 | Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-east Thailand |  |
18
EXORCISM AS HEALING RITUAL
In the extreme case of possession by phii paub, recognizable from the
hysterical symptoms of the patient, the drama of exorcism moves through
certain sequences. My concern here is to view exorcism as a healing ritual
and to discern the way in which it seeks to achieve its effects. We can then
compare this healing ritual to the sukhwan ritual analysed in Chapter 13.
When dealing with the sukhwan ritual I used as the framework of
analysis four dimensions: the occasion for the ritual, the specification of
the receiver of the message, the role and position of the sender of the
message and the supporting cast, and, finally, the message itself. While
this same framework is appropriate for viewing exorcism ritual, there is
one important difference. The victim of possession is seen as not being
in contact with society, or, more specifically, with his or her family and
kinsmen. The ritual as such relies on shock therapy in which the exorcist
and patient confront each other directly; family members, kinsmen and
neighbours play, in comparison with the sukhwan ritual, a less conspicuous
role as supporting cast; they devote their attention mainly to preparing
the ritual articles and acting as helpers.
The following are the main sequences in the exorcism ritual.
1. Invitation of the exorcist: when a patient is seen to be possessed,
someone from his or her family must go to the exorcist and `invite' him
(nimon). The verbal solicitation is accompanied by by the offering of a pair
of candles and flowers (tian khu dogmai khu). The exorcist then comes
to the home of the patient, where the latter's family have prepared the
ritual articles (thang kaj tham), which the exorcist offers to his own teacher
(khruu or achaan). In theory the kaj presentation should be the same as
the articles which the exorcist himself presented to his teacher as an
offering when he first learned his art as a pupil. The `teacher' in question
is not only the particular teacher who taught him, but through him the
whole line of teachers extending back to the mythical guru or rishi who
was the first teacher. This same offering with which the exorcist pays
respect to his teacher also constitutes the exorcist's own fee. The standard
fee in the village is khanpaed (8 pairs of candles and flowers), 160 small
candles, 20 large candles of one baht weight each, 1 phakoma (waist cloth),
2 metres of white cloth, and 12 baht cash. The cash fee may be increased
in multiples of twelve and collected later. It is a graduated fee, charged
curing (usually given an empirical index in terms of the number of days
during which the curing ritual is repeated).
2. The exorcist goes into a trance: the exorcist sits before the ritual
articles and, facing the propitious east, first worships the Buddha, the
Sangha and the Dhamma (the Trinity), and then chants sacred words
(gatha) in order to pay his respects to his teacher (waj khruu) and to invoke
the power of his teacher to enter and enable him to combat the patient's
possessing spirit. In effect then the teacher's spirit possesses the exorcist.
The theory is that, along with the teacher, the divine angels (thewada)
are also invoked to come into the exorcist; it is the teacher and the thewada
who, through the vehicle of the exorcist, wage battle with the possessing
spirit. Here we see that the thewada are categorically opposed to the
malevolent phii; also that while the thewada and the teacher are voluntarily
solicited to descend and take possession of the exorcist, the patient has,
by contrast, been invaded and possessed by an intruding and unwanted
spirit.
From the standpoint of the actual technique by which the exorcist
reaches the ecstatic state of trance and trembling, what the observer sees
is an increase in the speed with which the unintelligible magical spells
are repeated, accompanied by the waving and shaking of arms which also
increases in tempo, until the whole body shakes so as to bring the
exorcist to his feet. He then exhibits a frenzy of physical movement and
a violent change in voice which produces a distorted flow of words. The
exorcist is now speaking with the voice of divine angels and his teacher;
they are within him; he is they. This process is called tham soon, which
has two meanings: to make the teacher and the divine angels `come into
him'; to `become angry'. The exorcist is indeed now in a state of fury, as
he rushes to confront the malevolent spirit within the patient.
3. Making the possessing spirit reveal itself: the exorcist shakes and
jumps, and kicks the persons present, but it is the patient who bears the
brunt of what may be called shock therapy. The exorcist frightens the
patient, whips him with a rattan stem with a top made of white cotton, or
with a fern. In extreme cases he may use a tiger's tooth and pierce the
patient, extracting blood and eliciting howls. At the same time he verbally
threatens the afflicting spirit thus: `Are you afraid of me? I'm a representative
of thewada, I've come from heaven to drive you out.'
