The enchanting spirit of

Thai capitalism
The cult of Luang Phor Khoon
and the post-modernization of
Thai Buddhism

Peter A. Jackson

Thailand's decade-long economic boom, which came to a sudden end

in July 1997, created a mood of national confidence that influenced
all aspects of social, cultural, and religious life. At the height of the
growth euphoria in the mid-I990s, the aged abbot of a remote rural
monastery emerged as the country's most prominent religious figure.
Luang Phor (Reverend Father) Khoon Parisuttho, abbot of Wat Ban
Rai monastery, is widely believed to possess supernatural abilities and
has become the focus of a national cult which emphasizes the acqui-
sition of wealth and power. In this article the author analyses the
diverse media, economic, and political influences that transformed
Luang Phor Khoon into a national cult figure and which placed this
ostensibly world-renouncing ascetic at the centre of a 'prosperity reli-
gion' that emphasizes wealth more than salvation. He considers the
limitations of current approaches to the study of Thai religiosity and
suggests the need for an alternative, semiotic analysis which views
Thai capitalism as a signifying system. In conclusion, he contrasts
competing interpretations of the Luang Phor Khoon 'phenomenon'.
Does this cult demonstrate the destructive capacity of capitalism to
co-opt and debase Asian cultures, as claimed by some Thai critics, or
should it be viewed as an example of Thai cultural adaptability
whereby an alien capitalist way of life has been indigenized by being
understood within a Thai symbolic frame?

South East Asia Research, 7, 1, pp. 5--60

6 South East Asia Research

Introduction

Until the onset of the financial crisis in July 1997, Thailand experi-
enced a decade-long economic boom with average annual growth rates
approaching 10 per cent. This extended boom created a mood of
national confidence that influenced all aspects of social, cultural, and
religious life. Jean Comaroff (1994: 301) aptly summarizes the stun-
ning economic and symbolic productivity of the boom years when she
describes Thailand as a society 'where the dynamism of capitalist
production is rivaled only by the drive of diverse forms of ritual
creativity, both within and outside Buddhism'. At the height of the
growth euphoria in the mid-1990s the aged abbot of a remote monastery
200 kilometres north-east of Bangkok emerged as the most prominent
religious figure in Thailand, achieving 'superstar' status with a mass
nationwide following among all sections of society. Luang Phor
(Reverend Father) Khoon Parisuttho, abbot of Wat Ban Rai monastery,
is widely believed to possess supernatural powers of prophecy, healing,
conferring luck, and warding off harm, and has become the focus of a
national cult which emphasizes the acquisition of wealth and power.
Luang Phor Khoon's activities are often front-page stories in national
daily newspapers. His image and cult objects, such as blessed amulets,
are found in homes, stores, market-places, taxis, buses, and a plethora
of other locations across the country, and each year sales of these prod-
ucts bring hundreds of millions of baht into the coffers of Wat Ban
Rai. Khoon's followers include at least two former prime ministers, the
head of the Royal Thai Army, the royal family, senior businesspeople,
as well as hundreds of thousands of ordinary Thai men and women
from all walks of life. The anonymous author of one hagiographical
biography of Khoon is accurate in stating that 'it would not be wrong
to say that he is the most prominent Buddhist teacher of this period'
and that Khoon is 'the only monk whom people all over the country
respect and have faith in' (Anonymous, n. d.: 11). Khoon has become
a cultural icon, approaching the status of a living patron saint of the
Thai economic boom.
In its basic form, the cult following of Luang Phor Khoon is similar
to many other personality-based Buddhist movements in Thailand,
sharing features that researchers such as Tambiah (1984) and Terwiel
(1979) have described in detail. Rural monks are widely believed to
follow a stricter ascetic regimen than city-living monks, endowing them
with religious insight and supernatural powers, and making their monas-
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 7

