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Ritual for the Hungry Souls
SPI has now proceeded to the most important part of the event with
a Taoist ritual that opens the hell doors and placate the
tormented hungry ghosts with prayers. According to the cultural
belief, the anguish souls were tortured in hell; once they were
released out from hell for a probation of one month, they would
grab whatever food is offered to them. A table of 8 dishes cooked
food as well as half of the cheesecake were already placed beside
the ritual altar. Many candles were lit that served as guiding
beacons for the famished souls of the dead to the food offerings.
In ancient China, there existed fire-worshiping rituals; for
example, "The Rites of the Zhou" mentions the use of fire in
worship. The Essential Secrets of the "Most High" compiled by Yu
Wenyong of the Northern Zhou dynasty, has many records of the use
of lanterns in its discussion of various kinds of fasting rituals.
It says that the lanterns used at the offering altars allows "the
hungry ghosts and the souls of the dead laboring hard in the Nine
Darknesses to be lightened up and to see the root of life".
 
The ritual was about to start; Master
Wei Yi was putting on his Taoist robe after a prayer
 
Master Wei Yi was using holy water to
purify the place before inviting the deities come down
Just before the ritual started, the
whole place was already marked with makeshift lanterns. They were
the colorful plastic cups holding a candle within. In particular,
the area near the food offering and the passage in front of the
10-Courts-of-Hell had most candles concentrated. The choice of
colors, green on the left hand side and red on the right hand side
by KC and Ah Toh made the passage looked somewhat like an airport
runway. The ritual altar, of course, was placed facing directly in
front of the Hell door.
With a crisp and sharp clink of the copper ritual bell that
pierced through the silence of the atmosphere, the Taoist priests
started their prayers in Cantonese from the scriptures that were
imported from Hong Kong. The priests were wearing elaborate Taoist
robes, and solemnly doing the chanting. They looked professional
as well as merciful in the ritual. The flow of the chants were
conducted assiduously in certain sequence, that was combined with
hand gestures and occasional tinkling on the ritual bells. Chorus
were sang high and low in between. Every SPI member was quietly
observing a few meters away from behind the altar. Some were
leaning their backs against the mound while some were competing
for the best viewing positions. The whole theme park was in dead
silence except the rhythmic chanting like a small concert.
 
1. The Hell Gate Banner; 2. Horse Face;
3. Ox Head; 4. The facade of the 10-Courts-of-Hell
 
Candle lights that lit up the area; the
passage for the Hungry Ghosts was marked up like an airport runway
 
SPI members serving as observers to
spot any paranormal happenings; and the food offerings to the Hungry
Ghosts
The Contents of the Ritual
The exact details would not be understood to ordinary people, of
the sacred and sophisticated ritual that took place on that night.
However, according to Master Wei Yi who was the leading High
Priest on that night, the ritual basically contained the following
6 steps:
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Purifying the place and the
environment with holy water and chants
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Invite various deities (Tian Zun) and
Big Dippers descend from heaven and borrow their power to take
charge of the proceeding of the ritual
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When the time was right, the priests
conduct the summoning skills to illuminate the Nine Hells and
save the souls of the dead
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Command the heavenly generals and
soldiers to maintain order, then open the hell, and summon the
out the Hungry Ghosts
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Give blessing as well as food
offerings to the Hungry Ghosts
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Finally, give thanks to the deities
and the heavenly army for help
Wei Yi said this was only a
streamlined version of the proper ritual that is similar to
"Lantern Rituals for the Destruction of Hell" rather
than a full proper ritual that would take at least three hours. In the original
Hell opening ritual, contemporary Taoist priests of the Orthodox
Oneness sect south of the Yangtze River lead the group (of bigger
size), with whips and sticks or magical swords of the numinous
treasure in their hands, to pace the Big Dipper from the south and
circle clockwise around the lantern altar once. Having paced the
Big Dipper in various directions, they hit the ground with sticks
or swords, signifying the destruction of the hells.
After the performance of the rituals in the eight directions, they
walk to the center and burn the talismans and streamers. The
ritual master makes the Hand Gesture of Jade Clarity, visualizes
the yellow clouds in one direction, and visualizes his own
appearance as that of the Heavenly Lord. Each time he destroys a
hell, he clicks his teeth nine times before and after the
incantation so that the hell opens up and the souls of the dead
ascend to perfection". Finally, the ritual master prays with the
memorial of Withdrawing the Lanterns, saying, "please extinguish
the fire of the golden lotus. I sincerely wish that you did not
mind his sins of a thousand years, that they disappear with the
cinders, and that all the misfortunes harassing him for long be
eliminated with the extinction of the light. I wish that his body
enter the realm of light and leave the realm of darkness forever".
 
