The clearest way to describe an ongon is by what is done to it rather than by what it looks like, because the appearance varies a great deal. Some are flat felt cut-outs of a human figure, stitched at the edges, with the face marked in thread or with small metal fittings. Some are cloth bundles. Some are carved in wood or worked in hide, and some are little more than a strip of skin or a scrap of pelt kept for the sake of what it stands for. What they share is that they are attended to as though someone is present.
An ongon is fed. The first of the milk, a smear of fat, a portion of a meal, the smoke of juniper: these are given to the figure, physically, and an old ongon carries the accumulated residue on its surface. It is spoken to. It is kept inside the dwelling, usually high up and out of the ordinary traffic of the household, and it has a place rather than being stored.
This is why an ongon is best understood as a receptacle rather than an image. It is not a portrait of a spirit and it is not a devotional picture. It is somewhere a named spirit can be, made so that a relationship has an address, and when that relationship ends the figure is retired or destroyed rather than kept as a keepsake.