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Yesterday, as I posted here was devoted to Bang Neow Shrine, which is very conservative, and despite there being a few female deities involved in this festival, Bang Neow only has male mediums. Today is Jui-Tui’s day and it is a very different celebration.
Jui-Tui is the largest shrine in Phuket and as such has a much larger procession with many more mediums/mah-song than the others. It’s also unique for it’s vast amount of female mah-song. Other temples have female mah-song, but they tend to be entranced by mainly the more feminine of deities (the child and the old woman are the two I most easily recognize as feminine) whereas at Jui-Tui, all of the deities have female mediums spreading their prayers. Like last post, this one has lots of pictures, click through for full sizes.

This isn’t the old woman deity, but some sort of Goddess, she rarely walks, instead being driven through the procession, handing out flowers and bracelets, primarily to woman.
Just to show that the aforementioned woman doesn’t have to be an adult, here is a young child entranced by the same goddess
Just as the “goddess” doesn’t have to be an adult, the child deity doesn’t need to be a kid.
Rather usual piercings for female mah-song; flowers and roses on skewers
Not to say that the ladies don’t always go dainty in their choice of “burdens”
Sometimes they opt for more traditional, masculine, “burdens”.
Unfortunately, it’s been storming like made here in Phuket, so getting decent pictures hasn’t always been possible, but I hope that these do some part to convey the different vibe of Jui-Tui.

This post is more or less a photo dump, but I’ll try to give at least a brief explanation of each picture. For back story, in 2007 I was invited by some friends to visit the Vegetarian Festival with them; Ron more or less picking up on the fact that I needed to get away for a bit and experience the world more, which he was certainly correct on. Ron and John had done the legwork to make friends with a mah-song (Medium/Priest) at a prestigious temple called Bang Neow, so the rest of the Westerners and I (there was a posse of around 8 or so of us) were their on the coattails of John and Ron. We were treated to a most prestigious and up close experience of the Festival, an experience I cherish and will never forget. I returned in 2008 and 2009, each year having a vastly different vibe from the previous and 2011 is no exception. Anyhow, this morning was Bang Neow’s street procession, so I was up at 5:00am to make it to the shrine in time to see the mah-song being entranced and pierced prior to the procession and here are a few pics.

This is one of the “spears” used for piercing the cheeks of the mah-song. This goes in as far as necessary in order to insert whatever burden the mah-song will bear.

A mah-song pierced with a long spear adorned with flowers (not visible)
These three are of various types of flagellants which are my favorite mah-song “type”. The first is offering blood at the shrine, the second is licking a giant saw blade while walking, and the third shows the aftermath of licking blades for a few hours.
Here we see an elder mah-song standing on a chariot carried by devotees as he blesses a small shrine. The second shot gives a decent idea as to the amount of firecrackers lit off.

Tomorrow’s procession is for Jui Tui shrine, which is a large shrine with many devotees and mah-song, with a strong female mah-song presence, so I’ll be certain to get lots of pictures from their ceremony as well. Tonight is firewalking (weather permitting) at many of the smaller shrines, so I’m hoping to get some pictures and videos from that to put up as well.

Update: Allen posted this video on Tumblr and wondered when it was actually shot, so I did some more googling and found that this video isn’t actually from the 70’s, instead it’s most likely from 1985, or so this article makes it seem.

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Doing some youtube searching, as I’m wont to do on occasion and I came across an older video of human suspensions being performed in Sri Lanka. A Professor Carlo Fonseka takes the opportunity to show that suspension does not take magic or religious devotion to achieve and goes on to show a (presumed) scientist being suspended from six hooks in a superman position. This video is most likely from the late 1970’s as that is when the professor was waging a war of science vs gods, and his main opponent was the Hindu deity Kataragama, whose devotees are known for firewalking and flesh suspensions. Kataragama is also known as Lord Murugan to the Tamil people of India, which is the same deity exalted during Thaipusam.

Despite knowing that religious devotion is not necessary for rituals such as suspension, I still personally find it much more interesting within that context. We in the modern suspension community know that it’s mind over matter, not religious devotion which allows us to suspend, but I personally hope that all of us remember where these rituals originate.