Buddhist Wizards Weizza Weikza of Myanma

Buddhist Wizards (Weizzā/Weikza) of Myanmar

Thomas Patton
Subject: Buddhism Online Publication Date: Apr 2019
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.640
Summary and Keywords
Supernatural wizards with magical powers to heal the sick and who inhabit the minds and
bodies of men, women, and children, as well as defend religion from the forces of evil:
this is not the popular vision of Buddhism. But this is exactly what one finds in the Bud
dhist country of Myanmar, where the majority of people abide by Theravāda Buddhism—a
form of Buddhism generally perceived as staid, lacking religious devotion and elements of
the supernatural. Known as “weizzā,” the beliefs and practices associated with this reli
gion have received little scholarly attention, especially when compared with research
done on other aspects of Buddhism in Myanmar. Reasons for this are varied, but two
stand out. Firstly, because such phenomena have been labeled by scholars and Buddhists
alike as “popular” and “syncretic” forms of religion, scholars of Buddhism in Myanmar
have tended to focus their research on aspects of Buddhism considered orthodox and nor
mative, such as vipassana and abhidhamma. Secondly, the academic study of religion has
been slow to develop new interpretive strategies for studying religious phenomena that
do not readily fit existing categories of what constitutes “religion.”
These two dilemmas will be confronted by introducing and employing the framework of
“lived religion” to examine the religious lives of those who engage the world of Buddhist
wizards, as well as the experiences these individuals consider central to their lives—along
with the varied rituals that make up their personal religious expressions. The reader is in
vited to think of religion dynamically, reconsidering the landscape of Myanmar religion in
terms of practices linked to specific social contexts. After delineating a genealogy of
scholarly approaches to the study of Buddhism-as-lived and the ways in which scholars
have constituted the subject of their studies, the article will examine aspects of Myanmar
religious life from the perspectives of those whose experiences are often misrepresented
or ignored entirely, not only in Western academic works on religion but also in Myanmar
historical monographs and other written, oral, and pictorial sources. In addition to in
creasing our understanding of the lived religious experiences and practices of the weizzā
and their devotees, this approach to religious studies also enriches our investigation of
the complex interrelationship between these experiences and practices and the wider so
cial world they are enacted in. Acknowledging that any lens we study religion through of
fers only a partial truth, an improved religious studies approach to the weizzā and similar
phenomena can get closer to the truths that people make in their own lives: thus, moving
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further from the contested boundaries that scholars and practitioners of religion place on
religious worlds.
Keywords: Buddhism, Theravāda, Myanmar, Burma, Southeast Asia, lived religion, popular religion, methods and
theories of religion
Studying “Buddhism-as-Lived”
The study of “lived religion” is interested in religion as people practice it in their every
day lives. This study of religion was first identified and schematized by David Hall and
Robert Orsi to refer to “an approach to the study of religion that foregrounds practice:
‘lived’ in the sense of the performed or enacted” in order to examine the religious lives of
individuals and the experiences they consider central to their lives—along with the varied
rituals and practices that make up their personal religious expressions.1 Situated “within
the field of religious studies,” it intentionally adopts “methods and interpretative para
digms from the discipline of anthropology.”2 Lived religion considers religion at the level
of the individual and takes seriously his or her fluid, variegated—and at times contradic
tory—beliefs and practices.
It is valuable to grapple with the complexities, apparent inconsistencies, heterogeneity,

and untidiness of the range of religious practices that people in any given culture partake
in and find meaningful and useful. It reveals important things that we may not otherwise
recognize about religious traditions and the ways people incorporate them into their daily
lives. For purposes of this article, such an interpretive strategy will help to situate narra
tives, practices, and ritual works within a broader landscape of Buddhist traditions and
contemporary social dynamics in Myanmar. This analytical framework highlights the Bud
dhist wizards’ function as “a symbolic agent mediating individual bodies and experiences
and conventional discourses” within Myanmar society about religion, healing, politics,
and significantly advances our understanding of Myanmar Buddhist religious culture.3 To
put it in slightly different terms, the religious tradition of the wizards can be approached
as a “form of social discourse: a conceptual and experiential frame for the expression of
various disjunctive experiences, interpersonal conflicts, perceived threats to life and hap
piness, or other stresses.”4
For such an endeavor, we will not look at religion as something sui generis nor as an ab
stract system. Religion should be viewed as a social phenomenon that dynamically comes
into being as a result of the tensions that develop out of what is perceivable, achievable,
and imaginable in one’s world and its social structures.5 Timothy Fitzgerald, for instance,
has argued that religion is a scholarly construct with a conceptual history and that using
the concept of religion to analyze those traditions scholars recognize as “religious” is of
ten ineffective: this is because it implies distinctiveness from the social or secular.6
Indeed, the modern category of “religion” is a result of Enlightenment presuppositions
and preoccupations with defining the essence of a phenomenon such as “religion.” The
word “religion” can be problematic when it is used to refer to a folk category used by
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scholars to refer to something that has no equivalent term or concept to many of the
groups religious scholars study. However, while this may have been the case at the time
when European scholars first encountered non-Christian peoples, with regard to Myan
mar and Buddhism in Asia, the concept of “religion” has become deeply embedded in
many, if not most, of the cultures throughout the world in this post-Enlightenment, post
colonial era. Despite attempts of non-Western peoples to define the nature of religion of
ten resulting in definitions tainted with Western presuppositions, it is no longer fair to say
that those peoples and groups studied by religious scholars do not now have an equiva
lent term for what scholars mean by “religion.”7
From this position, then, we can begin to form a view of religion as it is actually lived in
people’s everyday lives. For example, when examining the beneficial, supernatural heal
ing capabilities of certain wizards in an ongoing, dynamic relation with the realities and
structures of everyday life in particular times and places, we realize that people in these
situations do not simply act: “They attempt to understand and narrate themselves as ac
tors,” and the “lived religions” approach recognizes that the stories they narrate and in
terpret are, as Orsi writes, “ideas, gestures, and imaginings, all as media of engagement
with the world . . . [for] it is pointless to study particular beliefs and practices apart from
the people who use these ideas in the definite circumstances of their lives.”8 This allows
us to understand how the practices, stories, and beliefs shared by informants are de
scribed and understood by them while also considering the circumstances of their experi
ences and the cultural structures and conditions from which these elements emerge.
In a sense, then, the object of study can be referred to as “popular religion” but not with
out first problematizing such a term. The term “popular religion” is
badly in need of definition. Among detractors of the idea, popular religion means
all those crazy religious things that people do and all the crazy ideas they have
outside the structures of an organized and properly ordered church. Among its de
fenders, popular religion too often means the nostalgic evocation of peasant spiri
tuality or the angry defense of magic and folk practices.9
Such a term often gives the impression that it is mostly the uneducated, non-monastic le
gions of laity who engage in such practices. But this idea only perpetuates monastic/lay,
educated/uneducated, sophisticated/unsophisticated, pure/impure dualities that imply a
binary of right/wrong. Good scholarship has been undertaken in the field of Buddhist
studies to help overturn such a bifurcated way of viewing Buddhism in Asia. Buddhism
Richard Gombrich makes the salient point that the term is misleading because it implies a
decline “from an ideal standard which is maintained by a few spiritual aristocrats, a rela
tionship analogous to that between ‘popular’ and ‘classical’ music.”10 So if we use the
term, it seems better to use it in the everyday sense: that is, with reference to those be
liefs and practices that are “widely followed” or “prevalent.”11
Furthermore, terms, such as “popular,” “syncretic,” and “hybridized” continue to perpetu

ate an imaginary stratification of religious elements that is not self-consciously reflected
upon by the Buddhists engaging in many of the practices included in this article. When
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engaging in a variety of rituals, Buddhists in Myanmar do not attempt to unravel the

