begin, propitiatory offerings were routinely made to placate the
local spirits. Should those ritual offerings be neglected, then the
least untoward thing – a common cold or a sneeze – was attrib-
uted to incurring the disfavor of the spirits. A local spirit doctor
was then called in to divine the cause and pacify the offended
spirit. Doctors in those days were much smarter than they are
today: they unhesitatingly declared that this spirit, or that ghost,
had been wronged, claiming that a certain offering or sacrifice
would cure everything. Even if the supplicant was hacking and
sneezing long after offering the prescribed oblation, it made no
difference. Back then, if the doctor declared you cured, you were,
and you felt relieved despite the symptoms. This is the reason I
can so boldly assert that both the doctors and the patients of that
era were very smart: whatever the doctor declared was final, and
the patient accepted it without reservation. It was unnecessary
to search for medical cures, since the spirit doctor and his ghosts
could cure everything.
Later when Ãcariya Mun and Ãcariya Sao passed through
these areas, reasoning with local inhabitants, and explaining the
principles of truth, their preoccupation with the power of spir-
its and the agency of spirit doctors gradually waned. Today it has
virtually disappeared. Even many of the spirit doctors themselves
began taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha in
place of the various spirits and ghosts they had been worship-
ping. Nowadays, hardly anyone engages in such occult practices.
Traveling from village to village in the Northeast today, we no
longer have to tread our way through offerings laid out for the
spirits as we did in the past. Except for the odd group here or
there, spirit worship is no longer an issue in people’s lives. It’s truly
jacob rumans
(Jacob Rumans)
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