20101029

101029 Thaikarl - Our new spirit house

friends,

we have a new spirit house!  after mama found a snake in bed with her in the middle of the night, the Long Som (spirit medium) told us that the ghost of the land wants a place to live.  (see the previous blog entry for the story) i sent tok some extra money to get us a spirit house.  she had to wait until after the recent buddist holiday to have the workmen come and install a concrete pad and tile.

and again mama had a nocturnal visitor - this time a centipede under her pillow.  don't know what kind of centipede it was, but they do have some big ones in thailand.  ones that bite and produce a painful wound that is easily infected.  they usually don't come creeping around the house.  i've never seen one on our property actually.  so the creatures visit is a little odd.   we're hoping that with the new spirit house installed, the local ghosts will be appeased with their fancy new digs, and stop bothering mama.  that's the principal, as i understand it anyway.

and old man from the village came out to dedicate our spirit house.  offerings of fruit, sweets and food were prepared:

 i wish i could have been there for the ceremony.  we now have a beautiful addition to the yard.



i found a explanitory article about thai spirit houses.  so many things to try to understand. 


100907 - Thaikarl - USA - The snake is a ghost (?)

the snake is a ghost (?)

my wife told me a story the other day when i called her.  my 77 ish old mother-in-law woke up in the middle of the night and discovered a snake in her bed. she slowly and carefully got out of bed and went downstairs. she got a flashlight and went back upstairs to look for the snake, but couldn't find it. odd that a snake would go all the way up to the her second floor room.

the next day they went to the Long Som (spirit medium - i still can't say it right, and am probably spelling it wrong) to see what this was about. the Long Som said that it was the ghost of our land. He wants a place to live. So we have to get a spirit house. My wife told me that we actually have to buy two houses - a larger one for the "Angel" and a smaller one for the Ghost. her dictionary translated all the thai words for what she was trying to say as "Angel" but i don't think it's and angel as we think of them in the west exactly.

we also have to have some of the old people from the village come to look around and decide where is the best place to put the spirit houses. i said we'd better go with the program and i'll send her a little extra money (3900 baht) to buy the houses, pedestals and concrete.

i'm never quite sure what is going on with such things. I don't "believe", but i don't dis-believe either. it's important to my family there, so i follow the customs- even if i don't fully understand them. my basic interest is that they don't just kill the snake. if they think that the snake is a familiar for a ghost and thus won't kill it, that's good by me. don't know what kind of snake it was - i'm going to show her pictures of thai snakes next time we skype and see if mama can pick it out. venomous snakes that could be dangerous need to be invited to live elsewhere. maybe the ghost won't need the snake after we get the spirit house installed. i'll post pictures when we have them.

amazing thailand.