many threads of their religious practices.12 Take, for instance, U Kyaw, a Burmese Bud
dhist who chants the Heart Sutra (in Sanskrit) while seated in front of a statue of Saras
vati. The Sarasvati statue is placed next to a statue of the Buddha that is enveloped in
smoke from a cigarette offered to a laminated picture of a revered wizard saint as a way
of in hopes of finding success in a new business venture. U Kyaw is not saying to himself
throughout this ritual, “Ok, this is Mahayana Buddhist, this is Hindu, this is a smattering
of animism from my ancestors, and this is just some stuff I came up with on my own.” It
can be argued that such individuals, unless pressed to create such distinctions (i.e., if
they even have knowledge of such constructs of “Hindu” “animism” and so on, in the first
place) live their religious lives and practices as a dynamic, ever-changing, amalgamation
of thoughts, feelings, and actions. People like U Kyaw draw on what they regard as coher
ent, well-formed practices of potency: our attempts to dissect them would be fruitless and
perhaps disrespectful. We should be wary of terms such as “hybridization” and especially
“syncretism” because of their historical uses and residual connotations.13 Toward the end
of the Long Reformation (1500–1800 CE), theologians gave the term “syncretism” a pejo
rative connotation in that it referred to the blending of non-Christian elements with sup
posed authentic Christian beliefs and practices. About two hundred years later, historians
of religion tried to reframe syncretism as any mixing of elements from diverse religious
traditions. They did not think there was anything problematic about the boundaries be
tween those traditions: they saw those definitive features separating the religions as qual
ities essential to the religions themselves rather than as social constructions.14
It is important to point out that the term “lived religion” is not a simple substitution for
“popular religion” or any of the above-mentioned terms. That would just be reifying the
stratified view of religion that we are trying to transcend here. On the contrary, borrow
ing folklorist and religious studies scholar Leonard Primiano’s words, the term “lived reli
gion” is used to represent “a theoretical definition of another term, not just a terminologi
cal substitution for an older concept.”15 Approaching Buddhism from the perspective of a
lived religion in order to shift our focus to the people (in this case, Buddhist wizards and
their devotees), whether they be monastics or laypeople, elite or commoners, rich or poor,
and so on.
Since the early 1990s there has been a growing body of research done by scholars of reli
gion whose work focuses on the everyday practices, thoughts, and beliefs of lay Chris
tians in various parts of the Western world.16 Such scholars of religion have approached
their subjects through history, sociology, ethnography, and close reading of texts to help
expand our ways of thinking about the daily life of lived religious practices. Buddhist
scholarship, however, has not kept up, and only recently have we begun to see a handful
of studies done by scholars of Theravāda Buddhism whose work comes close to what one
might think of as religion-as-lived.17 The methodologies and interpretative strategies em
ployed in the lived religions approach build upon and borrow from work done on Bud
dhism in South and Southeast Asia from the fields of Buddhist studies and history and an
thropology of religion. And although few lived-religion studies of Buddhism have been un
dertaken, important works that were published over the past several decades have great
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ly influenced and informed how lived-religion approaches to the study of Buddhism have
been adapted.
The Weizzā Phenomenon as Lived Religion

Before continuing with the remainder of the article, an explanation of what, exactly, con
stitutes a “Buddhist wizard” is in order. A wizard, or weizzā, in Burmese language, is any
human being—monastic, hermit, or lay—who has gained supernatural powers and trans
formed him/herself into a semi-divine being through specific practices and rituals. The
wizards who are understood to possess such power are thought to manipulate the natural
world around them to enact changes for the benefit of their followers and Buddha’s
sāsana. At the time of death, the weizzā exits this world to remain in an otherworldly
abode helping those in need and continuing to guard the sāsana. Weizzā are also known in
Burmese as “htwet yat pauk” beings, and according to how one interprets this phrase, the
compound htwet yat pauk can be understood and explained in two ways. For some, htwet
yat pauk means “to reach (pauk) the place (yat) of exit (htwet),” in reference to the “exit”
both from the cycle of rebirths and toward nirvāna. A second gloss is “to exit (htwet)”
from the cycle of rebirths—“to stop” (yat) rounds of rebirths—“to break out” (pauk) from
current earthly state. Such transformation is done in one of two ways: leaving dead (B.
athey-htwet) or leaving alive (B. ashin-htwet). Those who attain weizzā-hood by the first
method undergo a dying process similar to what an ordinary human being would experi
ence, except that person’s spirit (B. nān) leaves the body to dwell where it wishes. Those
who become weizzā by the other way, however, leave this world with their physical bodies
intact, and they disappear from this realm to dwell in a non-human abode.
Becoming a weizzā requires years of rigorous and disciplined training to master a specific
form of technical knowledge aimed at gaining supernatural powers for manipulating the
physical and psychical world around them. Ideally this is to help others, propagate the
Buddha’s religion, and eventually attain nibbāna. Weizzā achieve this state through any
number of methods, including alchemy, meditation, recitation of sacred spells, or drawing
magical diagrams. The literal translation of the Pāli word (“vijjādhara”) from which “weiz
zā” (“vijjā) derives gives us an accurate idea of a weizzā: “A bearer of wisdom” or even
“master of spells.” Those who aspire to this mastery are said to traverse the “weizzā
path” (B. weizzā lam) and systems for classifying and ranking weizzā can be found in the
writings of famous monks, popular magazines, and websites. There is no ecclesiastical
governing body that dictates and oversees the weizzā and their devotees, which leads to
substantial innovation and regional difference on the behalf weizzā path followers and the
associations they belong to. Niklas Foxeus says that due to “its eclecticism there is no au
thoritative version of weizzā path systems/cosmology/practices, etc., and it is difficult to
point to a discrete set of beliefs or practices common to all practitioners. Nevertheless,
some general ideas seem to be shared widely.”18 One such general idea is the weizzā
hierarchy. At the bottom of this ranking is the “common (P. janapada) weizzā” who uses
knowledge of alchemy, sacred diagrams, spells, Vedic knowledge (among other methods)
to obtain supernormal powers to be used for mundane (P. lokiya) affairs, especially per
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taining to matters involving finance, love, and prognostication. Next is the “Small (P. cūḷa)
Gandhārī Weizzā”—a middling level weizzā who has mastery over the same arts as the
Common (P. janapada) Weizzā but who uses his powers for supramundane (P. lokuttara) af
fairs. Such weizzā include the mercury and iron weizzā who have devoted their practices
to alchemy; the medicine weizzā whose practices involve the creation and mastering of
various indigenous medicines and elemental properties; sacred diagram weizzā whose
practice in centered on the creation and manipulation of cabbalistic squares and other di
agrams made up of syllables and quintessence of holy text; and the mantra weizzā who,
like the sacred diagram weizzā, creates and adapts sacred verses. Perhaps the most wide
ly known “Small” weizzā in Myanmar is in the form of the zawgyi figure (see Figure 1).
Dressed in red robes and turban, carrying a long walking stick used as a magic wand of
sorts, and proficient in alchemy and magic, the zawgyi is often considered synonymous
with the weizzā path, even though he is not considered as the highest power. This highest
authority is reserved for the “Great (P: Mahā) Gandhārī Weizzā”
Figure 1. Example of zawgyi. Ūh Ññāṇa. Vebhan-ky

oṅh Charā. 1888. Mahesara bhesaya kyam h (Bud
dhistische Mythologie)—BSB Cod. birm. 286.
This Mahā Gandhārī Weizzā is a high-level weizzā who engages in concentration (P:
samatha) and insight (P: vipassanā) meditation and who has fulfilled pāramī (perfection of
certain virtues) thus allowing him to become a chief disciple of the future buddha or even
a buddha himself. Such weizzā usually have some mastery of one or more techniques of
the lower weizzā, as a mastery of one such technique is what elevates him to the state of
Mahā Gandhārī weizzā, imbued with the complete set of ten superpowers: freedom from
illnesses; youthful body; longevity of life; invincible from weapons; loved by all; able to
find money easily; capable of traveling long distances quickly; and having the abilities to
walk on water, fly in the air, and perform miracles. The most revered and popular weizzā
of contemporary Myanmar fall under this category. Such weizzā include Bo Min Gaung,
Yatkansin Taung Sayadaw, and Bo Pauk Sein Sayadaw, among many others (See Figure 2,
Figure 3, and Figure 4).19
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Figure 2. Bo Min Gaung. Black-and-white laminated

