Degii Sodbaatar

Degii (Delgerjargal) Sodbaatar graduated from Ulaanbaatar University, Mongolia in 2000 with a degree in Korean language and culture. Later she did a one year course on Korean poetics at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea. She then entered Donguk University of South Korea as a graduate student, to pursue an MA in Buddhist studies.

In addition to the above academic endeavors, in 2009 Degii spent three months in residence at Smith College, Mass., USA, as part of a Mongolian art and culture exchange, and a one month residence at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Then in 2010-11 she did a six month internship at the Olcott Institute of the Theosophical Society of America, Wheaton, Ill., to upgrade her English translation skills.

In Mongolia she worked as publications manager at Maitri Books, and also ran a small travel company for people wishing to visit the Buddhist power places in the country. She is a permanent member of the Board of Directors of the Kim Ill Jung Flower Growers Association of Mongolia, as well as a member of the Board of Advisors of the America Mongolia Friendship Society.

Her most recent book Reflections of a Mongolian Shaman, is a translation of the writings from the famous Mongolian shaman Byampadorj Dondog, one of the greatest Mongolian shamans alive today. He was born in 1947 in Darvi Sum of Hovd Amaig, southwest Mongolia, in a maternal lineage descended from the tribe of the wife of Chinggis Haan (Genghis Khan). This was the harsh era of the Stalinist purges, when Mongolia was a satellite of the Soviets, and thus he grew up during a period when both Buddhism and shamanism were oppressed to the point of near extinction. In his youth he secretly trained in the ancient shamanic arts under several underground masters, and when Communism fell in 1990 he emerged as a principal force in the efforts of cultural and spiritual restoration.