Shaman Christian Ships
We heard before about Mongolia building its own marine, although with some suspicious activities. New to me is that they have a full functioning website. There is all kind of online application procedures, and if it all works correctly, there are still some good names available including simply "mongolia".
But possibly the most unexpected tidbit is the religious statistics in the "Mongolia in Brief" section.
Religions: Buddhist Lamaist 50%, Shamanist and Christian 6%, Muslim 4%, none 40% (2004)To have only 50% for the Buddhists is slightly uncommon, but to through Shamanist and Christian together on one pile....is unexpected, to say the least. Maybe they are believed to worship "Tenger Christ", with John the Baaptist as the spirit of the river?
Although.... Once i visited the shaman ger at the bottom of the Gandan hill. In a decor of wolf skins, Buddhist iconography and images of the young Genghis Khan. The house shaman gave a lecture on religious practise to a willing crowd, that mostly reminded me of a sermon i witnessed in a evangalical church in a backroom close to sukhbaatar square a year before. The shaman was engaging the audience with participative comments (tiim ee? tiim ee!).
So maybe the ship registry is onto something here. Would the Eagle in the TV station name, be a shamanist totem afterall?
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technorati: mongolia
Labels: mongolia, religion, ship registry
1 Comments:
What an excellent and pleasant blog to get information on Mongolia from 'the inside'. Keep it up Guido. Greetings from an 'old Mongolia hand', Chris in HOng Kong.
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