As far back as the historical record goes, shamanism was the oldest religion practiced in Asia, which was once a single cultural area extending over Russia, China, India, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal and Persia; where shamanism was concerned, these were a unified culture.

 From this original shamanism comes Siberian shamanism (suppressed by the Soviets, but now making a comeback in the Buryat republic), the Bon religion, and probably Chinese ancestor-worship (?). Buddhism spread throughout central Asia after 600 BC; Tibet converted from Bon to Buddhism about 800 AD; Tibetan Buddhism - usually called lamastic Buddhism - embraced most of the elements of Bon and also of Indian tantrism . . . becoming, essentially, a shamanistic religion. Tibetan lamas fall into trances, predict the future, and in many important ways behave exactly like shamans. After 1300 AD, the Mongols converted from shamanism to lamastic Buddhism, and this faith spread all the way up into Siberia.

Prayer to the shaman's mirror: "O my mirror, offered by my mother-sister, red and decorated with dragons, O oppressor of infant demons." Mirrors frightened evil spirits away. Old coffin-statues and wall-paintings in Chinese tombs (Liao period, at Luan-feng) show men holding up mirrors faced outward, to frighten evil spirits away from the tombs of the dead. Further, the shaman's mirror reflects everything, inside and out - including the most secret thoughts. One shaman was quoted as saying that in his mirror, his spirit horse lives and will come when he calls. The mirror's final task is to turn away the invisible attack of evil powers, protecting the shaman. The style of a modern shaman's mirror is apparently very old (and the ideas of its powers, probably likewise) - the mirrors are in the style of old Han-dynasty Chinese bronze mirrors, which in the last centuries BC and the first AD were traded all over central Asia. They are smooth on one side, perhaps polished to brilliance, and the reverse side is ornamented with flower-tendrils, birds and figures.

Helmets etc: Buryat shamans wear red headclothes, but used to wear masks. Mongol shamans sometimes wear helmets with horns. East Mongolian shamans wear silk headclothes, usually red.

Drum and drumstick: the spirit drum in eastern Siberian cultures is a round drum with a crossways stick. The second form of drum has a handle with rattles inside it. Form of drums: on a round or oval iron ring, a thin goatskin is stretched when wet; the lower part of the skin has a hole through which a 7 inch handle is fitted; this is iron and runs in a ring of twisted bar-iron (?); the handle is wrapped with leather strips. Nine small iron rings slide along the ring of the handle, making a rattling sound. These drums are usually called "peace-drums" or "drums that welcome the New Year". The sound frightens evil demons and drives them away.

The drumstick is called the shaman's sceptre. There are two forms. One: a stick, one end of which terminates in a horse's head, the other in a hoof; the middle may be slightly curved to represent a saddle, sometimes with tiny stirrups attached. The function of this staff is to serve as a shaman's flying horse, bearing him on his spirit journey to the realm where evil demons are battled. (Ie it is a witch's broom!)

The second form of the drumstick is a thin rod covered with a snake's skin, with long colored ribbons hanging from the snake's mouth - when the drum is beaten, the fluttering of the ribbons brings to mind the darting of a snake's tongue, the darting movements of a snake. This is called the "speckled scaly snake".

Kitan shamans also sewed arrows onto their costumes and sought to frighten demons away with the noise of their cries, the sound of bells and the noise of sewn-on arrows <ie clattering together?>.

Pole-offering: made in a special offering-place by suspending meat or horses from poles.

Day of the Red Disc: a great feast, summer solstice on the sixteenth day of the first month of summer.

Earliest known Mongol beliefs: the holy numbers: three, six and nine. War drums with drum skins made from the skins of black bulls. Fire purified. The Mongols in the twelfth century made idols of their household gods (ie the Ongghot) out of felt, setting them up on the sides of the tent-doors and offering them first milk of the flocks.

A Buryat chronicle says: "The souls of shamans and shamanesses who have died before and also the souls of other dead people become Ongghot. They call forth illness and death on the living. The souls of other dead people however become demons <cidkur> which bring evil to the living." Shamans command the ancestor spirits of the Ongghot, and they fight the following evil influences:

1. Cidkun: demons, devils or demonic possession.

2. Tuidker: possession or misfortune.

3. Ada: demons which soar in the sky and which surprise men, spread illnesses and bring misfortune

4. Eliye: bird-like demons who announce and also bring misfortune.

5. Albin: wandering lights.

6. Kolcin: ghosts of repellent, terrifying appearance.

7. The teyirang-demons.

Dharani: magical formulae taught to the Mongols by lama missionaries.

