Buryat Shamanic Activities and Their Spiritual Background

Buryat shamans’ spirits are spectres of ancestors and individuals who used to live in the human world and practised as well-known shamans or were famous for other merits. Mongols believe that three or more years after their death, shamans become spirits (ongon) and are able to come back to the human world by seizing the body of another shaman, who is (in most cases) his/her descendant or apprentice. Considering the fact that certain people from the past can also come and take possession of a shaman, we might assume that the abilityof becoming an ongon is not only the shamans’ priviledge.

Spirits do not want to part from the world they used to live in. They do exert a significant influence on their descendants’ lives―either by taking care of them or by being angry with them. Spirits demand their descendants’ attention and want to be served and entertained by them on a regular basis. Since they do not have body, their only possible way to come to the living people’s world is to use one of them as a vehicle for appearance. That is why they choose and even force certain people to be their mediators, i.e. to become shamans.

Shamans have to be possessed by their spirits (ongon oruulax) regularly; else they become seriously ill. They are similar to artists, who also show sings of depression or even fall ill if they do not have the opportunity to produce works of art. An even more striking similarity between some features of shamans and artists, and also the fact that Mongols, too, closely associate them can be apprehended by considering that in modern Mongolian, the same expression (ongon orox “the spirit enters”) is used for the shamans’ trance and the artists’ inspiration. When someone, for example, does not feel like singing when recquired, s/he might make excuses saying: ongon oroogüi lit.: “The spirit has not entered”, which means: “I am not possessed by the spirit”. (A similar expression can be found even in English: “the spirit does not move me”.) According to the Mongol way of thinking, the creative/performing activity of shamans and artists is concieved as a meeting of the shaman/artist and the spirits. Considering their relationship, the spirit―or we could say “inspiration”―is undoubtedly predominant. Similarly to the poet who feels to be forced by his/her thoughts and feelings to put them down on paper, the shaman is forced by their spirits to invite them. Mongols hold that if the shaman does not fulfill the spirits’ requirements, they will be angry and might even kill him/her

In order not to offend the spirits, Buryat shamans have to perform their spirit- pleasing rituals three times a month. The ninth, nineteenth, and twenty-ninth of each lunar month are the days on which these rituals (called yühen “nine”) have to be performed by the so-called black shamans, whose mount is their drum and whose costume is regarded as their armor. White shamans2, who wear a blue brocade gown (xüxe xamba nümerge) and use a bell and a vajra instead of a drum and a drumstick, perform the same ritual on the eighth, eighteenth, and twenty- eighth, or on the second, eighth, and sixteenth day of each lunar month. These days are considered to be the descending days of the White Old Man (Sagaan übegenei buulttai üder), the patron deity of white shamans. Buryats refer to spirit- pleasing rituals as naima naimanai nagalga yühe yühenei yürgelge “swaying of the eighth, swinging of the ninth” indicating that these rituals are performed on the aforementioned days.

Spirit-pleasing rituals can be conducted indoors (yühengee xexe) or outdoors (taxilga). Those performed in the shamans’ yurt are of smaller importance than those celebration-like rituals observed in the nature at a sacred place, usually once a year. The main purpose of a spirit-pleasing ritual is to maintain the good relationship whith the ancestral spirits by inviting them to the shaman’s home and by entertaining them to food and drink. On the days spirit-pleasing rituals are conducted, rather the spirits want to be invited than the people want them to come.

What Does the Shaman Sing?

