The session went on for some time longer, with other questions and other answers of little import. The whole ceremony had left me cold and disappointed. Not for a moment had I felt the mystery which had so fascinated Ossendowski, and me too as I read his book. Perhaps it was because his was a time of great events, when people lived and died more dramatically; but whatever the reason, that rite performed for me in a yurt in Ulan Bator had lost all the meaning it had had for him in the old city of Urga. The procedure, the gestures, formulae and invocations were probably the same. What I missed
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