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FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON 31

Buddhism and Divination

By Dr Edoardo Siani

Edoardo Siani is assistant professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He
writes primarily about the nexus between Buddhism and power in Thailand via long-term ethnographic
explorations of practices including divination, spirit mediumship and royal ritual. Edoardo received a PhD
in Anthropology and Sociology from SOAS (University of London), was Researcher and Assistant Professor
at Kyoto University’s CSEAS, Research Associate at SOAS, and Adjunct Professor at Thammasat University.
He has contributed to media outlets including BBC and The New York Times.

You’re an expert on divination and what I had witnessed, and did not When, years later, I had a chance to
spirit mediumship in Thailand. Why feel very comfortable about it. I study Buddhism within an academic
did you choose to focus on these wondered if this was what “true framework, I learned that the
practices in your scholarship? Buddhism” is all about. scholarship on Buddhism developed
in Europe precisely started from
I moved to majority-Buddhist As I settled in Thailand, I slowly the analysis of texts. Coming from a
Thailand in 2002, as a young man, realized that practices such as cultural context shaped by Christian
right after high school. At the time, mediumship and more broadly theology, which treats the scriptures
I had no academic training and divination are extraordinarily as the ultimate source of Truth,
was simply fascinated with Asia, a widespread. In fact, they possibly early scholars took it for granted
place that I thought was the most matter more to many Thai Buddhists that the Truth in Buddhism should
culturally distant from my native than the sacred scriptures. While also unilaterally be found in the
Italy. In Bangkok, I rented a room many people no doubt celebrate scriptures. They could not imagine,
from a woman who turned out to the scriptures as a higher source of for example, that the search for the
be a spirit medium. The first night knowledge, they indeed definitely Truth could alternatively be found
I was there, I watched her sit cross- engage more with these practices in one’s individual practice—as was
legged, as if she was meditating, in their everyday life. This made me possibly the case in the Theravada
in a prayer room surrounded by understand that my expectations of world, especially before the colonial
statues of Buddha and various what Buddhism should or should period.
deities, until when she allegedly not be about were based on accounts
became possessed. The gods then of an imagined Buddhism rather The approach of these early
spoke via her mouth—or at least than on engagements with actual scholars, while not “wrong” per
this was the assumption. As you Buddhist practitioners. se, ultimately ended replicating
might guess, I was shocked by the very power dynamics that