'Seats for spirits to sit upon': Becoming a spirit medium in contemporary Vietnam

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 541-558

  Hien, Nguyen Thi̧ ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL IDENTITY; CULTURAL TRADITION; ETHNIC GROUP; RELIGION;

ASIA; EURASIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; VIET NAM;

EID: 35948940773     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463407000252     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. Truong Thǹ, 'Tôn trong tín nguõng và bài trù mê tín di doan' [Respect religious beliefs and abolish superstitions], in Tín nguõng mê tin [Religious beliefs - superstition], ed. Ha Vǎn Tǎng and Truong Thìn (Hanoi: Thanh niên, 1998), pp. 112-26.
2. Among these mediums, my main consultant was Sister (Chi) Nga, a master medium (dong truóng) who lived in a village near mine in Vǎn Giang district of Hung Yên province. She has inspired me to study the Mother Goddess religion and l-cien dông rituals. She was eager to recall for me her miserable childhood and her experience with knotted hair, a phenomenon 1 would come to know well. Nga also spoke openly to me of her life as a medium - how she had cured hundreds of patients by praying to spirits of the Mother Goddess religion, anointing them with holy water mixed with the ashes from burned incense and initiating them into her faith.
3. In this article 'auspiciousness' denotes good health, a good life and prosperity. The interpretation of lên dong as a practice meant to achieve well-being and economic success is found in several chapters of a recently published volume on Vietnamese mediums: Pham Quỳnh Phuang, 'Trân Hung Dao and the Mother Goddess religion'; Karen Fjelstad and Lisa Maiffret, 'Gifts from the spirits: Spirit possession and personal transformation among Silicon Valley spirit mediums'; and Viveca Larsson and Kirsten Endres, 'Children of the spirits, followers of a master: Spirit mediums in post-Renovation Vietnam', in Possessed by the spirits: Mediumship in contemporary Vietnamese communities, ed. Karen Fjelstad and Nguyên Thi Hiên (Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2006), pp. 31-54, 111-26, and 143-60 respectively.
4. Collen Ward, 'Spirit possession and mental health: A psycho-anthropological perspective', Human Relations, 33, 3 (1980): 149-63.
5. Karen Fjelstad, 'Mother Goddess religion cong dong: Vietnamese women and mediumship in the San Francisco Bay area' (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1995);
6. Ioan Lewis, Ecstatic religion: A study of spirit possession and shamanism, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1989);
7. Gananth Obeyesekere, Medusa's hair: An essay on personal symbols and religious experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981);
8. Janice Boddy, Wombs and alien spirits: Women, men, and the zar cult in northern Sudan (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989);
9. Bruce Kapferer, A celebration of demons: Exorcism and healing in Sri Lanka (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991).
10. Ioan Lewis, Ecstatic religion: Religion in context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 42.
11. On the therapeutic value of possession see John Kennedy, 'Nubian zar ceremonies as psychotherapy, Human Organization, 26 (1967): 185-94;
12. and Vincent Crapanzano, The Hamadsha: A study of Moroccan ethnopsychiatry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).
13. The power aspect is discussed in Pham Quỳnh Phuong, 'Tran Hung Dao' and Susan Kenyon, 'The case of the butcher's wife: Illness, possession and power in central Sudan', in Spirit possession: Modernity and power in Africa, ed. Heike Behrend and Ute Luig (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), pp. 89-108.
14. The gender issue is discussed in Barley Norton, '"Hot-tempered2: Women and "effeminate" men: The performance of music and gender in Vietnamese mediumship' and Kirsten Endres, 'Spirit performance and the ritual construction of personal identity in modern Vietnam', in Possessed by the spirits, ed. Fjelstad and Nguyen, pp. 55-76 and 77-94 respectively.
15. Kenyon, 'Case of the butcher's wife', pp. 89-90, discusses the broad range of people who engage in mediumship.
16. The importance of wealth and making money in various religious practices, including village festivals, pilgrimages to pagodas, temples and historical sites; and various other rituals, has been discussed in a number of sources. See John Klemen, Facing the future, reviving the past: A study of social change in a northern Vietnamese village (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999);
17. the articles by Lê Hong Lý and Oscar Salemink in this issue; Luong Van Hy, 'Economic reform and the intensification of rituals in two north Vietnamese villages, 1980-1990', in The challenge of reform in Indochina, ed. Borje Ljunggren (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute for International Development, 1993), pp. 259-92; Ngô Dúc Thinh, 'The belief in the Granary Queen and the transformation of Vietnamese society' (Hanoi: Viên Nghiên cúu Vǎn hoá Dân gian, unpublished paper).
18. Lewis, Ecstatic religion: A study, p. 25.
19. Laurel Kendall, Shamans, housewives, and other restless spirits: Women in Korean ritual life (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985).