teries sites of devotional pilgrimage by urban Buddhists seeking contact

with authentic expressions of spirituality. What distinguishes this cult
is its dramatic transformation in the 1990s from a local to a national
phenomenon, being sponsored by the highest echelons of the Bangkok
military and civilian elites, and its unabashed support for wealth
creation. 'Khoon' means 'to multiply', and the resonances of the name
'Luang Phor Khoon' become clear when it is given its literal transla-
tion of 'Reverend Father Multiply', with the abbot's popularity being
founded on faith in his supernatural power to multiply good luck, good
fortune, and wealth.
What transformed Luang Phor Khoon from an ordinary up-country
monk with a local following into a nationally important cult figure?
How has this ostensibly world-renouncing ascetic become the focus of
what Roberts (1995: 2) has called an Asian 'prosperity religion', a reli-
gious movement that emphasizes wealth acquisition more than
salvation? The Luang Phor Khoon cult is a multi-dimensional phenom-
enon, emerging at the intersection of religious, media, economic, and
political influences, and answers to the above questions can be found
only through a multi-pronged analysis that covers all the cult's mani-
fold aspects. In this study I consider in turn: (1) the traditional religious
bases of Khoon's spiritual authority; (2) the role of the popular press
and media in the creation of Khoon's nationwide popularity and his
aura of charismatic supernatural power; (3) the commodification and
marketing of this charisma during the boom years and Khoon's
symbolic importance to Thai capitalist enterprise; and (4) Khoon's
political associations and the relationship of his cult to Thai Buddhism's
historical role of legitimating secular power. I also consider critiques
of Khoon's supernatural beliefs and unabashed support for making
money which have been presented by rationalist Buddhists, and how
these critiques were effectively silenced after the monarchy demon-
strated support for the cult.
I argue that the cult is founded upon Khoon's traditionally legiti-
mated spiritual authority, gained through his long decades of ascetic
practice as a wandering forest monk in north-east Thailand. Khoon is
widely seen to be a genuine monk, in but not of the world, who remains
untouched by the power and wealth that daily circulate around him.
His universal accessibility to rich and poor alike, and his rustic speech
and unaffected manners are seen as reflecting his down-to-earth
concern for old-fashioned Thai Buddhist values. Since the mid-1980s
Thai Buddhism has been shaken by a series of corruption and sex
8 South East Asia Research

scandals (see Jackson, 1997; Keyes, unpublished) which have under-

mined public confidence in the institution of the sangha. However,
Khoon has remained untainted by scandal, and to a populace tired of
exposes of clerical crimes and debauchery, the old abbot appears as a
religious figure who can be trusted and in whom faith is not misplaced.
Khoon could have become a national phenomenon only in the era
of a fiercely competitive, sensation-hungry national press. The popular
press has been a key agent in the creation of Khoon as a national cult
figure, with reporting of his reputed supernatural power in saving
disaster victims in the early 1990s catapulting him to national promi-
nence. His national media presence, the chance meaning of his name,
'to multiply', and his readiness to bless all manner of worldly activi-
ties, each contributed to Khoon becoming the focus of a national cult
of moneymaking during the economic boom. And as the press contin-
ually inflated his charisma by promoting his supernatural reputation,
local and national politicians sought to be associated with the monk in
order to promote their careers. The Thai military and civilian bureau-
cracies, and more recently the monarchy, have also publicly supported
the cult, ensuring its incorporation within the framework of state-spon-
sored nationalist Buddhism.
Most previous studies of the relations between Buddhism and Thai
society have focused on an analysis of power. Locally based anthro-
pological studies (Terwiel, 1979; Tambiah, 1984; Mulder, 1990; Turton,
1991) have analysed the relations between monks' ritual practice and
the accumulation of supernatural power (saksit). A second series of
studies has investigated the institutional relationship between
Buddhism and the state, focusing either on the state's appropriation
of Buddhism's legitimatory symbolism (Tambiah, 1976; Ishii, 1986;
Jackson, 1989; Somboon, 1993) or oppositional uses of Buddhist ritual
and symbology either to resist state power (Keyes, 1977; Jackson,
1988[b]; Taylor, 1993[a] and 1993[b]) or reformulate the state from
within (McCargo, 1993). However, none of these analytical approaches
is adequate to explain the form and character of new Buddhist-based
movements such as the Luang Phor Khoon cult which emerged in the
1990s. Such analyses need to be augmented with concepts drawn from
economics, and media and marketing studies. Khoon's relations to state
power - politicians, the civilian bureaucracy, the military, the monarchy
- have in large measure been facilitated by the media, and his symbolic
relations to wealth have emerged from the ludic semiotic activities of
his followers, and commercial exploiters. It was Khoon's lay followers
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 9

who first played upon the association of his name and multiplying
wealth, opening the door to the incorporation of market capitalism
within the domain of Buddhist ritual and symbolism.
As the Thai state has withdrawn from its historical role of control-
ling expressions of Buddhist religiosity (see Jackson, 1997), its place
has increasingly been taken by the market. The Khoon phenomenon
has not emerged as the result of any planned strategy but rather has
been 'produced' by a mutually reinforcing series of decentralized
processes involving a multitude of players, whose separate self-inter-
ested actions have had the cumulative effect of catapulting this
up-country monk to national prominence. It is because of the impor-
tance of the market in determining contemporary forms of Thai
Buddhism that political concepts such as legitimacy are no longer
adequate to explain the relations between Thai religion and society.
Power remains central to the social analysis of Thai Buddhism, but
power is now modulated through different channels and takes new
forms. In the final section I consider the post-modernization of Thai
Buddhism in the 1990s and the need for new analytical approaches
drawing upon semiotics and symbolic analyses.

