Marie van der Heijden Dutch

About Marie van der Heijden's series of photographs taken in Mongolia:

Shamanism is probably the oldest spiritual system in the world. It is not a religion but represents a holistic understanding of the relationship between man and nature. Everything that lives and has a spirit is besouled - including animals, plants even the air. Triggered by this idea I traveled to the nothern part of Mongolia; an intense ride of four days through a desolate lanscape that took me to the Tsaatan Reindeer people. Here I learned, among other things, that shamans transcend the barrieres between the worlds and communicate with the spirits by travelling in the spirit world or by voluntarily embodying them. In this way, they pass on healing and information from the spiritual worlds to the community in which they live.