I'm writing this post in the hope that I can get somebody helping me transcribe a song of a Buryat shamaness. I don't know the shamaness personally, I just happened to be around and recorded her while she was channeling her spirit. The shamaness was (and probably still is) a member of the Mongolian Shamans' Golomt Center which gave me the permission to make recordings of its shamans. The footage was made in April 2005 in Selenge province, Mongolia, at a ritual site called Mother-tree (Eej mod). The Mother-tree is a huge pine tree that was once struck by lightening but it didn't die, it still shoots sprouts every spring. In 2005 the shamans of the Golomt Center took me to the site where I made footages of several shamans' rituals. Every shaman had his/her own tree near the Mother-tree. They arranged an altar below their trees and started performing their rituals in front of them. I want to use the ritual of this shamaness for my PhD which is about Buryat shamanism in Mongolia, but I understand only bits and pieces of her song. I have transcribed everything I could understand, but as you'll see there are still a lot of indistinct parts. So if you are Mongolian or Buryat or somebody who understands these languages well and have the time, energy and curiosity to help me transcribe this song please do so!

Click here to find my transcription!

map counter

Khorchin Shamans 4.

After the ritual Mr. Shaman took us and Mrs. Shamaness to a small village called Yaolinmaodu some 50kms from Baolongshan to meet an old shaman. It was already late at night around 10 pm. and it was raining so heavily that our car almost got stuck in the mud. We got off the car and started our quest for the old shaman in an ocean of mud and in complete darkness. Finally we found the house. It was dark inside, just like in every other.I told Mr. Shaman that we didn't want to wake the old shaman up, lets go back to Baolongshan and come back tomorrow daytime.He said: "No problem he will wake up for a while and he will sleep back soon." We went in and saw the old shaman waking up and getting ready to recieve us. He lived with his wife and with a young girl who was probably his grand-daughter. We sat down on the kang, where he'd been sleeping and started to ask our questions. The old guy looked strange and I couldn't decide whether he was drunk or just very tired. May be both. He said that he had quitted shamanizing because he was too old, but he sang a short passage of his invocations for my request. I coudn't understand a word of it. Actually it was extremely difficult to understand him even when he was speaking. Nor did he understan much of what I was speaking with my thick Khalkha accent. We soon realized that he was very tired and coudn't tell us too much about Khorchin shamanism so we decided to give him the sweets and fruits that we'd bought for Mr. Shaman and left soon. As we stepped out from the old shaman's home Mr. Shaman announced that we were going to visit another shaman who lived nearby and took us to another house where a relatively young couple lived with their two teenager children, a boy and a girl. The husband brought in a table and placed it in the centre of the room while his wife prepared food for all of us. It all took approximately an hour till we all finished our meal and started to speak about shamanism. A shaman's drum and drumstik was hung on the wall and some images of Buddhist deities were enshrined opposite the entrance. Mr. Shaman told us that wife was a white shaman, which could be seen from the streamers of her costume (alag deel). He explained that the black or white colour of a thin line along the edges of each streamers inditace whether the shaman is black or white. White shamans as he said whorship Buddhist deities while black ones worship other spirits. The shaman's husband brought in his wife's costume:

Khorchin shaman in her costume.

Mrs. Shamaness and the shamaness we visited (the smaller one) both donned her costumes, took their drums and started performing the ritual:

map counter

What is Situgen?

The word situgen means 'the object of veneration' in written Mongolian. Its modern Mongolian form is shuteen. A shuteen or situgen can be anything that is revered and worshipped by the Mongols. It can be one's parents, the spirits of deceased ancestors and shamans, buddhist deities, or a legendary hero. The meaning of situgen often overlaps with that of the onggon (modern M. ongon) which can be interpreted as divine inspiration that spurs artistic and religious performances. The onggon is also viewed as an ancestral spirit impersonated by shamans. In fact every onggon is a situgen for all the onggons are revered but not every situgen is an onggon.
In modern Mongolian the combination of these two words are often used as one expression: ongon shuteen implying deities, and spirits.
In the Mongolian cultural region there are various types of situgen or onggon representations:

This is an image of a female ongon probably made of copper. You can see her tits and two parallel lines presumably standing for the streams of her flowing milk. I photographed it with my mobile phone during a trip outside of Ulaanbaatar.

A Khorchin shaman's ongon-images made of bronze.
2008 september Kulunqi, Tongliao, Inner-Mongolia.