1. The setting of the altar table, that
was filled with numinous ritual items;
2. A "ling" command tablet inscribed with some talisman. Its use is to
order spirits from all ranks at the priest's disposal
3. A gold statue of the grand master of Taoism. His spirit would be
summoned to descend down from heaven and be in charge
4. The sacred handbook from which the priests chanted the spells to
open the hell and bless the spirits
 
When all things were ready, the priests
started praying and chanting the magic scripture aloud
 
Making mystic hand gestures and rining
ritual bells while chanting out spells are common but essential
components of a Taoist ritual
After about an hour of chanting, they
stood up from their chairs and started circling around the altar
table. The singing was going merry-go-round as the atmosphere was
pushing to a new climax with actions. The observers knew that they
were about to break open the Hell. Wei Yi, the leader priest now
was holding the ritual staff that symbolized authority on hand.
The chanting was growing louder and louder. And the observers felt
that the "energy" radiated from the priests was getting stronger
too. The clock was ticking closer and closer to 11pm that was
calculated to be the arrival of the first day of 7th month in
lunar calendar. It was now only about a minute before 11pm. All
the people were holding their breath, waiting for the cracking
moment to arrive.
 
1 - 3. The Taoist priests concentrated
in praying through the scripture, at the same time cultivating vital
supernatural energy
4. The High Priest was offering joss sticks to the great deities that
they were summoning
 
1 & 2. Left view and the top view
of the ritual group; 3 & 4. Mysterious lights passed by the ritual
group
 
The priested, empowered with much
cosmic energy, started to circle around the altar for the final knock
out
Open the Hell, Release the Souls
Precisely at 11pm, the team of priests marched to the entrance of
the 10-Courts-of-Hell and pushed the door open with the ritual
staff. The timing was amazingly accurate that arouse SPI to ask in
curiosity in a due course. They did not seem to be reminded by any
clock or wriest watch. When asked later, they surprisingly said
that they didn't know the time and they never kept any timing. On
a speculation on the supernatural side, the flow of the ritual
might be governed by the deities that they summoned. The priests
"sensed" that it was about the time, then there they went ahead
without using any timing device.
In order to give readers a better idea about how this ritual was
supposed to open the hell and release the souls, we translated
some pages of the ritual scripture. Below are some excerpts of the
confidential ritual scripture that the priests used. It was from a
famous Taoist organization in Hong Kong. The name of the sacred
scripture is roughly interpreted as "The Magical Hell Breaking
Handbook". The full version of the book is protected by copyrights
as well as classified from the public because its nature of
secrecy. SPI however showed only some pages of it that essentially
indicated some important elements of the rituals as follow:
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Excerpt 1: Title of the scripture -
The Magical Hell Breaking Handbook, or known as the hell
breaking ritual (xuan men po yu ke) used by Quan Zhen Taoists in
Hong Kong. The scripture however was originated from ¤T¤¸宫 in
Guangzhou historically.
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Excerpt 2: Altar Opening Prayer, High
priest should follow the procedure of kneeing down 3 times and
bowing 9 times at the beginning of the ritual. Then purify the
vicinity of the ritual altar with the aid of many holy spirits
that brush away the evils. It also emphasizes on the wisdom and
the purity of the universe.
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Excerpt 3: This one is about
summoning, the ox head and horse face (hell guards), the lord of
hell, all the officers in the Hades and the local earth deities.
These spirits are needed for helping the High Priest to proceed
into ritual that may involve, finding a particular soul,
releasing him from hell and other things.
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Excerpt 4: This is actually the spell
to be chanted as a chorus by the whole team of priests. The
spell was roughly about combing through mountains of obstacles
in Hade, then shining (or enlightening) the Hades (the original
scripture described them as "holes") with the light of wisdom.
After the light is shone, all the souls, followed the smokes of
incense to the lotus position of wisdom. In other words, the
spell leads the souls via the incense joss sticks and enlightens
them with wisdom as a way to be saved out from hell.
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Excerpt 5: This is the "heart" of the
magic spell, or better known as the talisman, for opening the
Hell. It is believed to have magic power, once chanted out, its
effect will manifest. This talisman is deemed as a very sacred
secret belonging to the Taoist sect. Therefore SPI was told to
mosaic mask it by the priests. Nonetheless, for those who are
interested to find out more about talismans, e.g. the history,
the origin and their mythical power, you can refer to the online
Taoist Culture and Information Center. (Note that SPI is
neutral to all religions. Information provided and reported just
as they are for references only.)
 
