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T H A I  R E L I G I O N  A N D 
T H E  V I A B I L I T Y  O F  T H E 
C O N S T R U C T  O F  ‘ C U L T ’
M a t t h e w  A .  K o s u t a
Introduction
There is in anthropology and religious studies continuing debate on 
the viability and applicability of categories, concepts, and, more for-
mally, constructs created by Western scholars and applied to non-We-
stern cultures. In the field of religious studies, while the debate has 
settled down, there are still arguments against the use of the construct 
of ‘religion’. As a social scientist I hold that objective definitions, cate-
gorization, concepts and constructs can be formed for descriptive and 
analytical purposes, including cross culturally. Thus, I support this de-
bate over the construct of ‘religion’, especially given the multiplicity 
of definitions of religion that have been put forward, with the goal 
of establishing a scientifically valid and applicable construct of ‘religi-
on’, as well with other descriptive and analytical concepts. With this in 
mind, I was intrigued by the Asian Research Institute at the National 
University of Singapore’s workshop held in October 2021 on “Interro-
gating the Notion of ‘Cult’ as a Social Formation in Asian Religions”. 
The organizers appear to have noticed an uptick in the usage of ‘cult’ 
in works on Asian religions. I was particularly interested because in the 
study of Thai religion, some scholars use the construct ‘cult’, while it is 
completely absent from other works; in my own work I use ‘worship’. 
I had also finished extensive reading on ancient Roman and Greek reli-
gion, in a search for descriptions and models of polytheism, where the 
use of ‘cult’ as a descriptive and explanatory construct seemed standard. 
https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2022.330 Poligrafi, no. 105/106, vol. 27, 2022, pp. 45–61
p O l I G R A F I
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I participated in this workshop and the original draft of this article was 
presented and critiqued in the workshop. This version of the article in-
vestigating the viability of the construct of ‘cult’ in Thai religion is the 
result of that workshop.
In the United States, the word cult is generally taken in a negative 
sense as a type of small sect or group with weird and even degenerate 
forms of religious practice. A cult in American culture is usually some 
offshoot of an established religion, most frequently from Christianity 
or Hinduism. When one thinks of a cult, groups and leaders such as the 
peoples Temple (Jim Jones), Branch Davidians (David Koresh), Rajnee-
shpura (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), Heaven’s Gate and even Scientology 
come to mind. Indeed, the Wikipedia entry on Jim Jones calls him “an 
American cult leader” among several other things. An internet search of 
‘cults’ pulls a host of links to such groups as above with adjectives such 
as “most terrifying cults” and “weird and creepy cults” demonstrating 
that while a group may be relatively innocuous, applying the term ‘cult’ 
does carry connotations of strange or odd at best, and crazy and dan-
gerous at worst.
Reviewing dictionary definitions of cult shows that cult has both 
this meaning of small groups with strange and even dangerous beliefs 
and practices, as well as the neutral definition of a system of worship 
or veneration of a deity or object. There is also what can be termed 
the academic definition that means religious worship more generally or 
worship of a particular deity or spirit.
But the above negative definition does appear in American academi-
cs when researching and discussing the groups noted above. Does this 
mean that using ‘cult’ for the worship of gods, goddesses, bodhisattvas 
and spirits is counterproductive because of the negative connotation, 
especially in the USA? This is compounded by the advent of Donald 
Trump into politics, where we now have American political reporting 
and social media using cult for the ‘cult of personality” of Donald 
Trump and that the Republican party is no longer a political party but 
rather it is a ‘cult’.
I never seriously thought about using or not using cult in my own 
work, I just recognized it when used in academic writing. It wasn’t until 
sometime in 2019, when I started formally working on conceptuali-
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zing Thai religion as polytheism, that the definition of cult and its use 
came to my full attention. For comprehensive studies on and models of 
polytheism I turned to studies on ancient Mediterranean religions, par-
ticularly Greek and Roman, but especially Roman religion. I was now 
in an academic world saturated with the use of ‘cult’. Nevertheless, I did 
not consider using ‘cult’ and my article on the worship of the Thai King 
Naresuan and his elephant duel. I used worship of King Naresuan, not 
cult of King Naresuan, and I did not use cult the article. Not until re-
ading the call for papers for the Asian Research Institute workshop on 
the “Notion of Cult” did the question of its viability appear front and 
centre in my mind.
