Category: film review

The Great Nine-Day Matsu Pilgrimage

On By benebellIn film review, Magical in the Mundane, personal spirituality3 Comments

This video does a remarkable job illuminating one of the most important community (island-wide, and so national) celebrations in Taiwan. You follow a group of first-time participants on the pilgrimage and learn about the festival’s history, the lore and mythology of Mazu (older generations spell it Matsu), and her spiritual, communal, and political significance.

It’s from one of my favorite YouTube channels @TaiwanExplained, produced by TaiwanPlus, an English-language news and entertainment platform educating the international community on all things Taiwan.

The video covers a nine-day pilgrimage, though some devotees do a seven-day pilgrimage. It starts with three statues featuring the triple aspects of the goddess Matsu 三媽, carried in a traditional sedan chair, from the Matsu Temple in Taichung, to go on a 60-mile pilgrimage by foot toward the Fongtian Temple in Chiayi. Devotees stop at many temples along the way, and join in various types of local festivities at each stop.

For the mystic-oriented, it’s a week of sleep deprivation, overload to your physical senses, just walking through a constant haze of incense smoke, firecrackers, a lot of dancing and celebration, drinking, and socializing with complete strangers that, within a very short period of time become like family. It also, in effect, becomes one of the largest outdoor gatherings of spirit-mediums, diviners, psychics, and channelers you’ll experience.

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Safe Passages Spread from “Agatha All Along”

On By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, film review, tarot, tarot card meanings, tarot community, tarot exercises20 Comments

If you haven’t been watching the 2024 Marvel TV series Agatha All Along, it’s a spin-off from WandaVision focused on the character Agatha Harkness. And the episodes have been chock full of tarot (and witchy) goodness.

I love how the online tarot community is currently having fun with a fictional but bona fide tarot spread in the show, named the Safe Passages spread, a key feature in Episode 7 (“Death’s Hand in Mine”). It’s got Celtic Cross vibes in the formation of a pentagram.

(Ignore my graphic above; I squished all the card positions together, which is why you can’t really see the pentagram anymore. In the TV show, the pentagram shape is more pronounced.)

Just a head’s up: there may be spoilers in this blog post, but nothing too major; I’m focusing on the tarot parts.

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A Review of Wisdom of Changes: Richard Wilhelm & The I Ching (Documentary)

On By benebellIn film review, I Ching2 Comments

wisdom_of_changes_documentary

Bettina Wilhelm, the granddaughter of Richard Wilhelm (the man needs no introduction for any Westerner who has dabbled with the I Ching) directed a poignant, artistic, and sentimental documentary on the man who was her grandfather and who is credited with introducing the West to the I Ching. I selected the foregoing three adjectives with great care. The documentary through and through was poignant, artistic, and sentimental.

I admit not knowing much about the man prior to watching this documentary and walked away with great admiration for his pioneering spirit and independent mind. I admire his compassion and the contribution to and what seems to be genuine concern and respect for the welfare of the Chinese people while he was in China. I appreciate that he did not go there to baptize people and preach, but rather, simply practiced the teachings of Christianity with the hope that his actions would speak louder than words, which they did. The film is an incredible tribute to Richard Wilhelm and provides a great deal of historic context for the China he was living in and experiencing.

What made both Hubby and me uncomfortable, however, was the narrative arc of the documentary: white people shit on other culture and deem them heathens, abuse, torment, and treat them worse than dogs, and then lone white hero comes in, defies his own race, comes to admire the “simple” beauty of the “heathens” and, oh, saves them all. Statues are then built in his honor in said foreign land.

Don’t get me wrong it was not intentional and not for a second do I think that arc was intended by the director, but it is almost inevitable. I should even note that when Hubby was setting up the DVD for me, we had some technical difficulties, and while he was working on it, he skipped through sections of it while I wasn’t there. He told me he did so and I asked, “So what is your first impression of the documentary?” Said Hubby deadpan: “White people destroy China. One white guy doesn’t join in the destruction, however, and for not destroying someone else’s land and culture, he is venerated as a hero.”

Oh dear.

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