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07-02-2017, 02:10 PM
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Doll with a dead fetus’ spirit? How Hongkongers have embraced Thai occult charms
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 07 February, 2017, 6:00am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 07 February, 2017, 10:50am
Lifestyle
Sam Bronski [email protected]
Widespread belief in ghosts and influence of celebrities such as Jackie Chan wearing Thai amulets lies behind spread of shops in Hong Kong selling occult objects such as human bone fragments for financial and romantic success
http://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486w/public/images/methode/2017/02/07/3dde6f7a-e9c3-11e6-925a-a992a025ddf7_486x.jpg?itok=Qf2Shiqt
Off a dusty corridor in an industrial block in working-class Kwun Tong, a self-proclaimed spiritual guide, sells amulets laced with human bone fragments sourced from Thailand, and tends to her makeshift shrine.
Children’s toys hang next to religious statuettes among droplets of wax and incense ash. An open box of pizza with congealed cheese lies on the floor next to fruit that has begun to rot: these are offerings to the ghosts and spirits believed to reside here.
Hong Kong has plenty of ghost stories. With ancestor worship woven deeply into the social fabric of southern China, and real estate prices affected by fear of hauntings, belief that the boundaries between the living and the dead are porous is pervasive.
The region has always been a melting pot of spiritual beliefs, with Thai Buddhist deities and Japanese atonement practices - a tradition of making a sacrifice to make right a wrong - incorporated in the very southern Chinese methods of appeasing ghoulish forces trapped in the living world.
Myth busters: Thai scientists debunk sweating crystals, boiling oil and other superstitions [1]
But Thai occult stores such as the one in Kwun Tong are a relatively new phenomenon, and one that is gaining popularity in Hong Kong. They offer a window into a murky, complex world of Buddhist and animist beliefs with a strong flavour of black magic.
With a disarming smile, the spiritual guide – a Hongkonger in her thirties called Cat – pulls out one object after another from her glass cabinet. A golden amulet shaped like a skull with red eyes, a small tin containing a fragment of a human skull, a vial of oils she says were extracted by a monk from the chin of a corpse, a key chain with an illustration of a fetus on the front.
She sells each object for upwards of HK$1,000. They contain spirits or ghosts that will help the owner move forward in life, she says. Some assist with matters of the heart; others bring financial success. Some imbue masculine prowess; others, feminine wiles. The logic underpinning the system is often karmic: save a lost soul and he or she will save you.
“I first started seeing stores like these in Hong Kong in 2008 and 2009,” says City University anthropologist Thomas Patton, who specialises in the modern-day cross-fertilisations of Thai Buddhism across the region. “I’d say that’s when the industry started to take off.”
Patton says he has seen about one such shop for each MTR station on Hong Kong Island. He hasn’t checked for any in Kowloon, but knows of a couple in Kwun Tong and Sham Shui Po.
Hong Kong celebrities, including Jackie Chan, have been spotted wearing lucky Thai amulets. This was a factor that helped create a market for them in the city; prior to that they had only previously taken off to any large degree in Singapore.
Hong Kong people have this obsessive-compulsive disorder over fetish-like thingsThomas Patton, anthropologist
Patton says the Hongkongers most drawn to the world of amulets and Thai sorcery are working-class people hit by the 2008 global financial crisis. Businessmen, however, are also drawn to the practice, as are lovelorn women. People who like to collect things are also customers.
“Hong Kong people have this obsessive-compulsive disorder over fetish-like things, whether it’s model boats that they like to play with at the weekends at the park, or drones ... or electrical gadgets and anime stuff,” he says.
Whether all the Hongkongers who invest in occult objects understand their spiritual significance is unclear. With amulets available at phone and computer accessory stores, they might simply be a fad. However, the behaviours and values associated with these fetish objects classify as cultish, Patton says.
A free consultation is required before any purchase at the Kwun Tong store. Like a therapist, the vendor will listen with empathy to your woes and determine which spirit is the most appropriate to call upon for assistance. Sometimes, she might not even prescribe a purchase: with a kindness that lends her an air of authenticity, she will give practical advice free of charge.