The article presents an overview of the use of the construct of cult 
in academic works, first in studies of Greek and Roman religion, and 
then in a more in-depth look at the use and lack thereof of cult in 
research on Thai religion (worship of Buddha, deified monks, deified 
kings, revered monks, Rahu, local deities and spirits). This article pro-
vides both the concrete application of cult and a general sense of how 
the construct of cult is used. A discussion is held on whether cult is 
applicable to the Thai religious context and by extension other religions 
as well. More broadly, though not a specific topic of the article, the de-
tailed discussion of the viability of ‘cult’ speaks to the viability of other 
analytical terms in the social scientific study of religion.
Methodology
The core methodology is phenomenology of religion and thus quali-
tative; the phenomenological research on religion is located within the 
sociology and anthropology of religion. One can also categorize the me-
thodology more broadly as religious studies. Most of the publications 
examined for this study are from the disciples of history of religion, so-
ciology and anthropology. In terms of phenomenology of religion, for 
this study the strict holding in mind of Thai concepts of religion and 
religious practice is necessary because to determine if ‘cult’ describes 
and explains Thai religion, then the Thai emic view must be maintained 
throughout. The second aspect of phenomenology of religion that was 
emphasized was the comparative method. A review was carried out on 
p O l I G R A F I
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a number of articles, book chapters, and books used in work on Thai 
religion which consisted of articles and books on Thai religion, Roman 
and Greek polytheism and several of the articles cited in the Asia Rese-
arch Institute call for papers. The duration of the research portion was 
only about six weeks because the material had already been extensively 
researched.
Data Collection
Twenty-four articles, book chapters, and books covering topics on 
Thai religion were reviewed as well as thirteen articles and book chap-
ters covering ancient Roman and Greek polytheism. Each of these had 
already been read for the research on Thai religion. Three articles listed 
in the Asia Research Institute workshop call for papers were read for 
the first time. Every use of the word ‘cult’, ‘cults’ and ‘cultic’ found 
in an article or book chapter was logged, but for several books only 
representative usages, and not every usage, were logged. I searched for 
definitions and, importantly, patterns of usage. Dictionary definitions 
of cult were sought out as seen above, as well as the identification of the 
constructs or terms used when cult is not used, paying special attention 
for the use of ‘worship’.
Data Analysis
The definitions and usage patterns of cult from studies on Roman, 
Greek, and Thai religion were compared, first internally (cult in Ro-
man and Greek studies compared separately from Thai studies) and 
then against each other to identify definitions and usage patterns. The 
findings were then compared to Thai religious expressions of wai (pay 
respect), būchā (sacrifice, worship) and būang sūang (worship, appease) 
to assess the applicability of the construct of ‘cult’ to Thai religion. Fi-
nally, a comparison between definitions and patterns of use of cult and 
worship was made.
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Results
Definitions of Cult from Works Reviewed
The focus for the Asia Research Institute workshop was “cult as a 
social formation”, but the call for paper did not define “social formati-
on”. In this instance, it is doubtful we are dealing with the full Marxist 
definition of social formation as the economic structure, forces and re-
lations of production, and the relation to the superstructure, but we can 
see cult as a social formation where it “designates a social whole compo-
sed of distinct but interrelated instances.”1 Indeed the main definition 
for cult presented below is just that.
In the works reviewed, only five (see below) gave some definition 
of the word cult. The fullest treatment of the concept, term or catego-
ry ‘cult’ is in Irene polinskaya’s detailed study of a specific instance of 
ancient Greek religion where she devotes approximately two pages to 
investigating and defining the academic term ‘cult’ and its applicability 
to the study of Greek religion.
