Shaman Lady and Chinggis Country

While in Chinggis' birthplace - Khentii province - over New Years we paid a visit to the local Shaman. One of my friends put together these videos of the Shaman Lady describing how she came to be a Shaman and some of the power of the spirits that she communicates with.

Mongolian Shaman from Lauren Knapp on Vimeo.

Very interesting stuff.

Mongolian Shaman Playing Jaw Harp from Lauren Knapp on Vimeo.

I wasn't having anything to do with playing with the spirits, but each of my friends took a turn asking something about themselves or a family member. The lady got into some interesting things. She picked up that one friend had lost someone close recently. And when one friend asked about her brother, the shaman lady suggested he had been through a trauma at a certain age which had changed his character, which had happened. Generally though she was very inspecific...drawing scepticism from my friends.

Accompanying us were our translator and driver. The driver spent a couple of hours talking to the shaman, performing some rituals involving throwing a glass of vodka or milk to the sky and that kind of thing. The interesting thing is that a few weeks later some other friends did the same trip, with the same driver and translator. This time these men would not go into the shaman lady's house - they seemed freaked out and went ice fishing instead, leaving my friends at the house for a few hours.

Among my Mongolian friends it seems fairly common to consult a Shaman when a family member is sick or when they are looking for guidance on life decisions. The shaman will usually give seemingly strange instructions - maybe some clothing needs to be burnt, or some vodka or milk offered to the gods at certain times of the day, or maybe the family needs to visit a temple and pray with a lama on certain days or a certain period of time - or a combination of these kinds of things; in order to free the spirits that are bringing bad things to the situation.

It's all a lot more complex than Jesus intended, in my opinion.

Here are some photos from the rest of the trip:

This region is close to the Russian border and inhabited by Buriats - a Mongolian ethnic group mostly found in the bordering region of Russia. We rode horses and ice-fished, celebrated the new year with sparklers and buuz (dumplings) made by the old lady living next door.