The theory, as I have said before, is that the thewada and the power
of the teacher confront the malevolent spirit. If the patient's body is
attacked it is not he but the spirit who feels pain. If the patient cries and
talks it is the possessing spirit which does so. The strategy of this therapy
revelation is that of its living or dead human host. The admission of its
identity by the spirit automatically signals its defeat, and the therapy
can then move towards its expulsion.
I interpret the implications of the revelation of the possessing phii
thus: Culturally, the manifestation of the patient's violent hysterical and
psychosomatic symptoms is interpreted as due to spirit intrusion and
possession. The patient himself is out of touch with reality and lives in
a world of hallucination. The strategy of therapy is to re-establish through
shock-effects the patient's contact with the world (both through pain
and by confronting him with a magnified fearsome figure in the form of
the exorcist) and to force him,[1]
by naming an external agent as the cause, to
formulate in concrete terms the nature of his malady. The hysterical patient is
in a state of emotional lesion; the problem is to make him conceptualize
and identify the nature of his condition. In spirit possession the cultural
definition is that an external agency is the cause, not the internal condition
of the patient. Once the patient has identified an external agency, he has
also automatically expelled the offending disease. The remarkable thing
about this theory of mental and physical disturbance is that the victim
is not blamed for his condition; he bears no guilt because the illness is not
generated internally.
The drama is over when the patient has identified his persecutor. Both
patient and exorcist are said to become quiet if the therapy has been
successful. The therapy now progresses to the purification of the patient
and his reincorporation into normal life.
4. Purification: the purification of the patient consists of reciting charms
and lustration with and drinking of charmed water, administered by the
exorcist at three locations: outside the house at the foot of the ladder, on
the threshold platform of the house, and finally inside the house at the
place called huean naui (small house) where guests are entertained. This
orderly progression of words, purification with water, and house categories
expresses forceful meanings.
The exorcist first makes lustral water by chanting sacred words (seek
namon) into a bowl of water prepared by the inmates of the patient's house:
(a) then the patient is made to sit on the ground beneath the house-ladder
while the exorcist stands on the top rung. He chants sacred verses
called gatha lai (verses to chase away) into the water and pours it on the
head of the patient. This sequence is called rodnamon tai khan dai (pouring
sacred water under the ladder);
(b) the exorcist now forms an arch with his left leg at the top of the
ladder and the patient creeps through this arch and enters the open
threshold-platform (saan). The exorcist thus appears to stand guard at
the top of the ladder, giving entry to the exorcised patient but not to the
malevolent spirit. The use of the leg in this fashion would be highly
insulting in everyday life, and perhaps symbolizes the power of the
exorcist;
(c) the next sequence takes place on the platform and is called laang
sanyed (washing away bad things), which consists of sacred water again
being poured on the patient at this place;
(d) the patient is then led to the huean naui, the place for entertaining
guests. The exorcist `blow spells' (gatha seek) into a small bowl of water
which is then drunk by the patient. This sequence is referred to as
`washing the inside to come out' (laang khanai org ma). Thus after
external purification, internal purification is performed;
(e) the next sequence, also performed at the huen naui, is called `protecting
at five places' (cham haa prakaan): the exorcist binds the neck,
wrists and ankles of the patient with cord to prevent the spirit from
entering his body again;
(f) the patient receives from the exorcist the five Buddhist precepts
(rab sin haa). This is indeed a remarkable sequence, for normally it is the
Buddhist monk alone who gives the precepts. This adds weight to my
argument that the exorcist is in some respects `impersonating' the monk;
(g) lastly, the exorcist gives the patient khan haa (five pairs of flowers
and candles) which he must place at the head of his bed inside the huean
yaai (the large house, i.e. the sleeping quarters). He must not remove
them until he is fully cured. The patient may subsequently visit the
exorcist a couple of times for more sacred water to be poured on him to
help the convalescence.
The purification procedure exhibits two noteworthy features. First, the
external and internal cleansing with water is accompanied by verses
chanted by the exorcist; these are secret spells, the contents of which are
not heard by the patient or bystanders except as murmurings and which
clearly do not communicate a verbal message to the patient as do the
words in the sukhwan ritual. They are, however, perceived as powerful
in themselves. We have noted that in Phraan Muan the village exorcist
himself did not know the meaning of the words, so that for him too
they were powerful spells because they were believed to be taken from
the Buddhist texts.
