As a little sneak peek of things to come on ihung, I’m posting a photo I took at one of the temples while attending the 2008 Phuket Vegetarian Festival. A little background here, during the festival, many mediums, called Mah song in Thai, become one of the Nine Emperor Gods. Now, when I say become, I mean that they are entranced or possessed by one of these deities and become the living embodiment of them. I’m not 100% certain as to why they perform acts of “pain”, but it seems to be related to the Thaipusam Festival celebrated in nearby Malaysia since the other locations which celebrate the Feast of the Nine Emperor Gods don’t have rituals such as this.
Anyhow, back to the picture. In 2008, my second year at the festival, I was able to take a step back and watch the rituals without being quite so shocked and amazed by the piercings, and more able to pay attention to how the Mah song personalities change, what the order is in how they become entranced and de-entranced, etc. I thought that I was pretty nonchalant in regards to the piercings, until we saw this Mah song:
Now, like I said, I’d been here before, and this particular day was at least half way through this festival, so I’m comfortable saying that by this time I’d seen hundreds and hundreds of pierced Mah song. What I’d never seen before though was a Mah song who inserts all of their own piercings! And, not only did he pierce his own eyelids, he started with them and proceeded to insert a few in his earlobes and cheeks, and then he walked the entire procession route which is between 10 and 15 kilometers! With skewers though his eyelids.
Now, many of you may wonder what exactly this has to do with ihung and/or suspensions. Well, it doesn’t directly, but I personally feel that more modern people need exposure to this sort of thing, and that the body modification community needs to perserve this sort of imagery and ritual as many of these sorts of things are disappearing with globalization and westernization. The rites and rituals that we, as modern practitioners, perform are all derived from somewhere else, and I hope that I can use my travel experience, as well as my personal library, to make ihung.org a little more than a suspension blog.