Dawn breaks and the first rays of sun touch the complex of Buddhist temples at Wat Bang Phra, in Makon Pathon. The area is not too far from the Thai capital of Bangkok. Every year, thousands of followers of an ancient tradition gather in silence and in an organised way. The first glimmers of light wake the sleeping souls that have spent the night together on the esplanade. The patient vigil is coming to an end. Little by little, the first soldiers of ‘Yak Sant’ (mystical tattoo or amulet) stretch their bodies and launch themselves at the stage occupied by a handful of tattoo masters. Patient monks charged with preserving a tradition which decorates the bodies of their dedicated followers with ink under the skin. The ritual is repeated every year.
Dawn breaks and the first rays of sun touch the complex of Buddhist temples at Wat Bang Phra, in Makon Pathon. The area is not too far from the Thai capital of Bangkok. Every year, thousands of followers of an ancient tradition gather in silence and in an organised way. The first glimmers of light wake the sleeping souls that have spent the night together on the esplanade. The patient vigil is coming to an end.
Little by little, the first soldiers of ‘Yak Sant’ (mystical tattoo or amulet) stretch their bodies and launch themselves at the stage occupied by a handful of tattoo masters. Patient monks charged with preserving a tradition which decorates the bodies of their dedicated followers with ink under the skin.
The ritual is repeated every year. At dawn, hundreds of men enter into trance, their naked torsos covered only by the spiritual writing which decorates their skin, an ancient tattooing tradition, of Cambodian origin, called ‘Khmer’. The liturgy now has a large number of followers in neighbouring Thailand. Each diagram is drawn with a sharp bamboo stick or long metallic point, the ‘Ajarn’. The tattoos are endorsed by a tradition going back hundreds of years and have their own lineage.