This book discusses the evolution of Mongolian shamanism from the distant past to the collapse of great empires such as the Yuan Dynasty in the fourteenth century, drawing on archeological findings and historical resources like the Mongolian Secret History. Further, it introduces readers to the cultural and ideological differences between Mongolian shamanists, who believe in the Eternal Blue Sky, and modern Mongols, who follow Buddhist teachings. In closing, the authors put forward the idea that Mongolian shamanism could have helped build great empires, emphasizing, e.g., shamanism’s influence on Mongolian culture and literature in the Middle Ages.

Part travelogue, part experiential spiritual memoir, Kevin Turner takes us to visit with authentic shamans in the steppes and urban centers of modern-day Mongolia. Along the way, the author, a practicing shaman himself, tells of spontaneous medical diagnoses, all-night shamanic ceremonies, and miraculous healings, all welling from a rich culture in which divination, soul-retrieval, and spirit depossession are a part of everyday life. Shamanism, described in the 1950s by Mircea Eliade as "archaic techniques of ecstasy," is alive and well in Mongolia as a means of accessing "nonordinary realities" and the spirit world. After centuries of suppression by Buddhist and then Communist political powers, it is exploding in popularity in Mongolia. Turner gives compelling accounts of healings and rituals he witnesses among Darkhad, Buryat, and Khalkh shamans, and goes on to provide us with his insights into a universal shamanism, principles that lie at the heart of shamanic traditions worldwide. This astounding, inspiring book will appeal to shamans and shamanic therapists, students of Mongolian culture and comparative religion, and fans of off-grid travel memoirs.

A remarkable array of people have been called shamans, while the phenomena identified as shamanism continues to proliferate. This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Shamanism contains with examples from antiquity up to today, and from Siberia (where the term “shaman” originated) to Amazonia, South Africa, Chicago and many other places. Many claims about shamans and shamanism are contentious and all are worthy of discussion. In the most widespread understandings, terms seem to refer particularly to people who alter states of consciousness or enter trances in order to seek knowledge and help from powerful other-than-human persons, perhaps “spirits”. But this says only a little about the artists, community leaders, spiritual healers or hucksters, travelers in alternative realities and so on to which the label “shaman” has been applied. This second edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and extensive bibliography. The dictionary contains over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries on individuals, groups, practices and cultures that have been called “shamanic”. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Shamanism.

A guide to worldwide shamanism and shamanistic practices, emphasizing historical and current cultural adaptations. This two-volume reference is the first international survey of shamanistic beliefs from prehistory to the present day. In nearly 200 detailed, readable entries, leading ethnographers, psychologists, archaeologists, historians, and scholars of religion and folk literature explain the general principles of shamanism as well as the details of widely varied practices. What is it like to be a shaman? Entries describe, region by region, the traits, such as sicknesses and dreams, that mark a person as a shaman, as well as the training undertaken by initiates. They detail the costumes, music, rituals, artifacts, and drugs that shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness, communicate with spirits, travel in the spirit world, and retrieve souls. Unlike most Western books on shamanism, which focus narrowly on the individual's experience of healing and trance, Shamanism also examines the function of shamanism in society from social, political, and historical perspectives and identifies the ancient, continuous thread that connects shamanistic beliefs and rituals across cultures and millennia.

This book offers an in-depth insight into post-socialist rural shamans in Mongolia thereby making a rare but important contribution to the ethnography of both Inner Asia and Southern Siberia. It examines the social making of shamans, in particular those of the Shishget depression of the northernmost borders of Mongolia. By analysing practices, discourses and performances in local and national arenas, the author traces the social constitution of the shamans’ inspirational power, examines the shamans’ performance of power during the seance, discusses the economy of reputation of successful shamans and scrutinizes their legitimizing practices. The study will be welcomed by students of social/cultural anthropology and religious studies with a particular interest in shamanism or ritual studies.

First published in 1991 Mongolia Today presents a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field and gives important insights into the economic, political, legal and military systems of Mongolia. The Mongolian People's Republic, formerly known as ‘Outer Mongolia’, is three times the size of France but has population of just two million. Sandwiched between Russia and China, this remote heartland of Asia has long been one of the most inaccessible places in the world, its isolation preserved by political as well as geographical barriers. The modern history of Mongolia has been dominated by its two great neighbours: strong economic and political ties with the erstwhile Soviet Union and problematic relations with China. Relations with the West have been slow to develop. Post-cold war, Mongolia is willing to explore new relationships with other parts of the world and transform this once isolated land into a trading partner of international potential. This is an essential read for scholars and researchers of Central Asian studies, Asian politics, and Chinese studies.

These 130 articles Aisan mythologies and cover such topics as Buddhist and Hindu symbolic systems, myth in pre-Islamic Iran, Chinese cosmology and demons, and the Japanese conceptions of the afterlife and the "vital spirit". Also includes myths from Turkey, Korea, Tibet, and Mongolia. Illustrations.

Ripinsky-Naxon explores the core and essence of shamanism by looking at its ritual, mythology, symbolism, and the dynamics of its cultural process. In dealing with the basic elements of shamanism, the author discusses the shamanistic experience and enlightenment, the inner personal crisis, and the many aspects entailed in the role of the shaman.

Ritual Studies have achieved prominence since the 1980s, when interest in ritual as an object of inquiry was established, bridging over a number of humanities and social science disciplines. Both connected with religious studies and independent of it; overlapping with social and cultural anthropology, but also with history; related to science and health practices and ranging across the life course to education, Ritual Studies has come to encompass studies of change and dynamism in social life. Rituals are determinate in form, but not static. They enunciate distinctive social values within specific contexts that frame them; and they relate to the wider concerns and issues of their practitioners. Due to this broad and wide-ranging scope, it is often difficult to find a single resource on Ritual Studies, and even more so to find one which moves beyond the beginnings of anthropological theorizing to grapple with the present-day contexts of ritual. Bringing together recent ethnographies of ritual practice and ritualization from across the globe, this Handbook provides case study of ritual in the light of Emotion and Cognition, Identity, Religious Power, Performance and Literature, Ecology and Ecological Disaster, Media, and other topics. While each chapter provides a deep ethnography of a specific society, ritual, or ritualized practice, each also engages with current theoretical and substantive approaches to the relevant topic. The scholars collected here provide original synoptic and indicative pieces as guideposts and pathways through the complex, varied and cross-disciplinary, and vast landscape of scholarship that constitutes Ritual Studies today and points to developments in the future.

Mongolia remains a beautiful barren land of spectacularly clothed horse-riders, nomadic romance and windswept landscape. But modern Mongolia is now caught between two giants: China and Russia; and known to be home to enormous mineral resources they are keen to exploit. China is expanding economically into the region, buying up mining interests and strengthening its control over Inner Mongolia. Michael Dillon, one of the foremost experts on the region, seeks to tell the modern history of this fascinating country. He investigates its history of repression, the slaughter of the country's Buddhists, its painful experiences under Soviet rule and dictatorship, and its history of corruption. But there is hope for its future, and it now has a functioning parliamentary democracy which is broadly representative of Mongolia's ethnic mix. How long that can last is another question. Short, sharp and authoritative, Mongolia will become the standard text on the region as it becomes begins to shape world affairs.