Her definition is as follows:
Cult, as well as ritual, is often viewed in opposition to myth, as some-
thing that involves ‘doing’ as opposed to ‘talking’. Hence a common use of 
the phrase ‘cult practice’. Also, in common scholarly usage, ‘cult’ is what hu-
mans ‘pay’ to deities and what deities ‘receive’. In my understanding, ‘cult’ is a 
form of interaction (cf. pay-receive) that encompasses all traditional means of 
communication with the divine: rituals, myths, prayers, dedication of votive 
offerings, ocular consultations, incubations for healing, and so on. […] As a 
stand-in for ‘worship’, the term ‘cult’ serves a useful purpose: it designates an 
entirety of all modes of worship directed by a distinct social group to a parti-
cular hypostasis of a deity at a particular location…2
In footnotes polinskaya refers to Christensen noting that cult is the 
“regular worship of gods” and that “Greeks considered ‘cult’ and ‘religi-
1  Richard peet, “Materialism, Social Formation, and Socio-Spatial Relations: An Essay 
in Marxist Geography,” Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 22, no.56 (1978): 150. https://doi.
org/10.7202/021390ar.
2  Irene polinskaya, A Local History of Greek Polytheism: Gods, People, and the Land of Aigina, 
800-400 BCE (leiden: Brill, 2013), 101.
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on’ as synonymous” (footnotes 4 & 5 respectively).3 From polinskaya’s 
definition two usages for cult were identified, one equated with religion 
and worship encompassing an entire religious tradition and the other 
more specific in the worship of a single deity (the specific structure, 
materials, prayers, etc.); that is, (1) cult = religion/worship, and (2) cult 
= ritual. From all the works reviewed, this is a definition that all but a 
few of the scholars who use the term cult would agree with. Indeed, this 
definition was kept in mind as the works were reviewed and this dual 
definition fits for nearly all usages of cult.
Two of the articles cited in the Asia Research Institute workshop call 
for papers also define ‘cult’. Jack Meng-Tat Chia in a footnote says “In 
this study, I adopt paul R. Katz’s definition of ‘cult’ which refers to ‘a 
body of men and women who worship a deity and give of their time, 
energy, and wealth in order for the worship of this deity to continue 
and thrive.’”4 And while not fully defining ‘cult’ Nguyen Gia Hung sta-
tes, again in a footnote, “In this thesis, the word ‘cult’ is not used with 
negative connotations: it is used to refer to the worship of thần, deities 
in English in general, or of thành hoàng làng, village guardian deities 
in particular.”5 First, and importantly for my purposes, as with polin-
skaya, cult is the “stand-in” for worship. These two definitions place the 
usage of cult more in the confines of the meaning to worship particular 
deities-spirits rather than the wider definition of cult as religion or as 
generalized worship. And as a necessary side note, it must be pointed 
out that in reference to paul R. Katz, people do not worship a deity 
“in order for the worship of this deity to continue and thrive”; rather, 
people worship a deity in a patron-client manner based on, as polin-
skaya says, a reciprocal pay-receive relationship (quoted above) with the 
intention and desire that a particular human or the human community 
continues and thrives.
3  Ibid.
4  Jack Meng-Tat Chia, “A Recent Quest for Religious Roots: The Revival of the Guangze 
Zunwang Cult and Its Sino-Southeast Asian Networks, 1978-2009,” Journal of Chinese Reli-
gions 41, no.2 (2013): 91. https://doi.org/10.1179/0737769X13Z.0000000004.
5  Gia Hung Nguyen, “The Cult of the Guardian Deities in Contemporary Vietnam: the 
Re-invention of a Tradition” [Unpublished doctoral dissertation] (School of Humanities and 
Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, 2016), 1, https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/4762. 
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Although not part of the works reviewed, in order to set up the next 
two definitions it is necessary to refer to an older definition given by 
Max Weber: “The relationships of men to supernatural forces which 
take the forms of prayer, sacrifice and worship may be termed ‘cult’ and 
‘religion’, as distinguished from ‘sorcery’ which is magical coercion.”6 
We will skip over Weber’s distinction between religion and “sorcery” 
and highlight that once again the equating of cult and religion, and 
also worship. 
