Social scientists who study popular belief offer explanations for behaviors and events that arose as a means of redress in times of adversity or from perceived practical or spiritual utility.
[1] Astrology, witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts, and fairies were taken very seriously by people at all social and economic levels in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Yet in many parts of the contemporary world, spirit beliefs and practices have continue to serve a pivotal role in addressing the discontinuities and uncertainties of modern life.
The myriad ways in which devotees engage the spirit world shows the tremendous creative potential of these practices and their innate adaptability to changing times and circumstances.
Anthropological case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam investigate the role and impact of different social, political, and economic dynamics in the reconfiguration of local spirit worlds in modern Southeast Asia.
Chinese Folk Religion, in its present form dating back to the Song dynasty (960-1279), includes elements traceable to prehistoric times (ancestor worship, shamanism, divination, a belief in ghosts, and sacrificial rituals to the spirits of sacred objects and places, like relics in the West) as well as aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism.
Important annual rituals reflect their origin in an agrarian way of life (e.g., a harvesttime festival), but have been given new or additional meaning to accord with the ancestral cult or Buddhism.
However, unlike the Chinese case, most Korean spirit mediums are women, a vestige from a time when female deities dominated the folk religion.
In addition, Javanese religionists employ animistic rituals, such as ceremonial meals commemorating a person's transition to a new stage in the life cycle or important moments in the life of the village (slametan, the rituals of which reflect animistic beliefs), consult dukun (magicians capable of controlling the impersonal force that exists in all things), and use their own numerology to ensure that actions are synchronized with natural processes.