Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Power Struggle & Soul Binding (权利斗争与禁魂)


We always come across TV dramas showing power struggle stories amongst family members. While we pity the young hero being bullied and suppressed by his elder brothers; we celebrate the final success of this hero to return to power and defeated his tyrannous brothers. The stories almost always end with happy endings. This type of power struggle story also happens within our families too especially for those family members who lived near together and owning a shared family business.

Power struggle amongst family members can be cruel. Once, I was asked to exorcise a mineral water shop said to be cursed by the owner’s brother-in-law. According to the shop owner, his in-law wanted to take over his water business and heated arguments always broke out between two of them. Finally, this in-law resorted to use magical means to affect his mind and resulted in bad business decisions and debts. According to this business guy, his in-law went to Thailand to get some of the kid spirits and hide the spirits in the mineral water shop resulting in a series of work related accidents amongst the workers.

Another case I heard was from a friend, Lee in Hong Kong. This story is about a family running a famous supermarket business. There are four persons in charge of the supermarket chain and the eldest brother, Eric controlled the family business while the other three became Eric’s sleeping partners. Eric’s siblings did put up a fight against him to take control over the running of their family business but somehow they all were either became sick, involved in accidents or being beaten by strangers on the road.

Gradually, Grace who is Eric’s sister found something was not quite right but as someone who is highly educated; she didn’t suspect anything supernatural behind her and her two brothers’ predicament. One day, Grace passed by Lee’s shop and perhaps due to intuition, Grace just walked into Lee’s place and asked Lee to predict her fortune. After Lee looked at Grace for a while, he found Grace’s forehead was quite gloomy and that her eyes looked strayed. So, Lee told Grace that she might be the victim of ‘soul binding’ sorcery. If she failed to get her soul back, then Grace might become insane in long run.

At this point, Grace could have just brushed aside Lee’s warning as just another swindler’s talk to fish for money; but a series of incidents between her and her big brother, Eric made her think twice. Two days later, Grace brought her two brothers to Lee for a reading and the same conclusion was made on both of the gentlemen. After hearing Lee’s advices, three of them decided to return to their big brother, Eric to negotiate.

A month later, Grace visited Lee again and thanked him for his advices. According to Grace, they decided to split from Eric and went on with setting up each other’s own business. The condition was that Eric must undo whatever he has done onto them or Eric would not have a good ending. Of course Eric denied that black magic was involved but since he wanted to own the family business, he sworn in a temple by chopping off the head of a white chicken.

The latest development was that Grace and her children had developed some credentials in her new business; so are her other two brothers. On the other hand, Eric was not doing too good after Hong Kong returned to Chinese administration due to fierce business competition.

In case you wonder, soul binding is a Taoist ritual to bind a person’s soul onto a doll and this doll is then put into a small coffin. This coffin would then be buried under ground. If this coffin is not exhumed in due time, the person who has lost his/her soul would become insane or even die. In order to make this type of curse a success, a person’s personal belongings such as hairs, nails and blood must be obtained. So, it is not normally possible for outsiders to get such private items except for close ones.

Personally, I would dread the smiles of those close ones than the cold face of a total stranger as you would not know when you will be back stabbed. I guessed Grace and her two brothers had made a right choice. Instead of struggling with her cruel and authoritative big brother; she opted to think of the box and found her new world!

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