Mastering the intricacies of Thai spirit houses for Californian-born Marisa Cranfill Young is not just a hobby and passion -- it nourishes her soul.
Calling Bangkok home for more than two decades, arriving here for the first time with her parents as a 12-year-old, Young has a spiritual connection with Thailand beyond that which meets the eye.
Apart from Thai culture, through the years she developed a huge passion for traditional Thai spirit houses and local customs attached to it. The 39-year-old researched and studied traditional Thai spirit house rituals with shaman priests. So it doesn't come as a surprise that among the numerous hats she wears today is lecturing on what makes Thai spirit houses and local customs so unique.
To spice up her talks, she takes her audiences through a visual journey into a complete installation ritual. Young clarifies questions one might have in their minds of rituals of spirit houses -- for one, if there is animism involved and if it ties in with Buddhism.
She starts from the basics, saying: "A spirit house is a structure dedicated to the guardian spirits of the land. Spirit houses represent the local peoples' personal connection to Mother Earth and their ancestral spirit. For the average Thai, the daily effort to honour a spirit house is as common as the ritual of having a morning coffee."
To explain the ancestral connection locals have with their spirit houses, she continued: "The ritual of honouring and maintaining a spirit house is a practice handed down from generation to generation on the family level, the village level and the mass cultural level. It is a tradition that is formally preserved by Shaman-Brahman priests, but thrives because the people carry it on."
Spirit houses to her are a key characteristic of the mythic membership psyche of Thais. Most saliently, she describes them as a living tradition that continues to be creative, adaptive and evolving while keeping its traditional principals.
The American, who studied comparative religions, focusing on Buddhism, said personally spirit houses had offered her a deeper connection to her adopted country. She said Thai shamanism allowed her to make peace with a string of untimely deaths of loved ones, including her father, best friend and first love. Her passions in life reflect her immense interest in the spirit world. Besides grounding herself in the intricacies of spirit houses, she has immersed herself in energy arts and the supernatural. She has also developed Yogi, a combo of yoga and qigong.
To better understand why Young is passionate about what she does, one has to go back to her childhood.
"As a child, I was always interested in the spirit world, in magic, in nature and understanding the power of nature," she recalled. "My father died when I was 12. He passed away two weeks after we returned from Thailand. When people near me began to pass away, I became interested in the afterlife.
"Lord Buddha had a big impact on me. After my father passed away, I didn't have any religion. I come from a family that weren't religious, my parents intentionally wanted me to be free to choose my religion. Looking back, it was ultimately a good thing, but as a child with no direction, you are a little bit confused. So I was a big searcher, I was always reading books. So by high school I was into yoga, when I graduated I knew I wanted to go to Asia. I went to Japan, India, Israel and finished up in China."
In her search for the truth, Young said that from the beginning she was looking for shamans, for natural healing methods. She wound up going back to Buddhism largely because at the time it was more accessible than Shintoism and Shamanism.
Young began to notice that in Buddhist temples there was always an element of animism but that it was not being taught to her in school that way. All her academic studies taught Buddhism as a philosophy of the Buddha, but in countries such as China, Japan and Thailand especially, where she eventually decided to move because her mother had set up a fashion label, that didn't seem to be the case.
In the process of searching for answers during her teen years, she was greatly influenced by her "Thai mum", a family friend, who was deeply religious and taught her a great deal about spirit houses.
At 21, she studied Buddhism and wrote her thesis on it. From that she saw that her interest was absorbed in animism and its origins. So what is true Buddhism in Thailand? Replying to this, she said that there is no one consensus, and that all the theories out there are valid when it comes to answering this hotly debated question.
"Spirit house tradition has always been evolving with modern times. What is so fascinating is that you would think with science and technology people would believe less in these things. Instead they are everywhere and they keep making them more interesting," she said.
"So I am always interested in how Thai people are keeping this culture strong and I feel that spirit houses are the most strongest symbol of the Thai culture."
Marisa Cranfill Young will deliver a lecture on "Invoking The Land Guardians" on Saturday, from 1-3pm, at Rojana Center, 148 Sukhumvit 23. Call 02-664-2095.
