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: