TAILIEUCHUNG - Beautiful and efficacious statues: magic and material in Vietnamese popular religion
The medium, away from the lên đồng ritual, is an ordinary woman or man, but also a potential container for the deity. A medium lives (or is supposed to live) according to this charge, maintaining a personal shrine, serving the Mothers, observing proper conduct, and preparing carefully, purifying her or his body for possession rituals, bathing, dressing in clean clothes, and applying make-up. | Beautiful and Efficacious Statues. BEAUTIFUL AND EFFICACIOUS STATUES: MAGIC AND MATERIAL IN VIETNAMESE POPULAR RELIGION LAUREL KENDALL* VU THI THANH TAM ** NGUYEN THI THU HUONG *** .from the point of view of the anthropology of art, an idol in a temple believed to be the body of the divinity, and a spirit medium, who likewise provides the divinity with a temporary body, are treated as theoretically on a par, despite the fact that the former is an artifact and the later is a human being. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, p. 7 I asked the Mother Goddess why my body had been taken over (to serve as a spirit medium). The Mother said, a statue cannot walk or speak. If I did this (in statue form), then people would be afraid, so I chose you for this purpose. A Hanoi bà đồng, November 24, 2004 In the north of Vietnam, in a temple dedicated to the Four Palaces of the Mother Goddess, the bà đồng(1) or spirit medium sits covered with a red cloth in front of an altar heaped with offerings while the musicians sing and play to invoke the spirits. In the words of a bà đồng, “Under the red cloth I feel far, far away, light, as though I’m floating, not really inside my body at all. Then I see things, I see the spirits.” The bà đồng gestures with the fingers of each hand to signal what goddess or god - what Mandarin, Dame, Prince, Damsel, or Child from the domain of heaven, mountains and forests, water, or earth - has come to incarnate her body. The attendants scurry to find the deity’s own silk robe and accessories. They remove the red cloth from the medium’s head, dress her, and construct an elaborate headdress around the turban on her head. Once attired, the deity dances, listens with appreciation to the music, receives offerings, showers blessings on the attendants, musicians, and spectators, and sometimes utters an oracle (Ngo 2003, Nguyen 2002, Norton 2000). The goddesses and gods who inhabit the medium during a lên đồng ritual also inhabit the wooden statues on the .
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