photograph. From author’s personal collection.
Figure 3. Yatkansin Taung Sayadaw. Laminated pho

tograph. From author’s personal collection.
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Figure 4. Bo Pauk Sein Sayadaw. Laminated photo

graph. From author’s personal collection.
Buddhist wizards have been a staple of the Myanmar Buddhist landscape since at least
the 19th century, but their prominence has waxed and waned depending the sociopolitical
nature of the times. For instance, after the deposition of Burmese Buddhist King Thibaw
by the British in 1885, small bands of diverse, loosely connected networks of weizzā
groups began to develop throughout the country with many of them professing anticolo
nial, nationalist agendas. None of these groups, however, were systematically organized
or widely influential. This most likely had to do with the British criminalizing such groups
by associating them with rebellious activities. It is, therefore, not surprising that we find
the systematization of large-scale weizzā groups immediately after independence in 1948.
What separated weizzā associations from other Buddhist associations, however, was the
strong emphasis they placed on not only saving the sāsana but also in saving all human
beings by exposing them to this sāsana.
The post-independence period was the high point for the formation of weizzā associations
whose primary aim was to strengthen the sāsana throughout the country. Groups of weiz
zā devotees that had advanced to some degree of institutionalization were referred to as
gaing, a word that had a range of synonymous meanings that include “community,” “con
gregation,” and “association.” They were often exclusive associations organized around a
set of tenets and headed by a charismatic leader—with devotion centered on one or more
weizzā. Members were given esoteric teachings aimed at developing supernatural powers
through the practices of meditation, alchemy, reciting of mantras and magical incanta
tions, ingesting sacred diagrams, and studying cabbalistic squares. These associations
were often made up of members who came from a wide range of socioeconomic back
grounds. Merchants, office workers, taxicab drivers, booksellers, housewives, and monas
tics all joined these gaing to varying degrees of involvement and engaged in activities that
included pagoda construction, healing ceremonies, sermonizing, and general Buddhist
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missionary work throughout the country, all of which was understood by members to be
part of strengthening the sāsana. Regardless of weizzā affiliation with these associations
and the activities they chose to focus on, they all had one thing in common: to defend and
propagate the Buddha sāsana at all costs.
Authors of weizzā publications at this time proclaimed that the country was on the thresh
old of a new era—an era governed by the weizzā—and provided step-by-step instructions
for what members needed to accomplish so that a weizzā emperor could arise to unite all
the continents under Buddhist rule. Most of the weizzā associations had disbanded or
were absorbed into non-weizzā organizations during the 1980s. As a consequence of Gen
eral Ne Win’s purge of the religious landscape in the early 1980s, weizzā associations, es
pecially those concerned with practices that could be interpreted as black magic or sor
cery, were more closely monitored.20 By the late 1970s, when these issues were under
control, Ne Win turned his attention to religion and undertook a mission to purge the
sāsana from elements he perceived as deviating from orthodox Buddhism. In a speech de
livered in December of 1979, Ne Win likened these weizzā associations to the Jim Jones
Peoples Temple cult and warned that such groups only seek to exploit their members for
their own self-interests.21 A series of restrictions were then placed upon the weizzā
associations, and those considered illegal, like the Shwe-yin-kyaw Association (which was
popular among soldiers and civil servants) were banned. Others such as the Mano-citta-
pada Association were heavily monitored. During this period, Ne Win also banned maga
zines, printed books, and other forms of media that were created by weizzā associations
and even had portrayals of weizzā and their supernatural powers censored from written
works and films.
When the associations dissolved, however, weizzā members did not simply stop engaging
in activities defending and bolstering the sāsana. A further trickle-down effect seems to
have occurred: instead of being in the hands of larger groups of organized weizzā
factions, sāsana responsibility fell to individual weizzā devotees. Whereas previously the
power and responsibility for the care of sāsana was in the hands of organized lay associa
tions, it spread to a wider swath of individual Buddhists, both lay and monastic, who be
lieved themselves to be sought out by the weizzā to carry out their sāsana propagation
missions. Japanese scholar of weizzā associations, Keiko Tosa, discovered during her field
work in the late 1980s and early 1990s that although weizzā beliefs and practices among
individual devotees were still widely popular (and were becoming increasingly so in the
years she was in Myanmar), no one was particularly interested in forming new associa
tions or joining the few remaining ones. Instead, they were devoted to personal, direct re
lationships with weizzā saints and carrying out sāsana propagation activities as directed
to them by their patron weizzā saints.
This has all changed with the recent political developments in Myanmar. Within weeks of
the government abolishing the Censor Board in February 2013, publishers began putting
weizzā books back into circulation. Publications, general news stories, and websites and
Facebook groups dedicated to the weizzā are reaching a much wider public sphere.
Whereas previously there was only a handful of government-approved monographs dedi
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cated to the weizzā, the 21st century has witnessed an explosion of weizzā-related publi
cations, articles on devotees’ experiences featured in long-running popular religious mag
azines, and even YouTube videos. Coupled with this are the newly established daily jour
nals and online video news clips that began to carry stories about the weizzā.22 This is en
abling the swift dissemination of ideas to many parts of the country where weizzā
associations may not have had local chapters established.
Take, for instance, the most revered wizard in contemporary Myanmar. Named Bo Min
Gaung (b. 1885–d.1952), this weizzā has risen to the rank of “Chief Wizard” and is
thought of to be second only to the Buddha in terms of inspiring strong faith and devotion
among people from various religious traditions in Myanmar (see Figure 2). Drawing from
biographies of Bo Min Gaung, interviews with people who knew him personally, and the
experiences of his devotees, it is clear that the biographic process through which the fig
ure of Bo Min Gaung has been created for devotees. In publicly circulating oral and writ
ten sources, Bo Min Gaung’s devotees add to his biography through their own experi
ences of him. His elevation to the status of wizard-saint, for example, was tied up with the
events of World War II when Allied planes bombed his village, Japanese soldiers attempt
ed to assassinate him, and Burmese Communist insurgents imprisoned and interrogated
him. From these events, his devotees began to transform his biography after the war into
something personalized and linked to their understanding of their own experiences,
karmic biography, and aspirations.
Wizards such as Bo Min Gaung figure prominently in episodes of spirit possession among
weizzā devotees in Myanmar and throughout the world. Monthly published religious mag
azines, devotional tracts, and other forms of popular media devote considerable attention
to the weizzā’s role in spirit possession ritual activity, especially with regard to the heal
ing that allegedly takes place during these episodes. Indeed, one way to interpret this
phenomenon from a lived religions perspective is to examine how the cultural atmos
phere in which magazines, devotional literature, and other forms of popular media all rec
ognize, endorse, and publicize the ways these wizards interact with their spirit mediums
and devotees to heal specific illnesses. For instance, female devotees being possessed by
a wizard to carry out his bidding can be seen as a creative yet culturally sanctioned re
sponse to restrictive gender roles, a means for expressing otherwise illicit thoughts or
feelings, and an economic strategy for women who have few options beyond traditional
wifely or daughter roles. Young women who can channel the spirit of a powerful male wiz
ard are able to renegotiate the often silent and passive roles assigned to them by the reli
gious and medical culture by setting the experience of sickness into a new narrative
framework—one where the wizards are the source of all healing. Women express their
own needs and desires, and through their relationship with the saints, they find the con
viction to have these needs met. On another level, illness is recast as a sacred drama in
which the healing power is understood to come ultimately from the wizard-saints,
whether they are entreated or not. Though never directly challenging the social struc
tures that oppress them, these women are able to enact significant and positive changes
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in their lives and those around them through the power of their wishes and within the
flexible parameters of devotional practice.
Despite the popularity of, and reverence for, these wizards, there is still hostility and mis
trust toward the wizard phenomenon from segments of Myanmar’s governmental and ec
clesiastical authorities. This is due mainly to the belief that the most powerful Buddhist
wizards have used their supernatural powers to manipulate the recent political and soci
etal turn of events that have taken place in Myanmar in the past. Like a Myanmar-styled
Illuminati, the wizards are thought to have clandestinely orchestrated a series of events
starting with the 1988 nationwide pro-democracy uprising and continuing with the open
ing up of Myanmar in the 21st century. They are ultimately responsible for the political
and socioeconomic transformations that have taken place in Myanmar in the 2010s,
which has led to a renewed interest in the wizard-saints throughout the country.
Clearly, then, studying the lived religious landscape of Buddhist wizards in Myanmar re
quires drawing upon a variety of primary sources: interviews, conversations, and corre
spondences with the devotees; hundreds of weizzā related periodicals, private diaries,
and weizzā associations’ manuals and handbooks; videos and songs; two- and three-di
mensional images; and websites. “The interpretative challenge of the study of lived reli
gion,” Robert Orsi stresses, “is to develop the practice of disciplined attention to people’s
signs and practices as they describe, understand, and use them, in the circumstances of
their experiences, and to the structures and conditions within which these signs and prac
tices emerge.”23 Such a model for undertaking a study of lived religion in Myanmar takes
seriously the devotees’ beliefs and practices on their own terms and for their own sake. In
attempting to approximate the worldview of the people whose lives are enriched by the
weizzā, one may wish to offer a synoptic narrative, which is “a comprehensive view of
events pieced together from disparate and varied perspectives [where] multiple voices,
including scholarly ones” are allowed to flesh out the lives and practices of weizzā
devotees.24 In other words, reiterating the primacy given to informants as a primary
source, scholars can try whenever possible to give the devotees the last word, for their
relationship with the weizzā saints makes them an authority on all matters pertaining to
them. It is not because of a belief that they somehow possess some direct and unmediat
ed access to divine forces but rather, “it is this very contingency that makes theirs the
privileged voice.”25 One need not acknowledge the reality of these weizzā, but weaving
the apparatus of anthropology, history, religious and cultural studies—and at times, psy
chology—in a non-intrusive manner while allowing the lives and voices of the devotees to
remain in the foreground, one can come up with a study that does not reduce informants’
religious experiences to merely mental fabrications. The resulting narrative then be
comes polyphonic, sometimes relying heavily on the voices of informants or building
analysis around their words. At other times, their voices recede into the background as
sociological, historical, or theoretical issues come to the fore.
From this approach, we have been able to understand contemporary patterns of religiosi
ty in the lives of weizzā devotees, and one cannot understand Buddhist practice in con
temporary Myanmar more generally without knowledge of such widespread weizzā
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practice. Exploring the world of Buddhist wizards in Myanmar through the lens of lived
religion helps drive home the reality that such phenomena are not as exotic and esoteric
as they seem. Those unfamiliar with the weizzā phenomenon tend to characterize it as oc
cult, otherworldly, even bizarre. But investigation shows us that people who belong to
such associations lead quite ordinary lives. They go to work in the morning, return home,
and perhaps attend weizzā activities in their spare time or simply incorporate their prac
tices into their daily devotions. This form of lived religion in contemporary Myanmar is
commonplace. It is not a sect consisting of select members of secret societies concerned
with obtaining supernatural powers and awaiting the appearance of a millenarian savior.
While this is certainly the case for some, the vast majority of weizzā devotees incorporate
practices and beliefs associated with the weizzā path into their everyday lives. One can
not understand Buddhist practice in contemporary Myanmar without knowledge of such
widespread weizzā practice.
Far from being confined to darkened corners of their lives, these weizzā and the roles
they play are out in the open. For such individuals who have had astonishing encounters
with weizzā, there may have been some initial uncertainty about which particular saint it
was who came to visit. However, there was never any doubt about the kind of being it
was. Although one may have been encountering a weizzā for the first time, there was a fa
miliarity with the wizard-saint, and one knew immediately that it was a special being that
had come bearing an important message. The devout themselves explicitly made the con
nection between a particular event in their life and the timing of the weizzā’s appearance,
and there was almost always the feeling that the weizzā acted as something akin to an in
visible guide helping the devotee through life. Such experiences are, to borrow Robert
Orsi’s terminology, “abundant events.”26 In other words, even though Myanmar Buddhist
culture primes a person for an encounter with a wizard-saint, the person having such an
encounter considers it highly unusual. Second, those having such experiences are certain
that they are not delusions or hallucinations. Even those instances when the weizzā
appear in dreams, devotees consider them real. Third, such events do not take place in a
vacuum. They “arise at the intersection of past/present/future (as these really are or as
they are dreaded or feared or hoped for). At the moment of such an event we have a new
experience of the past while at the same time the horizon of the future is fundamentally
altered.”27 These wizard-saints enter into peoples’ lives often when they least expect it:
through visionary apparitions, auditory voices, dreams, spirit mediums, flesh-and-blood
persons, and two- and three-dimensional images and objects. These encounters have such
significant impacts on the person having such an experience that he or she often wishes
to deepen the bonds with the saints who visited them. In essence, such encounters are so
significant for the person as to have a long-lasting and predominantly beneficial impact
on the person’s life.
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Review of the Literature

