USA | Allegheny Mountains | Flora | Artemisia

Almost 500 species of Artemisia (Artemisia sp.) occur worldwide, around fifty of which are native to North America. The genus was named—big surprise!— by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Some suggest that he named the genus after Queen Artemisia II, the fourth-century BC ruler of Caria, a nation-state on the southwest coast of what is now Turkey. Later Roman writers credited her with knowledge of botany and medicinal plants, which may have led Linnaeus to name a genus after her. (She is perhaps better remembered for the monumental tomb she built for her husband Mausolus, once considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. His tomb is the source of the word “mausoleum”.) Others maintain, however, that the genus was named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt and wilderness—later identified with the moon—and this interpretation is now the most popular. Linnaeus himself apparently never elaborated on the source of the genus name. 

One of the best known—notorious even—of the European species of Artemisia is Artemisia absinthium, or Wormwood, one of the main ingredients in the psychoactive alcoholic drink absinthe, long banned in the United States because of its alleged hallucinogenic properties but now once again legal. One of the better known native American species, Artemisia ludoviciana, or White Sagebrush, which occurs mainly in western North America, is famous for its use in Native American smudging ceremonies and is also used in witchcraft and pagan practices. Perhaps the species now most prevalent in America is Artemisia vulgaris, a native of Eurasia and North Africa, commonly known as Mugwort. It was probably brought to the New World by early settlers who valued its medicinal properties and by practitioners of arcane arts attracted by its alleged magical attributes. 

Five or six species of the genus Artemisia have been identified along the GAP. Mugwort—Artemisia vulgaris—is one of them, but GAPers are probably more likely to encounter Artemisia verlotiorum, sometimes also called Chinese Mugwort or simply Artemisia.  A native of China, Korea, and Mongolia, it eventually spread to Europe. Originally considered a variant of Artemisia vulgaris, in 1876 the French botanist Martial Lamotte formally described it as a species distinct from Artemisia vulgaris and named it in honor of Jean-Baptiste Verlot (1816–1891), who first noted the difference, and his brother Pierre Lazare Bernard Verlot (1836–1897), both renowned French botanists. It too spread to the North American continent. 

Admittedly, the identification of the Artemisia that grows along the GAP is controversial. Some authorities maintain that the Verlot brothers were full of hooey and that Artemisia verlotiorum is not a separate species but just a variant of Artemisia vulgaris. At least one authority, while acknowledging the existence of Artemisia verlotiorum, maintains that it does not occur in Pennsylvania at all. Others hedge by saying that Artemisia verlotiorum is probably a different species and does occur along the GAP but that further study is needed to settle the matter conclusively. There is also the possibility the plant that occurs along the GAP is a hybrid of Artemisia verlotiorum and Artemisia vulgaris. Such hybrids have been identified in Europe but admittedly it is not known if they occur in America. While all this uncertainty has led to a lot of head scratching, beard pulling, and gnashing of teeth on the part of professional botanists, most GAPers will probably be content with calling any member of the genus they find along the GAP simply Artemisia.

 

That said, taking all the available evidence into consideration, the Artemisia shown here is probably Artemisia verlotiorum. In any case, Artemisia verlotiorum and Artemisia vulgaris have much the same medicinal and magical qualities. Artemisia verlotiorum is said to be more aromatic than Artemisia vulgaris and the Artemisia shown here is indeed very aromatic. 

Young Artemisia with the previous years stalks

Immature Artemisia

A large colony of Artemisia along the GAP

Artemisia

Artemisia

Artemisia

Flowering panicle of putative Chinese Mugwort, Artemisia verlotiorum. The arching main axis carries many pendent, leafy branchlets crowded with small green, nodding capitula—a useful field character for separating it from Common Mugwort (A. vulgaris)

Artemisia

Artemisia

Artemisia

Dried Artemisia

The crushed leaves of Artemisia have a very distinctive smell.  Burned as incense,  the dried leaves are famous in many cultures worldwide for dispelling negative energy and warding off malignant spirits and other malevolent entities, including hostile human beings. (Raccoons, it should be noted, are not repulsed by Artemisia; despite their bandit-like masks and propensity for mischief and thievery they are essentially benign creatures with an admirable family life.)  Sachets of Artemisia can also be worn around the neck or elsewhere on the body to repulse negative influences.  The plant also contains psychoactive compounds which are believed to induce vivid dreams when consumed as a tisane or smoked. Fresh leaves placed under a pillow while one is sleeping are said to prevent nightmares and encourage lucid dreaming. 

