10-12 September, in Bangkok
A childhood rhyme suggests that the day of the week on which we are born shapes our character. “Monday’s child is fair of face. Tuesday’s child is full of grace… Wednesday’s child is loving and giving…” and so on. The 27th June in 1965 was a Sunday, and while it would have been nice if had been a Monday or a Tuesday, or even a Wednesday (yes, “loving and giving” sounds nice), it wasn’t. “The child that is born in the sabbath day is bonnie and blythe and good and gay,” says the rhyme. Well, one out of four isn’t bad!
This strange idea is not limited to British childhood rhymes. Today, touring the Royal Palace in Bangkok and associated Temples, our guide was at pains to point out that Thai Buddhism has similar ideas about the impact of birth days, defining – she said – our character, and our lucky colour (mine’s red apparently). Not only that, but each day of the week is associated with a posture of the Buddha (the ‘Sunday Buddha’ is depicted standing, with hands folded and eyes downcast: demure, thoughtful, introspected and wise). And this is before you even begin to factor in the ‘lunar year’ (June 1965 fell in the year of the snake, which animal in Asian culture fortunately carries none of the negative associations of the Judaism-Christian world of Genesis, the Apple and the Garden, but which rather is associated with wisdom, perceptiveness and intelligence. I’ll take that, thank you!)
Of course in truth I think that all of this is just nonsense! But I would say that, wouldn’t I, as a child of the hugely rationalistic post-Enlightenment world. The life of magic and the assumed power of luck and good fortune persist here in a way that is unparalleled in the West where the coming of scientific method – as it were – wrote auguries of magics’s demise on the walls of the 18th century, and with the Enlightenment, Lady Fortune glimpsed the first omens of her death.
Thailand is not (yet) the victim of the erosion of its religious worldview by secularism (though it is coming, as borne witness to by surveys of social trends and beliefs among the educated urban young). In theory at least, Thailand is more instinctively religious than we are, and with a prevailing religious world view informed by Theravada Buddhism. This type of Buddhism puts a strong emphasis on individual responsibility and choice, and cherishes an ethic that flows from them. An 18th century Enlightenment Scotsman, while uncomfortable with the heat and with the externals of religious practice here, would have felt a strong affinity with the idea that we work out our future by our choices, and not ‘magically’ through happenstance and luck. Theravadic Buddhism is an honourable way of approaching life.
But as I saw today, this ancient and dignified form of ethical Buddhism coexists here with something even more ancient and persistent: a persistent belief in fortune, luck and chance in defining life. Many Thais also integrate ancient animist beliefs with their rational Buddhism, and everywhere you look there are spirit houses in domestic spaces and public buildings to appease spirits and charm the gods. Today, on our tour, we were invited to splash holy water on ourselves with a lotus flower bud, to drop 100 coins provided by the money changers into myriad collecting pots in the temple of the Reclining Buddha (Wat Pho), and to make various wishes as we went around.
Belief in magic is slow to die, as is reliance on luck and fortune. But of course that’s true in the west too – and even in my own tradition. At St Paul’s, and despite solid preaching, some people still seem wilfully or unconsciously to confuse the sacramental and the magical in Anglo-Catholic life! In the end I guess we strive for as ‘reasonable faith’ that honours our rationality without losing hold of the importance of the mysterious and the holy. It’s always a short step from that, back into magic, superstition and folklore.