Traditional origins

A biography of Luang Phor Khoon

The cult of Luang Phor Khoon has traditional origins, being founded
on the abbot's spiritual authority which he acquired through long
decades of ascetic practice. Khoon was born in 1923 in the small village
of Ban Rai located 50 kilometres north-west of the provincial capital
of Nakhonratchasima, popularly called Khorat. Like many boys from
poor families who could not afford to look after all their children, at
the age of seven Khoon became a temple boy or dek wat whose care
was entrusted to the monks at a local monastery. He stayed at the
monastery throughout his childhood and youth, and was fully ordained
as a monk in 1944, taking the clerical name of Parisuttho. After
ordaining he wandered as a thudong or itinerant forest monk for many
years in north-east Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, and studied magical
incantations and ritual (saiyasat) from various monks in these regions.
Popular Thai Buddhism incorporates many influences from ancient
Khmer Hinduism and pre-Buddhist spirit beliefs, with supernatural
practices being an accepted part of the role of Buddhist monks,
10 South East Asia Research

especially in the countryside. Khoon returned to Ban Rai in 1956 when

invited by villagers to become abbot of the then abandoned Wat Ban
Rai monastery, but continued to come and go from this base for some
years. He finally gave up his life as a wandering monk and settled down
permanently as abbot of Wat Ban Rai in 1965.
Like thousands of other Buddhist abbots across Thailand, Khoon
soon began making and blessing amulets for his followers. Amulets -
variously called 'auspicious objects' (watthu mongkhon) or more collo-
quially 'holy things' (phra khreuang) - are worn as a protection against
harm and are believed to acquire magical protective powers from the
khatha or mantra-like incantations that ordained monks chant over
them. To be blessed or empowered (pluk sek), amulets must be chanted
over each night for three months in a ritual that invokes the virtues
of the 'triple gem' of the Buddha, the dhamma, and the sangha.
However, there are strong hints of Brahmanical symbolism in Khoon's
own blessing formula. As reported by the English-language newspaper
The Nation,
He said that although the ma-a-u chant he uses during the rite was reminis-
cent of the Vedic a-u-m chant to invoke the Hindu gods, it was comprised of
the initials of the Maha Moggalana, a Buddhist saint, and two of Buddha's
noted disciples: Ananda and Upali.'
Khoon's blessing chant shows the hybrid form of his ritualism and
can perhaps be seen as a Buddhification of an originally Brahmanical
ritual chant, reversing the Hindu mystical sound of creation, aum, and
thereby making it a sound capable of destroying evil forces.
Blessed amulets come in a variety of forms, including tiny metal
Buddha images (phra kring) and small tablets made from baked clay
(phra phong) as well as medallions (rian) made from bronze, silver,
gold, or other metals. They are commonly worn as pendants or hung
from a motor vehicle's rear vision mirror like a St Christopher medal-
lion. A thriving market in amulets exists throughout Thailand (see
Tambiah, 1984) with stores and markets dedicated to the trade, plus a
wide range of magazines and books which describe the characteristics
and prices of amulets produced by famous monks. In the amulet trade
the purchase price of these objects is euphemistically called the 'worship
value' (kha bucha) or 'rental value' (kha chao) rather than the more

The Nation, 21 September 1995, 'Those not-so-magic charms of Luang Phor Koon',
p. AS. Note: Thailand's English-language press does not spell Luang Phor Khoon's
name or the name of his monastery consistently.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 11

mundane term 'price' (rakha) which is used to denote the monetary

value of all other marketable products, commodities, and services. That
is, the spending of money to purchase these objects is often symboli-
cally associated with religious practice rather than mundane investment.
The author (Saengphet, n. d.) of one manual describing the plethora
of Luang Phor Khoon amulets that have been produced in recent
decades states that he blessed his first batch in 1969. Thai soldiers
fighting communist forces in Laos and Vietnam in the early 1970s who
wore these amulets were reported to have been miraculously saved
from danger during armed engagements. Khoon's reputation in Khorat
province and the north-east for miraculously empowered amulets dates
from this time.

Endearing rustic idiosyncrasies

While Khoon's reputed supernatural powers form the basis of his fame,
his widespread popularity also flows from his idiosyncratic habits and
ritual practices. Khoon acts and talks very informally; like an unlet-
tered lay villager and very unlike the formal behaviour and speech
expected of a senior abbot. He is often pictured squatting on his
haunches like an old villager smoking a cheroot or home-made up-
country cigar. Khoon's disregard for formality is most clearly shown
by his use of colloquial language. He is widely known for his use of
familiar pronouns, his trademark being the use of the terms ku and
meung for'!' and 'you' respectively, rather than attama and yom, which
are considered the correct and polite personal pronouns for a monk
to use when speaking with a layperson. However, in Khoon these rustic
idiosyncrasies are seen as endearing rather than as signs of disrespect,
indicating his no-nonsense approach to life and a 'democratic' spirit by
which he treats all his followers equally, no matter what their social
status or wealth.
Khoon is not the only famous monk known for his use of familiar
pronouns. The late Buddhadasa (1906-93), a philosopher who aimed
to reform Thai Buddhist doctrine in line with his rationalist, anti-super-
natural reading of the scriptures, also used the pronouns ku and meung
in his teachings (see Jackson, 1988[a]: 159). However, Buddhadasa
played upon the base connotations of these pronouns, using ku as a
marker of the self-centred egoity (Pali: atta) that Buddhist moral and
meditative practice aims to overcome. Khoon does not use ku in such
a sophisticated or critical way. Indeed, were he still alive, one can
imagine Buddhadasa being highly critical of Khoon's supernatural
12 South East Asia Research