Red-cap lamas (sent into Mongolia to replace the shamans) who cultivated meditation had to spend 404 days in isolation and prayer, in four terms of 101 days: the first under a solitary tree on the edge of a steppe or desert; the second in meditation at a spring; the third upon a mountainside; and the fourth and last (and most taxing) in solemn prayer, fasting and trance on a place where corpses were exposed; during this last period the lama is forbidden to defend himself in any way against anything, whether hallucination or mundane attack. And during this period he had also to fashion ritual implements: a rosary of human bone, a trumpet from a young girl's tibia and an eating-bowl from a human skull, and also a double drum (Sanscrit damaru) from two skull-caps with skin stretched over them. After this, the lama was known as a diyanci lama, a magician and hermit. An even more enlightened lama called a gurtum lama would have the ability to drive himself into an ecstatic trance, wherein he could exorcize demons and prophesy the future. (The state oracle at Lhasa was clearly one such.)

A shaman in ecstacy could do feats of strength and endurance impossible for normal men.

Mongol folk religion: prayers to "the power of Eternal Heaven", prayers to the White Old Man (Cayan Ebugen) to the three gods in the form of armored men on horseback (Sulde Tngri, Dayicin Tngri and Gesar Khan) and to the constellation of the Great Bear (Doluyan Ebugen). Offerings of incense. Worship of fire. Worship of Mother Earth, and of the four great mountains.

Peoples in central and northern Asia burn juniper branches and berries as incense.

Incense offering (Mongol sang or ubsang, Tibetan bsangs) of juniper branches (arca) and berries; also of actual incense (kuji). Incense is offered to the wind-horse flag.

Fire-prayer (ocig): recited at sacrificial offerings (takilya) at which offerings such as the breast-bone of a sheep, covered with colored ribbons and melted butter, are burned. In north Mongolia the fire-offering is celebrated exclusively by women on the twenty-ninth day or the last month of the year.

Ceremony of invitation (dalalya) gods are named, requests made to them; the gods invoked are shown the direction of their worshipers through an arrow to whose shaft are attached gold, pearls, pieces of silver, silk strips and grain; those present accompany the rite with the cry of qurui, qurui.





Mongol divinities:

Ongghot, Ongghon: ancestor spirits represented by dolls or small paintings or images.

Bogeleku: to invite the Ongghot to take possession of one's body

Sa bdag: Lords of the Earth

Koke tngri, mongke tngri: the blue or eternal heaven, which was the summit of the divine.

Tngre Ecige: the Heavenly Father

Sulde: genius angels or guardians, the militant spirits animating the standards (and the flags, which are called wind-horses) and military insignia.

Ataya Tngri: one of the oldest shamanist deities, thought identical with the all-ruling Eternal Sky.

Emegelji Eji: the very old grandmother, female version and wife (?) of Ataya Tngri.



In the southwest resides the White Lightning Tngri, riding on a white horse, along with his companions the 77 siqar, the 99 Rumblers or kukur, and the 13 terrible thunder tngri.

Invocation:

My prince Gujir Tngri

You who eat burning fire

You who have a fiery serpent for your staff

A rage-maddened wolf for your mount

Human flesh as food

Bronze and stone for heart

You who slink up like the crouching wolf

You who tear like the grasping wolf . . .

The Fire Tngri; Fire King Miraga (or Miranca); the Fire-Mother Odqan Talaqan; Tngri of the Hearth-Circle; Mighty Tngri of the Fireplace: "red in color, with one face, two hands, riding upon a brown billy-goat. In his right hand he holds a counting-cord and red silk strips, in his left hand a fire-pan. His body is decorated with various silk strips. Surrounded by numerous companions, the Tngri of Fire comes, summoned from the direction of the southern firmament ..."

The Fire-Mother may be the oldest version of the god of fire ...? She is the butter-faced one, who later becomes the white mother with the thunderbolt. In older prayers, the Fire-Mother is not one woman but the mothers Tala Khan, the older and younger sisters. These Fire-Maidens may number up to five sisters, wild deities with blinding white faces, upraised arms, wide-opened mouths with bared teeth. Four Fire-Maiden Tngri of the cardinal points are also spoken of: the eastern being white, the southern reddish-yellow, the western dark-red and the northern black.

