Phuket’s Vegetarian Festival is not the peaceful gathering you might imagine – instead it’s Thailand’s most gory festival with devotees giving honour to the spirits with self laceration
I went to the Phuket Vegetarian Festival three years ago and it’s definitely one of those “only in Thailand” occasions. Today’s Bangkok Post has a good article explaining the festival — here’s an excerpt:
“The festival, that begins on the first evening of the ninth lunar month and lasts nine days, runs September 26 to October 6 this year during which devotees will subject themselves to all sorts of pain and torture and abstain from from eating meat or drinking alcohol as part of rites meant to chase away evil spirits and bring good luck.
This year street processions run October 1-7. Each day there will be different groups of devotees, called ma song in Thai, joining the rites that start with the first rays of the sun and end about four hours later.
Ma song devotees operate in a state of trance. Possessed by spirits, they are insulated from pain they inflict upon themselves by piercing their cheeks, mouth, ear lobes, arms, tongue, eye lids or any other part of the body using metallic or wooden implements whetted especially for the occasion. These can be in the form of a knife, dagger, short spear, metal rods or sharp nails and pins.
Last year, one devotee was seen parading with a dagger entering one cheek and exiting the other, another had metal contraptions secured to his face and arms, yet another had his eye lids pinned down with sharp wooden pins, and so forth. Not to be outdone, women were in the fray too, with one of them walking around with a pair of daggers lodged in her mouth.
Implements used in this act of self-mutilation can take various forms, said a local student who is a regular at the festival, though not an active participant. One year, he said, he spotted a devotee from whose cheeks hung the hand grip of a large motorcycle. There is no limit on the choice of objects used in these rites: on view last year were a Japanese sword, a toy rifle, an electric lamp, replica of a ferry, a metal chain and a rod tipped with roses. Some devotees pounded their backs and foreheads with an axe, while another ran a knife through his tongue.
“I feel nothing, no pain. It is like I am in my sleep and dreaming,” said Ekapan, describing his feelings before his initiation at a shrine from which he would emergence in a trance before joining his ma song colleagues on the street.” [Read the full story]
To see more photos from the Phuket Vegetarian Festival, visit my original post about the festival . Check out this awesome Flickr sideshow of pix taken by various contributors at the Phuket Vegetarian festival
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