Secondly, the orderly progression of lustration from the foot of the
house-ladder, then to the house-platform (which is normally looked upon
then to the huean naui, the place for entertaining guests and kin, and
finally the placing of ritual articles in the private and sacred sleeping
quarters (huean yaai), embodies a set of meanings which are clear in
terms of the values attached to different parts of the house elucidated
in Chapter 2. The patient starts as an `outsider', then climbs up to the
open platform which is the unclean threshold to the house and is purified
externally there; he then enters the room where guests are entertained and
undergoes internal cleansing; and finally, cured and protected from the
malevolent spirit, he enters the private part of the house where at night
he will sleep, guarded by sacred objects given by the exorcist. The progression
is a neat dramatization of progressive reincorporation into normal
family life. The melodrama of exorcism in its final phases, when it enacts
the return of the patient to normality and the resumption of his place
in family life, utilizes the simple but powerful symbolism of the social
values attached to different parts of the house.
THE ACCUSED AND HIS FATE
We have seen in the case of possession by phii paub that the exorcism
procedure is to force the patient, or more accurately the possessing spirit,
to reveal and identify itself. Village theory is that the phii paub may reside in
a living person, or may belong to a dead host who is revisiting the village.
In terms of the ongoing social relations of the village, there is no
complication if the phii paub confesses its association with a dead human.
But if a living person is named, then of course an entirely new dimension
is introduced. What are the sanctions against the living witch? Are
accusations of witchcraft symptomatic of structural strains and stresses
in the social structure?
I am unable to tackle these questions systematically, because possession
by phii paub and therefore exorcism rituals have in recent times declined
to the extent that they are considered extraordinary. In the circumstances, I
was only able to record details of cases that occurred in the village in the
past. While it is relatively easy to study the theory of spirit possession
and the ritual procedures from the experts, it is more difficult to get,
concerning actual cases of possession, the circumstantial details necessary
for a sociological analysis. Any statement of a sociological order based on
hearsay is necessarily unsatisfactory and incomplete.
It would appear that when living hosts of phii paub were named, they
were usually of three types: (1) a mau wicha, a practitioner of powerful
disease or love magic, who was suspected of using this knowledge unethically,
spells had turned bad inside him (or her) as a result of breaking taboos;
(2) an outsider, male or female, who had come to reside in the village by
virtue of marriage; (3) a stranger who had passed through the village.
It is clear to the anthropologist, from his knowledge of village attitudes
and of social relations in general, that the villagers of Baan Phraan Muan
would be prone to view malevolent agents more as disorderly forces
emanating from the unpredictable external non-human world or the world
of the dead than as originating amongst their living contemporary fellow-villagers
and kin. And if in the case of phii paub possession a living person
is named, then he or she is likely not to be a close kinsman but either
a peripheral person or, as in the case of the mau wicha, someone who is
unlike the ordinary villager by virtue of consorting with dangerous forces.
The sanctions traditionally applied against the witch appear to be
consonant with this view that phii paub possession and accusations were
on the whole a `peripheral' phenomenon, in two senses of the word.
First, the accused were, if living persons, marginal to the village community;
secondly, the experiencing of possession and the rituals of exorcism were
in incidence and in terms of their significance for the entire field of religion
and ritual of somewhat minor importance. Village religion is dominated
by Buddhism, khwan ritual, and the cult of the guardian phii; the malevolent
spirits figure as breaches in this ordered world. Thus I consider phii paub
possession and exorcism to be peripheral in the sense I. M. Lewis referred
to spirit possession among the Somali as `peripheral' in the spectrum
of religious experience and action (Lewis 1966).
Villagers say that when a living resident of the same or of another
village was named, ordinarily no action was taken against him. The ritual
concentrated on the exorcism rather than on the accused host of the
spirit. But if there was a sudden wave of possessions in the village and the
victims named the same person as the phii paub host, extreme action was
taken in the face of these cumulative accusations and evidence, whereby
the accused was asked to leave the village or was simply forced out by
stone-throwing and threatened violence. In extreme cases, then, witchcraft
accusations had serious implications for village life, and the offender was
summarily expelled. Thus repeated and cumulative accusations were
esolved by expulsion of the accused from the village rather than by
aking an attempt to heal relations. Sanctions against witchcraft ranged
rom ignoring the accused to his expulsion. This system of sanctions
ccorded with the fact that accusations had little to do with the key
ocial relations in the village social system.
To report now three instances of phii paub accusations in the past.
A woman was accused in the village, some thirty years ago, of being
a phii paub host. A number of victims had over time named her as the
person harbouring the spirit which entered them. At the time of the
accusations, this woman was thirty years old, had two children, and had
come to the village from outside and taken up virilocal residence. The
village exorcist and all the villagers were convinced she was a phii paub.