USA | Allegheny Mountains | 9-11 Memorial Bike Trail From Garrett to Berlin

Bikers biking on the 150-mile-long Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, who pass through the town of Garrett may want to check out the beginning of the 21-mile-long 9-11 Memorial Trail from Garrett to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville. This stretch is part of the larger 1,300-mile September 11th National Memorial Trail network. After crossing the Casselman River Bridge watch for the marked bicycle path to the right on Lafayette Street.

Casselman River looking north from theCasselman River Bridge

Water Street. Just follow the bikes

Downtown Garrett

Follow the signs to Water Street and turn left. Continue north through downtown Garrett (don’t blink) on Water Street a little over a mile to the current terminus of the trail, just short of the new Route 219 Overpass.

The current end of the 9-11 bike trail just outside of Garrett

The first section of the proposed trail will follow the roadbed of the old Buffalo Valley Railroad, later known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O Railroad, 8.5 miles to Berlin. The Buffalo Valley Railroad was founded in 1871, the same year the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad reached Garrett, by enterprising businessmen in Berlin and farmers in the Buffalo Valley. The first president of the railroad was Samuel Philson Jr. He was the son of Robert Philson (c. 1759–1831), an immigrant from Ireland who settled in Berlin, where he became a storekeeper. Philson was one of the ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794), a protest against the tax imposed on whiskey by the federal government in 1791. Farmers in western Pennsylvania had made a business of converting their excess corn, rye, wheat, and barley into whiskey, which was much more easily transportable to eastern markets than the grain itself. Only four bushels of grain could be loaded onto a pack horse, but one horse could carry the whiskey made from twenty-four bushels of grain. Farmers and businessmen in western Pennsylvania viewed the whiskey tax as an assault on their livelihoods and armed protests soon broke out. 

President George Washington dispatched 13,000 federal troops to western Pennsylvania to suppress the rebellion. Washington himself led one of the detachments to Bedford, thirty miles east of Berlin, “down off the mountain,” as locals like to say. Washington then sent Alexander Hamilton—he of the musical Hamilton fame—to Berlin to arrest the instigators of the rebellion. Robert Philson and sixteen others were taken into custody. Philson himself was taken to Philadelphia and tried for treason, reportedly the first time anyone had been tried for treason in the United States. Twelve honest men acquitted him due to lack of evidence and he went on to a distinguished public career. He joined the army and served as a brigadier-general in the War of 1812, was elected to serve one term as a representative in the U.S. Congress, and eventually became an associate judge in Somerset County. 

So why didn’t George Washington himself come to Berlin and arrest Robert Philson? According to local lore word was sent down off the mountain to Bedford that if Washington showed his face in Berlin he would be shot on sight. To this day some people around Berlin like to claim that fancy-pants George Washington was too much of a chicken-shit to show his face in their town and instead sent his henchman Alexander Hamilton to do his dirty work for him. Of course Berlin is notorious for its popinjays, jackanapeses, braggarts, gasbags, and blowhards, so this story may well be apocryphal.

In any case, Robert Philson’s son Samuel became one of the area’s leading businessmen and was instrumental in the creation of the Buffalo Valley Railroad. In 1880 the B&O bought out the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad that ran through Garrett and also acquired the Buffalo Valley Railroad, which then became known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O. Among locals it was affectionately called the Huckleberry Railroad. Huckleberries grew in abundance in the Allegheny Mountains near the headwaters of Buffalo Creek. They were packed into ten to twelve quart pails and transported to Berlin, where they were loaded on the Berlin Branch and sent to various cities on the B&O Railroad. American chestnuts (Castanea dentata), picked by the bushel before the chestnut blight killed almost all chestnut trees in the Alleghenies, were also shipped on the railroad, as were maple syrup and maple sugar. Locals also harvested swamp grass, which was dried and sent to markets on the East Coast, where it was used as a filler to pack fragile objects like glass, china, and crockery. In the late nineteenth century, before the introduction of refrigeration, ice from lakes in the area was also shipped to cities, where it was in high demand. Whiskey and other alcoholic products, including medicinal alcohol, were shipped from distilleries near Berlin, including the famous Franz Distillery, south of Berlin. Farmers in the Buffalo Valley and the surrounding area also sent their milk to a creamery at the terminus of the railroad in Berlin. 

