ABSTRACT
Based on fieldwork in Northern Mongolia, this chapter examines how certain sacred paraphernalia employed in shamanist rituals make visible a social ontology otherwise hidden to ordinary people.1 Heeding Edward Hutchins’ call for an anthropology which addresses how cognition takes place ‘in the wild’ (1995), my analysis rests on the theoretical premise that Darhad Mongolian shamanic knowledge is embedded in different religious artefacts, such as the shamanic costume, whose intricate design triggers peoples’ momentary conceptualisation of social relationships which otherwise remain unseen, and, for the same reason, to a large extent unknown. Darhad shamanist ritual, in that sense, constitutes a distinct ‘cognitive platform’, which, by temporarily situating its participants within a tabooed assemblage of artefacts, provides access to deeply esoteric thoughts.