Jörg Rüpke, while not disputing the definition of cult per se, questi-
ons the use of individual deities.
If the renunciation of a chapter on the gods [in A Companion to Roman Re-
ligion] prompts an explanation, the lack of systematic treatment of ‘cults’ sho-
uld prompt another. ‘Cults’ as applied to ancient religions is a very convenient 
term, as it takes ancient polytheism to pieces that are gratifyingly similar to 
the large religious traditions like Christianity: defined by one god, be it Venus 
or Mithras… […] Thus, part V deliberately illustrates the wide spectrum of 
religious groups or options and does not attempt to map ancient polytheisms 
as the sum of different “cults”.7
For this, we think Rüpke holds that using cult creates a distortion 
and a separation between deities within the polytheistic system that is 
not there. Within polytheism there is no this god’s cult or that goddess’s 
cult in that sense that the deity can be or is worshipped exclusive of 
other deities. Rüpke seems to rule out using cult for application to the 
worship of single deities.
Finally, peter A. Jackson, writing before the above scholars (except 
for Weber) and writing on Thai religion, expresses the more ‘American’ 
definition of cult:
Thai historian Nithi Aeusrivongse “uses the expression latthi-phiti (‘doc-
trine-ritual’), which he glosses in English as ‘cult’, to describe these ritual-
-symbolic devotional movements. Nithi defines latthi-phiti as ‘a ritually rich 
religious doctrine which is not a part of the “principles” (lak-kan) or ortho-
doxy of the dominant religion adhered to by the majority of people’ (Nithi, 
6  Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon press, 1993), 28.
7  Jörg Rüpke, ed, A Companion to Roman Religion (Oxford, UK: Blackwell publishing ltd, 
2007), 7.
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1993:11n). However, while the movements considered here may have begun 
as unorthodox minority phenomena, their rapid growth in the 1990s meant 
that their popularity and influence relocated them from marginal positions 
into the cultural and religious mainstream. I prefer to call these phenomena 
‘movements’ or ‘religions’ rather than ‘cults’ to denote their significance at the 
height of the [economic] boom.8
While the definition contained in this statement is not necessa-
ry negative, it does align with the ‘American’ definition of cult as an 
“unorthodox minority phenomena”. For Jackson, once the cult is large 
enough in terms of both adherents and popularity, it becomes orthodox 
and mainstream and shifts to a “movement” or a religion; and thus, 
cult is not synonymous with religion and this definition is an outlier in 
regards to the other definitions presented here.
Within these definitions polinskaya presents the fullest definition 
and one that can act as the standard definition of cult and one that 
encompasses Chia and Nguyen. Rüpke poses a challenge to expanding 
the definition beyond its original broader definition of beliefs and prac-
tices of a pantheon, a community of gods and goddesses. While Jackson 
presents a more American definition that stands apart from polinskaya.
The patterns of Use of Cult in Works on Greek and Roman Religion
The focus is not on this body of works and thus only a general over-
view is provided. The reading of Greek and Roman religion was ori-
ginally done to study conceptual models of polytheism and develop a 
conceptual model of Thai religion as polytheism. At that time, there 
was no concern with the concept ‘cult’; however, it was noted that cult 
is used frequently and in nearly all the articles and book chapters read. 
Because the reading of the articles and chapters was done in the hope 
that they would provide information and even models of polythei-
sm that would be useful in an application to Thai religion, reading 
on specific ‘cults’ of deities was not done. Indeed, perhaps because of 
8  peter A. Jackson, “Royal Spirits, Chinese Gods, and Magic Monks: Thailand’s boom-
time religions of prosperity,” South East Asia Research 7, no.3 (1999): 248, https://www.jstor.
org/stable/23746841.