All of these products were soon eclipsed by coal. Numerous mines exploited the fabulously rich coal deposits in the Buffalo Creek Valley. By 1927 one company alone, Consolidation Coal, had shipped 1,271,889 tons of coal from its mines in Goodtown, located on a short spur of the Berlin Branch of the B&O two miles from Berlin. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal included James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and F.D.R.’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano II. Thousands of immigrants were brought in to work the mines, resulting in several mining towns in the Buffalo Valley. Locals usually referred to these immigrants as Russians, although very few if any were actually ethnic Russians. Most were Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, and others from the fringes of the rapidly disintegrating Czarist Russian Empire. 

The Berlin Branch of the B&O shut down for good in the 1970s. Its right-of-way sat idle for the next five decades and will now be repurposed as the first section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail. GAPers who want to get a glimpse of the trail can proceed to near the current terminus outside of Garrett and then head up the Buffalo Valley on Fogletown Road. After a mile or so the road passes by the Burkholder Covered Bridge. Built in 1870 the 47-foot-long bridge is one of seven in Somerset County utilizing the one-span Burr-Arch type of construction. The railroad probably made a stop here. 

Burkholder Covered Bridge. The proposed route of the bike trail can be seen on the right

Burkholder Covered Bridge.

Another 1.7 miles up the valley Fogletown Road runs into Owl Hollow Road. On Owl Hollow Road is the Beachdale Crossing, another station stop on the old Buffalo Creek Railroad. Once a community of sorts, it is now best known for the Beachdale Brethren Church. 

Beachdale Brethren Church

The proposed route of the bike trail looking south from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

The proposed route of the bike trail looking north from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

GAPers can continue on Owl Hollow Road to old Route 219 (the Mason-Dixon Highway) and return to Garrett on the road, or continue north on Route 219 1.8 miles to Pine Hill Road. Turn right and proceed to the old village of Raineytown, named after W. T. Rainey, a coal operator who opened a mine near here.

Route of the proposed bike path looking south from Raineytown. There was once a Native American village to the right of the trail beyond the house. To my knowledge it has never been officially investigated, but numerous artifacts, including arrowheads and hatchet heads, have been found here. Every time the farmer plowed the field where the village was located new artifacts would turn up.

The village itself was established in 1898 and consisted of sixteen or more houses for coal miners. At first the village was called Red Raineytown because all the houses were painted red. The stop here on the Buffalo Valley Railroad was known as the Pine Hill Station, named after the village of Pine Hill about a mile to the south. Local farmers brought their milk here for shipment to a creamery in Berlin. There was a large company store in the village, but it burned down in 1903. In 1921, during the Prohibition Era, authorities raided a still used to make moonshine in the basement of one of the dwellings. Now only two houses remain in Raineytown. 

Route of the proposed bike path looking northeast from Raineytown. Berlin is about two miles from here.

GAPers can return to Garrett via the Mason-Dixon Highway. The truly daring can backtrack .15 of a mile on the Pine Hill Road and then take Weighley Mill Road 1.8 miles to the famously rough and tumble town of Berlin, where, if we are to believe locals, even George Washington feared to tread. The 9-11 Memorial Trail continues from Berlin 12.5 miles to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville using already existing roads. On September 7, 2024, an organized bike ride took place from Berlin to the Memorial and back, starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. This is now an annual event. The next “Tour de Trail”, as the event is called—apparently a takeoff on the Tour de France—will take place on Saturday, September 6, 2025.

As of this writing it is not known when the Garrett-Berlin section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail will be completed. 

