Shaman visit in UB

This was very interesting. Mongolians actually believe that Chinggis Khaan was a shaman aside from being the most ruthless - and most successful - warlord of all time. They think Chinggis helped raise awareness and belief in shamanism.  Anyway what is interesting about Chinggis Khaan is that he was not threatened by other people's religion when he was busy conquering Arabia, China, South East Asia and India. His soldiers never destroyed any religious monuments - this is quite unlike many many other territorial conquerors. In 1937 when Stalin came to Mongolia, his warriors did a great job destroying pretty much  all of the Buddhist temples. Anyway back to our Shaman visit this afternoon. 

"Our" shaman was quite young –about 30 years old we think - and had been doing this for 5 or 6 years. His mother was sick and this was causing many problems in the family until finally they all realized it was because Sukhbaatar (his name) was not fulfilling his true destiny to be a shaman. Once he did that, the mother got better. 

He is also a throat singer as well as a horse head fiddle maker. Quite the accomplished guy! It was quite interesting to watch him perform mini-displays of how he normally gets into the trance in order to help people. The wolf is his protector so that is why he is a wolf on his drum. Each shaman will choose the animal that best suits him.  

He had lots of potions and masks and skulls and bells and icons and bowls full of rocks and water and stuff. 

He also had a couple of capes I shall call them. The one he wore for us had snakes on his back to protect him. He was working with some people who had a bad aura and he felt in danger so after that he put the snakes on this back. He does not want any bad spirits sneaking up on him from behind and taking some kind of control. 

He also has string hanging down on front of this face. The string is to protect his face in case of seeing bad things – he does not want to harm himself by seeing these things.

And then our leader asked if he would rid any of us who wised to be cleansed of any bad "aura". 

Of course he said he did not think we had any but a few of us asked to be "cleansed". 

So Bev took this of me being cleansed.