134 Part II: Outsiders
a snake meet along a trail, they are mutually startled and hurry out of each
other’s way. Similarly there are spirits of all kinds inhabiting the wild places
and wanting to be left alone. When humans disturb their habitations, there may
be trouble. A snakebite can threaten one’s life; so can a spirit attack. The most
powerful and dangerous spirits, according to Chaitong, the shaman at Cheng-
mengmai, are those that inhabit termite mounds and those that live in the great
trees in and around Buddhist temples. Spirits in termite mounds cause nose-
bleeds in children, physical weakness, and illness if you dig into them or even
go near them. The spirits in the temples have made themselves resemble the fig-
ures in the temple: they have elongated heads and red mouths. The Buddhist
images must also have some kind of power, Chaitong supposes, but whether
their power is equal to that of the spirits in the trees, he does not know.
There are other spirits closer to home, in the village and even in the house.
They have various origins and vaguely known identities. Overlooking most vil-
lages will be a large and well-formed tree on a hill where the main spirit of the
mountain is invited to take up residence to look after the village. The door, the
main post of the house, the large fireplace, and the small one each have their
spirits. There is the spirit that lives in the funeral drum. There is Sierglung, once
a living human, one of seven brothers, the useless one who never did his share
of work but lazily spent his days amusing himself. When he fell sick and died,
no one cared, and his body was left to be eaten by wild animals. But then his
angry ghost came back to take vengeance by killing his brothers and their ani-
mals until a shaman advised the family to set up a small shrine inside the house
and give him food-gifts annually. Since then, all Hmong have a shrine to Sier-
glung in their houses. Sometimes individual subclans or families have spirits of
their own dead who for some reason failed to become benevolent ancestors but
became angry ghosts bent on spite. All these spirits can become friendly allies
in the spirit world if made happy with the regular offering of a chicken or pig.
Spirits are disembodied, but all living things, as their condition for living,
have spirits temporarily housed in the body. Souls are sent to the human world
to live within a particular body for a fixed period of time, sometimes described
as a license with a fixed expiration date. When the time is up, death is inevita-
ble, although under extraordinary circumstances extensions are possible. If a
person falls into a coma it may be because his or her time has ended. If the per-
son survives, it is evidence of a struggle and triumph in the spirit world; such a
person will surely become a shaman.
The soul is viewed as not firmly attached to the body. In the West the
“senses”—sight, hearing, smell, etc.—are viewed as part of the body’s percep-
tual apparatus, not part of the soul. The Hmong theory of the self divides
things up differently. The soul is a vague composite entity of seven divisible
parts: a soul-piece for each eye and ear, plus one in the nose, the mouth, and
the heart. All of these can stray from the body, posing a threat to life itself. In
other words, the senses are part of the soul rather than part of the body. At
death, the part of the soul of the ears, nose, and mouth remain with the body in