Dear olde Sigmund Freud said that dreams and the symbols ‘perceived’ in them by the dreamer would be mostly sexual in meaning – wow!
And this is the first of 3 dreams that I plan to post.
Remember my childhood adventure as a medium in an earlier posting Encounter with a God?
I might just refresh your memory on who the God was that kaytee was supposed to ‘connect’ with - Tua Peh Kong, the God of Prosperity.
I had then written (extracts):
Tua Peh Kong was (still is) the immortal’s popular name but his formal title goes by the rather stern appellation of Hock Teik Guan Suoi.
Guan Suoi means ‘General’. But the god wasn’t martial looking at all like Kuan Kong (of the 3 Kingdoms' fame) ….. but rather resembles a Chinese Father Christmas, with long white beard, jolly countenance and a benign smile. I dare say, after the incomparable Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, Tua Peh Kong would be the next most popular deity in my village.
The first dream that I am penning involved the above immortal. It wasn’t a dream I had personally experienced – well, for the obvious reason that part of my brain dealing with dreams, may I call it my 'subconscious', has been fairly preoccupied with more delectable beings ever since I started noticing those sweet witches.
Anyway, let me start off this tale with my neighbour, a teacher in his late middle age who taught English in Chinese medium primary schools. At the time of this story, he was new in my village, having moved into it just a couple of months back. Much later I was to find out that he and family had difficulties settling down in a place, and been changing residence rather regularly. In fact in another two years they would once again move, to another but nearby area. But that’s another story.
Let’s get back on track, as the story is about the dream of their youngest son, a rather good looking bloke even at a tender age of ten. We became great mates after the ritual sizing up of each other as new neighbours. Let’s call him Hamlet for ease of reference.
Being Taoist, Hamlet’s father, on moving in, erected an altar in the living room of his house to the worship of the Chinese ‘Father Christmas’ or our very popular Tua Peh Kong. A portrait-icon of the God was purchased from ye olde village shoppe selling religious paraphernalia and then consecrated.
The consecration process is known in Penang Hokkien as tiam gnan. Basically it involves the ‘bringing to life’ of the God’s physical senses, like sight, hearing, smell, speech, and (also various vital parts of his body like arms, legs, etc for) touch.
The word tiam means either 'a point' or 'to mark a point', thus the consecration ceremony of tiam-ing symbolizes the spiritual ‘activation’ of the God’s bodily senses represented by those points.
Tiam gnan is vital because it’s no point (pun not intended) praying to an inanimate (‘wooden dead’) God. An icon is just that, a wooden (or metallic, porcelain, earthen, canvas, fabric, paper, etc) ‘dead/inanimate’ image if not consecrated and brought to ‘life’, divine as that may be.
Indeed, without tiam gnan, how in the world would the God or Goddess be able to hear one’s prayers and implorations, and to lend a helping hand, especially when the supplicant is in trouble, distress or beseeching for a hopeful windfall (the last being usually on the eve of a Race Day) - wakakaka!
Yes, Chinese Taoists tend to regard their Gods as some sort of benevolent grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles or aunties – close ‘family members’ that they could call upon (frequently too) for very personal help. And why should one fear or be terrified of God or the Gods?
It’s a reflection of the Chinese pragmatic approach and easy going attitude towards religion. One can still be religious without invoking threats of, or dreading the End of the World. There’s no Armageddon in Taoist belief.
To the Chinese, God is not a fearful retributive heavenly ‘internal revenue officer’ who would, at your death, audit the credits and debits of your life’s performance, like the Egyptian Goddess Ma’at weighing your heart (representing the collective worth of your life’s good deeds and bad deeds) against the weight of her single ostrich feather (see image below - the feather is worn on her head), to decide whether you go upstairs to 1st class and enjoy all the attendant benefits and perks, or downstairs to the kitchen to be bar-b-qued.
And this is the first of 3 dreams that I plan to post.