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the extensive use Rüpke’s edited Companion (2007) and his individual 
book on Roman religion Pantheon (2018) and because he specifically 
stated his reticence to apply cult to the individual worship of deities, 
no extensive use of cult applied to individual deities was found. In the 
Companion, while the use of cult is frequent, it is used primarily in the 
broader meaning “publicly financed cult”, “places of cult”, “municipal 
cults”, “provincial cults”, “the cult statue”, “new cults”, “mystery cults”, 
etc. Cases of applying cult to a specific deity do occur “the cult of Di-
onysus”, the cult of the lares”, “Imperial cult”, “the cult of Mithrus”, 
but these are outnumbered some five or six to one by the more general 
definition. In the other works on Greek and Roman religion reviewed 
the pattern is repeated.
The general impression is that cult is used systematically, and even 
when not defined, falls into the description and definition of polin-
skaya, and while two meanings or usages for ‘cult’ were identified, in 
practice, even within a specific context, it is not always clear whether 
the meaning is religion/worship or ritual – it frequently can be both.
Despite saying that cult can designate “a particular hypostasis of a 
deity at a particular location”, polinskaya, in reviewing approximately 
100 pages of her book, uses cult in the more general sense equated to 
religion or religious ritual, such as “in the sphere of cults”, “local cultic 
calendars”, “various cult sites”, cult images”, etc. The reason for this 
may well be because only the first six chapters of her book were read 
to build a conceptual model for polytheism and the first six chapters 
cover definitions, methodology, theory, and the like; deeper in the book 
when treating actual worship, she may use cult applied to a specific de-
ity. However, she does use phrases such as, “figures of cults”, objects of 
cults” and ancient Greek cults”, the use of the plural “cults” indicating 
that there are indeed discrete cults for deities.
The patterns of Use of Cult in Works on Thai Religion
In reviewing the material on Thai religion used in my research, spe-
cific attention was paid to the use of cult, it was found that several scho-
lars do not use cult at all, several use it sparingly, and several scholars 
use cult frequently. Except for the distinction between cult and religion 
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54
made by Jackson noted above, no scholar provided a definition of the 
term. During the review of these works a cognate for cult was looked 
for when cult was not used. That is if cult means or is a replacement 
for religion, or more specifically for worship, then when a scholar does 
not use cult, does the scholar use worship or some similar term instead? 
The review comprised twenty-four articles, book chapters and books 
on Thai religion. Of these, nine works did not use cult at all, and using 
subjective estimates, eight had low to moderate use (1–10 uses, subjec-
tive estimate because 9 uses in a short article could be considered high 
rather than moderate), and seven with high usage (10 or more uses). 
An overview follows.
We start with peter A Jackson who was quoted above. Because he 
specifically said why he would not use cult, it should come as no sur-
prise that in that long article9 and one published a few months earlier,10 
he does not use cult. As he explains, he uses “prosperity religion(s)”, 
“prosperity movements”, “devotional movements” and then for specific 
deities or people he uses worship – “worship of King Chulalongkorn”, 
“worship of Kuan Im”, and “worship of monks”. This usage helps de-
monstrate the dual definition of cult already expressed, ‘religion’ and 
‘movement’ are more global general terms, while ‘worship’ is for appli-
cation to deities as a whole or individually. And here we see the terms 
used when ‘cult’ is not used – worship is the go-to term, directly expres-
sing polinskaya’s statement that cult is the stand in for worship. Writing 
much later in 2016 and 2020, Jackson has dropped his objection to 
using cult. In these more recent articles, he refers to the same phenome-
na above as “prosperity cults”, “cult of King Chulalongkorn”, “cult of 
Kuan Im”, and to new phenomena called “spirit medium cults”, “cult of 
amulets”, and “cult of spirits”. No explanation as to why he made this 
change has been provided.
9  Jackson, “Royal Spirits, Chinese Gods, and Magic Monks,” 245–320.
10  peter A. Jackson, “The Enchanting Spirit of Thai Capitalism: The cult of luang phor 
Khoon and the post-modernization of Thai Buddhism,” South East Asia Research 7, no.1 
(1999): 5–60, https://doi.org/10.1177/0967828X9900700102. 