Prayers to the Fire Mother included requests for blessings to the umbilical cord and the womb; the birth of sons; long life, fame, riches, power; for good fortune and also protection of many kinds. To protect from cattle-plague, from slippery ice, from thieves and wolves and also the ada and jedker demons, etc etc. For sur sunesun, good fortune: for "the sur sunesun of the horses, of the camels with shaggy manes, of the thick-limbed bulls, of the long-tailed stallions, of the mares with big teats, of the geldings with big swellings on their knee-joints and of the cows with big teats ... of the loud-barking dogs ..."

To the Fire Tngri were offered yellow butter, melted butter and the breast-bone of a white sheep with a yellow-spotted head, the thin layer of fat on the inside skin of a slaughtered beast; the offering of a breast-bone was covered with colored silk strips.

"Odqan Talaqan Mother arose

When Khangai Khan was still a hill

When the elm-tree was still a sapling

When the falcon was a fledgeling

When the brown goat was a kid ...

When Mount Burqantu was still a hill

When the willow was still a sapling

When the lark was still a fledgling ..."

Arsi Tngri: the Hermit Tngri

The White Old Man - called by the Mongols Tsaghan Ebugen; by the Tibetans sGam po dkar po; in China, Muan-llu-ddu-ndzi and Hwa-shang and Ho-shang; by the Japanese Jurojin; possibly the European St Nicholas. A cunning old man with white clothes and white hair, who leans on a dragon-headed staff. He is the lord of the mountain, a pre-Buddhist culture-hero who rules the earth and the waters. The white garb is probably a shaman's robe; with a blow of his staff, the White Old Man can sicken or kill cattle.

Sulde Tngri: a sulde is a genius, a protecting companion; a sulde is a standard or banner (or an ark?).

To invoke the sulde-genius against insult, calumny and deception: go to the summit of a high mountain and there offers a triangular, black offering-pyramid of gold and silver filings, spirts, milk, flour and butter, and offer a libation of black tea with a many-pointed arrow.

To invoke the sulde-genius against war, enemies, thieves and brigands: mix in spirits equal parts of the following: blood of a murdered man, shavings from iron used to kill a man - and offer this with flour, butter, milk and black tea - and further prepare a triangular red offering-pyramid and a triangular black offering-pyramid.

Description of Sulde Tngri: a white-coloured tngri, his head adorned with a thunder-helmet, his armor made of jewels, made of gold. Clothed with marvellous moon-boots, with quiver of tiger-skin filled with sharp arrows slung over the right side; with bow-holder of panther-skin filled with the dreadful bow, hung over the left side of his body; with a sharp sword girt about the hips; holding in his hand a three-pointed bamboo staff. Mounted on a horse, with on his fingers an iron falcon flapping its wings upward; leading a white lioness on the right, a great tiger upon the left ...

Elsewhere the sulde are described as nine brothers riding fiery horses, with falcons flying above them, with lions rearing by their left shoulders and tigers springing by their right shoulders.

Dalyisun Tngri: called the high prince of the enemy gods or dGra lha (every man having a good god and an enemy god to protect him, and when a shaman lures away these good and enemy spirits, the man is in grave danger of occult attack): a rider with magic powers, on a horse as if riding upon white clouds, holding in his right hand the lance which takes enemies' lives, in his left hand the blade which reaches the evildoers, ornamented with fluttering ribbons and jewels.

Gesar Khan: the third rider tngri: protector of warriors and herds, especially herds of horses. Described as having a reddish-brown face, golden-yellow hair - his right hand holding arrows with the sign of Garuda, in his left hand the bow with the tiger's sign. A sun-like helmet on his head, a moon-like shield hangs on his shoulder, a star-like coat of mail covers his body. The fine sword of understanding upraised, riding on the horse of wisdom. With arrows like lightning and shooting-stars. With the King of Birds, Garuda, fixed on his helmet. Etc etc.

In Tibetan epics, Gesar Khan also wields the sword of understanding and wears the moon and sun and stars. He fought and killed the Siraighol Kings. He killed the twelve-headed giant. His beautiful wife is named Roy mo. His vanguard are thirty-five heroes and 360 warriors.