teachings, the materiality of his cult, and the traditionalist, backward-

looking associations elicited by Khoon's use of the folk idiom.
Khoon's colloquial use of language is a source of humour and fasci-
nation, especially when he meets prominent people with whom it is
customary to use extremely formal and polite language. After King
Bhumipol's first visit to Wat Ban Rai in January 1995, reporters were
keen to know how Khoon had spoken to the monarch and whether he
had used the highly formalized and deferential royal vocabulary or
ratchasap. Everyone wanted to know whether Khoon had called the
King meung. It is difficult to convey the mix of jocular informal inti-
macy and disrespect that this second person pronoun connotes in Thai.
Meung is the sort of matey term that Thai men call others in their
drinking circle, or when extremely angry with someone. To call King
Bhumipol meung would be not unlike calling Queen Elizabeth II 'You
old bastard Lizzie'. Khoon told reporters that he had called the King
khun yom, a correct but rather ordinary expression used by monks to
address a layperson. It appears that even Khoon takes care when
speaking with the King of Thailand, for the old abbot added that he
had not called himself ku or the monarch meung during the visit
(Anonymous, n. d.: 15).
Khoon's use of the local Khorat dialect was cited as one of the
several reasons he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1997 by
Wongchavalitkul University, a private institution in Nakhonratchasima
province.? In awarding the degree, Acharn Prani Wongchavalitkul,
Rector of the University, praised Khoon for his skills in combining the
principles of the Buddha's dhamma with 'Thai local wisdom' (phumi-
panya Thai) in order to communicate the customs and dialect of the
people of Khorat.' He was credited with being proficient in using the
local dialect to reduce barriers to communication and was honoured
for campaigning to uphold 'the linguistic aspect of Thai identity'
(ekkalak thang phasa-Thai). He was also praised for promoting tourism
to Khorat Province (because of the large number of pilgrims who visit

2 Khoon initially declined the honour. saying that he had no desire for personal reward
or fame and that he could not take any honours with him when he died. Only the
results of his deeds would follow him into the next life. (Thai Rath, 11 November
1996, 'Dr Khoon, "I won't accept it [doctorate]:" [dorktor Khoon, ku mai ao dork),
p. 1). However, he did finally accept the award, which was presented at Wat Ban
Rai on 14 April 1997 (Daily News, 8 April 1997, 'Degree in mass communications
presented to Luang Phor Khoon' [thawai prinya nithet. dae Luang Phor Khoon], p.
19).
3 Daily News, ibid.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 13

his monastery), and raising the province's national profile. In concluding

her remarks, Prani said that Khoon had used his applied communica-
tion skills to promote socio-economic and community development,
which in turn had contributed to the progress of Buddhism in Thailand.
Some of Khoon's ritual practices are also unconventional. For
example, to bless and cure diseases he knocks people on the head
(khorh hua) with a short staff and then blows on the crown of their
head (pao kramorm). Khoon also engages in the unusual ritual of
blessing pieces of cloth and paper by walking on them, and his foot-
prints marked in ink on holy cloths (pha yan) are sold as collectable
items. It is said that if an owner is having trouble selling his property,
a buyer will soon be found once Khoon has walked on the title-deed.
Khoon also engages in more traditional clerical practices such as
fortune telling and blessing new vehicles, often writing the words
'Khoon Protects' (Khoon raksa) in holy fragrant powder on the inte-
rior ceiling. In the words of one biographer (Anonymous, n. d.: 12),
this is 'so that people feel that Luang Phor is nearby protecting them'.

Ignoring hierarchy
A key aspect of Khoon's success is his disregard for the divisions that
are central to Thai cultural and political hierarchies. He blurs the
boundaries between the rich and poor, the high born and the lowly,
the powerful and the disenfranchised. As discussed below, he also blurs
the boundaries between the sacred and the profane. The cult integrates
both well-off and impoverished followers, with the presence of the
wealthy at Luang Phor Khoon events no doubt serving to suggest to
the poor the efficacy of his spiritual power. Until recent illnesses, Khoon
was prepared to make himself available to all who sought his blessing,
submitting himself to a gruelling itinerary of nationwide visits. Khoon
excludes no one from his blessings, teaching a positive message that
focuses on encouraging people to be good and moral, rather than
issuing interdictions or criticisms. His preparedness to travel extensively
and officiate at ceremonies around the country contributed to his image
of being a 'monk of the people', a kind and wise grandfather figure.
In a period when a seemingly endless stream of monks have been impli-
cated in sex scandals or financial fraud, many Thai Buddhists feel that
the sangha has lost its way. Paradoxically, even though Khoon is famous
for blessing others' efforts to acquire wealth and power, his personal
disregard for power, prestige, and wealth is seen as a return to
Buddhism's proper detached role.
14 South East Asia Research