Excerpts of the scripture used in the
Hell opening ritual
 
1 & 2.
The team of priests were
matching toward the entrance of the Hell
3. By the mythical and most powerful of his magic staff, Master Wei Yi
broke open the hell
4. Symbolically and representatively the hell was opened via the
ritual, the preists returned to their altar
Come Eat Some
The moment has finally come - the door was opened when the time
hit 11pm. The ritual however continued, and perhaps that is the
most important part from the perspective of the experiment. As a
cultural belief, the Hungry Ghosts should be by now roaming around
every corner from hell. They were hungry and were searching for
food offerings. Next the ritual moved on to blessing and feeding
(spiritually) those hungry souls. Such ritual has a former name
called "Anterior Heaven Ritual for Feeding, Saving and Refining
Ghosts." The description of the proper ghost feeding is given
below:
The ritual is composed of three
parts: feeding ghosts, saving ghosts, and refining ghosts. The
skills for saving and refining are "the way to transcendence and
holiness." "Running one's own Spirit and Vital Breath, combining
the vital liquids of the Two Images, one can refine a dead
skeleton and make it lively in both form and figure." According to
Wang Qizhen, a Taoist of the Southern Song dynasty, "the ancient
rituals of Gentleman Guangcheng didn't include the ritual for
salvation and refining, which became popular only in recent
times." The ritual, through "extinguishing all sins and grievances
of ghosts", can lift ghosts from hell to heaven. This kind of
ritual began to spread widely as early as the Tang and Five
Dynasties. Through feeding hungry ghosts, the ritual "benefits
sentient beings in the Three Realms of Illness and the Five Worlds
of Suffering, and makes the lives of all kinds of people full,
thus transcending death and obtaining immortality." As early as
the Tang Dynasty, there were records about rites of feeding
ghosts.
Some people may have a misconception
in true Taoist rituals as they thought the food should be
scattered on the ground, including those flower petals and fruits
from the decorated altar; and ghosts would come and grab using all
his fingers, and stuff the food into their mouths as how that
could be vividly imagined. The factual scenes would however not be
as animated as the fantastic imagination of skeleton-like ghosts
fighting for food. But it would be mainly just chanting and
singing hymns from scriptures to see off the dead. The power of
the religious chants through the priests mouths were sang and the
effect would be transcended to the other realm, usually along with
burning joss-ticks.
The High Priest moved over to the food, drawing some magic spell
in the air as if signifying and filling the cooked food with the
power of chants. The ritual, with the Heavenly Lord of Supreme
Oneness as its main deity, cordially invoked twenty kinds of
ghosts to enjoy salvation. The scripture generalizes the
sufferings of all people, pays great sympathy to them and conducts
rituals to feed and save them. The content of liberating
grievances gives ten kinds of death, such as murder, hanging,
drowning, etc., and expresses people's ideal to live in a world
without grief and ascend to Immortality after death.
After the hell door was opened, everyone appeared somewhat
slightly more anxious. The so-called 3rd eye people were busy
scanning around, trying to spot one or two hungry ghosts that
crawl near them perhaps. The crowd was in a dilemma of stepping
nearer to the hell door for a closer look or should shun away to
give way to the starving ones. Overall, nobody had any major move
as if they felt that the hungry ghosts were now feasting over the
food and better not to disturb.
 
