ABSTRACT
Although the participants in most spirit-medium cults answer that they are Buddhist if asked what religion they practise, it is usual to find that the genuinely Buddhist elements in their worship have been inundated by the Shenist tradition. In Singapore, there are several examples of Chinese spirit-medium cults centering around the worship of a Muslim saint. It is reported that when some spirit-medium cults hold processions, there is great difficulty in passing a Christian church, outside which the dang-ki suddenly feel intense pain from his skewers and nails. In the rural areas of Singapore, some of the spirit-medium cults have much the same characteristics as the urban cults already described. In Singapore, numerous small temples are no longer the centres of spirit-medium cults but give evidence that they have been associated with such practices in the past. Once a spirit-medium temple has fallen into a moribund condition, its days are usually numbered, but this need not always be the case.