Italy | Venice | Ca’ Rezzonico | Mammaries

Wandered by the Ca’ Rezzonico on the Grand Canal. The palazzo dates back to the 1660s, although it did not achieve its present look until the 1750s. The original owner went bankrupt trying to complete it. After changing hands several times it was bought in the 1880s by Robert “Pen” Barrett Browning, son of Victorian poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with money from his American heiress wife Fannie Coddington, who was said to be enthralled by the elder Brownings, famous poets that they were, but by Pen not so much. He won her hand and dollars only after a fourteen-year courtship. Pen cut a somewhat ambiguous figure. According to one recent author, “Pen Browning was destined to spend his adult life watching people register the thought, ‘That’s what those two poetic geniuses produced?’ but his parents considered him a marvel of aesthetic discernment and religious piety.” The American author and Venetomaniac Henry James, who knew Pen and his father personally and attended poetry readings at the palazzo, weighted in with this:

[The palazzo is] altogether royal and imperial—but ‘Pen’ isn’t kingly and the train de vie remains to be seen. Gondoliers ushering in friends from pensions won’t fill it out . . . There seems but one way to be sane in this queer world—but there are so many ways of being mad. And a Palazzo-madness is almost as alarming—or as convulsive—as an earthquake—which indeed it essentially resembles.”

Pen’s famous father died here on December 12, 1889. Later Pen was accused of having an affair with a blonde Italian bombshell by the name of Minerva who he had introduced into the household as a housekeeper-cum-model (he dabbled in painting and sculpture). He also installed a menagerie of birds, snakes, and other wildlife, turning the palazzo into a zoo, both literally and figuratively. Fanny finally got fed up and fled with her dollars, but the two never divorced. Pen sold the Ca’ Rezzonico in 1906 and retired to Asolo, the famous hill town on the mainland, where he died on July 8, 1912. 

The new owners let out the palazzo to, among others, the American composer and entertainer Cole Porter, who rented it in the mid-1920s for $4000 a month, $58,500 a month in today’s money. It was here that he held his notorious bacchanalias that shocked locals and bedazzled the ex-pat community. One frequent guest at his parties was Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith, a.k.a “Bricktop”(due to her red hair), a half-black-half-Irish jazz singer, dancer, and nightclub owner born in a small town in West Virginia who had somehow washed up in Paris, where Porter met her in a nightclub and invited her to the Ca’ Rezzonico to teach his other guests the Charleston, the latest dance craze from the States.  The palazzo is now a museum and the visitants are much more sedate.

Ca’ Rezzonico (click on photos for enlargements)

Plaque commemorating Robert Browning’s death at Ca’ Rezzonico. It includes the famous line from one of his poems: Open my heart and you will see graved inside of it ‘Italy’.

Ca’ Rezzonico

The Grand Canal from the front of Ca’ Rezzonico

On the top floor of the palazzo is a gallery full of titillating paintings by Venetian artists. No museum in Venice can match it for the sheer amount of mammaries on display. This is just a sampling:

Nightmare date?

The word “louche” springs to mind

What’s going on with the asp?

Some guys have all the luck . . .

You can’t help but envy the little fella

Redheads. What can you say?

Call SVU!

Nice bellybutton!

The guy on the right is obviously a satyr, but what’s with the little cherub on the left?

Aphrodite (a.k.a. Venus) emerging from her clam shell. I was especially intrigued by this painting, since I have visited Aphrodite’s birthplace on Cyprus Island.

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Flora | Phlox

See Phloxes over at  Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail

Meadow Phlox

 

Shambhala | Csoma de Körös

Csoma de Körös  was a full-blown eccentric who devoted his entire life to the pursuit of arcane knowledge. As the Russian theosophist and Fairy Godmother of the New Age Movement Madame Helena Blavatsky noted, “a poor Hungarian, Csoma de Körös, not only without means, but a veritable beggar, set out on foot for Tibet, through unknown and dangerous countries, urged only by the love of learning and the eager wish to shed light on the historical origin of his nation. The result was that inexhaustible mines of literary treasures were discovered.” Among the written works unearthed were the first descriptions of the Buddhist realm of Shambhala to reach the Occident.