With the United States’ steadily increased involvement in Southeast Asia during the
volatile years following World War II, several universities—with the help of funds from the
State Department and Rockefeller Foundation—established programs dedicated to the
study of Southeast Asia. It was at this time that, as Juliane Schober notes, “the Second
World War disrupted both colonial rules as well as the episteme of colonial scholarship in
Southeast Asia and elsewhere.”28 Whereas previous scholarship on Buddhism was domi
nated by historians, Indologists, and philologists, the 1950s and 1960s saw the interven
tion of a growing number of anthropologists who also wished to be part of this venerable
field of Buddhist studies with the hopes of studying “Buddhism” as the object of an overt
ly social and cultural inquiry. One can get a sense of this newly emerging field and the
problems anthropologists of Buddhism were preoccupied with by looking at the volume,
Anthropological Studies in Theravāda Buddhism, which grew out of a conference of a sim
ilar name at the University of Chicago in 1962.29 The works included in this volume ex
press the specific set of assumptions brought by European and North American scholars
of Buddhism to their anthropological work. Such presuppositions were highly influential
and went on to inform both the academic study of Theravāda Buddhism as well as the
Buddhism(s) of South and Southeast Asia for years to come. Most notable, however, were
their ideas surrounding “text and context” and “the relations between the ongoing behav
ior of the ordinary Buddhist (both monk and laity) and voluminous canonical (in the Tip
iṭaka) and semicanonical literature of Theravāda Buddhism.”30
In the field of anthropology, scholars tended to view Buddhism in South and Southeast
Asia through the Redfieldian distinction between great and little traditions, which came
to dominate the way ethnographic inquiries were carried out during the Cold War
period.31 This binary differentiates between those religions shaped by elite groups of vir
tuosi on the one hand and village traditions composed mainly of the masses of non-liter
ate peasants on the other. The works of anthropologists such as Melford Spiro, Gananath
Obeyesekere, and Manning Nash were largely predicated on such a view and “trans
formed in that way the epistemic focus of their orientalist predecessors.” They failed to
take seriously those beliefs and practices that did not correlate with what they read in
Buddhist texts.32
Such work was not to be found solely in the fields of anthropology and sociology, howev
er. In the 1971 classic, Precept and Practice, one can see that the anthropological spirit of
the day even influenced the philologically trained Richard Gombrich to leave the confines
of Oxford University and travel to Sri Lanka to conduct fieldwork for his dissertation. Up
on his arrival, he was quickly confronted with the problem of how one could reconcile the
practice of “actual” Buddhists he observed in a Sri Lankan village with the information he
learned from the texts. Borrowing an idea from Gananath Obeyesekere’s essay that was
included in the previously mentioned Anthropological Studies in Theravāda Buddhism,
Gombrich suggests that a fruitful way of looking at this seeming disconnect of “what peo
ple say they believe and say they do, and what they really believe and do” is to develop a
cognitive/affective dichotomy: cognitively, Buddhists will attest to believing in such nor
Page 13 of 26
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mative doctrines as anicca, dukkha, and anatta, while their actions indicate a supposed
affective acceptance of, for example, an unchanging soul. In other words, Buddhists “cog
nitively” know the Buddha is dead and gone but “affectively” or “psychologically” feel his
presence and power working in their lives.33
Writing in a similar vein as those scholars whose work is included in the seminal Anthro
pological Studies in Theravāda Buddhism, B. J. Terwiel, in his work on Buddhist magic in
rural Thailand, discloses that when he first entered Thailand in the late 1960s to do an
thropological work, he arrived with knowledge of Buddhism gained only from translated
works from the Pāli texts. And, like Gombrich, he was thus surprised to find that the prac
tices and beliefs of those in the Thai villages seldom, if at all, agreed with the texts. When
Terwiel began to interview people about the relationship between Buddhist and “non-Bud
dhist” elements of their religious lives, he quickly realized that such categories had little
relevance to his informants.34 He struggles in his book with the issue of whether the Bud
dhism of his village is a harmonious blend of Buddhism and local creeds or whether an at
tempt should be made to delineate the two or more distinct strata found within it. The
former view he terms “syncretist” and the latter “compartmentalized.”35 Those who ad
here to a syncretistic model, he says, usually come to such a conclusion based on observa
tions of the lesser educated members of one’s field site. The scholars who tend to com
partmentalize their findings often base their opinions upon data drawn from informants
of the educated classes. These two groups of scholars would have avoided such “apparent
controversies had they made clear that their description of Buddhism does not encom
pass the whole Buddhist population, but refers only to certain sections of it.”36 It is neces
sary to point out that despite Terwiel’s insistence that we view Buddhism in a more holis
tic manner (à la Tambiah), he nonetheless fails to recognize that his admission that the
two groups of scholars are referring to different classes of Buddhists in Thailand places
him in the company of those who differentiate between the distinct strata of Thai Bud
dhism. Such two-tiered models can be problematic because they “residualize” the reli
gious lives of some Buddhists while simultaneously reifying an imagined Buddhist authen
ticity.37
Writing at least partially in response to Gombrich’s work, Stanley Tambiah argued for a
more holistic approach when encountering apparent inconsistencies in precept and prac
tice. Dismissing Gombrich’s affective/cognitive thesis as a “simpleminded proposition,”38
Tambiah sees it as an arbitrarily imposed dichotomy that is “theoretically untenable.”39
Tambiah even goes as far as saying that this dichotomous way of looking at Buddhism is
an “invention of the anthropologist dictated not so much by the reality he studies as by
his professional perspective.”40 He feels the need to “rightly repudiate” such a bifurcated
notion because “as far as the villagers are concerned there are not two traditions but sim
ply one, ‘which is their life’; for them village tradition is not conceptually separable into
different elements.”41 Tambiah concludes that
Buddhism is a shorthand expression for a total social phenomenon, civilizational in

