The Wealth Of Shamans

“This is not play,” he says. “People in Ulaan Baatar treat it like theatre.”

Three days’ drive to the southeast, the Mongolian capital thrums with new energy. Just beyond the parliament building, a statue of Lenin stares out over a boulevard jammed with old Russian jeeps and new Japanese suvs. Capitalism has taken hold here.

Alongside a busy road sits a round white tent—a Mongolian ger, or yurt. Above the door, a blue-and-white sign announces “House of Mongolian Shamanistic Ritual” and, in smaller lettering, “Byambadorj, the shaman.”

Byambadorj, the urban shaman, arrives mid-morning to work. He’s a large man, verging on corpulent; he wears his thinning hair in a ponytail. Under Communism, Byambadorj worked as a driver, but now someone else chauffeurs him around town.

Six customers wait on a bench outside the tent; most are here for the first time. Byambadorj enters without even glancing at them. One man, Dovchin, is a meat-seller who looks to be in his thirties. He says that booze is ruining his life. He has tried to quit. Counselling, pills—nothing worked.

Inside the tent, Byambadorj seats him on a low chair. The shaman shakes a rattle and shouts to the spirits, “Shosh! Shosh!” He paces the tent, slapping Dovchin with the flat of a sword, then, amazingly, spritzing him with a spray bottle of vodka, until Dovchin drips and the air fills with the smell.

After ten minutes, Byambadorj stops to regard his patient, “I can see light in your face,” he says softly. “The Eternal Sky is going to pull you up.” Dovchin pays for his session in cash, the equivalent of half a week’s wages for most Mongolians. For the moment, he considers it money well spent.

Byambadorj says business is good. The demand for shamans is increasing. He rummages around his desk for a handful of business cards and a photocopy that lists his credentials. “Nowadays, shamans are more interactive with the world, more modern,” he says.

Ghosta, with his sixty head of reindeer and simple ortz, counts four generations of shamans in his lineage. Byambadorj claims nine. “There is not one God, but many,” Ghosta says. “They have chosen me and taught me to be a shaman.” To Byambadorj, “There are different spirits with different purposes. There is no manual to follow; it is up to his own free will.”