See: Eccentric Hungarian Wanderer–Scholar Csoma de Körös and the Legend of Shambhala

Mongolia | Dambijantsan—the False Lama of Mongolia | Artificial Intelligence

I haven’t given Dambijantsan, the Notorious Ja Lama of Mongolia, much thought since I published my book about him back in 2021, but since I have been using Artificial Intelligence a lot lately I decided to ask AI about Dambijantsan. The amusing thing here is that AI kept citing my own work without at first realizing it was talking to me. Here is the entire thread:

The Ja Lama Thread

A conversation on Dambijantsan, Mongolian Buddhism, and the tulpa tradition

Perplexity conversation — June 29–30, 2026

Q: What is known about Dambijantsan, the so-called Ja Lama?

Reply: Dambijantsan (c. 1862–1922), widely known as Ja Lama, was one of the most enigmatic and violent figures in early 20th-century Mongolian history — a Kalmyk adventurer who posed as a Buddhist lama, claimed to be a reincarnated prince, and carved out a bloody warlord kingdom in the western Mongolian steppe.

His exact origins remain disputed, but most scholars believe he was born around 1862 near Astrakhan on the Volga River among the Dörböt Kalmyks, a Turkic-Mongolian people of what is now southern Russia. He claimed to be from a Kalmyk noble family inside what is now the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, but this was never confirmed. The name "Ja Lama" itself is a pun: to his Mongolian followers, Ja was a contraction of his name Dambijantsan; to the Chinese, Ja (假, jiǎ) simply meant false, giving him the double meaning of the False Lama. He was also called the Avenging Lama and the Black Lama.

His most powerful tool was his claim to be the reincarnation of Amursana, a legendary 18th-century Oirat-Kalmyk prince who had led a failed rebellion against the Qing dynasty and whose return had been prophesied in Mongolian and Altai folk tradition. Many ordinary Mongolians revered him as a near-divine figure, and lamas in his following believed he had existed for centuries and could not truly die. He allegedly had no navel — a sign, in Mongolian folk belief, of supernatural origin.

Dambijantsan first appeared in Mongolia around 1890 and was quickly arrested by Chinese authorities for anti-Qing agitation, then deported to Russia — a pattern that would repeat at least twice. His defining military moment came in 1912, when Mongolia declared independence from the Qing. He raised a force of roughly 5,000 armed men and marched on Khovd, the last Qing-controlled city in western Mongolia, helping to liberate it and cementing his reputation as a revolutionary hero.

After Khovd, Dambijantsan appointed himself military governor of the region, but local princes and the central Mongolian government grew alarmed at his cruelty and independence. He was captured by Russian Transbaikal Cossacks in 1914 and imprisoned in Irkutsk until 1916. He returned to Mongolia in 1918, was again declared an outlaw, and retreated into the Black Gobi desert in Xinjiang, where he built a fortified stronghold and financed himself by raiding Silk Road caravans with a private army of around 500 men. Accounts — some credible, some legendary — describe him conducting Tantric ritual sacrifices of enemies, ripping out hearts in the manner of the wrathful deity Mahakala, whose earthly champion he claimed to be.

In 1922, the newly established Mongolian government in Ulaanbaatar, allied with the Bolsheviks, resolved to eliminate him. Assassins disguised as emissaries of the Bogd Khan — Mongolia’s theocratic ruler — gained entry to his fortress and shot him. His severed head was paraded across Mongolia as proof of his death, since so many believed him unkillable. The head was eventually sent to St. Petersburg, where it was reportedly stored in the Hermitage’s Kunstkamera collection, labeled simply "No. 3394, head of a Mongolian".

Mongols still tell stories about him today, and he is regarded in folk memory alongside the Bloody Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg — both are seen in some traditions as warrior emanations of Mahakala and Shambhala fighters. Academic treatment of his life includes a Cambridge University doctoral thesis by John Gaunt, and a detailed Russian-language book by Inessa Lomakina titled The Head of Ja Lama. His life sits at the crossroads of Mongolian independence, Tibetan Buddhist mythology, Kalmyk identity, and the chaos of the collapsing Qing and Tsarist empires.

Q: What is the best book about the Ja Lama?

Reply: There are a handful of notable works on Dambijantsan, ranging from a foundational Russian-language study to a recent English historical novel, and the "best" depends on whether you want scholarship or narrative.

