The monograph approaches the T Ph, the Religion of the Four Palaces of the Viet via an ethnography of its practice of H u Bong spirit possession ritual. It relies on fieldwork data collected mainly in the alluvial plains of northern Viet Nam from 1998-2000. It uses a combination of performance and ethnographic methods, focusing on the life histories and personal interviews of informants, which are vehicles for them to tell their life stories and to describe their motivations to become spirit mediums. The book provides an understanding of the mediums of a complex and increasingly important and...