Soul Attractions

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Taoist healer Wong Tai Sin sought eternal life on a mountain in China 1,500 years ago; today, pilgrims travel to Hong Kong to seek his eternal guidance in marriage, business, career and emigration affairs. Before the Chinese temples honoring him were destroyed, this ancient god, part Dear Abby, part Harvey Mackay, "spoke" through a medium in a trance who wrote his words on a table. Now he speaks through 100 numbered sticks in a bamboo cup. Worshippers who visit his gargantuan Hong Kong temple shake the cup and select a stick; each number corresponds to a lengthy poem, or "fortune."

Hong Kong Tourist Association, 5th Floor, 590 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10036-4706; phone 212/869-5008

Jesus Malverde, Culiacan, Mexico 

Devout drug lords and ordinary folk flock to this shrine to a modern-day Robin Hood: Jesus Malverde, a criminal hung in 1909, now known as El Narcosanton, or the Big Narco Saint. The dealers beseech his plaster image to bless their bullets and render their marijuana crops bountiful; others give thanks for drug-related employment and hospitals, orphanages, and schools endowed by drug barons. The drug biz, they reason, simply steals from the rich and gives (a little) back to the poor.

Mexican Government Tourism Office, 450 Park Av., Suite 1401, New York, NY 10022; phone 212/755-7261

Chimayo, New Mexico 

More than 2,000 pilgrims gather on Good Friday alone at this sacred spot of dirt: to kneel on it, rub it on their bodies or on photos of sick relatives, and sometimes even eat it. Each year millions journey, especially during Holy Week, 30 miles north of Santa Fe to El Santuario de Chimayo, an adobe church built by Spaniards in the 1800s. It houses a pit of medicinal mud in a room called El Pocito, where pilgrims post small images of ailing body parts. Miraculously, the earth (aided by a resident priest with buckets) continues to replenish itself.

New Mexico Department of Tourism, 491 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87503; phone 800/545-2070

Atomic Mirror Pilgrimage, International 

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print