Remember my childhood adventure as a medium in an earlier posting Encounter with a God?
I might just refresh your memory on who the God was that kaytee was supposed to ‘connect’ with - Tua Peh Kong, the God of Prosperity.
I had then written (extracts):
Tua Peh Kong was (still is) the immortal’s popular name but his formal title goes by the rather stern appellation of Hock Teik Guan Suoi.
Guan Suoi means ‘General’. But the god wasn’t martial looking at all like Kuan Kong (of the 3 Kingdoms' fame) ….. but rather resembles a Chinese Father Christmas, with long white beard, jolly countenance and a benign smile. I dare say, after the incomparable Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, Tua Peh Kong would be the next most popular deity in my village.
The first dream that I am penning involved the above immortal. It wasn’t a dream I had personally experienced – well, for the obvious reason that part of my brain dealing with dreams, may I call it my 'subconscious', has been fairly preoccupied with more delectable beings ever since I started noticing those sweet witches.
Anyway, let me start off this tale with my neighbour, a teacher in his late middle age who taught English in Chinese medium primary schools. At the time of this story, he was new in my village, having moved into it just a couple of months back. Much later I was to find out that he and family had difficulties settling down in a place, and been changing residence rather regularly. In fact in another two years they would once again move, to another but nearby area. But that’s another story.
Let’s get back on track, as the story is about the dream of their youngest son, a rather good looking bloke even at a tender age of ten. We became great mates after the ritual sizing up of each other as new neighbours. Let’s call him Hamlet for ease of reference.
Being Taoist, Hamlet’s father, on moving in, erected an altar in the living room of his house to the worship of the Chinese ‘Father Christmas’ or our very popular Tua Peh Kong. A portrait-icon of the God was purchased from ye olde village shoppe selling religious paraphernalia and then consecrated.
The consecration process is known in Penang Hokkien as tiam gnan. Basically it involves the ‘bringing to life’ of the God’s physical senses, like sight, hearing, smell, speech, and (also various vital parts of his body like arms, legs, etc for) touch.
The word tiam means either 'a point' or 'to mark a point', thus the consecration ceremony of tiam-ing symbolizes the spiritual ‘activation’ of the God’s bodily senses represented by those points.
Tiam gnan is vital because it’s no point (pun not intended) praying to an inanimate (‘wooden dead’) God. An icon is just that, a wooden (or metallic, porcelain, earthen, canvas, fabric, paper, etc) ‘dead/inanimate’ image if not consecrated and brought to ‘life’, divine as that may be.
Indeed, without tiam gnan, how in the world would the God or Goddess be able to hear one’s prayers and implorations, and to lend a helping hand, especially when the supplicant is in trouble, distress or beseeching for a hopeful windfall (the last being usually on the eve of a Race Day) - wakakaka!
Yes, Chinese Taoists tend to regard their Gods as some sort of benevolent grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles or aunties – close ‘family members’ that they could call upon (frequently too) for very personal help. And why should one fear or be terrified of God or the Gods?
It’s a reflection of the Chinese pragmatic approach and easy going attitude towards religion. One can still be religious without invoking threats of, or dreading the End of the World. There’s no Armageddon in Taoist belief.
To the Chinese, God is not a fearful retributive heavenly ‘internal revenue officer’ who would, at your death, audit the credits and debits of your life’s performance, like the Egyptian Goddess Ma’at weighing your heart (representing the collective worth of your life’s good deeds and bad deeds) against the weight of her single ostrich feather (see image below - the feather is worn on her head), to decide whether you go upstairs to 1st class and enjoy all the attendant benefits and perks, or downstairs to the kitchen to be bar-b-qued.
Egyptian goddess Ma'at
The Chinese God is more like a 24/7 Service Help Desk. Of course like the typical Help Desk you may often find that you might not get the desired help wakakaka!
