Akha Religion — The Way of the Spirit Gate — A profile of the Akha indigenous religious tradition — the Akhazang, the total way of life preserved in oral genealogies, spirit gates, and ancestral custom among the highland peoples of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Yunnan. A tradition facing mass conversion and the silence of the unspoken line.
Cao Dai — The Great Faith of the Third Amnesty — An ethnographic introduction to Cao Dai — the Vietnamese syncretic religion founded in 1926 through spiritist revelation, which synthesizes Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Christianity into a unified cosmology while venerating figures from Victor Hugo to Sun Yat-sen among its divine saints.
Hmong Shamanism — The Way of the Txiv Neeb — An ethnographic introduction to Hmong shamanism — the ua neeb tradition of spirit-healing, the txiv neeb who crosses between worlds, the hu plig soul-calling ceremony, the cosmology of multiple souls and negotiable spirits, the survival of a highland shamanic tradition through the Secret War and transpacific displacement, the living room altar in Minneapolis, and the ongoing negotiation between the shaman and the hospital.
Kebatinan — The Way of the Inner Feeling — An ethnographic introduction to Kebatinan — the Javanese mystical tradition of seeking direct knowledge of God through inner experience, encompassing hundreds of spiritual organizations and millions of practitioners across the most populous island in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, navigating the tension between indigenous spiritual inheritance and modern state religion.
Mien Religion — The Way of the Liturgical Manuscript — An ethnographic introduction to the Iu Mien religious tradition — the unique Daoist-animist synthesis of the mountain peoples of southern China, Laos, Thailand, and the American diaspora. A tradition built on liturgical manuscripts written in Chinese characters, copied master-to-disciple for eight hundred years, carried across the Pacific in the hands of refugee priests, and now facing the paradox of physical survival and literate extinction.
Nat and Phi — The Way of the Spirit World — An ethnographic introduction to the animist spirit traditions of mainland Southeast Asia — the Burmese cult of the Thirty-Seven Nats, with its spirit mediums, divine pantheon, and pilgrimage center at Mount Popa, and the phi spirit traditions of Thailand and Laos, including spirit houses, guardian cults, the remarkable Ghost Festival of Loei, and the Lao soul-calling ceremony of the baci. Traditions that Theravāda Buddhism absorbed, formalized, and never quite extinguished.
Phật Giáo Hòa Hảo — The Way of Purified Buddhism — An ethnographic introduction to Hòa Hảo Buddhism — the Vietnamese prophetic religion founded in 1939 by the nineteen-year-old visionary Huỳnh Phú Sổ, which simplified Buddhist practice to the point where any peasant farmer could practice at home without clergy, temples, or ritual equipment, and which became one of the most politically consequential religious movements in twentieth-century Southeast Asia.
Philippine Indigenous Religion — The Way of the Babaylan — An ethnographic introduction to Philippine indigenous religion — the Austronesian spiritual traditions of the Philippine archipelago, centered on the babaylan (spiritual intermediary), the anito (ancestral spirits), and the diwata (nature spirits), surviving four centuries of colonialism and now experiencing a remarkable revival in diaspora communities worldwide.