Mongol

"Don't despise a weak cub, it can appear the son of a tiger." Mongolian proverb

which pretty well sets the tone for the film, Mongol, the story of Genghis Khan's rise to power. Mongol is in Mongolian (with subtitles), has stars who look like they could have belonged in the culture they are portraying, and was filmed in the area where Genghis Khan grew from the boy Temudgin to become one of those historic figures still talked about today. To the West, his has been the name of a brutal barbarian. To the East, he is a hero who nearly conquered all of the known world. Supposedly this film is part one of what will be a three part series to tell his story.

Mongol is the story of a boy growing to a man, of spiritual belief in powers beyond our knowing, of development of a culture, and of a great love that sustained both Temugin and his wife Borte (Khulan Chuluun who is Mongolian) through separations and dangers.

Genghis Khan (Tadanobu Asano, who is Japanese) united his people through his strength of purpose, his ability to motivate others to follow him, and a concept of giving the people rules they could live under where trust would then be possible.

As is typical of films, the movie does not totally follow the life of Genghis Khan but is close enough to make you feel what isn't in history might have been true. For anyone interested in researching it further, Wikipedia gives a good start.

[Anyone not interested in reincarnation theories, stop here.]

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection." Voltaire

"Finding myself to exist in the world; I believe I shall in some shape or other always exist; and with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to some new edition of mine,hoping, however, that the 'errata' of the last maybe corrected." Benjamin Franklin

"My doctrine is: Live so that thou mayest desire to live again-- that is thy duty-- for in any case thou wilt again." Nietzsche

When you look at your natal astrology chart (which means where the planets were when you were born, location of birth, the exact timing), it can tell more than your personality traits. A talented reader can give possible dates and places of past lives which are impacting this life. In other words, you would have had many other past lives, but some had elements in which you will be working on improving or growing in this lifetime. These might be your interests, your talents, goals, or your problems. Those show up in your planets and their positions.

When I was into studying astrology, accumulating a lot of books on the subject, learning as much as a mathematics challenged person can, I explored this aspect of astrology. Using a book called The Elements of Reincarnation by A T Mann, I found through his charts times for some of my own past lifetimes. With the help of a astrologer friend who could do geographic alignments, one of mine would have been Mongolian before the time of the great khans, a time of horse cultures and tribes, where women had more freedom than in many other contemporaneous cultures.

Because at that time I was doing charts for friends in a chat room where I was going, I found a few others could have also been in that lifetime. Through another book that uses astrology for possible relationships between signs, Karmic Relationships by Martin Schulman, I was able to put together my own Mongolian story of family, love, freedom, power, and betrayal.

For some time I have thought to incorporate that story, real to me or not, into a fictional novel about reincarnation and how in a woman's current life, she is facing problems than only through discovering her past life relationships can she solve. My interest in writing such a story led to accumulating some books on Mongolia, its history and its people just in case I did the story.

Was what astrology told me, what I pieced together like a puzzle, a real past life? It would not surprise me, because of my interest in elements that would have been part of such a life; but, if so, it was not one of the ones I got through regressions.

Still I like the image of a woman with long black hair riding fast across the steppes, living in a yurt, loving a good man, giving birth to a daughter who would have more power than she had, possibly even participating in the rituals which might be a lot like Native American ones. Real or not, it's a satisfying image.