20. Barley Norton, 'Vietnamese mediumship rituals: The musical construction of the spirits', The World of Music, 42, 2 (2000): 76; Endres, 'Children of the spirits', p. 77.
21. Norton, 'Vietnamese mediumship rituals'; Shaun Malarney, Culture, ritual, and revolution in Vietnam (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).
22. This type of oral narrative is popular in villages where Buddhist pagodas or temples were destroyed. One story in my home village relates the life of the commune head who ordered the villagers to destroy the Buddhist temple complex, implying official instructions to that effect. At that time, villagers took the Buddhist statues to bury them for safekeeping, while others stole objects from the pagoda and took them home for their own use. As a result, years later when the official was retired, he was 'punished' spiritually, the villagers said: He did not go out and only stayed at home beating a wooden drum (gõ mõ, an act which Buddhist monks and nuns would perform during their ceremonies. The villagers also listed a number of people who had died prematurely for having wrongly appropriated the temple objects. The land where the Buddhist pagoda was situated became a potent sacred ( thiêng) site where people were reluctant to live or build houses. Only recently, with the dramatic rise in land prices in both urban and rural areas, which has made it difficult for young couples to buy a piece of land for their homes, did anyone risk building on this sacred site. So far, however, I have not heard any stories about 'punishment' as a result of this action. A major regret for the villagers is that they could not afford to build a new temple; instead, they made a very small Buddhist shrine next to the temple dedicated to the village spirit. One of their wishes today is to raise money and to receive government funds to construct a pagoda.
23. Norton, 'Vietnamese mediumship rituals'.
24. On the adaptation of Trân cult into Mother Goddess Religion, see Pham Quỳnh Phuong, 'Trân Hung Dao'.
25. Nguyen Thi Hien, 'Spiritual parents of the Viet' (paper read at the AAS Annual Meeting, 2003);
26. Pham Quỳnh Phuong, 'Hero and deity: Empowerment and contestation in the veneration of Tran Hung Dao in contemporary Vietnam' (Ph.D. diss., La Trobe University, 2005).
27. Larsson and Endres, 'Children of the spirits'.
28. Religious practice as a dialogue between the state and local levels is mentioned by Philip Taylor, Goddess on the rise: Pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), p. 6.
29. Fieldnotes, 2003.
30. Phan Dǎng Nhât and Oscar Salemink, 'Ritual transformations around a spirit medium in the northern highands of Vietnam', paper read at the Second International Conference on Vietnamese Studies, Ho Chí Minh City, 2004, p. 6.
31. On the revitalisation of lên dong rituals among overseas Vietnamese, see Karen Fjelstad, 'We have lên dong too: Transnational aspects of spirit possession', in Possessed by the spirits, pp. 95-110;
32. and Karen Fjelstad and Nguyen Thi Hien, 'Lên dong (spirit possession) as a transnational ritual', paper read at the conference on Approaching Vietnam's Contemporary Cultures: Methodology and New Studies, Hanoi, 2006.
33. Standing Committee of the National Assembly, Decree No 21/2004/ PL-UBTVQH11, 18 June 2004. Item 1 of Article 3 states that 'the activities of folk beliefs are activities representing the veneration of ancestors, commemoration and honouring of those who had great merit towards the country and people; the veneration of spirits, traditional symbols and other activities of folk beliefs which are typical for good values in history, culture and social ethics'.
34. Phan and Salemink, 'Ritual transformations', p. 11.
35. For overviews of these beliefs and practices, see Ngô Dúc Thinh, Dao Mau o Viet Nam [Mother Goddess religion in Vietnam] (Hanoi: Vǎn hoá Thông tin, 1996);
36. Ngô, 'The Mother Goddess religion: Its history, pantheon, and practices', in Possessed by the spirits, pp. 19-30; and Fjelstad, 'Mother Goddess religion'.
37. Nguyen, 'Spiritual parents of the Viet'. On Tran Hung Dao see the various works by Pham Quǹh Phuoug: 'Tran Hung Dao', 'Hero and deity', and 'Tim hieu hin tuong tín nguõng Dúc Thánh Tran' [Study on the belief in Saint Tran] (M.A. thesis, Vien Vǎn hoá Dân gian, 1998).
38. Ngô Dúc Thinh, 'Lên dong: Spirits' journeys', in Vietnam: Journeys of body, mind, and spirit, ed. Nguyen Vǎn Huy and Laurel Kendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 252-72.
39. Nguyen Khac Kham, 'Vietnamese spirit mediumship: A tentative reinterpretation of its basic terminology', Vietnam Forum, 1 (1983): 27-8 (quotation);
40. see also Nguyen Khac Kham, 'Vietnamese mediums and their performances', Asian Folklore Studies Newsletter, 11 (1983): 11-21.
