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www.shamansociety.org 15 S H A M A N I C P R A C T I C E Introduction Since the mid 1990s Susan Grimaldi and John Lawrence Jr. have together been searching for and researching surviving traditional shamans. Their work has taken them to three conti- nents. The fruits of their labor have been preserved in photo- graphic video and audio recordings as well as in written form. The video recordings include face-to-face interactions conversa- tions interviews shamanic rituals and healing work. For the work presented here they began a quest to see if they could find practicing shamans among a nomadic tribe of reindeer herders called the Dukha AKA Tsaatan these people being the last remaining truly nomadic subsistence reindeer herders in the world. Just as they finished packing their gear and were preparing to begin the last leg of this expedition into the West Taiga John and Susan had the unexpected good fortune to meet a shaman from a different ethnicity the well known Darkhad shaman Erdene-Ochiz. The following findings were gathered during this expedi- tion to the Sayan Mountain Range in the remote outpost of Tsagaanuur located in northern Mongolia. We asked Erdene-Ochiz how he had become a shaman. He began When I was 13 years old I got frozen. He was attending a boarding school in a different town. He missed his family and hated school. One winter he tried to escape from the school and reach his home. On the way his ears and toes were deeply frostbitten. During his escape he was stricken with another serious ill- ness. Its a childhood illness known as the wind flower illness. He explained This illness got inside of my body and I got crazy. A rash appeared on my skin. I was told that I had become delirious with a high fever and had taken off all of my clothes. I was unconscious. He didnt remember any of this. Someone in a car found him naked lying beside the road.He was frozen so hard that his feet were as hard as wood. He laid in the hospital unconscious for fifteen days. When he awoke he remembered nothing only knowing that he was in the hospital. For three months he stayed there and during those months he had to have fluid aspirated from his chest and from behind his scarred ears. He lost some of his toes.Eventually though he got well. We wondered why he had run away from school and he told us I missed my home very much. I was not interested in school at all. I had tried to run away before and my family would catch me and send back to the school. We wanted to know what happened after his recovery and were told After I got well I had to go back to school. When I was at school I started foretelling the fortunes of my classmates. The teachers didnt understand me. They blamed me for doing these divinations and said that I was bad and doing wrong claiming that I was turning around the heads of my classmates. My teachers hit me beat me and threw me against the wall. Shamanism was prohibited and punished by the Soviet govern- ment. My teachers made me hit the wall because the society was against the shamanic traditions. They tried to take away my power and destroy me. So I stopped doing these shamanic practices under this pressure. I quit this kind of seeing.It was Meeting with Darkhad Shaman Erdene-Ochiz of Mongolia His Story and Description of a Special Tool for Extraction Healing by Susan Ross Grimaldi M.Ed. and John R. Lawrence Jr. PhD Erdene-Ochiz Darkhad Shaman Photo by John R. Lawrence Jr.