Mongolian Shamanism: A Video of Their Healing Ceremonies and Traditions

This video from FSS looks at Mongolian shamanic traditions and includes a healing ceremony. It is a preview of the full length DVD that is a video field study looking at their traditions and healing methods that is titled "Drums of the Ancestors: Manchu and Mongol Shamanism."

You can buy the full length DVD from the FSS site. Here's their description:

This remarkable and unique documentary filmed in North China and Inner Mongolia during a field study sponsored by the Foundation for Shamanic Studies in 1995, offers a rare opportunity to experience the living traditions of shamanism as practiced today by the Manchu and Mongol peoples. The film includes an ancient harvest ritual, a ceremony for healing, as well as interviews with shamans. Provides rare detail of actual shamanic ritual costume and altar presentations.

Here's a little background on Mongolian Shamanism:

Among the Mongol and Siberian indigenous peoples, the universe is conceived as a living organism. The polar star is a celestial nail, also called the Golden Nail, and the Altaic shamans decorate their drums with the symbols of Venus and the constellation of the Great Bear. In Buryat shamanistic symbolism, the World-Tree is connected to the World-River, which interlinks with all the three worlds. It must be traversed by the shaman in order to reach any part of the Otherworld.

In Siberian cosmology, the universe is also associated with animal concepts, such as the elk for the Middleworld, the bear for the Master of the Animals, or, among the Evenks, for the ethnogenic father. In addition, the universe has a tripartite structure consisting of the Upper, Middle, and Lower worlds, each one being a replica (imago mundi) of the other two. The Yakut shaman embarks on a soul journey by ascending progressively several celestial poles, the World-Tree. It is particularly important that the drum of a Siberian shaman be made from the wood of the World-Tree. The cosmological symbolism depicted on the drumskin, in conjunction with the whole drum, stands for the entire universe. All these types of symbolic devises are internalized by the shaman as his or her personal metaphors.