41. On terminology see Nguyen Thi Hien, 'Religion of the Four Palaces';
42. Ngô Dúc Thinh, Dao Mau;
43. and Maurice Durand, Technique et panthéon des médiums viêtnamiens (Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1959).
44. Peter J. Claus, 'Ritual performances in India', in Anthropology of religion: A handbook, ed. Stephen D. Glazier (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997), p. 193.
45. See the discussions of mediumship as a dramatic performance in Laurel Kendall, 'Initiating performance: The story of Chini, a Korean shaman';
46. Carol Laderman, 'The poetics of healing in Malay shamanistic performances';
47. and Marina Roseman, '"Pure products go crazy": Rainforest healing in a nation-state', in The performance of healing, ed. Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 1996), pp. 17-58, 115-42 and 233-70 respectively.
48. The term 'chau vǎn' (literally, 'service literature/texts') refers to songs in honour of spirits (Norton, 'Vietnamese mediumship rituals', p. 93).
49. The singing of chau vǎn is a way of expressing thanks and reverence to the spirits; see Tô Dông Hai and Pham Vãn Ty, 'Nhũng khía canh vǎn hoá nghê thuât cua hát vǎn và hau bóng' [Cultural and artistic aspects of vǎn songs and hau bóng], in Hát vǎn [Vǎn songs], ed. Ngô Dúc Thinh (Hanoi: Vǎn hoá Dân tôc, 1992), pp. 42-50.
50. John Beattie, 'Spirit mediumship as theatre', Royal Anthropological Institute News, 20 (1977): 1-6;
51. Edward Schieffelin, 'Performance and the cultural construction of reality', American Ethnologist, 2, 4 (1985): 707-24.
52. Larsson and Endres, 'Children of the spirits', pp. 149-50.
53. Lê Hong Lý, 'Tín nguõng lên dong tù cái nhìn cua nguòi trong cuôc' Lên dong ritual from an insider's persp ective], paper read at the International Conference on Mother Goddess Veneration and the Phu Giay Festival (Tín nguõng Thò Mau và Le hôi Phu Giay, Viên Nghiên cúu Vãn hoá Dân gian, Hanoi, 2001).
54. See the interpretations of 'cǎn' or 'cǎn nǎng' in Pham Quỳnh Phuong, 'Tran Hung Dao';
55. Fjelstad and Maiffret, 'Gifts from the spirits';
56. and Larsson and Endres, 'Children of the spirits'.
57. The gender issue is discussed in more detail in Norton, '"Hot-tempered" women'.
58. Pham Quỳnh Phuong, 'Hero and deity', pp. 41-3.
59. During my childhood I heard about villagers who suffered from a mysterious disease called knotted hair (ket tóc) but thought it was a myth. A victim's hair would become knotted in bunches that could not be combed out; if they shaved their heads, it was said that they would go mad or die. The cure for the malady involved, in a sense, giving in to the causes of the disease. The victim could sponsor rituals performed by someone who knew how to cure the disease - that is, a master medium who was highly gifted spiritually.
60. Field notes, 1998.
61. Nguyen Thi Hien, 'Religion of the Four Palaces', ch. 5, discusses yin diseases.
62. See also Carol Laderman, Taming the wind of desire: Psychology, medicine, and aesthetics in Malay shamanistic performance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 15.
63. Nga observed that there are a number of individuals who suffer from what is called spirit root but do not know how to be treated (field notes).
64. Information from field notes, 2001. The income derived by Nga's family members from producing votive offerings is discussed in Nguyen Thi Hien, '"A bit of a spirit favor is equal to a load of mundane gifts": Votive paper offerings of lên dong rituals in post-Renovation Vietnam', in Possessed by the spirits, pp. 127-42.
65. The resentment of overseas Vietnamese upon seeing a master medium give a hard kick to a female hau dâng is mentioned in Karen Fielstad, 'A tale of two temples: Transnationalism and the views of a traveling spirit' (unpublished manuscript, 2006).
66. The principal temples dedicated to the Mother Goddess, Second Mandarin, Second Dame, Fifth Dame, Sixth Dame, Youngest Dame and Youngest Damsel of Mountains and Forests realm are all located in Lang Son province.
67. In recent years it has become common for business people and educated people to either undergo initiation rituals or else have rituals performed by mediums for the purpose of being blessed. This phenomenon, which has become even more widespread since the 2004 ordinance on the veneration of spirits, has been studied by researchers; See Lê Hong Lý, 'Tín nguõng lên dong' and Andres, 'Spirit performance'.
68. This article does not examine cases of mediums who have followed a religious path yet still suffer from either mental or worldly problems. One such example is my cousin, who was unable to improve her business of trading goods in her home village; she still suffered from her 'misfortune' until she quit doing business; she now spends all of her time serving the spirits by building a shrine and 'opening a palace' (mo phu, referring to the performance of rituals) for her clients.