[Editor’s Note: This series is included as a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth .]
Shamanic Background
View of Lion Mt and Zhu Shao boats from the Bay of the Goddess, photo K. Rodin
Children are thought to become adults at a ceremony when they turn thirteen, at which time they can participate in all adult activity, including choosing their own partners from other villages. They often stay with each other for two to three years, but may change partners at any time. Around age seventeen they are ready for an ahzu relationship. Ahzu courtship begins when a boy sends his chosen girl a special dress and scarf. If she accepts them, then she is interested in pursuing the relationship. Once they are ready to become seriously involved, the girl will tie a shawl waist belt around the boy’s middle. This means they have become an ahzu couple. Not all relationships end up as ahzu relationships. The partnering today involves the Mosuo boy leaving his home around midnight wearing a cowboy hat to spend time with his girlfriend. Before the visit he needs three things: a cowboy hat to hide his identity and to hang on the door as a “do not disturb” sign), pebbles to throw to the window (when she comes she opens the window or door for him, if she doesn’t want his advances he’ll get a bucket of water thrown on him. If allowed in he can climb up the side of the house and enter her room), he also needs a good relationship with the dog, so he brings meat for the dog to keep him quiet. Most Mosuo households have dogs as according to legend they traded their allotted time on earth with people, so keeping the dog happy is important to any budding relationship. By four or five in the morning the boy returns home and works in his own family’s fields.
There is no reference in the textual tradition, which would indicate that a Buddhist priest would conduct a ceremony for someone who was pregnant or for any of the childhood rituals relating to traditional Mosuo culture. In practice, however, wandering lamas in Tibet did this quite often, thereby keeping the earlier shamanic practices alive. In Yongning, the daba, not the lama, chooses the child’s name on the day it is born or the day after, based on astrological oracles. During the ceremony a chicken is slain and the daba uses the chicken’s head to discern the fate of the newborn. On the third day, the mother and child are brought outside at dawn. She carries a sickle, a symbolic spear, and a copy of a page from a Buddhist Sutra to protect against evil forces. She raises the child to the sun, which is considered to be feminine and the benefactress of all life. In this ritual the three forms of sacred practice are united, the shamanic sacrificial blood offering and naming, holding the Buddhist text as protection, and supplication to the Divine Feminine. When the child is a month old, the mother’s ahzu is introduced to the child, and it is formally placed in its childhood clothes.[1] The child does not wear adult clothing until a coming-of-age ceremony when it is about thirteen. The daba plays a crucial role in this ritual as well as he speaks to the ancestors introducing them to the new adult. He ties the young person with a string that is supposed to do one or more of three things: bring good luck and long life, tie the now adult to the clan’s traditions and ancestors, and remind the newly initiated of their ancient nomadic history through a sheep wool thread. The ceremony is held during the thirteenth year of life, which is typical of other tribes in the greater Himalayan region, but the Mosuo have a delightful legend to explain the reasoning behind it. According to their tradition, when the Creator of the World was handing out the first lifespans, people fell asleep. When one hundred years was called, elephants spoke up, when sixty was called dogs spoke up, when twenty horses spoke up, and when thirteen was called people woke up to claim it. As they wanted to live longer, they made a deal with the dogs to switch, which the dogs agreed to on the condition that people would take care of them. At the coming-of-age ceremony, the family dog is brought into the room and fed rice and pork in thanks for their sacrifice of a long life. Clearly, none of these traditions are in any way related to Buddhism, but are an indication of a more ancient shamanic, perhaps laced somewhat with Bön magic, tradition.
For the Mosuo, as in other shamanic cultures, spirits live everywhere and can influence a person’s life, for both good and ill. There are good spirits who try to help and protect, and there are nasty ones who trick, bring bad luck, illness and natural catastrophes. The good ones are associated with nature, especially mountains, water elements, particular plants and house gods/the consecrated souls of the ancestors. The bad are associated with the dead souls of strangers, spirits of sickness and the lost unconsecrated ancestors. The Mosuo believe that the soul does not die; after death the soul goes back to the ancestral home. Their belief appears similar to that other greater Himalayan communities like the Tamang, where there are two souls, one that stays in the body and one that departs.There is a Mosuo maxim, “Three ascending generations, three descending generations”; one’s personhood is incomplete unless that person can faithfully serve three elder generations and raise three younger generations.[2] Daba led ceremonies honoring the ancestors are held in November, whereby a small piece of pork is offered after the name of each of the predecessors. Each house has a place of ancestor worship and behind that are ‘shanbala,’ a figure of a hearth deity made of clay or cut wood. According to Knödel’s sources, the shanbala tradition is not originally Mosuo, but instead came from Tibet, where it has been documented by a number of Tibetologists, including Snellgrove and Peters.[3] It could also have come from Mongolia as there are similar traditions there.[4]
Nature is seen as a positive force, and mountaintops are the seats of some of the most powerful deities. The Goddess Gemu lives on and in Lion’s Mountain, otherwise known as Yongning’s Woman’s Mountain. The Goddess Gemu also protects the people as long as they don’t misuse her. There are many legends of the lake that relate to the traditions of the people living on its shores. Local museum staff tell a story for the creation of the lake that does not involve an azhu relationship. According to them, a long time ago, before there was a lake, there was a large green meadow. A Mosuo orphan boy helped the local people watch over their animals, the yaks and goats grazing on the meadow. One day he found a huge fish in a pond. He carefully cut a piece of meat from it for barbequing, a favorite Mosuo pastime. On the second day, he saw that the fish was perfectly whole. He cut another piece from the fish and ate it again. This went on for a number of days, until one day he told his secret to some of the villagers. They came out to the pond and also cut pieces from the fish. Frustrated and wanting to capture the creature, they used eighteen water buffalo to haul the huge fish out of the water. There was a tremendous spray of water as the fish was almost landed, immediately flooding the grassy meadow and creating the lake. The fish was no ordinary animal, but a form of the Goddess Gemu. Mosuo Grandmother saw what was happening and had the people get into the pigs’ troughs and use them as boats, which saved them from the flood, thereby forming the Zhu Shao boats that are still used on the lake. In Mosuo language, “lake” means “mother” because its water comes from Holy Gemu Mountain. Like a mother, the mountain gives milk/sustenance to her children as it feeds the lake.
(To be continued)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Krista Rodin, Ph.D.
[1] Knödel, Die Matrilinearen Mosuo,198-99.
[2] Chuan-kang Shih, Quest for Harmony: The Moso Traditions of Sexual Union and Family Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 5.
[3] Knödel, Die Matrilinearen Mosuo, 207; Kevin Turner, Sky Shamans of Mongolia: Meetings with Remarkable Healers (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2016), 140.