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16 A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism VOLUME 8 ISSUE 1 SPRINGSUMMER 2015 something I had to stop for a period. It was when I was 27 years old that I became a shaman in the real meaning of the term. He finished school married and had a family of his own. At the age of 20 he became insane.He ran away from his home and family. He ran away fifteen kilometers and preferred to be in the mountains in nature and alone.He became strange and couldnt be with regular people.This condition lasted for over a year. He doesnt remember that time well.He only remembers what he heard from other people. He ran through the valley and on occasion he would return to his home only to eat but then he would run away again. People couldnt recognize him because he had lost a lot of weight and seemed like a different person with a different appearance. He was really thin.He only wanted to be alone and to pray. An old shaman saw him jumping up and running away into the mountains and tried to make a shamanic re-pairment for him which we later understood to be the same as soul retrieval. With this help he made some improvement and after one year he stopped running away. That old shaman helped him to get back to life and regain his sanity. The old sha- man had told him that he needed to have some shamanic tools so he got three items a rattle a jaw harp and the Skys Arrow.His teacher made the jaw harp alive for him by whispering some powerful energy into it. A craftsman made a Skys Arrow for this sha- man which he still has and uses for extraction healing. Erdenes grandmother had been a shaman too. One of her students who had become a shaman informed Erdene that he had been chosen to become a shaman.During this initiatory pe- riod he began to dream of shamanic teachings learning directly from deceased ancestral shamans. As a tool the Skys Arrow has its origins in the Bronze Age. The length of the Skys Arrow is 7-10 inches 20cm. The point is sharp and the shaft is twisted into a spiral. The Skys Arrow as- sures that the shaman is always able to connect with the sky. He explained to us that The Skys Arrow is empowered by thunder and lightening and that the vibrations of the thunder and the power of the lightening can destroy an illness. He described how he uses the Skys Arrow for healing pa- tients. The Skys Arrow is used for getting out bad things. The helping spirit goes into my body and tells me what to do with the Skys Arrow. For instance he was instructed by the spirits to wipe the patients body clean using the Skys Arrow. If the person is having spasms or twitching the Skys Arrow needs to be wiped over them from head to foot and crosswise. I may be shown how to draw this bad out from somebody. He says that he often doesnt remember the healings Because when the spirit goes away I forget what I have done. He compared his shamanic healing journey to a dream saying It is like a dream. It is the spirit that knows. The Skys Arrow is a tool especially important for treating psychosis. He has treated many insane people successfully. He spoke about one man who had been insane for seven years. Dur- ing this period this insane man had two horses that he would tie together by their necks. He would stand on one saddle and then step across the moving horses to stand on both saddles. We asked why the insane man didnt fall off and he explained It was because while he was insane he was very good at communi- cating with the animals. During the healing for this man a helping spirit entered the shamans body enabling him to see the reason for the bizarre behavior. This was a case of shamanic poison. This insane person was an unusual person but he wasnt a shaman. The shamanic poison oc- curred because the patient had broken a taboo. He had offended nature and was experiencing punishment. In the healing process The Ongot spirit tells the shaman how to get rid of that shamanic poison so the person will be sane again. We understood Ongot spirits to be deceased shamans ancestors and nature spirits. During a healing the shaman calls on his many helping spirits and these go into his body. Erdene revealed Its like be- ing shifted. He said I have seven helping spirits. Almost all of them are old people spirits who already lived on the earth and have passed away. He told us that during a healing his soul goes out of his body as the spirits go into his body. We told Erdene that we had been informed that a few sha- mans in Mongolia practice black shamanism and we wanted to know if this is true and if so we wanted to know if he could explain why someone would do this.We had heard that in olden days there were two brothers who were both Darkhad shamans. They died in the 1960s. One shaman was white and one black. The black shaman would cause hardship and the white shaman would try to fix what his black shaman brother had caused. When the black shaman was still living every year on a particular day he required everyone in his community to pay him a visit and give him a valuable gift. Even the poorest person had to do Drawing of Skys Arrow by Erdene-Ochiz Darkhad Shaman Digital Image by John R Lawrence Jr.