An ongon is a small made figure that a named spirit is understood to occupy. It is typically a few handspans at most, cut from felt or cloth, sometimes carved in wood, and it is kept inside the dwelling rather than at a shrine. What distinguishes it from an image is that it is fed: milk, fat and the first of a meal are offered to it, and the surface of an old ongon carries the residue of that feeding. Figures are made for a particular spirit and are replaced, retired or destroyed when the relationship they hold ends. European travellers to the Mongol court described felt figures of exactly this kind kept in the tents.
Facts
Identity
Also Known As Use
Who May Handle ItThe household that keeps it 1 ConsecrationConsecrated in a rite before use 1 Ritual ContextKept inside the dwelling and fed with milk, fat and a portion of a meal, so that an old figure carries the residue on its surface 1Tradition: Mongolian practice Attributions
TraditionMongolian practice, with cognates among the Buryat 1 Status
Status TodayIn active religious use 3Tradition: Mongolian practice Practice Status DetailSuppressed by Buddhist authorities and then far more thoroughly under state atheism; made openly again since the 1990s, so surviving historical examples are largely ones removed by outsiders 3Tradition: Mongolian practice Physical Form
MaterialFelt, cloth, hide or wood, sometimes with metal fittings, in small anthropomorphic or animal form 1Tradition: Mongolian practice Meaning
Symbolic MeaningA receptacle a named spirit occupies rather than an image of one, so a relationship has an address 2Tradition: Mongolian practice Learn More
A Figure That Is Fed
The clearest way to describe an ongon is by what is done to it rather than by what it looks like, because the appearance varies a great deal. Some are flat felt cut-outs of a human figure, stitched at the edges, with the face marked in thread or with small metal fittings. Some are cloth bundles. Some are carved in wood or worked in hide, and some are little more than a strip of skin or a scrap of pelt kept for the sake of what it stands for. What they share is that they are attended to as though someone is present.
An ongon is fed. The first of the milk, a smear of fat, a portion of a meal, the smoke of juniper: these are given to the figure, physically, and an old ongon carries the accumulated residue on its surface. It is spoken to. It is kept inside the dwelling, usually high up and out of the ordinary traffic of the household, and it has a place rather than being stored.
This is why an ongon is best understood as a receptacle rather than an image. It is not a portrait of a spirit and it is not a devotional picture. It is somewhere a named spirit can be, made so that a relationship has an address, and when that relationship ends the figure is retired or destroyed rather than kept as a keepsake.
Made to Be Impermanent, Which Is Why So Few Are Old
Ongon were made to be replaced. A figure serves a particular relationship with a particular spirit, and when the reason for it passes, or when the household changes, or when the figure has taken as much feeding as it can hold, it is disposed of and another is made. Nothing about the object argues for keeping it. It is cheap to produce, made from materials any herding household has to hand, and there is no tradition of an heirloom ongon.
Two waves of destruction sat on top of that impermanence. Buddhist authorities in Mongolia moved against ongon at several points, gathering and burning them as the visible marks of a practice competing with the monasteries. The twentieth century was far more thorough: state atheism destroyed monastic and non-monastic material alike, and the making of ongon stopped in the open.
The consequence for anyone studying them is uncomfortable. The historical examples that survive are, overwhelmingly, ones that left Mongolia in the hands of outsiders, collected by travellers, missionaries and ethnographers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and now held in European and Russian museums. The ones that were kept properly are gone, because keeping them properly meant not keeping them. Figures have been made openly again since the 1990s, and those are new.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Many ongon hold the spirit of a named forebear or of a former practitioner.
Belongs to Tradition
Ongon are kept in Mongolian households and by practitioners as the seat of a spirit.
Sources
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