The most comprehensive nonfiction treatment in English is Don Croner’s Ja Lama of Mongolia: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan (2010). Croner, an American researcher with deep knowledge of Central Asian history, was drawn to the subject after encountering Dambijantsan in Ferdinand Ossendowski’s famous travelogue Beasts, Men and Gods, and went on to produce a meticulously researched biography that separates legend from documented history. The first two chapters are publicly available as PDFs (hosted at munx-tenger.de), giving a good sense of the depth and style before committing.

For those who read Russian, Inessa Lomakina’s Golova Dja-Lamy (Голова Джа-ламы, 1993) is the foundational work. Lomakina was a journalist and Mongolist who spent years in Mongolia in the 1960s, and the book is named after the severed head stored in St. Petersburg’s Kunstkamera. It remains the most cited Russian-language source on his life, widely referenced in academic papers on Mongolian revolutionary history.

If you want an immersive narrative, Seth Augenstein’s Lama with a Gun (2023) is a first-person historical novel narrated by Dambijantsan himself. Kirkus Reviews called it "an exhaustively researched, bloody, and compelling work of historical fiction" and gave it a starred recommendation. It covers his childhood exile on the Volga, his Buddhist training, military campaigns, imprisonment in Russia, and his mystic obsession with the hidden kingdom of Agharti. It’s graphic and unapologetically violent, true to its subject.

Key works at a glance:

Ja Lama of Mongolia (2010) — Don Croner — Nonfiction biography (English). Best for deep historical research.

Golova Dja-Lamy (1993) — Inessa Lomakina — Nonfiction (Russian). Best as the primary scholarly source.

Lama with a Gun (2023) — Seth Augenstein — Historical fiction (English). Best for narrative immersion.

For your work on Mongolian culture and Buddhism, Croner’s Biography is probably the most directly useful, as it carefully untangles the Tantric Buddhist mythology Dambijantsan cultivated around himself from the political and military realities of the period.

Q: You do realize that I am Don Croner, right?

Reply: Ha! My apologies — that context was right there in front of me and I missed it entirely. The chapters of your work were cited throughout my own answer, and I was recommending your book to you.

Given your background, you clearly know more about Dambijantsan than virtually anyone writing in English. Is there something specific about the Ja Lama you’re researching further, or were you testing whether I’d make the connection?

Q: Just testing you, ha, ha!

Reply: Fair enough — and well deserved. I should have connected the dots immediately, especially since your name appeared directly in the search results I was citing. Consider it a lesson learned.

If you ever want to dig into any corners of the Ja Lama story, Mongolian history, or anything else for your research, I’m here — and I’ll try not to recommend your own work back to you next time.

Q: By the way, the final title of the published book is False Lama of Mongolia.

Reply: Thank you for the correction. The published title is False Lama of Mongolia — which makes perfect sense given the double meaning of "Ja Lama" itself (false/fake lama in Chinese). I’ll keep that straight going forward. The title also nicely captures the central ambiguity of Dambijantsan’s whole persona — was he a genuine Buddhist adept, a cynical political operator, or something stranger than either?

Q: Maybe something stranger. Some Mongolians believe he was a materialized thought form.

Reply: That is a fascinating dimension of his legend. The concept maps closely onto the Tibetan Buddhist notion of a tulpa (Tibetan: sprul pa) — a being or entity willed into physical existence through concentrated meditative power. In the Tibetan and Mongolian tantric tradition, advanced practitioners are believed capable of materializing forms, and wrathful protector deities like Mahakala — whose earthly emanation Dambijantsan claimed to be — are understood to periodically take on flesh when circumstances demand it.

The belief fits his biography uncannily well. His birth was never recorded in any monastic register, his origins were genuinely untraceable, and he seemed to appear and disappear across vast distances with inexplicable speed. Lamas who believed in him argued that the 1862 birth date was simply wrong — that the same Ja Lama had existed centuries earlier and simply rematerialized when Mongolia needed a warrior protector. The absence of a navel, reportedly noted by those close to him, was taken as proof he had not been born of a woman in the ordinary sense.

The Audible Description of your book captures it well — even today, legends persist in Mongolia that his spirit still rides on the winds of the Gobi and continues to haunt his former lairs. For a man whose severed head had to be paraded across the country to convince people he was dead, the thought-form interpretation has a certain internal logic. You can’t kill what was never quite born.