Villagers stoned her house at night. The village elders solicited the aid
of an elderly monk from a neighbouring village, who poured sacred
water on her, and told her on behalf of the villagers to leave the village.
It is said that the woman confessed to the monk that she was a phii paub.
The village in fact drove her away with her family, including her husband.
After she left, the epidemic of spirit attack subsided. The woman moved
to her natal village of Baan Chiang Yuen, only a few miles away, and is
apparently still alive and leading a normal life there.
Nang Uan is an elderly mother living in the village. More than ten
years ago she was afflicted with spirit possession. She cried and she mourned
and did not open her eyes. Her husband and fellow villagers diagnosed
the affliction as phii paub possession and invited the exorcist to deal with
her. She was given the shock therapy I have already described and upon
questioning identified the phii paub host as a stranger from the village of
Baan Khao (in the same tambon as that to which Phraan Muan belongs);
while he was passing through the village, the spirit had entered her. The
spirit was successfully exorcized; the accusation itself was unimportant.
Nang Uan has never been afflicted again.
Nang Sai, a young married woman of the village, died in childbirth
some ten years ago. Her child survived. Her delivery was difficult and
she behaved like a woman possessed. An exorcist was sent for but he did
not arrive in time. After her death, a diviner was consulted and he diagnosed
the death as caused by phii paub possession and identified Phau San as the
perpetrator of the crime. Phau San was not a native of the village; he
came from another province (Mahasarakam) and had settled here uxori-locally.
He is reported to have studied wicha ha khom (magical control of
epidemics) and was widely suspected of letting loose disease in the village
in order to earn money through treating patients. It was suspected that
he did not observe the taboos of his profession. Hence the diviner's
diagnosis merely confirmed village opinion. Phau San was driven away
from the village by the usual recourse to nocturnal stone-throwing. It is
reported that he went south to get `cured' but was unsuccessful and died
some years later. His wife and children separated from him and went
away in another direction: their whereabouts are not known.
EXORCISM IN RELATION TO OTHER RITUALS
The exorcistic ritual reveals very interesting features when placed in
relation to Buddhist rites. Let us keep in mind certain features and
inferences already stated concerning the monk's rites, especially the three-dimensional
character of the Pali sacred words (which derive their power
because they are related to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha), and
the ritual transaction by which monks transfer grace to laymen who have
previously asserted their adherence to the precepts and the Trinity, and
have demonstrated their right intention through gift-giving.
In spite of the overall differences, the exorcistic ritual manifests some
remarkable parallels. The trinity of features which give efficacy to the
exorcistic ritual can be clearly seen.
1. The exorcist demonstrates his filiation to his teacher (guru) and through
him to the line of ascending teachers culminating in the supreme guru.
The sacred words gain their authority through this impeccable derivation,
and in the ritual situation the spiritual power of these teachers is present
in the officiant. This assertion of a genealogy has an added feature in
rituals employing mantra. Mantra are secret formulae, jealously guarded,
revealed and taught by the teacher to his initiated pupil.
2. We have seen that the spells of the exorcist, which he recites esoterically,
are said to be derived from Buddhist gatha and paritta—perhaps distorted
and adapted—which are publicly and audibly recited by monks. Not only
this, but the exorcist at the beginning of the rite pays homage to the Buddhist
Trinity, worships the Buddha statue and his teacher, invokes the thewada,
and even administers in the course of the rite the Buddhist precepts. Clearly
this is a use of Buddhist procedures with a twist and an inversion.
3. The third basis for the efficacy of the ritual stems from the special
properties of the exorcist himself—who theoretically has been trained in
the proper intonation of the words, observes food and liquor taboos in
the service of bodily purity, and undergoes certain acts of preparation.
These three features are paralleled in the monk's rites, especially in
respect of the three-dimensional character of the Pali sacred words. But
the formal similarities must not be allowed to obscure the differences in
the transactions. In the Buddhist case, monks publicly and audibly
transfer grace through sacred words to laymen who support the faith.
By contrast, in the exorcistic rite the exorcist is a protagonist confronting
a malevolent antagonist, and uses spells which are esoterically muttered
to magnify his power and to master and dominate the enemy.
Thus, from this point of view, it is clear that the monk and the exorcist,
the Buddhist religious action and the rites addressed to malevolent spirits
is devoted to the achievement of merit whereas the latter is concerned
with the removal of unwanted supernatural contact. The monk in theory
has no contact with malevolent spirits; the higher and purer religious
pursuit is insulated from contamination by the lower pursuit. Nevertheless,
the hierarchy of village religious values is expressed in the fact that the
exorcist is a Buddhist and relates himself to Buddhism while practising his
doctrinally devalued art. Everyone in the village is a Buddhist first and foremost.
