Corporeal gods
Alvin Eng Hui Lim
September 13, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9781351188876-3 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnography |
|---|---|
| Population | An 80-year-old spirit medium of the Monkey God in Singapore, his assistant, and the temple community |
| Key findings | Lim argues that the spirit medium's practice of healing, exorcism, and possession involves constant negotiation and transformation of religious codes and forms, in which practitioners embody their deity while also remaining themselves. He contends that such embodied practice reiterates tradition while simultaneously iterating the spiritual as traces, as when the aged medium's re-performance of the acrobatic Monkey God addresses the present situation of an ageing body. |
Abstract
In Chapter 3 , the author moves from the assistant to his 80-year-old godfather, a spirit medium of the Monkey God, and examines his spiritual practice. By interviewing and following the medium assistant, and observing his godfather, this chapter provides insights into the Monkey God temple practice in Singapore. Lim considers the efficacy of the spirit medium’s practice, which includes healing, exorcism and spirit possession, and examines how they relate to their community and beyond. Caught in a web of spatial and temporal configurations, his research subjects manifest the constant negotiation and transformation of religious codes and forms, embodying their deity as much as having to be themselves. These constant shifts and substitutions perform a critical example of how an embodied practice can reiterate a tradition and a material body as an imprint but simultaneously iterate the spiritual and the practice as traces. For example, when the spirit medium’s aged body attempts to re-perform the acrobatic and ageless Monkey God, the practice reiterates both the acrobatic tradition and the need to address the present situation of an ageing body.