Khoon is not a radical in the sense of deliberately subverting the

hierarchies that structure Thai social life. Rather, he merely ignores
the divisions which the vast majority of the Thai population, including
most ordained monks, scrupulously respect. He is at liberty to ignore
social hierarchies because, according to Buddhist doctrine, an ordained
monk renounces concern for worldly matters of rank and prestige, and
should relate to all laypeople - from the King to the humblest
commoner - in the same way. In practice, however, most Thai monks
accord greater respect to the rich and influential than to the poor and
lowly.
However, while disregarding social divisions, Khoon does not
threaten or challenge these dichotomies. He provides an image of social
levelling but does not undermine the divisions that uphold privilege
because, by remaining detached from direct worldly involvement, he
does not engage with structures of power and influence. While Khoon
is often represented in terms of the rhetoric of 'democracy'
(prachathipatai), which in Thailand connotes social equality as much
as representative politics, he blesses the acquisition of the power and
wealth which support the divisions of the social and political status
quo. This explains why Khoon is most popular among conservative
sections of the Thai political elite and least popular among those
educated middle class and professional groups who see themselves as
pro-democratic and resisting entrenched authoritarian power and priv-
ilege. As discussed below, pro-democratic intellectuals and journalists
are Khoon's most trenchant critics.

Media-induced charismatic inflation

The role of the popular press in making and marketing a

national saint
Khoon's reputation in north-east Thailand for miraculously empow-
ered amulets dates from the 1970s. However, it was a dramatic tragedy
in the early 1990s that catapulted him to national prominence. On 13
August 1993, in one of Thailand's worst disasters, the shoddily-
constructed Royal Plaza Hotel in Khorat city collapsed, killing 137 and
injuring hundreds." Three days after the collapse, rescuers from the

4 Bangkok Post Weekly Review. 26 August 1994, 'Prayers for victims of Korat hotel
collapse', p. 4.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 15

Por Tek Teung Foundation located a hotel cleaner, Miss Nartthaya

Chimdee, still alive but with her legs trapped by a massive block of
concrete. The rescuers found it impossible to remove the concrete block
until one worker dropped a Luang Phor Khoon amulet to the trapped
woman. As Nartthaya held the amulet and prayed to Khoon for help,
the rescuers managed to lift the block of concrete and save her life.
As the Bangkok Post reported on the occasion of the first anniversary
of the disaster,
The objects produced at Wat Ban Rai became more famous when the Royal
Plaza Hotel in Nakhon Ratchasima collapsed last year and ... survivors were
found to be wearing a 'Luang Phor Khoon' amulet. People believe an amulet
or object from Wat Ban Rai or even a touch on the head with the hand of
Luang Phor Khoon will protect them from any danger.!
Khoon's reputation was further enhanced by a second disaster only a
couple of months after the hotel collapse. According to one biography
(Anonymous, n. d.), in late 1993 a young female worker at the Kader
doll factory on the outskirts of Bangkok survived a leap from the
factory's third storey when escaping a fire in which more than 200 of
her co-workers died. Twenty-one-year-old Phairat leemkhunthot, a
native of Khoon's home district of Dan Khun Thot, survived the leap
while other escaping workers who jumped with her died. She later told
reporters that as she jumped she held on to her Luang Phor Khoon
amulet, struck in 1987 and called the 'co-operatives batch' (run
sahakorn). Apparently Phairat's fall was cushioned by the bodies of
colleagues who had leapt before her and on whom she landed.
However, the popular Thai language press attributed her survival to
the miraculous power of the amulet. The 1987 'co-operatives batch' of
medallions has now become highly prized and expensive, with a thriving
market in forgeries.
The popular press reported these two events as miracles, crediting
Khoon with supernatural powers, and the more sensationalist national
dailies Thai Rath, Daily News. and Khao Sot have had a major role in
promoting Khoon's fame. Competition between these newspapers is
intense, with each trying to secure sales by exclusive coverage of sensa-
tional page one stories. Sex scandals, political corruption, graphic
photographs of the dismembered bodies of accident victims, blood-
chilling crimes, national sporting triumphs, as well as tales of
5 Bangkok Post Weekly Review, 14 October 1994, 'Thousands in Korat for celebrated
monk's birthday', p. 6.
16 South East Asia Research

