A talk with spirits: meeting a shaman

Last august I have met a shaman in Mongolia, in a lovely natural park outside Ulan Bator.

His name is Bilguutei. He is young, son of a great and famous shaman.

I think he belongs to Teva tradition, traditionally originated in Siberia regions.

In shamanism culture, spread all over Mongolia, together with Buddhism religion, many spirits live in the natural world, and a shaman is an intermediate between our world and spirit world. Spirits are everywhere: in animals, in trees, in rocks, in thunderstorm, in rainbow... Each shaman communicates with a specific spirit, and also they use different clothes. Clothes are very heavy (I think 15 kilos, also more), plenty of feathers, some iron swastikas (a traditional ancient symbol, nothing to do with Nazism), bells (calling the spirits), mirrors or metal pendants (to be noted by spirits: hey, I'm here!).

I like this words written by Francesco Benozzo - a great connoisseur of this matter, sadly passed away this year - in his book 'Lo Sciamanesino' ('The Shamanism'), that mathes well with the first picture of my post:

"Ancora oggi indossano obbligatoriamente piume di aquila nei loro copricapi e uno dei loro appellativi è proprio 'figlie e figli dell'aquila'. In molti racconti della zona siberiana, la prima sciamana fu proprio l'aquila, uccello del sole, antenata celeste; e la sciamana, quando acquisisce il dominio sul fuoco, ottiene anche la capacità di trasformarsi in aquila per poter tornare alla propria origine, cioè al sole stesso." (by Francesco Benozzo).

English translation:

"Even today, they still wear eagle feathers in their headdresses, and one of their titles is precisely 'daughters and sons of the eagle.' In many tales from the Siberian region, the first shaman was the eagle, the bird of the sun, a celestial ancestor; and the shaman, when she gains mastery over fire, also gains the ability to transform into an eagle in order to return to her origin, that is, to the sun itself."

He started to dance, playing the drum rhythmically: rhythm evokes the natural cycles of nature, and allows people to get closer to the world of spirits, reproducing the natural breathe of things.

In all Mongolia, it is common to view some special point: some stones in cirle, with many flags above and some objects that people leave inside this sacred circles, like a donation to spirits. You can put there also money, or bones, or simply some stones, and you must walk three times around this point, to say thanks to spirits.

He also asked to spirits to obtain a good photoset of him!

Clothes and drum have the same colors of rocks, they have the same shades, like they were the same things.

Shamans, like all ancient men, don't separate humans by nature: animals and human being are the same thing, they live on the same plane of existence.

He was blended with landscape, it was amazing to be there, listening to the sound, with the eyes plenty of serenety and sun, with good friends aroun.

He has showed us there are no border between us and natural world.

We are nature.

In the pictures above you can see some svastikas with some little bells hold on them. The word svastikas means "good fortune" and "well-being" and it represents the eternal cosmic motion, like the motion of the sun in the sky.

Pictures taken with Sony Alpha 7iii.

31.08.2025.