Gods, ghosts and demons

Offerings to the spirits on a major feast-day

A little dictionary of some of the more important Cambodian supernatural beings (my preferred spelling first, followed by alternatives I’ve come across):

Araks (areaks): Ancestral spirits that live in fields and trees around the village. Traditionally a village shaman, the kru araks, would enter a trance during which villagers could ask them for advice, but this seems to be dying out – I only came across one in six months of searching and she was 90 years old. Nevertheless, farmers will still leave some of their midday meal in the field for the araks. They are easily angered, and punish those who cross them with illness.

Arp (ap, arb): A witch, although often called a vampire. By day an ordinary woman, though identifiable by her haggard face and bloodshot eyes, at night her body waits at home while her head flies around spreading sickness and bad dreams. She has parallels in many other Southeast Asian cultures – how did this cultural meme spread so widely?

Boramey: High spirit-beings who help humans with their problems. Many villages and towns have kru boramey, shamans (usually women) who enter into a trance and are possessed by a boramey. They seem to be replacing the village araks and kru-araks throughout Cambodia.

Bray (priay): A female demon (almost all the demons seem to be female), the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. She is the most malevolent of all demons, but can be tamed by those who understand the correct ritual, in which case she becomes a powerful protective spirit. Buddha images and the boats used in the annual Water Festival boat races are protected by bray.

Chumneang pteah (in Phnom Penh dialect, ch’neang teah): The protective spirit of the house. One of very few spirits who are wholly benevolent. Her shrine is always placed on the floor, and offerings of flowers and fruit (and cans of coke) should be left there on the four holy days of each month (these days are marked on religious calendars, and every house will hang this calendar near the shrine). In village houses she inhabits a particular pillar, usually the main house pillar, and there’s a special ceremony to ask her to protect new houses.

Chumneang pteah shrine – despite the Chinese appearance, it’s Khmer.

Kmouch (kmout): The ghost of someone who died a violent or unexpected death. The kmouch is not aware of its status and wishes to return to the world of the living. Monks and kru know the ritual for sending a kmouch away, but it should never be destroyed, which would be the equivalent of murder – it’s capable of going to hell and eventually returning to another life.

Meba: The family ancestor-spirits. They take a particular interest in marriages and births: they have to be offered some of the wedding feast, and should be informed when the new bride becomes pregnant, and again when she is delivered. They are highly moral and highly conservative, and will punish any girl (but not boy) who has sex before her wedding (my informants were of parent-age – somebody really should study this in detail from the viewpoint of teenagers). An interesting point that I came across in interviews, and have never found in written sources, is that I was repeatedly told that the meba are ancestors by birth, not blood – they’re reincarnation-ancestors. This video plays meba-music from a Khmer wedding (after the ad). https://www.youtube.com/embed/_heYQhcZL8Y” target=”_blank”>

Mrieng kongveal: Little child-spirits, the protectors of most domestic and some wild animals (domestic animals destined to be killed and eaten get no protection, nor do wild animals that are hunted). They normally live in the trees around the fields, but they like to play with human children, and they have the useful ability to give gifts to adults. For this reason they often have house-shrines, in the form of a flat-bottomed basket with a little bamboo house. The shrine should hang from a bush or nail in the wall, and should never touch the ground. Their offerings are toys and sweets.

Mrieng kongveal shrine

Neak ta: The village ancestor. Almost every village will have a neak ta shrine, often with a statue of the ancestor, or possibly a rock or shiva linga (the neak ta is the only spirit who is represented in physical form – the shrines of the tevoda and chumneang pteah are empty, and although the mrieng kongveal shrine often has little toy children in it, these don’t actually represent the mrieng).  He represents fertility and social order, and once a year he has a village festival at which the village boundaries are rehearsed and his blessings invoked.

Village neak ta shrine, Takeo province – from Alison in Cambodia

In addition to the village-level neak ta there are also “wild” neak ta who own the hills and forests and other unsettled places, and anyone entering their lands must ask permission. And finally there are the “great” neak ta who have charge of entire regions and provinces. Unlike the “wild” and village neak ta these have names and histories – the one pictured below is called Red Neck. The red colours (his turban and scarf) and his beard and moustache mark his Indian/brahmanical origins – the colour or Buddhism is yellow, and Buddha and Buddhist deities are clean-shaven.

Neak ta Red Neck at the Angkorean temple of Chisor, near Phnom Penh.

Praet: A ghost that died a good death and is now in hell. Hell is far from pleasant, but it’s the right place for ghosts and the only place where they can prepare for their next life. Praet, like kmouch, are eternally hungry – they have tiny mouths and huge stomachs, and can eat only filth. Once a year they return to the world of the living and their relatives feed them at the temples – this is the festival of Pchum Ben, the most important in Cambodia.

Hungry ghosts from Thailand – they look the same in Cambodia.

Preah phum: The name means something like “holy earth,” and it represents the entire village, including its fields and ponds and groves. Its shrine is a little house on a pillar, very like the tevoda shrine but with one significant architectural difference: the tevoda shrine has a roof with a spire, indicating that this is the home of a goddess (compare to the spire on the roof of the monastery prayer-hall and on the royal palace), but the preah phum roof does not, as preah phum is not a god. Phreah phum is extremely important to the psychic health of the village, and there are special ceremonies to “centre” him in times of trouble, such as epidemics or droughts. This village preah phum involves quite a different-looking shrine made of four posts in a square with a fifth in the centre.