But most intriguing is that the exorcist is in some ways a `mock' monk
who uses the sacred words of the monk in a manner which is apparently
antithetical to the use made of them by the monk. There is, then, an
interesting inversion and a link between the ascetic monk and the dionysiac
exorcist which is partly traceable to the notion of miraculous powers (iddhi)
in doctrinal Buddhism itself, to the use made of sacred words in all ritual
as embodiments and carriers of power, and finally to the notion of normal
and abnormal death reflected on the one hand in the mortuary rites of
Buddhism, and on the other in the spirit cults in the form of guardians
and ancestors versus victims of sudden or violent death.
The contrast and link between the malevolent spirits and the village
guardian spirits, and their respective rituals and specialists, are of a different
kind. The major contrast is that guardian spirits have a collective village
significance as controllers of agricultural fertility and rain, and in this
respect the cults addressed to them have a territorial and communal
aspect. The malevolent spirits only act capriciously against individuals,
and the rites addressed to remove their influence primarily concern the
victim and his household, not necessarily the wider kinship group or the
territorial community. The ritual specialists of the guardian spirits are
either their intermediaries who propitiate them or mediums through whom
they verbally communicate with human beings. The exorcist is also an
intermediary and a medium, but of the power of divine angels and his
teacher, and he makes combat with the malevolent spirit who is his enemy.
While these contrasts are clear, there is some overlap, however, in the fact
that guardian spirits can also punish individuals and are in such instances
propitiated in a manner similar to that adopted when malevolent spirits
cause minor illnesses and are placated (not exorcized). But even here there
is a contrast: when guardian spirits cause individual affliction they are seen
as acting not capriciously but as upholders of moral values. The relation
between the exorcism ritual and the khwan ritual warrants special comment.
The khwan ritual is a prophylactic (and healing) ritual; the exorcism ritual
also is a healing ritual. The situations they deal with, the techniques of
therapy and the expressive symbolism and communication structures of
Chapter 13 on Sukhwan rites, I formulated a hypothesis which I indicated
might be confirmed after the data in this chapter had been presented.
The sukhwan ritual, we saw, is built around the notion of khwan, a man's
spirit essence, the presence of which is considered essential to well-being
and which is believed to leave the body and escape into the outside world,
usually the forest. The flight of the khwan is most likely to occur in certain
situations, especially before undergoing rites of passage or preliminary
to integration into village society (and its constituent groups) or at moments
of actual or potential departure from it. Village elders recall the escaped
essence and aggregate it to the body, thereby charging the celebrant with
morale, and restoring his sense of wholeness and well-being.
The exorcism ritual represents a different therapeutic situation, in
which the exact reverse of the elements in sukhwan ritual is represented.
Here a person is mentally and physically ill because an alien external
agent has entered him, which produces in the patient an alienation from
society. The ritual technique here consists of persuading the patient to
define his illness by naming the attacking agent, thereby enabling the
patient to re-establish contact with society. The remarkable aspect of this
theory of mental illness and the therapy for it is that its cause is externalized
and objectified in an outside force or agency. The patient thus is not held
responsible for the illness; nor is it seen as being caused by events or
processes generated inside the human organism. He does not carry the
burden of guilt or personal responsibility. I must emphasize that these
statements describe culturally defined and conceptualized notions of
disease and curative procedures. From the clinical or psychotherapeutic
point of view, it may well be that what the healing ritual does is change
`idiosyncratic conflicts and defenses to culturally conventional conflicts
and ritualized symptoms', and that the cure achieves a `social remission'
for the patient. (See Ari Kiev 1964, p. 27.)
The sukhwan and exorcism rituals are, from a comparative point of
view, expressions of two explanations of disease causation commonly
found in many societies: loss of vital substance from the body (soul loss),
and introduction of an external and harmful substance in the body, this
including spirit intrusion or possession. In the Thai case, loss of spirit
essence may be likened to a state of diffuseness in the person; the ritual
by charging morale re-establishes concentration of mind and achieves
moral commitment to status requirements. Intrusion of a foreign spirit
results in the opposite state of over-concentration on (preoccupation with)
oneself and withdrawal and alienation from society. Normal relations with
society are re-established through expelling the cause of abnormal behaviour.
| Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-east Thailand | |