supernatural and magical phenomena, commonly fill the pages of these

newspapers. Accounts of Khoon's reputed prophetic, healing, and
protective powers are often reported as news by Thai Rath, Daily News,
and Khao Sot. And in these populist dailies, Khoon is commonly
referred to by epithets that reflect his supposed supernatural powers,
often being called a thepphajao or 'divine lord' (from Pali deva, Thai
jao), an expression that can denote either a divine being or a human
with spiritual authority. Another common epithet in the popular press
is 'the divine lord of the plateau [i. e. Isan]' (thepphajao haeng thi-rap-
sung). In more high-brow dailies, such as the Thai-language Siam Rath,
Matichon, and Phu-jat-kan (The Manager) and the English-language
Bangkok Post and The Nation, Khoon is much less often a front-page
news story, with accounts of his activities more commonly reported in
a disbelieving tongue-in-cheek or critical style, and relegated to an
inside page.
Throughout the mid-1990s, the sensationalist press regularly gave
front-page coverage to a stream of miracles attributed to Khoon's
protective power. For example, in December 1996 Thai Rath published
a page one photo story of a Bangkok taxi driver whose vehicle had
been crushed by a tour bus and who claimed he had been saved from
death by a Luang Phor Khoon amulet hung around his cab's rear vision
mirror." Many prominent people, including politicians, attest to the
magical power of Luang Phor Khoon amulets and have told their stories
to the press. In 1992 Suvat Liptapallop, former Deputy Secretary
General of the Chart Pattana Party led by the late Chatichai
Choonhavan, became a staunch believer in Khoon's powers when he
credited his Luang Phor Khoon amulet with preventing a plane crash'?
In that year he and 18 officials from the Thai Fine Arts Department
were returning from a visit to the United States when their plane's
landing gear malfunctioned. The pilot ditched fuel over the sea and
returned to Los Angeles, where the plane landed safely. Suvat later
told The Nation, 'At that time, I thought the plane would crash and I
would die - so I took the Luang Phor Koon amulet from my neck and
began to pray "May Luang Phor Koon save me'"," Suvat said that all
of the 18 officials on the plane were also wearing Luang Phor Khoon

h Thai Rath, 13 December 1996, page 1 photo story captioned: 'I want you to be saved
from death' (ku hai meung rort tai).
7 The Nation. 21 September 1995, 'Those not-so-magic charms of Luang Phor Koon',
p. AS.
H Ibid.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 17

amulets, and explained that this was why a 170-member khon classical
dance troupe from the Fine Arts Department performed at Wat Ban
Rai to celebrate Khoon's seventy-second birthday in 1994, because the
Department's senior staff wished to show their appreciation to the
abbot for having been saved."
Continual reporting of Khoon's reputed powers and his association
with prominent national political figures creates a media-induced charis-
matic aura around him, establishing a self-reinforcing circuit of
charismatic inflation whereby the more he was sought out and the more
his image was reproduced, the more his popularity increased. Khoon's
charismatic appeal is, then, not merely a sacral Buddhist phenomenon
but also a very contemporary phenomenon that flows from the power
of the mass media to manufacture influential images and symbols.

'Reverend Father Multiply': the Luang Phor Khoon

industry
Khoon's national fame was initially due to press reports of the reputed
protective powers of his amulets. However, the abbot's popularity was
further enhanced by his symbolic and direct associations with wealth.
The materiality of the cult and the symbolic linking of money and spir-
ituality are demonstrated by Khoon's ritual performance as he emerges
on to the steps of the Wat Ban Rai sermon hall each day after giving
his afternoon sermon. On a visit to Wat Ban Rai in August 1997 I
watched as a crowd of laypeople gathered on the steps holding
banknotes between the palms of their hands in the wai gesture of
respect. As he walked past, Khoon randomly picked some but not all
of the bank notes offered, putting the collected cash into a plastic super-
market shopping bag held by a lay monastery committee member who
walked behind him.
Despite a plethora of shops and market stalls selling Luang Phor
Khoon products both inside and immediately outside the monastery,
when I visited Wat Ban Rai in 1997 not one of these enterprises sold
any book about the abbot's life or his teachings. A variety of such
books are now available in bookstores around the country (for example,
Withet, n. d.; Karakot and others, 1997; Wanchana, 1997; Wilat, 1997).
This situation is unusual compared to most other famous monasteries,

9 Bangkok Post Weekly Review, 14 October 1994, 'Thousands in Korat for celebrated
monk's birthday', p. 6.
18 South East Asia Research

which typically sell books on the history of the monastery, the teach-
ings of local famous monks, and summaries or extracts of the Buddhist
scriptures in cheap pocket-book editions. Wat Ban Rai had none of
these textual products. The absence of texts for sale at Wat Ban Rai
further indicates that it is not Khoon's teachings on Buddhist doctrine
or the dhamma that are important but the material products associ-
ated with him.
In the 1990s the marketing of Khoon's blessed amulets and other
cuitic products became a multi-million baht industry. His monastery
was the focus of this trade in spiritually-empowered products, with
Khoon himself at the symbolic centre of an industry that commodified
and marketed his charisma. In 1994 The Nation reported that Khoon's
monastery received one hundred thousand baht each weekday and one
million baht on weekends from the sale of blessed amulets.'? A large
proportion of these donated funds is used to finance welfare projects.
In 1992 Khoon donated 91 million baht to schools in the north-east,
and in 1993 he gave more than 200 million baht to support rural public
health services. In 1995 Khoon's projects included a 190 million baht
college in his home district of Dan Khun Thot and a 30 million baht
monks' hospital in Nakhonratchasima. However, it is not clear what
proportion of donated funds is used for these projects. In reply to ques-
tions about financial accountability, in 1995 Khoon told The Nation,
'Donations are carefully documented to ensure that the money goes
to the proper causes', but he also added that he 'could not be
completely sure there was no abuse of donated funds'.'!
Speculative investment in Khoon's amulets became a prominent
feature of the cult in the mid-1990s. In 1995 The Nation reported that
because of increasing demand, prices for many types of Luang Phor
Khoon amulets had 'skyrocketed from Bt 20 to between Bt 1,000 and
Bt 10,000 each, but the abbot said he condones this increase as a means
to finance his planned projects to benefit the public'.J2 Khoon's most
famous amulet reportedly sold for four hundred thousand baht, with
these high prices spawning an active trade in fakes.