Any purchase “depends on who or what you want to attract in your life”, she says in Cantonese, drawing upon the teachings of a Buddhist monk whom she sought out in Thailand. She gestures to pictures of him pinned to her wall. It is this monk who consecrates each object in the shop, she says, infusing in them the spirit or ghost enlisted to do the bidding of the new owner in return for redemption.
She pulls out an amulet with an illustration of a mother and child. “This lady killed herself while she was pregnant,” she says. “The monk had to make many of these amulets” to ensure the woman’s tortured spirit had a greater chance of being redeemed with help from the living.
Squeezed on a worn sofa are three men smoking cigarettes, fastening necklace chains to the occult paraphernalia. And in a leather chair sits a toy doll with an impish grin and penetrating plastic eyes. We are told that the doll contains the spirit of an aborted baby.
“I used to feel sad about my life before I came here,” says a burly man in his 40s who works in construction management. He has joined the plastic doll on its chair, carefully balancing it on his knee and whispering sweet nothings into its ear. “Now things seem to make more sense and I feel better.”
I used to feel sad about my life before I came here. Now things seem to make more sense and I feel betterA customer at Cat’s store
He says he comes to the store regularly, refers to the shop vendor as “big sister” and the people who visit regularly as his family. He speaks tenderly and pityingly of the toy doll, which is passed around the group for nurturing.
For people who have trouble dealing with other humans, helping ghosts may be more straightforward and satisfying, even though Chinese tradition suggests staying as far away from ghosts as possible, says Joseph Bosco, an anthropologist formerly at Chinese University. Bosco has written extensively on supernatural beliefs in Hong Kong and China.
“Traditionally, families left offerings out for ghosts, but did not interact with them so directly, unless with the help of some sort of shaman ... or Taoist priest.” That Hongkongers are dealing with ghosts in this way is also unusual in that, to the Chinese, when it comes to paranormal assistance there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
“Some Taiwanese and Chinese have tried to get help from ghosts (such as help in picking lottery numbers). These ‘yin’ forces, however, will exact repayment in other forms; you may die sooner, or will suffer more in the underworld or in reincarnation. So any help the ghosts give is at a price.”
Bosco says that while many Hongkongers will be put off by practices that involve close interactions with ghosts, there are several aspects of the Thai occult that appeal in Hong Kong and China.
“It is precisely the fact that Thai Buddhism is both similar and different that makes it easy to incorporate into Hong Kong and Chinese beliefs. I’ve seen Thai statues of Buddhist gods in Hong Kong temples: they are viewed as new and more powerful, but fit into the existing pantheon and religious system,” he says.
Why Thais lavish treats on ‘angel dolls’, and what sparked a creepy craze [2]
“Foreign” beliefs are commonly viewed as more powerful, he adds, mentioning gypsy fortune-tellers as an example. Associations with “primitives” – often viewed as being closer to nature – can lend a belief system a greater sense of potency.
The lure of Thailand and its spirit world is not only drawing in Hongkongers, but also garnering attention further afield.
“In 10 years doing research in Southeast Asia, I’ve seen more and more Taiwanese, mainland Chinese and Hongkongers coming in search of religious help for their business,” says Patton. There are Chinese arriving in Thailand intending to fill suitcases with amulets. With prices far higher online than in the Kwun Tong store, it’s big business.
“Everything [has been] about the Chinese market, the Singapore market. Everything is just look look, look, money, money, money,” Thailand-based Briton Peter Jenks said in an interview with underground occult publication Rune Soup. Jenks has recently completed The Thai Occult, a book describing the beliefs to non-Asian collectors.
He says there’s been a ripple effect of interest in Asian spirituality in the West, from tai chi to far more esoteric practices. Thailand is a particularly strong magnet for seekers of the supernatural owing to its complex ghost world.
“Most aspects of life [in Thailand] have a magic aspect – there are spirit houses attached to every dwelling,” he says. According to Jenks, the boundaries between life and death in the kingdom are incredibly thin.
In the Kwun Tong store it is approaching midnight when we leave, having bought nothing but been offered information for hours, an invitation to return at a later date, and a tacit warning: it gets a lot darker than this.
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/articl...-occult-charms (http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2067800/doll-dead-fetus-spirit-how-hongkongers-have-embraced-thai-occult-charms)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?240780-Inside-Hong-Kong-s-obsession-with-spirit-dolls-and-Thai-occult-charms&goto=newpost).
