Sak Yant Thai Tattoos a Personal Experience

Personal Sak Yant Experience. Also while in the south, I witnessed an old Thai boxer who was literally covered in Sak Yant tattoos. He easily won his fight and one of the other boxers explained that this guy felt no pain and he wore down all his opponents because he had so many Yants on his body that he felt invincible! Many young men who hang around with dubious companies are also well adorned with different tattoos designed to protect them from gunshots and knives.
I befriended an elderly Thai man in that same village I was particularly interested in the past and how they lived in days gone by. He told me that when he was a boy, the Ruesi would come to the village once a week and would attend sick people, handing out potions made from things in the forest and offer Yantras as protection against a
multitude of things. The Ruesi was indeed the equivalent of a modern-day physician and probably the only option the villagers had at that time.
Personal Sak Yant Experience. On other occasions in North-East Thailand, I have encountered Sak Yant. I recall one such incident where a procession of people was moving from the temple to a villager’s home. Once there a Monk nailed a small piece of cloth above the main doorway and began to chant. I was then told that this house had been visited by evil spirits that night before and this Yant would protect the house from future evil doings.
Indeed I would encounter men that had many amulets hanging around their neck, each one offering a type of protection. One old man was often ridiculed and people wanted him to remove his amulets just for a short time. When asked why he explained that unless he took them off, he would live forever!
While all the above experiences reflected the poor rural community, I have also had the experience of well-educated Bangkok Thai people having Sak Yant and taking great care to follow the precepts. In business, there are certain things, such as the direction your place of work faces and having certain Yantras placed in different locations of the building. Certain present-day politicians and leading figures are believers of Sak Yant.
Personal Sak Yant Experience. One particular incident amused me greatly,
In this village in the south, the headman (Poo Yai Bahn) had a PA system that was used to tell the people important news about the community. This particular headman liked a drink and would be inebriated most evenings. If he was really drunk, he would turn on the PA system and rabble to the whole village at the highest volume imaginable! One of these times, I asked a local what this guy was saying as he blasted his slurred voice across the jungle. The man listened intently for a few seconds then explained that the headman was upset because his wife had spilled water on his bed. Obviously tired of his rantings, she had retired to bed leaving him to rabble on to the entire village! This carried on for a few minutes until one old woman produced an old piece of cloth and started to chant as she spread it onto the table. The man explained that she would invoke a Yant to stop him talking and much to everyone’s amazement, the noise abruptly stopped. Suddenly everyone burst into laughter and it was explained that the sudden silence was not brought on by the old woman’s chanting, rather the wife had woken and crept round the back of the amplifier and pulled out the speaker jack!
Personal Sak Yant Experience. I spent a few months close to the border with Cambodia during which time I got to know some Cambodian laborers. They told me that Sak Yant was much more for the men in Cambodia. Soldiers and government officials, as well as convicts, were tattooed but in mainstream society, Sak Yant was not so common. The Cambodian Yantras are slightly different as Khmer script is used and they have their own version of things, much the same as Thailand does.
Another strange phenomenon I noticed was that many young Thai men had small wooden phallic symbols tied around their waist with thin string. I never really found out what for, other than some kind of protection against evil. Thai people will never walk under a washing line and generally regard the head as the most sacred part of the body, while the feet are considered dirty and to be of low importance. It is considered improper to touch a Thai male on his head, with perhaps the exception of a young boy being patted affectionately by an elder. If you ever see a Thai banknote on the floor, NEVER put your foot on it as this is considered a big sign of disrespect (The King’s head is printed on all banknotes).
Sak Yant is alive and well and flourishing within Thai society.