No Place For Kids (儿童不宜)

I don’t mean to discriminate against kids when I said that some Taoist temples are not suitable for kids especially kids of 5 years and below. According to experience that temples that worship gods/goddesses of more negative type such as: Lord of hells (阎王), land gods (城隍土地), wandering spirits (有应公), messengers of hell (黑白无常) etc. may bring bad influences to kids.

These gods/goddesses have hideous facial expressions that may scare young kids and cause them to have nightmare. Also these so-called ‘yin’ spirits like to feed on pure ‘yang’ energy of young kids. Since kids of below 5 years old are more sensitive to psychic attacks and they have no means to defend themselves; hence it is best not to let them get too close to these ‘yin’ spirits and the related temples just to save any unnecessary troubles.

Aunt Low joined a tour to China with her family members a few months ago. As it is her habit to pray at the nearest temple when she visits any foreign place, Aunt Low brought her 4 year old grandchild, Lisa to pray at a local temple worshipping land gods in the hope that the local lord spirit will protect them when they are in China.

On that night, Lisa suddenly fall ill and soon developed high fever and in the process, she intermittently yelled loudly: “Go away! Go away!”

No one knew what had happened to Lisa but they waste no time and brought little Lisa to a hospital for treatment. The concerned family decided to spend a night beside Lisa’s sickbed to accompany the little girl as they are in a foreign land.

Aunt Low dozed off at the edge of Lisa’s bed and she dreamed of two person one wearing white with a tall white hat and the other wearing black with a tall black hat. She immediately recognized the two were the messengers of hell whose work is to arrest living soul to hell. The messengers told Aunt Low that the local lord likes Lisa a lot and he wished to adopt Lisa as a god-daughter. And that Lisa was to ‘stay’ in the temple for all eternity.

On hearing those words, Aunt Low became frantic and she started yelling: “NO!”  As the word ‘NO’ came out of her mouth, she awoke by herself and found that it was a dream.

Although Aunt Low is no superstitious one, she thought the dream has something to do with her visit to the Taoist temple during the day. So first thing in the morning, she contacted a local friend and they visited a spirit medium.

According to the medium it was indeed that the local land spirit was fond of little Lisa and wanted Lisa to stay put. To make a long story short, after some negotiations the spirits finally agreed to release Lisa with a condition that Lisa must return to the temple every 3 years or so.

Believe it or not, after visiting the medium, Lisa recovered almost instantly. Now the question thrown back to me by Aunt Low: “Should Lisa return every 3 years?”

My answer was just a ‘NO’. We don’t know if the medium was true or it was only a coincidence or Lisa was too scared of the images. Anyway, after 3 years or so, Lisa would be around 7. By then her soul would be strong enough to defend against those spirit intrusions.

Anyway, it is still best just to keep the kids away from those temples just in case. At least, too much incense smoke is harmful to the kids too.