breadth and depth, which encompasses the lives of Buddhist monks and laymen,
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and which cannot be disaggregated in a facile way into its religious, political, and
economic realms as these are currently understood in the West.42
Foreshadowing important work that would be undertaken by a new generation of schol

ars in the 1990s, Tambiah in 1984 offered prescient remarks when he wrote:
I have found that those who espouse the narrow-minded view of religion . . . also
frequently have a linear view of the development of Buddhism, from a pure, pris
tine, philosophical, salvation-search-oriented beginning, unstained and unsullied
by the character and concerns of the social milieu in which it arose, to the later
states of ever-widening popularization and vulgarization and deviation from the
initial purity, in which are at play all the human passions and this-worldly con
cerned of the masses. This posture can be baptized as ‘the Pāli Text Society men
tality’ . . . which is not only portrayed by some Western scholars of a puritanical
bent but also by some Sri Lankan scholars who have not emancipated themselves
from the presuppositions of that ‘reformist Buddhism’.43
As if heeding Tambiah’s words, the 1990s saw the emergence of a kind of scholarship un
dertaken primarily by scholars who wished to supply a dialectical counterweight to the
theoretical study of Theravāda Buddhism evident in the scholarship discussed in the first
part of this article under STUDYING “BUDDHISM-AS-LIVED”. Scholars, most notably
Steven Collins, Charles Hallisey, and Anne Blackburn, have suggested new ways of con
ceptualizing the relationships among Buddhist textual, ethnographic, and historical evi
dence in relation to one another while studying Theravāda Buddhism and Buddhist prac
tice in South and Southeast Asia.
In his influential essay, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Bud
dhism,” Hallisey pushes us to uncover the assumptions and cultural and academic prac
tices that have shaped the course of Buddhist studies since the early part of the twentieth
century. Most notable is his idea of “intercultural mimesis,” which Hallisey uses to de
scribe the participation of both European philologists and Sri Lankan Buddhists them
selves in the processes of delineating the parameters of “Buddhism.”44 Exploring the con
nections between colonialism and Orientalism in the academic study of Buddhism, his es
say explores precolonial constructions of what it meant to be a “Buddhist” in Asia while
also helping to shape colonial European understandings of Buddhist thought and prac
tice.
Anne M. Blackburn’s careful study of the role of the Siyam Nikaya of Sri Lanka questions
the common colonial/postcolonial view that prior to the intensification of colonial influ
ence, “traditional” Theravāda Buddhism was essentially a stable and monolithic entity.
Blackburn argues, on the contrary, that “pre- and early-colonial Lankan Buddhism was
shifting, multiplex, and human.”45 In a related and equally important work, Blackburn,
building on Keyes, Collins and Hallisey, proposes that we nuance our notions of the Ther
avāda Buddhist “canon” by distinguishing between two different types: what she refers to
as a “formal” canon and a “practical” canon. The former include those texts that serve as
“the ultimate locus of interpretive authority in the Theravāda” and the latter as “those
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portions of the tipiṭaka with their commentaries as well as texts understood by their au
thors and audience as consistent with, but perhaps not explicitly related to, the tipiṭaka
and its commentaries.”46 Of the two, the practical canon, defined further as “the units of
text actually employed in the practices of collecting manuscripts, copying them, reading
them, commenting on them, listening to them, and preaching sermons based upon them
that are understood by their users as part of a tipiṭaka-based tradition,” plays a more cen
tral role in the lives of Buddhists.47
Other scholars such as Steven Collins revisit the discussion of how to reconcile the seem
ing Weberian contradiction of a radical ascetic discourse of otherworldly salvation on the
one hand and a this-worldly gratification on the other. The most nuanced and suggestive
thinking on this has been provided in Collins’s Nirvāna and Other Buddhist Felicities. On
first glance, one may think Collins is reiterating what anthropologists such as Keyes con
cluded at least ten years earlier.48 Indeed, as Blackburn and Hansen rightly point out,
Collins has certainly been influenced by anthropological studies of South and Southeast
Asia, especially by Keyes’s ethnographic data of illuminating the use and makeup of
“canons” in modern-day Southeast Asia.49 Collins, however, does not focus on Buddhist
beliefs and practices and how they fit with those found in canonical texts. He concerns
himself, rather, with looking at varieties of textual imagery and shifts in narrative to re
veal what he calls a “Pāli imaginaire.”
Collins’s innovative notion of the “Pāli imaginaire,” a cultural and ideological system he
abstracts from premodern South Asian Buddhist civilizations, challenges the idea that
nirvāna, and the ascetic, world-renouncing practices that lead to it, was the primary goal
for Buddhists. This involves a very different history of Buddhist ideas that looks at both
philosophical and literary perspectives to understand how the summum bonum of nirvāna
fitted into a wider discourse of “felicities.” Integrating more worldly felicities allows long-
overdue attention to such often-overlooked elements such as heavenly rebirth, and
health, wealth, and other life-enhancing merit-making rituals.
Another related perspective is found in the work of François Bizot. Bizot has given partic
ular consideration to texts composed in South and Southeast Asian vernacular languages.
Such texts highlight the idea that such vernacular sources, and not those solely from the
Pāli tipiṭaka, were what Buddhists in South and Southeast Asia had access to and that
played an integral role in informing their ideas about Buddhist practices and beliefs. The
texts include diagrams and sacred formulae used to create the Buddha within one’s body
through the performance of ritual, thus indicating that the Buddha and his power are
very much present and can be accessed via certain practices (see McGovern’s “Esoteric
Buddhism in Southeast Asia.”).
Donald Swearer’s work on Thai Buddhist statue consecration rituals, although the result
of decades of research in Thailand, was nonetheless informed by Collins’s and Bizot’s
work. Swearer’s work goes a long way in discrediting long-held notions of Theravāda
Buddhism as a rational, nontheistic, philosophical religion by broadening our understand
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ing of Buddhism “on the ground.” He sums up the spirit of this period of scholarship
when he writes:
Are we then, witness to two oppositional forms of Buddhism—an ‘original’ monas

