ABSTRACT
Apart from ceremonies connected with the dead, and thanksgivings for the recovery from sickness, the services of Taoist priests are not greatly in demand in the actual worship of the host of divinities included in their pantheon. Even at the greater pilgrimages on the birthdays of the Queen of Heaven and Tam Kung the clerics are conspicuous by their absence. The males in the congregation present the sacrifices of pork, eggs and chickens, whilst the women occupy themselves in burning the paper clothing and investing in sticks of incense or lighting candles before their Patron Saint. Death, of course, is a more serious matter, and it is essential to neglect no precaution to secure the benignity of the spirit in future dealings with the family. A troop of priests is engaged to sing the appropriate masses, predict the hour and direction of departure of the soul, and finally to ensure its proper bestowal in the cemetery. During the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts in the Seventh Moon charitable people also subsidise them to beat the bounds of the harbour to comfort the spirits of the drowned who have no known place of sepulture, or those whose descendants have died out and are left with none to observe the
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ancestral worship. Having no livings, in the Western sense of the word, the Taoist priests are obliged to supplement their income by fortunetelling and the sale of talismans.
