So, good evening everybody and thank you for being part of this, to this, to this talk.

So the topic of this night is fortune telling and Catholicism building two cultural others

in Taiwan.

And this presentation is basically based on the data that I collected during my field

work in Taiwan.

I am an anthropologist and I have been in Taiwan between 2003 and I left, I guess in

As I said I am an anthropologist so the point of view that I would like to propose this

night is the point of view of cultural anthropologists and also to just show how anthropologists

approach this kind of discussion, this kind of theme.

So well actually I don't really need this right now but because I want to start the

presentation of this presentation by sharing with you some of the stories I collected during

my field work on this topic of course.

And the first story is this year Jesus is really strong.

It's a very easy story of a Catholic mother actually who told me this story.

Her son went to the temple asking the fortune teller about some things and problems he had

and after that he asked actually something about his mother.

And the fortune teller actually said well your mother belongs to Jesus so I cannot help

you.

I am not power on her so I cannot help you.

So this guy came back home and saw the mother and said oh mama, Jesus is really strong.

So she asked why do you say that and he told her what happened at the temple.

And the second story is a story of a little girl who was living with the grandmother because

the parent basically divorced.

And the mother was Catholic and baptized the daughter without telling the family of the

husband.

And I found it quite, I don't want to say common but it comes often in Taiwan.

And so the grandmother was of course concerned about this little girl so she brought her

to the temple and to ask the fortune teller to foresee her future, what will happen to

this small girl.

And the fortune teller actually told the grandmother well there is a cross on her forehead so I

don't know, I don't see anything.

So I cannot help her basically.

And the third story is basically a little bit different from the previous two but I

hope that you will help to give a more concrete context where we can read the previous two

stories.

And this is because when I was living in Taiwan, I lived in Yunlin and my wife was pregnant

during this time so we went to this hospital, the St. Joseph Hospital in Huawei to check

the pregnancy.

And when we were waiting over there, every week actually you have to do this, so we were

there and the nurses and other workers they knew that I was doing research in Yunlin about

religion and they started to tell me a story about what happens in this hospital.

Basically they said that one time there was one patient hospitalized over there and the

family of this patient were not happy or convinced that the doctors were actually helping this

guy.

So they decided to employ one shaman, Iggy Dengyi basically, to perform an exorcism.

So invited him to the hospital to do this.

The problem was that this Dengyi, when the God actually went to his body, he tried several

times to go into the hospital but God basically disappeared, he left the body.

And the interpretation of these people who were talking with me was that because this