SAIYASARTThe Great Book of Sacred Magic of Thailand

This ranking is no ancient legend: it was formalised at the very beginning of the 1950s — around 1952 — by an identified figure of the milieu, a collector and writer who signed himself Triyampawai […], keen to give enthusiasts a simple point of reference amid an already teeming market.

Bangkok for the Phra Somdej, Phitsanulok for the Phra Nang Phaya, Lamphun for the Phra Rod, Suphanburi for the Phra Phong Suphan, Kamphaeng Phet for the Phra Somkor. It is not a symbolic pantheon: it is a map.

The first is that of Ongk Kroo — literally “the master piece”, or “the piece that teaches”. It is a specific, identified and published example against which all others will be compared.

A Nork Pim piece is often wrongly taken for a fake when it is authentic, and it remains affordable when the same amulet from the fashionable mould has become unattainable. If one buys out of devotion rather than speculation, the market's hierarchy has, strictly speaking, no reason to impose itself on one.

Her parents soon noticed that on the days their daughter rode in the cart, everything sold, and on the days she stayed at home, sales were poor. They made sure she always came with them, and became rich.

This is the version most temples keep, and it has one considerable merit: it does not make Nang Gwak a goddess of luck, but a young woman whose fortune comes from having listened, understood and practised. What one invokes in her is not a power, but the fruit of conduct.

Receiving a Sak Yant does not end the relationship between disciple and master: it begins it. This is the whole meaning of the Wai Kroo ceremony (“salutation to the master”), traditionally held once a year in the great temples renowned for their master tattooists.

The point most often unknown in the West is that the Wai Kroo does not belong to the world of magic. It is a general Thai institution. Classical musicians hold one […]; dancers, craftsmen, masters of arms and teachers have theirs.

What is less well known is that these little houses are not all of the same nature, and that their architecture says so. The Saan Phra Phum proper, intended for a celestial deity, stands on a single pillar; altars intended for the genie of the place or for wandering spirits have four or more.

The number of legs is therefore information, not decorative whimsy: anyone who knows how to look sees immediately which order of occupant the little house is meant for.

One face is square, almost stern, the eyebrows joined in a single line; the next is an elongated oval, smiling, topped with a flame. Between the two lie eight centuries.

It is recognisable by its broad, frontal faces, eyebrows joined in a single continuous arch, thick lips […]. It is the sculpture most foreign to the modern eye, and the most moving: in it one sees a Southeast Asia that has not yet invented its own face.