Rice is the
main diet for majority of SEA folks. Besides rice is consumed, it is also
widely used in magical rites. Many Taoist magic cannot do without using rice as
it is believed that white rice represents ‘chi’ or life force.
Rice Stem
Manikin (草人)
Rice stems
are used by Taoists to construct manikins that serve as a replacement body (替身). This manikin replaces the actual
person in fooling the evil spirits, or it can also act as an agent during a
soul catching ritual. The older generation of Taoist still insist on using the
rice stems as according to them any other medias such as paper will not be as
effective as the actual rice stems.
Raw Rice
In Taoist
magic, raw rice is used to ‘open road’ to enable the soul of a medium to enter
the underworld to search for dead souls.
Raw rice is
also mixed with salts to perform space cleaning rituals.
In the
practice of Taoist magic, a bowl of raw rice is used for holding joss sticks.
This will enable the congregation of chi energy.
Raw rice
and chicken egg is used in Taoist spirit conjuration rituals.
The Thai
magical practices use raw rice in soul catching ritual.
Cooked Rice
Cooked rice
is served as one of food offerings in Taoist, Indo-Chinese, Thai, Malay,
Javanese and Balinese magic.
However,
people seldom aware that cold rice mixed with cold water is served to passer by
spirits. So if your dog is barking at an empty space, prepare a bowl of cold
rice mixed with cold water together with a pair of chopsticks. Put the serving
at the location your dog is barking at. Remove and disposed the whole thing
into a trash bin far away from your house the next morning. Please do not burn
any incense or candles or the spirit will stay put.
This belief
is originated from ancient China where a convict is served cold rice with cold
water prior to his or her beheading.
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