Meeting the Goddess

 An encounter with the Netherworld? (or business as usual?)

Went to a number of temples this week; it being Chinese Lunar New Year (新年 ) - CNY. (A sidebar: It has been said that CNY is the largest annual migration of humans in the world.)

 

Visiting my wife’s family in a small Taipei town of XinWu, we went to a Temple dedicated to Matsu – goddess of the oceans whose name means ‘mother ancestor’. (For more on Matsu (Mazu): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazu )

 

For background, I’ve long since resigned to going with the flow during family functions and at Lunar New Year (新年: Guo Nian) and being a prop (an accessory to the matter at hand) . I’m typically given a bullet-point schedule on the fly. I’ve learned to leap into action without more than a moment’s notice. 

 

This particular encounter with a goddess wasn’t even on the bullet-point. We drove by a temple to Matsu and saw a company of young woman singing (chanting) while performing a choreographed display with electric torches. 

 

Since this temple was in the neighborhood of my sister-in-law (Da Jie) and is one of her favored sites, we returned to the Temple for the midnight ceremony welcoming in the New Year.  

 

All of the following happened in a flash. 

 

There I was - the unwitting witness to the summoning of the goddess by the temple high priestess. First the priestess – a woman in her fifties – dressed in red garments (auspiciously befitting the season), intoned a prayer while holding a fasces-like  bundle of very long joss-sticks. As the joss burned and gave off incensed smoke, the priestess wielding the bundle of joss sticks like a calligraphy brush, writing words in the air above a square of perhaps 900 wicked candles in jars set in straight rows. While ‘air’ writing, the priestess intoned an invocation to Matsu. 

 

When this task was complete – and Matsu had inhabited the priestess - temple workers lit the candle wicks in a very orderly manner – from the center to the edges of the square.  In the meantime, the priestess returned to her place at the end of a long table set before a statue of the goddess, Matsu.

 

It was then that I was ordered to raise my hand – to volunteer for something. Explanation was not forthcoming but I did so as a dutiful accessory to the festivities. I was quickly informed that because of my age, I was to go to the priestess (who was now the goddess, Matsu) and I that I should be properly deferential in accepting the goddess’ beneficence.

 

I was chosen by the temple assistants to come into the presence of the goddess (who had channeled herself into the body of the priestess). I was to be given a red envelope and a small bracelet as a beneficence from the goddess. 

 

Before being persuaded to raise my hand and receive beneficence from the ‘goddess’, I had had a conversation with the son of the priestess. This conversation put a new perspective on the proceedings. After I had gotten the bracelet and red envelope, I was sitting having some hot tea when the priestess’s son, Leo, engaged me once more in English conversation expressing his surprise that I was the only foreigner he’d ever seen at any temple activity. He went on to say that their previous temple had been located in a larger city and they had moved the location to a locale that had fewer restrictions and ordinances regarding temple activities. I found this intriguing but held my questions out of deference to his apparent belief in the goddess herself.

 

However, in this brief conversation, I deduced that the temple was a family business (as many temples are in Taiwan) and that the temple was where he had been raised. I also sensed that Leo and his mother, the priestess, had a matter-of-fact, business-as-usual approach to the dealings of the temple. Leo was clearly unimpressed by his mother being the vessel for the visitation of the goddess, Matsu. 

 

Personally, I could not accept that his mother had been channeled by Matsu or that there was any spiritual significance to the ceremony I had witnessed. I assumed a non-committal, detached role as I thought an anthropologist might do. 

 

The festive mood intrinsic to Chinese Lunar New Year swirled and I partook in the joyous clamor by wishing everyone I encountered with the phrase ‘Shin-nien-quai-leh’ (新年快乐:Happy New Year). I also accepted the congratulations of the temple-goers and my family for having met and received beneficence from the goddess, Matsu. 

 

It was an innocent subterfuge on my part, I felt. I also think that I could ‘dine out’ on this tale for some time. And I have a prop: the friendship bracelet from the goddess herself!