Note: Berghahn recently published Katherine Swancutt’s Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination, an ethnographic study of the world of Buryat Mongol divination. An excerpt from the book follows a note from the author which places it in the context of her larger argument.
It’s common knowledge that, when under duress, many people turn to religion. Yet the human penchant for inventing new magical practices during this ‘turn to religion’ is rarely revealed.
When I first went to Mongolia, I wanted to uncover how a shamanic cosmology comes to be reinvented over time. My plan was to document the shamanic practices – and especially the divinations (aka ‘fortune-tellings’) – undertaken by Buryat Mongols at the northeastern fringes of the country. These shamans manage everything from major health and business crises to everyday fluctuations in a person’s fortune, which, I learned, is not just a kind of luck-filled prosperity that can rise or fall dramatically. Fortune is also a driving force behind Buryat innovation-making. Continue reading “An Excerpt from Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination” →