tic worldview of high moral philosophy and spiritual practice versus a thoroughly
compromised, if not debased, popular tradition of magical expectation? Such a di
chotomy is the projection of the logical mind uncomfortable with the incongruities
within religious thought and practice, and the creation of Buddhist apologists
whose relatively narrow view of a non-theistic, rationalistic Buddhism appeals to
the modern mind. But the lived tradition of Buddhism—like all classical religions—
is not so tidy.50
Giving attention to the “lived tradition of Buddhism” as it is played out “on the ground”
has becoming increasingly voguish among scholars trained as Buddhologists in the early
21st century. Recent monographs such as Buddhism in Practice (1997), Sacred Biography
in the Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia (1997), Life of Buddhism (2000),
Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (2005), and to a certain extent Constituting
Communities (2003), comprised essays focusing mainly on pushing beyond elite represen
tations of Buddhism to popular expressions that often include lives of the laity and/or the
wider arena of Buddhist communities at large. Reynolds and Hallisey astutely observed
back in 1987 that the field of Buddhist studies was slowly beginning to shift its focus from
elements of Buddhism inside the monastic walls and of monks’ elite lives to the cultural
surroundings and ordinary people who inhabited local monasteries and villages. It was
not until the mid- to late 1990s, however, that we really began to see a spate of works
that, as Reynolds notes, moves away from “doctrinal issues toward a much greater em
phasis on many various forms of Buddhist expression, including especially those that have
been most deeply implicated in the everyday life of ordinary Buddhist practitioners.”51
The essays in the aforementioned volumes give much attention to what Buddhists do
rather than to what their texts say. The works direct our attention away from de-histori
cized discussions of philosophy to that of contextualized activities and practices by Bud
dhists. As Carl Bielfeldt says, these studies focus on “practices of what we might call the
Buddhist silent majority: the men and women on the streets and in the rice paddies
whose voices speak outside the canon.”52 Although such a project is certainly laudable
and long overdue, it is still not without its problems. One may worry that such studies still
portray the image of a bifurcated Buddhist world of elites and non-elites—little and big
people. It is not clear to whom Reynolds was referring to, or what he had in mind, when
he mentioned “ordinary Buddhist practitioners” in the quote cited in the previous para
graph. But one may see it as giving the false impression that those Buddhists who do not
live within the monastery walls are somehow unconcerned with notions of liberation, and
conversely, that monastics do not engage in any worldly (P. lokiya) practices. For example,
we see such notions of “ordinary Buddhists” and “Buddhist silent majority” lose meaning
in Southeast Asia, where the line between monastic and lay is blurred. This ambiguity is
due to the fluid movement of men, and now women, in and out of the monastery walls as
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they undergo temporary ordination, sometimes several times a year and for only days at a
time.
Recalling the earlier discussion of popular, syncretic, and hybridized forms of religion at
the beginning of this article, the reader should resist the temptation to explain away
these weizzā-related practices as a degenerative syncretism comprising Buddhist and
non-Buddhist elements. Such outdated analytical frameworks, although attractive in their
simplicity, are unhelpful.53 Nonetheless, such a bifurcated way of looking at Buddhism,
especially with regard to studies of the weizzā phenomenon, has had a lasting durability
among scholars of religion in Myanmar. This is due in part, perhaps, to the way scholars
have (and, in many cases, have not) dealt with certain source material, as well as the
ways certain data collected in ethnographic research has been interpreted.
Firstly, scholarship has tended to ignore Burmese sources concerned with those Buddhist
elements that clash with notions of a non-theistic, rationalistic Buddhism that many schol
ars still seem to associate with as “authentic” Theravāda Buddhism.54 As previously dis
cussed, the lack of references to certain Burmese Buddhist beliefs and practices is con
nected with the way scholars of Buddhism in Southeast Asia continue to address ahistori
cal and essentialist questions of what constitutes a “real” Buddhist and how one deter
mines who is not. Such frameworks often consider such “magical” or “occult” practices as
non-Buddhist in nature but are gradually incorporated into Buddhism by people who use
them as tools to deal with the vicissitudes of everyday life.
Another reason why such practices are often ignored or, if addressed, are seen as later
accretions to the Buddhist tradition may have to do with scholars’ unfamiliarity with the
extensive and complex histories of the beliefs and practices of modern-day weizzā path
practitioners. There is a vast corpus of vernacular literature on the weizzā phenomenon
that comprises published reference manuals, biographies, and histories; unpublished
textbooks and pamphlets circulated among practitioners; monthly journals that focus
specifically on the weizzā phenomenon; and paper-folding books (B. parabaik) and palm-
leaf manuscripts that provide detailed information on practices used by those on the weiz
zā path. Scholars should make such valuable textual material an integral part of their re
search. They should do so because even anthropological studies of the religious develop
ments of the weizzā phenomenon should integrate historically based comprehension of
the complexities of how such phenomena developed, especially as contemporary Myan
mar Buddhism and practice is strongly shaped by the literary vernacular print material
and culture.
Descriptions and interpretations of Buddhist wizards in Myanmar have been few and var
ied. Michael Mendelson provided some of the first studies of the weizzā, especially as he
observed the weizzā phenomenon during his research in Myanmar during the 1950s.55
Melford Spiro, John Ferguson, and Juliane Schober offered updated accounts of the weiz
zā during their research in the country in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, respectively.56 In
the 1990s, Patrick Pranke published the first English translation of a weizzā text, and
Keiko Tosa provided the first in-depth anthropological study of weizzā gaing.57 The 2000s
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saw a revival of weizzā-related research: Guillaume Rozenberg’s work on weizza cults,

saints, and alchemy, Niklas Foxeus’s exhaustively in-depth historical and ethnographic
analysis of an esoteric weizzā organization in upper Myanmar, Brac de la Perrière’s work
on spirit mediumship among weizzā path followers, and Celine Coderey’s research on
medicine weizzā.58 A publication that resulted from the first academic panel dedicated to
the study of the weizzā was also published at this time.59 Most recently, Thomas Patton
has published works on Burmese Buddhists’ relationships with weizzā.60
Further Reading
Lived Religion
Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2001.
Hall, David D., ed. Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997.
Hughes, Jennifer Scheper. Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local
Faith from the Conquest to the Present. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.
McGuire, Meredith B. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford, UK: Ox
ford University Press, 2008.
Orsi, Robert A. History and Presence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
Orsi, Robert A. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the
Scholars Who Study Them. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Orsi, Robert A. Thank You, St. Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless
Causes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
Weizzā in Myanmar
Brac de la Perrière, Bénédicte. “Being a Spirit Medium in Contemporary Burma.” In En

gaging the Spirit World in Modern Southeast Asia. Edited by Kirsten Endres and Andrea
Lauser, 163–184. New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2012.
La Perrière, Bénédicte Brac de, Guillaume Rozenberg, and Alicia Marie Turner, eds.
Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Contemporary Burma. Burma-Myanmar Studies
Conference. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2014.
Foxeus, Niklas. “‘I am the Buddha, the Buddha is Me’: Concentration Meditation and Eso
teric Modern Buddhism in Burma/Myanmar.” NUMEN 63 (2016): 411–445.
Foxeus, Niklas. The Buddhist World Emperor’s Mission: Millenarian Buddhism in Post
colonial Burma. Stockholm, Sweden: Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and
Gender Studies, Stockholm University, 2011.
Page 19 of 26
gal Notice).