10 The Nation, 3 March 1994, 'The humble face of Buddhism', by Nithinand Yorsaengrat,
pp. CI-C2.
II The Nation, 21 September 1995, 'Those not-so-magic charms of Luang Phor Koon',
p. AS.
12 Ibid.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 19

Commodifying charisma: naming amulets

All batches or run of blessed amulets are given a name, which is either
inscribed on the amulet itself or printed on the box in which it is sold.
Until the 1990s Luang Phor Khoon's amulets were given traditional
names. For example, some early batches in the 19708 and 19808 were
simply called 'School batches' (run rong-rian), intended to be sold to
raise money to build a school, or 'bodhi leaf batch' (run bai pho), the
name of a traditional Buddhist symbol. However, since the start of the
1990s the names of most batches of Khoon's amulets have been explic-
itly linked with money-making. The following incomplete list provides
an indication: 13
1990: 'Fortune, success, increase' (run lap phon phoon thawi)
1990: 'Multiplying fortune' (run khoon lap)
Here Khoon's own name is first used in its literal meaning, 'to multiply',
as an element of the name of the amulet batch. Many subsequent
batches have employed this same indexical device.
1993: 'Rich for sure' (run ruay nae)
1993: 'Multiplying wealth' (run sap thawi-khoon)
1993: 'Increasing wealth' (run mang-mi thawi-khoon)
1993: 'Tycoon multiplying wealth' (run jao-sua khoon lap)
1993: 'Requesting an increase in wealth' (run khor pherm sap)
1993: 'Multiplying wealth, multiplying silver, multiplying gold' (run
khoon lap, khoon ngern, khoon thorng)
1994: 'Paying off debts' (run plot ni)
In 1996 The Nation reported that an increasingly bizarre range of names
had been given to recently produced amulet batches." Some of the
more unusual names were: 'I love you' (run ku rak meung); 'I like
reading newspapers' (run ku chorp an nangseu-phim); 'I want you to
get rich' (run ku hai meung ruay); 'I made it myself' (run ku tham
eng); and 'I came by helicopter' (run ku nang helicopter ma).
Significantly, it is the lay sponsors who pay for the production of a
batch of amulets who choose these names, not Khoon himself. As
Khoon told The Nation,
'Sponsors of the amulets always have the design and inscription of their set of
amulets ready before asking my permission to produce them. I always give my

13 Summarized from Anonymous (n. d.) and Saengphet (1994).

14 The Nation, 6 October 1996, 'Luang Phor Khoon's strangely named amulets', p. 88.
20 South East Asia Research

permission - now, many sets of amulets have been produced.... I forget how
many', Luang Phor Khoon said, adding that he did not really care much about
the inscriptions. The sponsors always gave the money they earned from sales
of the amulets to charity, according to the monk. He said he normally gets up
at 3 a.m. and blesses new amulets until dawn, then goes to greet his followers,
hundreds of whom visit his temple every day."
This means that the form of Khoon's amulets and other products is
largely determined by the market, with the design and naming of such
products being in the hands of lay business interests seeking to maxi-
mize sales among believers. Khoon may be right in saying that most
of the money raised is given to charity, but it also seems to be the case
that many sponsors take a cut of the proceeds for themselves. The
focus of the cult on money and wealth can thus be interpreted as a
commercialization of Thai Buddhism, with the expression of aspects of
Khoon's religiosity having been taken out of his hands. Considering
the role of press and business interests together, it can be said that the
Luang Phor Khoon phenomenon has been significantly influenced, if
not determined, by media owners and newspaper editors eager to
promote sales with stories of miracles and by entrepreneurs interested
in profiting from commodifying Khoon's supernatural charisma.
However, in the final section I argue that this interpretation is only
one perspective on the cult and needs to be supplemented with an
understanding of its symbolic importance in boom time Thailand.