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John Holt also uses ‘cult’ quite frequently in his book and book 
chapter on lao religion.11 (2009, 2019 respectively). The main use is in 
“spirit cults”, and then “phi cults” “cultic behavior, “cultic life in laos”, 
and also applied to heroes of the communist revolutions in Vietnam 
and laos: “Ho’s [Ho Chi Minh] contemporary cult”, “Ho’s cultic vene-
ration”, “the public cult of Kaysone” [a leading figure in the lao com-
munist revolution], Kaysone cult”. Holt’s use of cult is in alignment 
with the usage of the works on Greek and Roman religion.
The most ubiquitous use of cult is by pattana Kitiarsa in both his 
2005 article and subsequent book on basically the same subject of de-
scribing Thai religion and his theory to conceptualize Thai religion as a 
hybrid (2012).12 The usage is very much in line with the later writings 
of Jackson, we find “spirit-medium cults”, “rural cults”, “amulet cults”, 
“Indian religious cults”, “Guanyin cult”, “spirit cults”, “popular cults”, 
“urban prosperity cults”, “cult of phumphuang, and my favourite “su-
pernatural cults”. 
In a hint at a definition of cult, Irene Stengs asks in her book on 
King Chulalongkorn “But is the King Chulalongkorn cult merely a 
religious cult, in the sense of the word: King Chulalongkorn is a deity, 
endorsing a system of rites and beliefs […]. Or are we confronted with 
its more ‘modern’ and ‘secular’ equivalent, a ‘personality cult?’”13 So she 
presents both the neutral academic category and a negative, as well as 
modern and secular, definition of ‘cult’ and we are apparently supposed 
to juggle this throughout the book. Stengs does use cult defined as a 
system of rites and beliefs for deities – though she does not explicitly say 
so – such as, “the cult of Chao Mae Kaun Im (Kuan Yin).” This deity 
cult is certainly not a personality cult, as Kuan Im is a Thai deity (as 
11  John Clifford Holt, Spirits of the Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture (Honolulu: 
University of Hawai’i press, 2009); John Clifford Holt, Theravada Traditions: Buddhist Ritual 
Cultures in Contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i 
press, 2019).
12  pattana Kitiarsa, “Beyond Syncretism: Hybridization of popular Religion in Contem-
porary Thailand,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36, no. 3 (2005): 461–487, https://doi.
org/10.1017/S0022463405000251; pattana Kitiarsa, Mediums, Monks, & Amulets: Thai 
Popular Buddhism Today (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2012).
13  Irene Stengs, Worshipping the Great Modernizer: King Chulalongkorn, Patron Saint of the 
Middle Class (Singapore: NUS press, 2009), 14.
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well as Chinese), but Stengs does not address this. And so, returning to 
King Chulalongkorn, he is now a deity for Thais and so Stengs’ questi-
on about a personality cult is clearly answered: the King Chulalongkorn 
cult is religious worship, not a cult of personality.
We close with Justin T. McDaniel who is in opposition to the use of 
cult. He states in regard to attempts to understand Thai religion, “We 
retreat to a series of vague explanations and terms like ‘magic’, ‘cult’, 
‘Indianized’, ‘localization’, and ‘folk’ when attempting to describe what 
seems like novel anomalies…”14 There is no elaboration of the topic as 
to exactly why these terms are vague and so one can only speculate as to 
why he considers ‘cult’ to be so. Not surprisingly, he does not use cult 
in the book.
Discussion
Cult of Amulets and Spirit-medium Cults
We begin this section where we ended the last, with works on Thai 
religion. The use of cult by pattana Kitiarsa is so pervasive that it raises 
questions as to the accuracy of its use, particularly “cult of amulets” 
or “amulet cults” and “spirit-medium cults”. Stanley Tambiah, wri-
ting well before Kitiarsa, has a book title using the phrase “spirit cults” 
(Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-east Thailand)15 and another 
using “the cult of amulets” (The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the 
Cult of Amulets, 1984)16. Chapter 14 of the latter is titled “The cult of 
images and amulets”; in that chapter and chapters 15, 16, 17, 18, and 
1917 (1984, p. 195-289), however, ‘cult’ is used quite sparingly. peter 
A. Jackson in his 2016 article18 also uses both “cult of amulets” and 
14  Justin Thomas McDaniel, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magic Monk: Practicing Buddhism 
in Modern Thailand (New York: Columbia University press, 2011), 15.
