Magic in healing practice: a case study in Vietnam and its philosophical assessment

Abstract

The use of magic and religion in healing practices in Vietnam is relatively popular. In the folklore and folk religion of Vietnam, it is often said that “In case of sickness, follow any feasible cures [co benh thi vai tu phuong]” in the sense that all means, including using religious beliefs and rituals, will be used to get healing for oneself or one’s relatives. When people or their relatives get sick, besides going to medical facilities, they will look for a shaman, necromancer, monks, even priests, bishops, and pastors to cure the illness they or their relatives are suffering from. Based on Mircea Eliade’s theory published in The Sacred and the Profane (Eliade, 2016), the article has the ambition to offer a different perspective on the use of magic (sometimes considered as a religious ritual by the subject) to cure disease. We employ both the comparative and analytical methods of study as we explore concrete cases of treatment of patients with different religious beliefs (Ms. T’s case of treatment, following Buddhist practices in comparison with the healing cases of the Mother Goddess Worship and the Catholic Church). The authors propose that a uniquely Vietnamese philosophy of life (Life-philosophy) serves as a constitutive basis for the adaptation of magic in healing practices, being itself formed and influenced by these practices.

Social network activity of students in conditions of an epidemiological threat

“…The validity of this thesis is substantiated in studies of the social and psychological characteristics of users of social networks and their behavior in the Internet space (Golub & Lysenko, 2018;Belinskaya & Prilutskaya, 2019;Levin, 2020;Tugun et al, 2020;Nguyen et al, 2021;Zheltukhina et al, 2021;Begishev, Khisamova & Vasyukov, 2021a). It has been shown that social networks are the most important means of personal communication for the overwhelming majority of young people, attribution of certain parameters of social status (virtual social status) to a user by an outside observer (virtual social status) is associated with such personal characteristics of the user as neuroticism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and self-monitoring.…”