1. A brave girl, SPI member called
IceStormer, be the first one who walked near the hell door when it was
first open for the 1st photo
2. She was running back in fear as if saw or felt something very
frightening; 3 & 4. The door was open and "they" were coming out...
 
1- 3. The priests were chanting louder
and louder. The hungry ghosts now are supposed to be masticating the
offered "food"
4. TV filming crew and reporters joined SPI for observing such amazing
moments
Captured a Horned Demon?
While the hell was opened and the Taoist priests continued with
the ghost feeding ritual, SPI photographed a weird silhouette that
looks nothing but a horned creature. It was discovered later only
when the photos were reviewed after the event with a great shock.
The silhouette resembles a general stereotype of demon that comes
in a pair of horns on the head and long claws. An image of such
was computer-generated and posted side-by-side in the following
three photos for comparison. It looks like the shadow of such
horned creature, wearing a frock with elbow length. The most
amazing impression is, on the right of it there was an exclamation
mark (!) It was as if he was ironically wondering what on earth
the humans were doing out there.
Rather than immediately jumping into conclusion that the
silhouette is a paranormal entity, we examined the photos for
analysis. We tried to trace the source of the shadow. In the photo
below that has 4 numbers and a green arrow that indicates the
position of the silhouette, we can see there was only 4 statues
that would possibly cast the silhouette. Number 1 is the Yama or
the judge of one of the 10 courts of hell, 2 and 3 are the Hade
officers, and 4 is a naked man kneeing down and being
interrogated. The figures 1 and 3 are out because their one arm is
up as compared to the silhouette that has its arms stretching
down. Figure 4 is out too, as their body shapes do not match at
all. Figure 2 however would be the most probable one, as estimated
from the position, distance and the hand shapes. The only mismatch
is that Figure 2 was hearing a Chinese style hat that has two fins
horizontally stretching out, that look very different from the
upward pointing horns on the silhouette.
So what cast the shadow and the exclamation mark? Two strange
things worth noting. One is the shadow looks solid and dark. Its
edge is quite sharp meaning it should be cast by an object very
near to the wall. Otherwise the shadow would be blur and
over-layered under multiple light sources in the mound. The second
point is that the shadow was exactly cut off on the ground level.
It remains much of a mystery on what caused the silhouette, what
it is and what it is trying to tell us. The mystery however could
be solved by going back to the 10-Courts-of-Hell one day or one
night, and inspect the shadow on site. So next time when you visit
Haw Par villa, remember to check this out and send us your
findings. As a reference, this
link has a detailed gallery of demons with photos from all
over the world.
1 & 3. Frontal and back views of the
illustrated horned demon; 2. The horned shadow captured by SPI inside
10-Courts-of-Hell
Enlarged photo of the scene where the
horned apparition was clearly seen
 
The Hell Door was opened and the ritual
moved to the final stage feeding the hungry ones with prayers
 
