Khiimori- Mongolian ConceptConcept"Windhorse"

The Horse That Carries Fortune

Printed on cloth in five colors, the windhorse gallops through clouds with the wish-fulfilling jewel on its back. A garuda and a dragon flank it above, a tiger and a snow lion below. This is khiimori: not a creature anyone expects to meet on the steppe, but the image Mongolians use for the force that lifts a life or lets it stumble.

When a person's khiimori rides high, livestock fatten and illness passes over the household. When it sinks, misfortune stacks: a horse goes lame, a cough won't clear. The word itself joins khii (wind) to mori (horse), and the logic holds. Fortune moves. It gallops and rears and bolts like a horse across open country. The Tibetan equivalent, lung-ta, carries the same pairing of wind and horse, and entered Mongolian practice alongside Buddhism from the sixteenth century onward.

Flags and Paper on the Wind

To raise one's khiimori, hang prayer flags where the wind will find them. Families string them at ovoo cairns, on mountain passes, from the rooftops of gers. Each flag carries the windhorse image alongside sacred mantras. The five cloth colors stand for the five elements, blue for sky through yellow for earth. Every gust that moves the fabric sends the printed blessings outward across the landscape. Lamas advise hanging them on auspicious days, when the calendar and the wind cooperate.

At Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year, and at the close of important ceremonies, the windhorse leaves cloth behind and takes to the air on paper. Families and monks gather and throw handfuls of small printed windhorse papers upward, shouting Lha gyalo!, "Victory to the gods!" The papers scatter and climb on the updraft. Virtuous acts and a lama's blessing push the windhorse higher. Broken vows and harmful acts drag it down. A Mongolian does not simply have good fortune or bad fortune. Fortune is a horse, and it needs tending.