Mongolian shamanism is a living religion built around the böö (male shaman) and udgan (female shaman), who serve as go-betweens for the Mongol people and a sky god called Tenger, a wide host of ancestor spirits, and the spirits of specific mountains, rivers and places. It survived nearly seventy years of state suppression under communist rule and has been practised openly again since the early 1990s, both in independent Mongolia and among Buryat and other Mongolic peoples across the wider steppe.
Below I cover who the böö and udgan are, what Tenger and the ovoo shrines mean, how the Mongolian state tried to erase this tradition in the twentieth century, and where it stands now.
Who are the böö and the udgan?
A böö is a male shaman and an udgan a female shaman. Both mediate between people and the spirit world, although in traditional Mongol society spiritual authority was never theirs alone. Nobles, clan elders and even ordinary heads of household carried out their own smaller rites, and the böö or udgan was called in for the work that needed a specialist: serious illness, a death that needed settling, or a dispute with the spirits of a place.
Mongolian tradition also makes a split that outsiders often find surprising: white shamans work with benevolent spirits on behalf of the community, while black shamans handle the fiercer, more dangerous end of the spirit world. Among the Buryat, this distinction hardened further after Buddhism arrived: white shamanism absorbed Buddhist deities and prayers, while black shamanism kept working with the older spirits largely untouched.
A böö’s drum is not simply an instrument. It is described in Mongolian tradition as a mount, the animal that carries the shaman’s ongon, their ancestral or guardian spirit, across the boundary between worlds. Losing or damaging a drum is treated as a serious matter for exactly this reason.
Who is Tenger, and why does Genghis Khan matter here?
At the top of the Mongolian spirit world sits Tenger, father sky, sometimes addressed as Qormusta Tengri. A vast hierarchy of ancestor spirits, the tngri, sits underneath him, traditionally counted as ninety nine: fifty five gentle, forty four fierce. Seventy seven earth mothers, spirits of the land itself, make up the lowest tier.
Genghis Khan occupies an unusual place in this system. Mongol tradition treats him as the clearest embodiment of Tenger’s power on earth, and reverence for him at dedicated shrines continued for centuries after his death, right up until Soviet-backed authorities shut it down in the 1930s. That a historical ruler and a sky god could be spoken of almost in the same breath tells you how thoroughly this religion is woven into Mongolian national memory, not kept separate from it the way a church is kept separate from a parliament.
What is an ovoo, and what do you do at one?
An ovoo is a mound shrine, usually stones piled on a hilltop or pass. Blue prayer scarves and wooden poles sometimes dress it too. Each one is treated as the dwelling of a specific spirit, a mountain, a river, a local protector, or the guardian of a whole district. Travellers passing an ovoo traditionally walk around it clockwise, add a stone, and leave a small offering of food, drink or incense before continuing their journey.
It is a small ritual, over in a minute or two, and that is rather the point. Mongolian shamanism does not reserve contact with the spirit world for special ceremonies alone. It expects you to keep up a running relationship with the land you are moving through, one stone and one short pause at a time.
How did communism nearly end this tradition?
From 1924 to 1992, Mongolia was governed as a Soviet satellite state, and the Mongolian People’s Republic treated native religion, both shamanism and Buddhism, as a direct threat. Shrines to Genghis Khan were destroyed. Practitioners were driven underground or worse. For much of the twentieth century, an entire generation of Mongolians grew up with this religion pushed almost entirely out of public life.
What makes this history worth sitting with is how little it actually worked. The tradition did not need institutions to survive, because it had never fully depended on them. A family’s private rites, a traveller’s habit of pausing at an ovoo, a grandmother’s knowledge of which spirits to leave alone: these things are harder for a state to find and ban than a temple is.
How is Mongolian shamanism practised today?
Since Soviet influence ended in the early 1990s, Mongolian shamanism has come back into the open quickly, both in Mongolia itself and among Buryat communities in Russia and China. Organisations such as the Mongolian Shamans’ Association, known as Golomt Tuv, and the Golomt Center for Shamanist Studies now train and represent practitioners formally, something the tradition never needed or had before the twentieth century forced it underground.
The American-raised teacher Sarangerel Odigon did a great deal to carry Buryat Mongol shamanism to a Western audience through her book Riding Windhorses: A Journey into the Heart of Mongolian Shamanism (2000), written after she reconnected with her own Buryat lineage as an adult. Her work, alongside Mongolian-led organisations, has helped the tradition reach practitioners who have no family connection to the steppe at all, while keeping the line between genuine instruction and costume-wearing fairly clear.
Why this is the lineage I was trained in
Of the traditions I write about on this site, this is the one I did not come to as a visitor. My own training runs through the Mongolian and Siberian line, and it shapes how I teach journeying, how I think about helping spirits, and how seriously I take a request as simple as leaving something behind at a place before you ask it for anything. I will not pretend my own practice looks like a full Mongolian ceremony conducted by a böö. It does not, and to claim otherwise would be the kind of borrowing this tradition’s history gives every reason to avoid. What I carry from it is a method and a set of manners: how to approach a spirit, how to ask, how to say thank you properly. That much I can vouch for directly.
Frequently asked questions
A böö is a male shaman and an udgan is a female shaman in Mongolian tradition. Both perform the same core role, mediating between people and the spirit world, and the terms simply mark gender rather than different functions.
Tengerism is a name sometimes used for Mongolian shamanism, centred on reverence for Tenger, the sky. Some practitioners and researchers prefer it as a more precise term than the general word shamanism.
Circling an ovoo clockwise and adding a stone is a traditional way of greeting the spirit of that place, usually done before a journey continues, and it is one of the few shamanic customs in Mongolia still practised almost universally, including by people who would not call themselves religious.
Yes. The Mongolian People’s Republic suppressed shamanism from 1924 to 1992 and destroyed shrines, including those honouring Genghis Khan, but private and family practice continued quietly and the tradition has been openly revived since the early 1990s.
A religion that keeps most of its real work in small, private gestures is hard for any state to kill, and Mongolia’s shamanism is the proof. If you want to see how this tradition sits next to Siberian, Korean and other living practices, the map of the world’s shamanic traditions is a good place to keep reading. Tell me in the comments: do you have a ritual of your own for greeting a place before you pass through it?
