Here, it is the therapeutic aspect that dominates, Buddhism having appropriated the funerary rites. The performance of
sū khwan ("calling back the souls") is mandated at times of risk: illness, before a voyage or examination, or at the passage to another stage of life. This "call" is accompanied by invocations and the recitation of votive formulas and is concluded by the tying of ligatures of cotton threads to the wrist, thus connecting the souls to the body.
The Lao have recourse equally to specialist healers (mō̡) and occasionally to female mediums (nāng thiam). The most powerful among the former is the mō̡ thēvadā, or "master of divinities," a shaman who invokes the aid of his auxiliary spirits, the phī thēvadā. The mō̡ thēvadā have a double competence, as shamans and as mediums, as demonstrated by the "sacrifice to the talisman protectors" (liang khō̡ng haksā). In this ceremony, master and disciples stage a séance of successive possessions by diverse deities, among them a class of spirits known as khā, said to include both Austroasiatic authochthones and Vessantara, the Buddha in his last rebirth prior to that in which he achieved enlightenment as Gautama.
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