Mother Tree

Eej Mod, Mother Tree

    The people of Sukhbaatar City in Selenge Aimag care about their forests, recognizing the trees as important factors in air, water, and soil quality.  In fact, most people recognize natural spirits as the inherent owners of the forest and its trees.  While beliefs in Shamanism are low here, almost everyone I have talked to acknowledged the presence of nature’s system and spirits, which have their own rules and their own penalties.  People speak matter-of-factly about families who cut down the trees near springs or cut down young, green trees.  Most of them died.  People believe that cutting down a tree is like cutting down your own life; your life becomes like the stump you just made.

Old Eej Mod

    One tree of particular importance here is called Eej Mod, or Mother Tree.  There are actually two Mother Trees. One was burned during Socialist Times.  It lays on the ground, charred and completely covered by scarves.  Some of the scarves are stiff and sour from milk offerings given to the tree, and as you walk around you have to duck under stiff scarf draped branches.  In some other trees, people have hung tires and other car parts, offerings made with the hope of safe travels.  The other tree was named after Socialist Times.  Mother Tree is a stirring sight; a tall tree, barren of leaves (because of the season), with colorful scarves wrapping around her trunk, hanging from her branches, and laying near her roots.  Ravens, magpies, sparrows, and black birds perch amongst her branches, representatives of spirits revealing themselves to men.  At Mother Tree we offer vodka, milk, rice, millet, candy covered peanuts, and juniper incense, and we pray not for ourselves, but for others, walking clockwise around Mother Tree three times.

Offerings at Eej Mod

    In Sukhbaatar, I heard two stories about Mother Tree.  This is the first, told to me in an interview by a kind, old lady who has lived in Sukhbaatar for 40 years.
    In the 1920’s a woman was in love with a man, but her father promised her to a rich, old Chinese man.  The woman did not want to marry the old man, and so she ran away.  The old man sent his soldiers after her, and as they were chasing her, she turned into a tree and was able to escape.  Later, she came into the area of the Eej Mod, and she was deep in the trees so those Chinese soldiers couldn’t catch her.  There, she stayed a tree, the most kind, most special tree, and so the locals named her Eej Mod and began pray and make offerings to her.

Eej Mod

    The second story as told to me in an interview by a woman who owns a farm with her husband, growing sea buckthorn bushes, trees, and other vegetables.
    Once, a female shaman from Khovsgol area lived in the area of Eej Mod, and when she died her spirit connected with this tree and also a tree in Khovsgol Province.  There is another special tree close to UB, and also in Arkhangai province there is an Eej Mod. People say that these trees have a very strong, very close connection between each other, and maybe the same spirit between the three of them.