the show was what it intended to portray, and who its intended audience was. Ganbold replied that the intended audience was outsiders visiting Mongolia with no cultural point of reference or prior education on the subjects of Mongolian shamanism, Tsam dance, or Khoomii. I found this honest response only problematic insofar as this audience was going to see the show and (perhaps) formulate their perceptions of historically and culturally rich Mongolia based entirely upon something that had its inherent connotations removed, and during the interview I told him so. However when he told me “at the Suki Center, we regularly bring shamans in to see the show and see what they think about it, and we’ve gotten a very good response so far.” I certainly couldn’t argue.