15  Stanley J. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-east Thailand (Cambridge, 
UK: Cambridge University press, 1970).
16  Stanley J. Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets (Cambridge, 
UK: Cambridge University press, 1984).
17  Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the cult of Amulets, 195–289.
18  peter A. Jackson, “The Supernaturalization of Thai political Culture: Thailand’s Magical 
Stamps of Approval at the Nexus of Media, Market and State,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues 
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“spirit medium cults”. We question this use because both the amulets 
and the spirit mediums are instruments or material and human objects 
used in the cult/worship of a deity or spirit, rather than the cult being 
about the amulet or spirit medium. There is a deity, a revered monk, or 
a spirit that is worshipped first, and the amulets and the spirit mediums 
are components in that cult of the deity or spirit. We do not say, for 
example, that there is a cult of ‘incense’ (material component in the cult 
like amulets) or a cult of Catholic priests (primary human component 
in the cult like spirit mediums). So, in the cult of King Chulalongkorn 
there are amulets and spirit mediums, and the same for other deities, 
but there is no cult of the amulets or cult of the spirit mediums of King 
Chulalongkorn, although both amulets and spirit mediums may well 
be revered.
Kitiarsa unintentionally–given how he used the term cult–makes 
our point when he says concerning amulets, “Luang Pu To was reborn 
in heaven as a thep and that his spirit comes down to possess a body to 
help human beings. Remembered as a highly charismatic and intellec-
tually renowned monk, he is also popular in amulet cults; his amulets 
are ‘the most sacred of all auspicious materials and his magical spells 
(katha) are the most recited religious verses’.”19 Thus, there is a cult of 
luang pu To and amulets are made representing him. There is not a 
cult of amulets into which luang pu To is then chosen as a figure in 
the amulet cults. And further for spirit mediums, “Through the magical 
expertise of mediums, phra In’s power as it appears in Hindu cosmo-
logy is transformed into specific practices; in the cults, he is a deity 
who demands proper worship and offerings”20. “In the cults” appears to 
mean the spirit medium cults, but this reverses the process. There is the 
deity phra In first, and then spirit mediums channel or are possessed by 
his spirit; there is no cult of spirit mediums who create and conjure up 
deities. The spirit mediums coalesce around existing deities and spirits.
in Southeast Asia 31, no. 3 (2016): 826–879, https://doi.org/10.1355/sj31-3d.
19  Kitiarsa, “Beyond Syncretism,” 479.
20  Ibid., 480.
p O l I G R A F I
58
Cult Versus Worship: The Applicability of Cult to Thai Religion 
Returning to polinskaya’s definition of cult, she says it is a stand-in 
for worship. This begs the question as to what the difference betwe-
en ‘cult’ and ‘worship’ is that makes cult a better explanatory concept. 
looking at definitions of worship, worship is more the general act or 
action, while cult is more comprehensive, encompassing all aspects of 
the phenomenon. Cult is self-contained, or closed–the cult of King 
Chulalongkorn, as opposed to the openness of worship–the worship of 
King Chulalongkorn.
Thus, reservations are raised about the applicability of cult to Thai 
religion. First is Rüpke’s concern for the separation and/or differentia-
tion, not of the deities, but of the worship of these deities that makes 
each a distinct cult, and even if there are distinctions, do they matter in 
any substantive way to the worshipper? The Thai vocabulary equating 
to worship has slight nuances between terms, but they generally express 
the same beliefs, sentiments, and ritual actions: wai (pay respect), būchā 
(sacrifice, worship), būang sūang (worship, appease), etc. These are 
frequently prefaced by pitī (ritual, ceremony), thus, pitī būang sūang. 