The shrine of a village preah phum ceremony, constructed when calling the spirit of the village land. From Khmer Renaissance

Tevoda: Like the chumneang pteah,  a protective house-sprit, but unlike the chumneang she’s a goddess. Associated particularly with the annual New Year festival, her shrine is the little toy temple on a pillar outside the house. This should be placed in a corner of the house-yard, facing the door of the house but not in front of it. The offerings vary from year to year, as there’s a new tevoda each year. I’ve also heard of what seems to be another sense of tevoda, a sort of messenger of the spirit-world, but have no information about this. The shrine itself is called rean tevoda, a “tevoda shelf.”

Smoked babies, part 1.

Cover illustration from Trude Jacobsen’s “The Lost Goddesses”

Steven Prigent’s paper UN FŒŒTUS HUMAIN POUR AMULETTE (in French, obviously), is divided into three parts, preceded by an introduction. This is a summary of Part I, “La rumeur de l’enfant fume”:

LA RUMEUR DE « L’’ENFANT FUMÉ » (KUN KRAK)

• Koan kroh can be obtained either from a woman who has died in childbirth, or from a living pregnant woman. The woman in the second case will end up as dead as the woman in the first.
• In the first case, the man “awakens” the corpse of the woman (who has been buried with the fetus) by magic. He must then ask and receive the dead woman’s permission to take the fetus. This will be difficult for him, because the awakened corpse will cause great fear. (See the material from Trude Jacobsen below).
• According to Ang Choulean (says Prigent – I haven’t found Ang’s paper on the subject), a fetus obtained from a woman who is already dead in childbirth is less powerful than one obtained from a living mother. Prigent believes that the preferred course is to obtain a living fetus, which is to say, a fetus from a living mother.
• The word krak (which is how Prigent gives it – others have “kroh” or “kroach” or other variants) has been explained by Ang Choulean as “to grill, smoke, dessicate.” Prigent says that the word “kun” should be translated not just as “child” but as “child of….” There seems to be no exact parallel in English. The point is that the term implies the forging of a filial link between the fetus and the man who takes it. (Takes, that is, from the mother). The man becomes not merely its father, but its sole family, since the mother dies.
• The kun krak is thus not just the possession of the man who possesses it as an amulet, but also his son. (The amulet is regarded as masculine, and indeed most often is).
• The man (owner of the amulet) is usually a soldier; the woman (mother) may be his mistress or wife; the fetus must be a first child (and as the mother is either dead or, more often, about to die, also an only child).
• If taken from a living mother (wife or girlfriend), the man spends “an intimate moment” with her (presumably Prigent means they have sex); he then asks jokingly if she will give him the child in her belly; the woman, believing this is a game, says yes. The man immediately cuts her open and takes the fetus. The willing and verbal donation of the child by the mother is essential to the power of the amulet.
• The fetus itself is between two worlds, a soul caught “crossing the river” from unborn to born; this presumably accounts for its psychic potency. (Consider how ghosts also come at late evening or early morning rather than midnight or midday).

Trude Jacobsen in “The Lost Goddesses” has a little on the procedure and dangers if the fetus is obtained from a woman who has died in childbirth:

Women who died in the third trimester of pregnancy or in labour without having given birth were said to have been killed by brai (a kind of witch-spirit) and could become brai themselves if, three days following the burial, a man “sufficiently audacious and resolved” carried out a certain ceremony. After establishing a sima (boundary of holy stones) around the corpse, he was to place an image of an eight-headed brai in the centre of the room and recite magical incantations. The woman would rise from the dead as a brai after the third repetition … making horrible faces, lolling an enormous tongue, rolling her eyes, and taking on the forms of a serpent, tiger and elephant. If the man showed any fear he would be consumed…

…but if he didn’t the woman would give up her unborn child. Elsewhere Jacobsen mentions that the KR obtained koan kroh in order to guard against enemy bullets etc, and a rumour that Hun Sen possesses a number of them. This is not to say that Hun Sen really has these things, but the existence of the rumour illustrates that the belief in their power still continues.

Boats possessed by spirits

A post on the racing boats used in the annual Water Festival. Or I should say the so-called Water Festival – in Khmer it’s called Bon Om Touk, which means Festival Row Boat – in other words, it’s a boatrace festival. Maybe 200 boats and a million people from all over the country gather in Phnom Penh for a program of races over three days in October or November, presided over by the king, and much honour accrues to the winning team.

Boat Festival in Phnom Penh

But it’s more than just a boat race, it has religious overtones. The boats represent villages, and are stored in the village monastery. As the boat festival nears, the monastery neak ta (spirit) is asked to help the village team, but that’s not enough: the neak ta can’t travel, he’s bound to the monastery,and the boat is off to Phnom Penh. What to do?

Monastic neak ta shrine at a village near Phnom Penh

So the village gets a powerful spirit called a bray to inhabit the boat for the duration of the festival. The bray is the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth or while pregnant – she’s inconsolable, and grief makes her evil. Most spirits are essentially neutral, but the bray goes out of her way to cause harm, especially miscarriages, for which reason pregnant women should not go near the village racing boat. But she can be tamed, by the village kru arak and kru baomey (types of shaman), and the monks.

And so a bray is enticed into the boat. This is essential because all the other villages will have their bray, and without protection these bray will attack the rowers. So while the rowers battle it out on the river, the bray also do invisible battle, fighting off the attacks of the rival spirits to protect their team.

Below are some photos of the a bray-shrine and some offerings to the bray on the riverbank at Siem Reap at the recent boat festival there – the festival is held in several towns around the country, although Phnom Penh is the biggest because of the king.