Continuity and change in Chinese spirit mediumship in urban Malaysia

Abstract

The spirit medium occupies an important position in popular Chinese religion. As an arbiter between the spiritual and the mundane world, he not only provides services in healing and divination but also performs vital roles at temple and spirit festivals. The history of Chinese spirit mediumship can be traced to the Shang Dynasty of the second millen nium B.C., where priest-shamans (wu) were accorded high official standing in the imperial courts, until their decline in the late Chou period in the third century B.C.1 However, spirit mediumship did not become obsolete but continued to be practised at the popular level (Yang 1967: 106, 303). Few reports of spirit mediumship in modern China have appeared in print, except for the detailed observations of De Groot (1964) made in the southern provinces in the late nineteenth century. Since then, most anthropologists have studied Chinese spirit medium ship in various Chinese communities, particularly in Taiwan (Jordan 1972, Seaman 1978, Kleinman 1980) and Hong Kong (Potter 1974). Spirit mediumship is also practised in various Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, but few ethnographies have been published. One such rare ethnography, by Elliott (1955), focuses on Chinese spirit medium ship in Singapore.2 A comparable study on the Malaysian Peninsula has yet to be accomplished. In this essay, I wish to fill some of this lacuna by describing the practices of Chinese spirit mediums and their organiza tion in contemporary urban Malaysia.3