Pale Blue Sky: Some aspects of Mongolian Shamanism

Shamans attempted to commune with and determine the wills of the local spirits that resided in great mountains and in special trees.

Image Credit: National Palace Museum

It was once believed that when dusk had settled on the blistered olive of the Mongolian tundra, the stars and planets — whose flames decorated each night’s sky — would bestow people with good health and impart, to them, celestial wisdom. The venerated constellation known to us as Pleiades was associated with their heaven. The seven stars of Ursa Major watch over them as the “seven old men”.

There is no concrete theory for why the number nine was the most distinguished above all other numbers. Though we know that Mongolian shamans draped nine colourful strips of cloth, called maitkhuuch, off the feathered backs of their ceremonial hats and hung along their sashes nine bronze mirrors that clamoured percussively in their ritual dances. (Apprentice shamans were only permitted to hang eight mirrors.) In shaman songs, they would sing of the ninety-nine heavens or skies in the universe: their word for heaven/sky synonymous conceptually with the great heaven/sky spirits. There were said to be fifty-five benevolent spirits that dwelled in the cardinal direction West and forty-four evil gods who resided in the East.

Each of the ninety-nine skies belonged to their own star. Unusually, the other remaining stars in the sky all belonged to the people alive on the Earth. To a Mongol, when a meteor falls somebody dies because their star had fallen. We infer that meteor showers would signal some massacre or disaster transpiring on a far-off plain.

This belief is rooted in the axiom that human beings and all aspects of the natural world were, and could be, controlled by a spirit’s powers. As such shamans attempted to commune with and determine the wills of the local spirits that resided in great mountains and in special trees. In the rituals they held at those sites, shamans would dance into feverish trances to evoke a magic allowing spirits to enter their body. Their ensuing frenzy was the spirit seizing violent control of the shaman’s mind.

Those special trees inhabited by spirits came to be commonly known as shamaness trees, since ancient Mongolian society had always believed that the land itself was looked after by mothers and mother-spirits. Early rituals venerating weather phenomena involved wooden totems shaped into figures of women, and even the morphology of the Mongolian words differentiating the genders of shamans lends itself to a similar implication. The term for a (male) shaman, boo, is a homophone of their word for wrestler, bokh. It shares the same linguistic root as the Turkish word for ‘sage’ and the Chinese word for ‘divination’. The term for a (female) shamaness, udgan, shares its meaning with ‘woman-shaped spirit’, but can also mean ‘beginning’, ‘origin’, and ‘ancestor’. Ancient Mongolian tribes remained matriarchal for comparatively much longer than the rest of the world, and in the court of Genghis Khan, right up until recent history, shamanesses often enjoyed the privilege of greater religious authority compared to their shaman counterparts.

Mongols revered two colours the most: the pale yellow-blue of the sky they lived under, and white. White was the colour of the wandering clouds and also the colour of the moon, but most importantly it was the colour of milk and the milk products which comprised the main source of their food. Milk had religious importance; the first month of autumn was designated for ceremonies for the preparation of dairy products and milk was often scattered in rituals. A qualified shaman’s tambourine is white. (Apprentice shamans were given a red tambourine.)

Of the Mongolian livestock, all of which provided milk, horses were the most esteemed because of their social and military uses. There are instances of horses being decorated in ribbons and dedicated to a local guardian spirit as their riding animal. Such a horse becomes a living shrine to that spirit and no people could use nor harm that animal. 

The very first sentence of The Secret History of the Mongols, the definitive chronicle of the conqueror Genghis Khan’s life, boldly declares that his destiny was ordained by THE heaven, the greatest spirit associated with Pleiades above. Genghis Khan was the title bestowed to him, Khan meaning ‘lord’ and Genghis believed to mean ‘strong’. Genghis Khan’s horse was white.

There is an episode from the life of Genghis Khan where he believed himself saved by the guardian spirit who resided in the great mountain Burkhan Khaldan. When he was young and still known by his birth name Temüjin, he fled from the three adversaries who had ambushed his camp and captured his first, and at the time only, wife Börte. He evaded capture with the help of the old woman Qo’aqchin who hid him in her cart, and he escaped into the boreal forests where he hid for three days and could not be found. When he had descended safely from this mountain, he draped the sash on his hat around his neck; a sign of respect towards heaven; and hung his hat from his arm. Then, beating his chest, he knelt nine times toward the sun. In that moment he resolved to give offerings to and pray to this mountain every morning for the rest of his life and declared that also “the seed of my seed shall know this”. Centuries later the sacred Burkhan Khaldan and its panoramic surrounds is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. Even today, the ceremonial cairn erected there remains an important site for modern shaman rituals.