Persistently the horned apparition was
showing up in a series of photos
Nevertheless, you can see that the
above series of photos all contain the mysterious silhouette taken
from different angles and times.
They Come Out, We Go In
The ritual had finally come to an end. That gave enough time for
the Hungry ghosts to scurry out from the symbolic hell and enjoyed
the food offerings. Anxiously, everyone was waiting for a chance
to visit the famous gruesome exhibits inside the 10-Courts-of-Hell
especially now during the fresh beginning of the lunar 7th month.
The 3rd eye members hesitated to proceed as though they thought it
might not be a good idea to counter those entities at this time.
Anyway, Abductboy was leading the group and preparing the
participants to go in. Before they entered the 10-Courts-of-Hell,
Abductboy was briefing the group on the do's and don'ts as well as
the short history of the 10-Courts-of-Hell. It supposed to be just
a normal briefing. However, from the photos, his exaggerated
waving hand gestures and poses really made him look like a Hungry
ghost. Did Abductboy get possessed by a Hungry Ghost, we wonder?
Abductboy got possessed by Hungry
Ghost?
At the crack of Hungry Ghost
festival, SPI members entered hell to visit the hungry ghosts' abode
With extreme curiosity, SPI members
gingerly stepped into the 10 courts of hell, hoping to see
something sinister or scary. Many of them had never visited the
exhibits before. They were utterly stunned by the ghastly and
frightening scenes of how the pitiful souls got tortured in
different courts of hell for their wrong doings when alive. The
souls were chopped, cut, sliced, pierced, froze and boiled in hot
flaming oil. Such was hell. Seeing is believing although it was
put up for only warning people of the wheel of retribution and
severe punishment by the work of karma. Those who visited the
exhibits before also felt the intensive impact. And as indicated
on the photos below, the exhibition was full of hell dazzling
"fire". Abductboy was telling the thrilling stories about each
court of hell along the way.
 
SPI members visiting hell
 
Hell fire was burning high
The photos below were taken when SPI
members walked in and out of the 10-Courts-of-Hell. They appeared
like the translucent apparitions of those ravenous souls roaming
out of hell. Or are they really apparitions?
 
Humans or apparitions?
 
Humans or apparitions?
 
Humans or apparitions?
A Small Round-up
Here came to about the end of the tour tonight before they carried
on to the food tasting experiment. After everyone had visited the
10-Court-of-Hell exhibition, Abductboy was being interviewed by
Mediacorp TCS5 for the objective and the summary of this SPI
Hungry Ghost event. The interview was later shown on TV in one of
the episodes of
Trendspotting, hosted by Vernetta Lopez shown from 21
September.
 
Are they humans who rambled pass
Abductboy when he was doing the interview?
 
Abductboy was talking to reporters with
his very dynamic and vivacious body language
It was time to wrap up the ritual. Escorted by the Taoists priest,
Mr Lawrence the manager of Haw Par offered and burnt the paper
offering on behalf of his management team to the dead souls. In
return, this merciful act is believed to bring blessings to the
staffs and visitors for safety and prosperity for the months to
come.
Over the other side, the SPI members were preparing for the food
tasting experiments that was the goal of the event tonight.
 
1. TCS5 filming crew capturing a shot
of the 8-course food that had been consumed by the Hungry Ghosts
before
2. Packing up the barrangs; 3. Mr Lawrence humbly offering the joss
papers to the Hungry Ghosts;
4. When human evacuated, it is their world... You could feel the
apparition grinning at the doorway of the hell.
 
1 & 2. The lights and candles, were
believed to be the energy food for the lost souls
3. The prominent picture of the mysterious horned apparition; 4. SPI
is going in to check it out...
Epilogue
Beside such amazing event, Taoism is a righteous and long
established Chinese religion that covers much more contents than
just occult and rituals. Unfortunately, most people only find the
occult parts to be most interesting. Taoism however has its own
philosophy of life. This ideal mixes the fine aspirations and
inclinations of Chinese values, human virtue, and casting off the
outside burden to secure personal freedom.
Taoism is an ancient religion with rich and mature contents. It
has a very systematic system of Doctrines and Teachings,
corresponding to the theology of the West. These include faith in
Tao and the concomitant Cosmogony and theories on the origin of
the creation of all beings and transformations; ideals of human
society; advocacy of human values, and so on.
For those who would like to find out more on the true meanings of Taoism,
there are some links that contain authoritative and most accurate
information respectively from Hong Kong Taoist Culture and
Information Centre, and Department of Philosophy, Stanford
University. Or one can contact Master Wei Yi by
email if he or she wishes to learn more about the correct
version of Taoism.
http://www.eng.taoism.org.hk/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/taoism/
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Answering
Mysteries
Come