Doll with a dead fetus’ spirit? How Hongkongers have embraced Thai occult charms
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 07 February, 2017, 6:00am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 07 February, 2017, 10:50am
Lifestyle
Sam Bronski [email protected]
Widespread belief in ghosts and influence of celebrities such as Jackie Chan wearing Thai amulets lies behind spread of shops in Hong Kong selling occult objects such as human bone fragments for financial and romantic success
http://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486w/public/images/methode/2017/02/07/3dde6f7a-e9c3-11e6-925a-a992a025ddf7_486x.jpg?itok=Qf2Shiqt
Off a dusty corridor in an industrial block in working-class Kwun Tong, a self-proclaimed spiritual guide, sells amulets laced with human bone fragments sourced from Thailand, and tends to her makeshift shrine.
Children’s toys hang next to religious statuettes among droplets of wax and incense ash. An open box of pizza with congealed cheese lies on the floor next to fruit that has begun to rot: these are offerings to the ghosts and spirits believed to reside here.
Hong Kong has plenty of ghost stories. With ancestor worship woven deeply into the social fabric of southern China, and real estate prices affected by fear of hauntings, belief that the boundaries between the living and the dead are porous is pervasive.
The region has always been a melting pot of spiritual beliefs, with Thai Buddhist deities and Japanese atonement practices - a tradition of making a sacrifice to make right a wrong - incorporated in the very southern Chinese methods of appeasing ghoulish forces trapped in the living world.
Myth busters: Thai scientists debunk sweating crystals, boiling oil and other superstitions [1]
But Thai occult stores such as the one in Kwun Tong are a relatively new phenomenon, and one that is gaining popularity in Hong Kong. They offer a window into a murky, complex world of Buddhist and animist beliefs with a strong flavour of black magic.
With a disarming smile, the spiritual guide – a Hongkonger in her thirties called Cat – pulls out one object after another from her glass cabinet. A golden amulet shaped like a skull with red eyes, a small tin containing a fragment of a human skull, a vial of oils she says were extracted by a monk from the chin of a corpse, a key chain with an illustration of a fetus on the front.
She sells each object for upwards of HK$1,000. They contain spirits or ghosts that will help the owner move forward in life, she says. Some assist with matters of the heart; others bring financial success. Some imbue masculine prowess; others, feminine wiles. The logic underpinning the system is often karmic: save a lost soul and he or she will save you.
“I first started seeing stores like these in Hong Kong in 2008 and 2009,” says City University anthropologist Thomas Patton, who specialises in the modern-day cross-fertilisations of Thai Buddhism across the region. “I’d say that’s when the industry started to take off.”
Patton says he has seen about one such shop for each MTR station on Hong Kong Island. He hasn’t checked for any in Kowloon, but knows of a couple in Kwun Tong and Sham Shui Po.
Hong Kong celebrities, including Jackie Chan, have been spotted wearing lucky Thai amulets. This was a factor that helped create a market for them in the city; prior to that they had only previously taken off to any large degree in Singapore.
Hong Kong people have this obsessive-compulsive disorder over fetish-like thingsThomas Patton, anthropologist
Patton says the Hongkongers most drawn to the world of amulets and Thai sorcery are working-class people hit by the 2008 global financial crisis. Businessmen, however, are also drawn to the practice, as are lovelorn women. People who like to collect things are also customers.
“Hong Kong people have this obsessive-compulsive disorder over fetish-like things, whether it’s model boats that they like to play with at the weekends at the park, or drones ... or electrical gadgets and anime stuff,” he says.
Whether all the Hongkongers who invest in occult objects understand their spiritual significance is unclear. With amulets available at phone and computer accessory stores, they might simply be a fad. However, the behaviours and values associated with these fetish objects classify as cultish, Patton says.
A free consultation is required before any purchase at the Kwun Tong store. Like a therapist, the vendor will listen with empathy to your woes and determine which spirit is the most appropriate to call upon for assistance. Sometimes, she might not even prescribe a purchase: with a kindness that lends her an air of authenticity, she will give practical advice free of charge.
Any purchase “depends on who or what you want to attract in your life”, she says in Cantonese, drawing upon the teachings of a Buddhist monk whom she sought out in Thailand. She gestures to pictures of him pinned to her wall. It is this monk who consecrates each object in the shop, she says, infusing in them the spirit or ghost enlisted to do the bidding of the new owner in return for redemption.
