Liquidity (9) - Multiculturalism, mediumship and madness

The Chinese folk, or syncretic religion, if based far more around spirit mediumship than most outsiders realise. Few people attend services in Buddhist monasteries and fewer still in orthodox Taoist temples. These are both closed networks for the initiated, with their clerics being paid to perform rituals at non-orthodox usually spirit medium temples, and at births and funerals. Your average Chinese temple has a healthy collection of deity statues from multiple pantheons of deities, and practitioners offer them incense and using divination blocks, ask them yes / no questions, usually regarding whether the deity is willing to help them or not. Complex communication takes place between deities and devotees when a deity possesses his or her medium. Most remples have 1 or more resident mediums in Singapore and Malaysia, less so in Taiwan. It is actually a lucrative profession, but new mediums have to find a way to get followers, and this photograph is of one such medium. To gain a following of mostly young people, he often pierced his face with a fluorescent light tube with wires leading down to a battery pack on his waist. When visiting public temples, he travelled by truck, plugging in the light tube to the battery just before getting off the truck as if left on too long, it gets very hot. The light tube thus has no ritual significance, rather, a commercial one as it is fascinating to see, and attracts new followers. Interestingly, this spirit medium is actually a Tamil Indian born in Singapore who is channeling a Chinese Underworld deity with a hole in his face for sensational piercings powered by electricity. Hence the title, 'Multiculturalism, mediumship and madness'.