Where would our spirits live?
Spirits live in certain sites and even the boundaries of their territory are inscribed with religious meaning.
My favorite explanation of this one is that evil spirits live in the hair and spill out of the hat when it's taken off and obviously evil spirits make for some treacherous bedmates.
In the wooden high-gabled houses of the northern Tai (Chiengmai province), even today, ornate lintels are carved with floral relief designs to sanctify and potentiate the inner domestic part of the house where the domestic spirits live.
Normally these are natural shrines, such as sacred groves, or temples and sanctuaries in which gods or spirits live or have manifested themselves or in which their statues, symbols, holy objects, or relics are enshrined.
The Na believe that malefic spirits live in mountains; they sneak into villages at every opportunity and bring various misfortunes to humans, such as illness, damages, even abortions, and deaths.