She pulls out an amulet with an illustration of a mother and child. “This lady killed herself while she was pregnant,” she says. “The monk had to make many of these amulets” to ensure the woman’s tortured spirit had a greater chance of being redeemed with help from the living.
Squeezed on a worn sofa are three men smoking cigarettes, fastening necklace chains to the occult paraphernalia. And in a leather chair sits a toy doll with an impish grin and penetrating plastic eyes. We are told that the doll contains the spirit of an aborted baby.
“I used to feel sad about my life before I came here,” says a burly man in his 40s who works in construction management. He has joined the plastic doll on its chair, carefully balancing it on his knee and whispering sweet nothings into its ear. “Now things seem to make more sense and I feel better.”
I used to feel sad about my life before I came here. Now things seem to make more sense and I feel betterA customer at Cat’s store
He says he comes to the store regularly, refers to the shop vendor as “big sister” and the people who visit regularly as his family. He speaks tenderly and pityingly of the toy doll, which is passed around the group for nurturing.
For people who have trouble dealing with other humans, helping ghosts may be more straightforward and satisfying, even though Chinese tradition suggests staying as far away from ghosts as possible, says Joseph Bosco, an anthropologist formerly at Chinese University. Bosco has written extensively on supernatural beliefs in Hong Kong and China.
“Traditionally, families left offerings out for ghosts, but did not interact with them so directly, unless with the help of some sort of shaman ... or Taoist priest.” That Hongkongers are dealing with ghosts in this way is also unusual in that, to the Chinese, when it comes to paranormal assistance there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
“Some Taiwanese and Chinese have tried to get help from ghosts (such as help in picking lottery numbers). These ‘yin’ forces, however, will exact repayment in other forms; you may die sooner, or will suffer more in the underworld or in reincarnation. So any help the ghosts give is at a price.”
Bosco says that while many Hongkongers will be put off by practices that involve close interactions with ghosts, there are several aspects of the Thai occult that appeal in Hong Kong and China.
“It is precisely the fact that Thai Buddhism is both similar and different that makes it easy to incorporate into Hong Kong and Chinese beliefs. I’ve seen Thai statues of Buddhist gods in Hong Kong temples: they are viewed as new and more powerful, but fit into the existing pantheon and religious system,” he says.
Why Thais lavish treats on ‘angel dolls’, and what sparked a creepy craze [2]
“Foreign” beliefs are commonly viewed as more powerful, he adds, mentioning gypsy fortune-tellers as an example. Associations with “primitives” – often viewed as being closer to nature – can lend a belief system a greater sense of potency.
The lure of Thailand and its spirit world is not only drawing in Hongkongers, but also garnering attention further afield.
“In 10 years doing research in Southeast Asia, I’ve seen more and more Taiwanese, mainland Chinese and Hongkongers coming in search of religious help for their business,” says Patton. There are Chinese arriving in Thailand intending to fill suitcases with amulets. With prices far higher online than in the Kwun Tong store, it’s big business.
“Everything [has been] about the Chinese market, the Singapore market. Everything is just look look, look, money, money, money,” Thailand-based Briton Peter Jenks said in an interview with underground occult publication Rune Soup. Jenks has recently completed The Thai Occult, a book describing the beliefs to non-Asian collectors.
He says there’s been a ripple effect of interest in Asian spirituality in the West, from tai chi to far more esoteric practices. Thailand is a particularly strong magnet for seekers of the supernatural owing to its complex ghost world.
“Most aspects of life [in Thailand] have a magic aspect – there are spirit houses attached to every dwelling,” he says. According to Jenks, the boundaries between life and death in the kingdom are incredibly thin.
In the Kwun Tong store it is approaching midnight when we leave, having bought nothing but been offered information for hours, an invitation to return at a later date, and a tacit warning: it gets a lot darker than this.
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/articl...-occult-charms (http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/2067800/doll-dead-fetus-spirit-how-hongkongers-have-embraced-thai-occult-charms)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?240780-Inside-Hong-Kong-s-obsession-with-spirit-dolls-and-Thai-occult-charms&goto=newpost).