Opportunities for Gay participation at Thai temples. Part 1. Chao Mae Sam Muk Shrine.
It would help if a guide was started listing opportunities at various temples. Also, if we could start connecting with the LGBT spirit mediums that would be good also.
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Introduction:
What most Western LGBT tourists to Thailand often don’t realize is that there are opportunities to participate in small self-affirming ways in Thai religion. It would be instructive to many LGBT tourists that there can be religion without hostility towards LGBT, that there could be a religious environment where hostility towards LGBT is the exception.
For Thai Buddhists I am not sure what advantage there is besides revenue, but many people will go back to the United States with having had an experience with Buddhism and connected with a personal experience which they otherwise would never have.
There might be more significant ways of participation than I have describe in this essay, but I have only been able to find out so much so far.
I will be researching participation and this essay will be updated as opportunities are discovered. Amulets will be discussed in another write up, and when it is done, a link to it will be at the end of this essay.
During my visit to Taiwan, I was able to have significant participation in Taoist religious activities. I have links to the reports on this at the end of this essay. In Thailand very much less, since I was unable to get much information.
I think one of the reasons that Western LGBT don’t realize that there are opportunities, besides not knowing much about Thai religion and not being able to read or speak Thai, is that they presume that in Thailand it is the same as in Western Europe.
I think the temples in Thailand don’t realize there is an opportunity to reach out to LGBT since they don’t see any LGBT interest, which is because LGBT don’t know that there might be an opportunity.
Even if there was some participatory thing at Notre Dame in Paris, the Catholic Church still holds that homosexuality is a sin. They wouldn’t allow some LGBT participation. Western LGBT likely suspect that it is like this in Thailand.
Most Western LGBT tourists also don’t understand how Eastern religions are different than Christianity.
In order to explain what avenues are available, these differences need to be explained.
Eastern religion is not exclusionary and binary.
Exclusionary: In Eastern religions you can participate in more than one religion at the same time. In Christianity this is expressly forbidden.
Binary: In Eastern religions you can participate at various levels including just minimal initial activities. In Christianity, you are expected to know the religious dogma, to be agreeing with the entire Christian faith and go to church and be entirely and wholly involved. At an Eastern religion often there are small things you can do as activity without committing to more involvement.
Chao Mae Sam Muk Shrine
The Chao Mae Sam Muk Shrine is Southeast from Bangkok, about 60 miles (100km) from downtown Bangkok on the coast out on a peninsula.
The shrine is a monument to two lovers, a woman named Muk and a man named Saen, whose love was blocked by Saen’s father. Muk jumped off a cliff and Saen followed her. The shrine was over a century ago in memory of them. The beach is named Bang Saen and the hill that they jumped off of Khao Sam Muk.
The shrine is dedicated to their memory and has the Goddess Sam Muk. Its style is very much like a Chinese Taoist temple.
https://www.tour-bangkok-legacies.com/Bangkok_Travelbug-August11.html
According to the following paper, “Mothers of All Peoples: Goddesses of Thailand from Prehistory Until the Present,” by Pairin Jotisakulratana, Muk was made into a Goddess. Quoting:
Ordinary women can occasionally become goddesses after their death through various means. In Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, a shrine has been erected on a cliff overhanging the sea to commemorate the goddess of Sam Muk Mountain. The shrine is venerated by members of the local fishing community. She was a villager who lived nearby the mountain. She fell in love with a man, but her father obstructed their love. Finally, she committed suicide by jumping off the cliff with her lover. Villagers later built a shrine for her and now she is believed to protect sea travelers and give blessings to those in love.
You can down the paper for free at this link. It was the best I could find for definitive documentation. The quote is from it.
https://media.proquest.com/media/hms/ORIG/2/CAMBK?_s=rEbQk%2BpQvXHGHIZq4Phk38Q9S%2Bo%3D
The two lovers met while Saen was looking for a kite. So one of the things that you can do is write a love wish on a small kite and hang it on a tree.
The only reason I even knew of its existence was that a visit to the temple was part of a BL story and one of the protagonists wrote a love wish on a kite at the temple that the other character in the series would love him back. The opportunities I found for LGBT I just stumbled upon. There doesn’t seem to be any systematic listing of places LGBT might consider.
Mydramalist has this entry. It is sort of a cartoon as a drama and I don’t recommend it.
https://mydramalist.com/61973-ton-hon-chon-tee
The following is the structure at the base of the tree with the small kites hanging from a line.
The following shows the large size kites hanging up in the tree. You can purchase them also.
You can purchase the small kit or a large kit to put up in the tree. I purchased two small kites. The cost was very inexpensive. I think 4o bhat, which was a little more than a dollar. I knew the procedure for the small kits, but I didn’t know the procedure for the large kits.
On one of them I did a wish for a local Dallas Facebook group in which the hopes for love and the complaints of not finding someone is endless.
I posted the following on Facebook in the group. The response was phenomenal. There was a total of 170 positive responses. It is a small group with 9.5K members.
The other was to my spouse of 32 years. The response was very strong from him.
Along with the kite was a string for my wrist.
I bought two souvenirs. These prayer cloths and an amulet.
The staff was very friendly and got me ice cold water when it became obvious that I was overheating. They wouldn’t accept payment, so I placed money on the table in front of me. I got heated when I was up at the highest levels of the temple, under a clear sky, with no wind.
This is what they showed me for water and what Thai use. They sensed my discomfort and then got ice water from a refrigerator. If you reflect upon it, they had every right to feel offended, but were indulging me. I had water in the driver’s car, but it would have been a serious strain to go get it. I was overheated. I hadn’t brought my bag with me from the car.
I got heated when I was up at the highest levels of the temple, under a clear sky, with no wind. The lower levels were nice. You don’t have to go up to the higher levels, I did since I was only planning to visit this one day and wanted to do a complete photo documentation. No one else was up there since they had good sense not to go there at that time. Mad dogs and Ed Sebesta goes up into the Sun.
The lower levels were nice. You don’t have to go up to the higher levels, I did since I was only planning to visit one day and wanted to do complete photo documentation. No one else was up there since they had good sense not to go there at that time.
what an adventure, and what vibrant photos. As usual, I appreciate the religious module which I think is very relevant.