Laudator Temporis Acti

Julia Wallace, "Workers of the World, Faint!", New York Times (January 17, 2014):

Early last year, I met a 31-year-old woman called Sreyneang, a worker at Canadia Industrial Park, west of Phnom Penh. She had recently caused dozens of her co-workers to collapse after speaking in the voice of a neak ta. While entranced, she had also assaulted the president of the factory's government-aligned union, pounding him with her fists and pelting him with insults.

We chatted on the dirt floor of the tiny wooden house where she lived; there was nowhere else to sit. She said she had been feeling ill on the day of the fainting, and that the factory nurse had refused to let her go home. She did not remember most of what had happened next, but a spirit healer later explained that a neak ta had entered her, infuriated that a banyan tree on the factory site which had been his home for centuries was chopped down, with neither ritual propitiation nor apology, during the construction of the building.

Id.:

Last year, in a slum in Phnom Penh, a demonstration by residents who were being evicted by a wealthy landlord was interrupted when a neak ta possessed an indigent woman who lived under a staircase with her mentally ill husband, both suffering from H.I.V. The woman assaulted a local official who was trying to shut down the protest, forcing him to stand down. Previously, the landlord had cut down an old banyan tree believed to be the neak ta's home.

"I have been protecting this area for a long time," the woman shouted, "and I am very angry because the company demolished my house. I am very, very angry."

I haven't seen Alain Forest, Le culte des génies protecteurs au Cambodge: Analyse et traduction d'un corpus de textes sur les neak ta (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1992).

Hat tip: Mrs. Laudator.

Labels: arboricide