The complexity and elaborateness of the tiam gnan ceremony vary, depending on the patron’s desires and the expenses he/she is prepared to outlay. Most would settle for a simple one, where a priest or monk ‘activates’ the icon attributes with vermillion ink and prayers – a mere 10 to 15 minutes job. But a rare number of fussy conservative-minded Taoists would replace the vermillion ink with the blood of a white pigeon and provide lavish offerings and God knows what else (pun also not intended).
So, as they would say in a Chinese story, “... one dark tropical night … while the innocent slept and kaytee and gang were out raiding the neighbourhood rambutan (or was it mango?) trees, lil’ Hamlet had a dream.”
In his dream (which he recounted to his family and me a day later) he saw the Chinese ‘Father Christmas’ with His renowned smile. But strangely Tua Peh Kong didn’t say a word. Instead He pointed to His mouth and gave the universal sign of not being able to speak.
While Tua Peh Kong continued to make the gesture of not being able to speak, suddenly (according to Hamlet) 4 large cards appeared in the air beside the immortal.
Hamlet saw a number on each of the first three cards (counting from left to right). But the last card was blank.
The immortal pointed slowly and deliberately to each of the three cards having a number. The numbers were* 6, 3, and 9 respectively.
* I can’t recall the real numbers after so many years but I’ve given notional figures above to just help tell the story smoothly.
When He, the smiling One, came to the last card (remember it was blank) He sort of pointed at it casually with a kind of tidak apa (couldn't care less) attitude and shrugged His shoulders, as if (according to Hamlet) He was suggesting “Who cares about this one”, or “What is it?”, or “What do you think?”, or “I don’t know”, etc.
Hamlet admitted (in his rendition of the dream) he wasn’t quite sure what the last card was supposed to indicate or represent, but decided to interpret it as the first possibility, that Tua Peh Kong must have been stating “Who cares about this one!”
Hamlet recalled the dream ended with Tua Peh Kong repeating his signalling of not being able to speak.
As would have it ;-) the following day was a Race Day, and sneaky lil’ Hamlet, at his glorious age of just ten, without telling anyone including his loving mum about his strange dream, went to the local village bookie with his total savings of RM5 and punted on the 3-D number of 639. He lied to the bookie that he was instructed to do so by his mum.
That evening when the 4-D results were announced ..... guess what? ;-)
Do you remember what I had also written in Encounter with a God?
Here are the relevant paragraphs (extracts):
… I was given a thorough briefing by the medium master who obviously possessed an impressive range of experience in dealing with tricky gods. For example, he said that sometimes a guileful god would enter the medium’s body but would not talk to the waiting audience - instead the Wily One would conduct a conversation ‘internally’ with the medium; in other words, while ‘externally’ the audience saw only a silent medium, 'internally' the god could be giving private instructions to the medium on, say, the 929 chapters of the Old Testament, unbeknownst to the bystanders. […]
Another favourite trick of a mischievous god would be ... […]
... my admiration for the Crafty Ones began to grow as the medium master related all he knew, which was probably only a mere fraction of what the gods could and would do if they feel like frustrating or teasing the punters.
You got the idea?
Well, that evening the top winning set of numbers for the draw was 6390.
;-) Good olde Tua Peh Kong, wakakaka, as humorously tricky as he looks.
Apart from berating poor lil’ Hamlet for not telling dad and mum about his dream (of course by then, with the advantage of hindsight, everyone in his family was absolutely brilliant in interpreting what the blank card had meant), his family inspected the Tua Peh Kong portrait-icon in the living room and discovered to their amazement that there was no vermillion ink marking on His mouth. The priest had missed that spot in his tiam gnan, for unknown reason.
A new portrait-icon was swiftly ordered and consecrated, this time very carefully, but alas, no one in that family was ‘visited’ by the Grand Olde Man again.
In my first post on this blogsite Senjakala I quoted a Shakespearean line in Hamlet (Act I, Scene V), which states:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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