Mendelson, Michael. “Observations on a Tour in the Region of Mount Popa, Central Bur
ma.” France-Asie 19 (1963): 780–807.
Mendelson, Michael. “The King of the Weaving Mountain.” Journal of the Royal Central
Asian Society 48 (1961a): 229–237.
Mendelson, Michael. “A Messianic Buddhist Association in Upper Burma.” Bulletin of the

School of Oriental and African Studies 24, no. 3 (1961b): 560–580.
Patton, Thomas. The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Healing and Protection in Burmese Bud
dhism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Patton, Thomas. “Buddhist Salvation Armies as Vanguards of the Sāsana: Sorcerer Soci
eties of Burma’s Liberation Era.” Journal of Asian Studies 75, no. 4 (2016a): 1083–1104.
Patton, Thomas. “The Wizard King’s Granddaughters: Burmese Buddhist Female Medi
ums, Healers, and Dreamers.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 2
(2016b): 430–465.
Patton, Thomas. “In Pursuit of the Sorcerer’s Power: Sacred Diagrams as Technologies of
Potency.” Contemporary Buddhism 13, no. 2 (2012): 213–231.
Pranke, Patrick. “On Becoming a Buddhist Wizard.” In Buddhism in Practice, Edited by

Donald S. Lopez Jr., 343–358. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Pranke, Patrick. “On Saints and Wizards—Ideals of Human Perfection and Power in Con
temporary Burmese Buddhism.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Stud
ies 33, no. 1–2 (2010): 453–488.
Rozenberg, Guillaume. Renunciation and Power: The Quest for Sainthood in Contempo
rary Burma. Monograph 59, Yale Southeast Asia Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Southeast Asia Studies, 2010a.
Rozenberg, Guillaume. “The Alchemist and His Ball.” Journal of Burma Studies 14
(2010b): 187–228.
Rozenberg, Guillaume. The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma. Hon
olulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015.
Notes:
(1.) David Hall, “Lived Religion.” Encyclopedia of Religion in America, eds. Charles H.
Lippy and Peter W. Williams (Washington: CQ Press, 2010), 2182.
(2.) Jennifer Scheper Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local
Faith from the Conquest to the Present (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 14–
15.
Page 20 of 26
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(3.) Kelly Hayes, Holy Harlots: Femininity, Sexuality, and Black Magic in Brazil (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2010), 9.
(4.) Hayes, Holy Harlots, 9.
(5.) Phenomenological anthropologists, such as Michael Jackson, refer to this as the “life-
world”: “that domain of everyday, immediate social existence and practical activity, with
all its habituality, its crises, its vernacular and idiomatic character, its biographical partic
ularities, its decisive events and indecisive strategies, which theoretical knowledge ad
dresses but does not determine, from which conceptual understanding arises but on
which it does not primarily depend.” See Michael Jackson, ed., Things as They Are: New
Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1996), 7–8.
(6.) Timothy Fitzgerald, “Problems with ‘Religion’ as a Category for Understanding Hin
duism,” in Defining Hinduism: A Reader, ed. J. E. Llewellyn (New York, NY: Routledge,
2005), 171–201.
(7.) For example, in precolonial Myanmar there was no word in the Burmese language for
what we would describe as “religion.” The closest term they had was the Pāli word
sāsana. As time went on, however, a word for religion (B. bhātha from the Pāli “bhāsa”)
came into existence and eventually referred to any subject of academic study, especially
religion.
(8.) Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem,
1880–1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), xx–xxi.
(9.) Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street, xiv.
(10.) Richard F. Gombrich, Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural High
lands of Ceylon (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1971), 319.
(11.) Hall, “Lived Religion,” 1284.
(12.) We still see such terms employed in works on Buddhism. In Mediums, Monks, and
Magic: Thai Popular Religion, for example, anthropologist of religion Pattana Kitiarsa be
gins by showing that supernatural elements within what he considers contemporary “Pop
ular Buddhism” are not a symptom of the decline of Buddhism. Unfortunately, such an ap
proach still presents an image of Buddhism that consists of different layers, with those at
the top being more authentic. Moreover, the danger of such a study is that the author be
comes the arbiter of what constitutes these strands.
(13.) A sample of works on Buddhism in Southeast Asia that have employed such termi
nology include: Pattana Kitiarsa, “Beyond Syncretism: Hybridization of Popular Religion
in Contemporary Thailand.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36, no. 3 (October 2005):
461–487 October 2005; and Jim Taylor, Buddhism and Postmodern Imaginings in Thai
land: The Religiosity of Urban Space (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2008).
Page 21 of 26
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(14.) There is a large body of work that addresses the use of syncretism as a category for
the study of religions. See, for example, Anita Leopold and Jeppe Jensen, eds., Syncretism
in Religion, and Rosalind Shaw and Charles Stewart, Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism, for
thorough discussions of the use of syncretism.
(15.) Leonard Primiano, “Afterword,” in Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life, eds. Marion
Bowman and Ulo Valk (Sheffield, UK and Bristol, CT: Equinox Publishers, 2012), 384.
(16.) David Hall (1997) notes that the concept of “lived religion” and its application to
studying religious history has long been in use among French scholars of sociology of reli
gion.
(17.) Recent books that provide excellent examples of works that focus on religion as
lived in everyday lives of the Theravāda Buddhists include: Samuels, Jeffrey, Attracting
the Heart: Social Relations and the Aesthetics of Emotion in Sri Lankan Monastic Culture
(Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010); McDaniel, Justin Thomas. The Lovelorn
Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand (New York: Co
lumbia University Press, 2011); Turner, Alicia Marie. Saving Buddhism: The Imperma
nence of Religion in Colonial Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014); and
Cassaniti, Julia. Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).
(18.) Niklas Foxeus, The Buddhist World Emperor’s Mission: Millenarian Buddhism in
Postcolonial Burma (Stockholm, Sweden: Department of Ethnology, History of Religions
and Gender Studies, Stockholm University, 2011), 21.
(19.) See under “Further Reading” to learn more about these specific weizzā.
(20.) Foxeus, The Buddhist World Emperor’s Mission, 176.
(21.) Foxeus, The Buddhist World Emperor’s Mission, 81.
(22.) For two such examples in English language, see: Athens Zaw Zaw, “Magic in the Air:
Myanmar Wizardy Flourishes,” Agence France-Presse (AFP), March 9, 2017; and Fanny
Potkin, “In Search of Burma’s Wizard-Saints.” BBC News, October 6, 2016.
(23.) Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street, xx.
(24.) Jennifer Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local Faith
from the Conquest to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), x.
(25.) Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix, x.
(26.) Robert Orsi, “2+2 = 5, Can We Begin to Think about Unexplained Religious Experi
ences in Ways That Acknowledge Their Existence?” The American Scholar (Spring 2007).
Available online.
Page 22 of 26
gal Notice).

(27.) Orsi, “2+2 = 5, Can We Begin to Think about Unexplained Religious Experiences in
Ways That Acknowledge Their Existence?,” (Spring 2007).
(28.) Juliane Schober, “Communities of Interpretation in the Study of Religion in Burma,”

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39, no. 2 (2008): 255–267, 258.
(29.) Manning Nash, Anthropological Studies in Theravāda Buddhism (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1966).
(30.) Manning Nash hoped that such a work would help foster cooperation between “field
anthropologists (sometimes accused of ‘seeing everything and reading nothing’) and his
torians of Buddhism and textual scholars of Sanskrit and Pāli (sometimes maligned by an
thropologists as ‘reading everything and understanding nothing’).” See Nash, Anthropo
logical Studies in Theravāda Buddhism, ix.
(31.) Robert Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucutan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1941).
(32.) Schober, “Communities of Interpretation in the Study of Religion in Burma,” 258.
(33.) Richard F. Gombrich, Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural High
lands of Ceylon. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1971), 9. For a more recent reworking of
the ideas put forth in earlier works by Gombrich, see his monograph, co-authored with
Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed. In this work, their conceptual framework for what
they term “Sinhala Buddhism” rests on the by now familiar bifurcated idea that there is,
on the one hand, a Theravāda Buddhism that is rooted in Pāli canonical sources, and on
the other, a “spirit religion” that is made up of those practices and beliefs that, if adhered
to, make it difficult for Obeyesekere and Gombrich to “claim that they remain Theravāda
Buddhists in any meaningful sense” (Gombrich, Richard, and Obeyesekere, Gananath.
Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer
sity Press, 1988), 29. One can glean from such statements that Obeyesekere and Gom
brich have strong convictions in their views of what constitutes “real” Buddhism.
(34.) B. J. Terwiel, Monks and Magic: An Analysis of Religious Ceremonies in Central Thai
land (Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur, 1975), 3.
(35.) Terwiel, Monks and Magic, 5.
(36.) Terwiel, Monks and Magic, 1.
(37.) L. N. Primiano, “Vernacular Religion and the Search for Method in Religious Folk
life,” Western Folklore 54, no. 1 (1995): 39.
(38.) Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets:
A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millennial Buddhism (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 5.
(39.) Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets, 375.
Page 23 of 26
gal Notice).