There is an informal standardized use for basic worship with materials 
consisting of garlands, incense and candles; this can be augmented with 
other items depending on the deity or spirit: drinks (sometimes liquor), 
meats, sweets, figurines of animals (typically roosters, zebras, water bu-
ffalo and elephants) and figurines of women performing Thai classical 
dance. In Thai religion there is no formal membership in worship and 
ritual practice (at least none that we know of ) and worship is fluid with 
individual Thais free to worship, or not worship, any deity and spirit 
they chose. Worship is a simple generalized pattern with minor varia-
tions to suit particular deities, deified kings, spirits, etc. There are no 
separate priests for each deity; in fact, there are no established priests 
for worshipping deities in Thai religion. One can organize a special 
event or attend one where ritual specialists (ajāns), sometimes but not 
always called phrām, carry out the ritual, and in the worship of deities, 
Buddhist monks may also participate, but day-to-day worship is an 
individual or small group affair of family and/or friends.
T H A I  R E L I G I O N  A N D  T H E  V I A B I L I T Y  O F  T H E  C O N S T R U C T  O F  ‘ C U LT ’
59
While one can certainly say the “cult of King Naresuan”, and the 
title of my article could be changed21 to Among the Pantheon: the Cult 
of King Nareusuan’s Victory in Elephant Duel, the fluidity of Thai religi-
on, the polytheism that is Thai religion, strains the parameters of the 
notion of the ‘cult’ of an individual deity as a specific social formation 
in Thailand.
Finally, it is important to note that no one has applied the construct 
cult to the Buddha or Buddhism: there is no “cult of Buddha”. To me 
this means that ‘cult’ in Thai studies is inconsistent, perhaps confused. 
This opens up one of our main criticisms of the use of cult. If cult is 
used for Thai, Chinese, Roman, or Greek deities, then it should be used 
for all religions and all deities, and thus we should find academic works 
on the cult of Buddha, the cult of God, the cult of Jesus (including 
protestant Christianity), and the cult of Yahweh, and the cult of Allah. 
Cult is used in connection with Catholic saints, but this only reinfor-
ces my point. Not using cult with these deities also reinforces Rüpke’s 
criticism of dividing up polytheism into parts denying its unity, but 
maintaining Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam as wholes. This non-
-use also appears to grant a superiority to Buddhism, Christianity, and 
Islam because they are not cults. Given this, how then is ‘cult’ a neutral, 
generalizable descriptive and analytical construct?
Conclusion
Given our support of creating academic concepts, categories, and 
constructs for social sciences and the quality of polinskaya’s definition 
and use of cult, it is understood why scholars use cult as a descriptive 
and explanatory term; yet, we are hesitant to incorporate it in our work. 
First is the simple matter of the predominance in American circles of 
the negative connotation of cult. Secondly, and I think more importan-
tly, I am squarely in the camp of Rüpke. I am less concerned when cult 
21  Kosuta, Matthew, “Among the Thai pantheon: Worshipping King Naresuan’s Victory 
in Elephant Duel,” Humanities and Social Sciences Journal of Graduate School, Pibulsongkram 
Rajabhat University 14, no. 2 (July–December 2020): 623–637.
p O l I G R A F I
60
is used in a general sense of religion or worship, but I find it distorting 
the phenomena to differentiate deities and spirits by ‘cults’.
Finally, we must reinforce the idea that ended the Discussion section 
which speaks directly to the necessity of a construct being generalizable. 
In the context of Thai religion, a telling omission in the pattern of use 
of ‘cult’ is that not one scholar uses cult in relation to the Buddha – 
there is no “cult of the Buddha” or “Buddha cults”. Why is this? And 
why is there no cult of Yahweh, cult of Jesus, and cult of Allah in other 
works of religious studies? It strikes me that the construct of cult has 
an inherent bias imbedded within it. If cult cannot describe the social 
formation around the Buddha, if cult cannot break into usage in the 
monotheistic religions, if it is not useful in describing and explaining 
them, and if ‘cult’ is not a good stand-in for the worship of these deities, 
then it is not in my view a construct adequate to apply to Thai deities 
and spirits. If cult is not generalizable, and thus not applicable to all de-
ities and spirits inclusive of the central or only deity of a religion, then 
it is not applicable to any deity, or any spirit – in contrast, worship is.
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