(44.) Charles Hallisey, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism,”
Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez
Jr. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 33.
(45.) Blackburn, Anne. Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century

Lankan Monastic Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 139.
(46.) Blackburn, Anne. “Looking for the Vinaya: Monastic Discipline in the Practical
Canons of the Theravada,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies,
22.2 (1999), 281–309.
(47.) Blackburn, “Looking for the Vinaya: Monastic Discipline in the Practical Canons of
the Theravada,” 284.
(48.) Keyes, Charles F., “Merit-Transference in the Karmic Theory of Popular Theravada
Buddhism,” in Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry, Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine
Daniel, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
(49.) “Looking for the Vinaya: Monastic Discipline in the Practical Canons of the Therava
da,” 283; and Hansen, Anne R., How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial
Cambodia 1860–1930 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007), 9.
(50.) Swearer, Donald. Becoming the Buddha: The Ritual of Image Consecration in Thai
land (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 10.
(51.) Frank E. Reynolds, “Coming of Age: Buddhist Studies in the United States from
1972 to 1997.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 22.2 (1999):
457–483.
(52.) Carl Bielefeldt.“Practice.” In Donald Lopez, ed., Critical Terms for the Study of Bud
dhism, pp. 229–244 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 243.
(54.) Especially, as Peter Skilling points out, what is meant by the term, “Theravāda,” is
far from clear Skilling, Peter. “The Advent of Theravāda Buddhism to Mainland South-
East Asia.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 20(1) (1997): 93–
108.
Page 24 of 26
gal Notice).

(55.) Michael Mendelson, “Observations on a Tour in the Region of Mount Popa, Central
Burma,” France-Asie 19 (1963): 780–807; Michael Mendelson, “The King of the Weaving
Mountain,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 48 (1961a): 229–237; and Michael
Mendelson, “A Messianic Buddhist Association in Upper Burma,” Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies 24, no. 3 (1961b): 560–580.
(56.) Melford E. Spiro, Burmese Supernaturalism: A Study in the Explanation and Reduc
tion of Suffering (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967); Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism
and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes (Berkeley: University of Cali
fornia Press, 1970); John P. Ferguson and Michael E. Mendelson, “Masters of the Bud
dhist Occult: The Burmese Weikzas,” Contributions to Asian Studies: Essays on Burma,
ed. John P. Ferguson, vol. 16 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1981), 62–80; and Schober,
Juliane, “The Path to Buddhahood: The Spiritual Mission and Social Organization of Mys
ticism in Contemporary Burma.” Crossroads 4(1): 13–30.
(57.) Patrick Pranke, “On Becoming a Buddhist Wizard,” Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald
S. Lopez Jr. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 343–358; Keiko Tosa, “Biru
ma niokeru weikza shinko no ichikosatsu: gaing nitotteno Lawki and Lawkoktara,” The
Japanese Journal of Ethnology 61, no. 2 (1996): 215–242; and Keiko Tosa, Biruma no
weikza shinko (Study on Weikza Belief in Myanmar). Tokyo, Japan: Keiso Syobo, 2000.
(58.) Guillaume Rozenberg, The Immortals: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015); Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière, “Spirits Ver
sus Weikza: Two Competing Ways of Mediation,” in Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults
in Contemporary Burma, ed. B. Brac de la Perrière, G. Rozenberg, and A. Turner (Singa
pore: National University of Singapore Press, 2014); and Coderey, Celine. “Healing
through Weikza: Therapeutic Cults in the Arakanese Context,” in Champions of Buddhism:
Weikza Cults in Contemporary Burma, ed. B. Brac de la Perrière, G. Rozenberg, and A.
Turner (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2014).
(59.) Burma-Myanmar Studies Conference, Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Con

temporary Burma, ed. B. Brac de La Perrière, G. Rozenberg, and A. M. Turner (Singa
pore: National University of Singapore Press, 2014).
(60.) Thomas Patton, The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Healing and Protection in Burmese
Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Thomas Patton, “Buddhist Salva
tion Armies as Vanguards of the Sāsana: Sorcerer Societies of Burma’s Liberation Era,”
Journal of Asian Studies 75, no. 4 (2016a): 1083–1104; Thomas Patton, “The Wizard
King’s Granddaughters: Burmese Buddhist Female Mediums, Healers, and Dreamers,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84, no. 2 (2016b): 430–465; and Thomas Pat
ton, “In Pursuit of the Sorcerer’s Power: Sacred Diagrams as Technologies of Potency,”
Contemporary Buddhism 13, no. 2 (2012), 213–231.
Thomas Patton
Page 25 of 26
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City University of Hong Kong
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Buddhist Wizards (Weizzā/Weikza) of Myanmar

Buddhist Wizards (Weizzā/Weikza) of Myanmar

Summary and Keywords

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It is valuable to grapple with the complexities, apparent inconsistencies, heterogeneity,

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Furthermore, terms, such as “popular,” “syncretic,” and “hybridized” continue to perpetu­

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engaging in a variety of rituals, Buddhists in Myanmar do not attempt to unravel the

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The Weizzā Phenomenon as Lived Religion

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Figure 1. Example of zawgyi. Ūh Ññāṇa. Vebhan-ky­

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Figure 2. Bo Min Gaung. Black-and-white laminated

Figure 3. Yatkansin Taung Sayadaw. Laminated pho­

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Figure 4. Bo Pauk Sein Sayadaw. Laminated photo­

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Review of the Literature

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Buddhism is a shorthand expression for a total social phenomenon, civilizational in

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Foreshadowing important work that would be undertaken by a new generation of schol­

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Are we then, witness to two oppositional forms of Buddhism—an ‘original’ monas­

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saw a revival of weizzā-related research: Guillaume Rozenberg’s work on weizza cults,

Brac de la Perrière, Bénédicte. “Being a Spirit Medium in Contemporary Burma.” In En­

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Mendelson, Michael. “A Messianic Buddhist Association in Upper Burma.” Bulletin of the

Pranke, Patrick. “On Becoming a Buddhist Wizard.” In Buddhism in Practice, Edited by

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(4.) Hayes, Holy Harlots, 9.

(9.) Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street, xiv.

(11.) Hall, “Lived Religion,” 1284.

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(20.) Foxeus, The Buddhist World Emperor’s Mission, 176.

(21.) Foxeus, The Buddhist World Emperor’s Mission, 81.

(23.) Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street, xx.

(25.) Hughes, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix, x.

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(28.) Juliane Schober, “Communities of Interpretation in the Study of Religion in Burma,”

(32.) Schober, “Communities of Interpretation in the Study of Religion in Burma,” 258.

(35.) Terwiel, Monks and Magic, 5.

(36.) Terwiel, Monks and Magic, 1.

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(45.) Blackburn, Anne. Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century

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(59.) Burma-Myanmar Studies Conference, Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Con­

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City University of Hong Kong

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Furthermore, terms, such as “popular,” “syncretic,” and “hybridized” continue to perpetu

Figure 1. Example of zawgyi. Ūh Ññāṇa. Vebhan-ky

Figure 3. Yatkansin Taung Sayadaw. Laminated pho

Figure 4. Bo Pauk Sein Sayadaw. Laminated photo

Foreshadowing important work that would be undertaken by a new generation of schol

Are we then, witness to two oppositional forms of Buddhism—an ‘original’ monas

Brac de la Perrière, Bénédicte. “Being a Spirit Medium in Contemporary Burma.” In En

(59.) Burma-Myanmar Studies Conference, Champions of Buddhism: Weikza Cults in Con