Marketing and monopolizing charisma

The efficient nationwide marketing of Luang Phor Khoon amulets is
shown in an advertisement placed in Thai Rath on 24 October 1996
(p. 18) for a batch of amulets and talismans collectively named 'multi-
plying wealth' (run mang-mi thawi-khoon), whose production was
sponsored by Phra Khru Athornsasanakit (Suthep Aphakaro), abbot
of Wat Hua Lamphong in central Bangkok. Prices ranged from 10 baht
for a pressed clay amulet to 35,000 baht for a 60 gram gold miniature
statue of Khoon. The items could be ordered by telephone reservation
from 12 monasteries in Bangkok, each with its own sales office; from
27 amulet centres (sun phra khreuang) in Bangkok; from three large
amulet markets in Bangkok (Phanthip Plaza at Pratunam, Jakrawan
Phra ['amulet universe'] in Banglamphoo opposite the Viengtai Hotel,
and Queen Plaza at Wang Burapha); from 22 gold and jewellery shops

15 Ibid.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 21

in Bangkok; and also from 21 provincial locations. Credit card orders

were welcomed. In this advertisement, Khoon is referred to as 'His
Powerful Holiness Reverend Father Khoon Parisuttho, the Divine
Being of the Land of Isan' (phra det phra khun than Luang Phor Khoon
Parisuttho thepphajao haeng daen Isan), and the accompanying text
states that Khoon had given permission to his followers to produce
these objects in order to raise funds to build (unspecified) hospitals,
schools, and other deserving projects. The advertisement claimed that
the investment value of these 'auspicious objects' would be ensured by
their being produced in limited numbers and their availability being
restricted to orders placed before a specified closing date. In other
words, the production and marketing procedures adopted by those asso-
ciated with the Luang Phor Khoon industry ensured that items had a
guaranteed investment value.
Members of the Wat Ban Rai monastery lay committee also main-
tain a commercial monopoly on photographic images of Khoon taken
within the sanctified space of the monastery precincts. The only images
of Khoon that pilgrims may acquire are those sold from shops and
stalls within the monastery and along the nearby street. As Khoon
moves about the monastery grounds, both inside and outside the
sermon hall, he is preceded by a layman carrying a sign reading 'Taking
photographs of Luang Phor Khoon is absolutely prohibited' (ham thai
rup Luang Phor Khoon doi det khat). This sign is placed at the top of
a silver pole and carried around in front of Khoon, somewhat like the
standard of a Roman legion being carried before the advancing troops.
However, the possible grandeur of this symbolism is undermined by a
bathetic effect. A small silver hom with a bulbous black rubber blower
- similar to the silver hom the mute Harpo Marx honked in old Marx
Bros movies - is attached to the pole, and the layman carrying the sign
ensures that the gathered faithful take note of its message by honking
the hom insistently if someone looks like getting their camera ready
to take a happy snap of the old monk. Wherever Khoon walks around
the monastery grounds, his presence is therefore announced by the
raucous honk of the silver 'Harpo Marx' hom.

Lucky banknotes
Not only Khoon's amulets are linked with wealth creation. Many other
cultic products from hand-held fans to souvenir pens marketed by Wat
Ban Rai also contain symbolic associations with making money. One
of the most richly symbolic of these cultic products is a series of Luang
22 South East Asia Research

Phor Khoon 'lucky banknotes'. The first series of 100, 500, and 1,000
baht lucky bank notes was printed in 1994. Based on colour copies of
actual banknotes, the lucky bank notes combine symbols of protective
power against evil forces and victory over foes, together with images
and symbols of wealth. In recent years these lucky banknotes, selling
for as little as 10 baht a piece, have come to be widely used by small
traders as good luck talismans to increase business. Streetside vendors
often display Luang Phor Khoon lucky bank notes at the front of the
wooden trestle tables on which they layout their wares for sale.
Bangkok taxi drivers stick the lucky banknotes on their dashboards to
attract customers, while also hanging Luang Phor Khoon amulets from
their rear vision mirrors to protect them from accidents and injuries.
When they first appeared in October 1994, the lucky banknotes
created some controversy, because in their design the image of King
Bhumipol which appears on all Thai legal tender had been replaced
by an image of a smiling Khoon, squatting on his haunches and handling
huge wads of apparently real Thai banknotes." Khoon's followers
initially announced that they planned to take legal action against those
who had produced the lucky banknotes. As reported by The Nation,
The followers stressed that neither they nor the monk were involved in
producing the notes, adding that the production of such notes is defamatory
to His Majesty. Members of the Wat Banrai Committee said they had banned
the sale of the lucky notes in the temple compound, and that they were
searching for the printing house .... Khao Sod newspaper quoted Luang Phor
Koon as saying, 'I am worried, but people who do bad things will receive them
in return. The public and my followers know what kind of man 1 am, and 1
have never allowed anyone to do this [producing lucky notes]'. The paper said
officials of the Bank of Thailand had informed Bank Governor Vijit Supinit
of the lucky notes and that Vijit is also considering taking legal action against
those who produced the notes. I?
However no action has ever been taken against the mysterious
producers of the bank notes, whose identity has never been revealed.
The lucky banknotes have many differences from legal tender and this
does not appear to have been an attempt to produce counterfeit money.
16 It is not only on the lucky banknotes that Khoon's image replaces that of a monarch.
One series of amulets (uncertain date) has been produced in the form of nineteenth
and early twentieth century Siamese stamps, with Khoon's image and name replacing
that of King Chulalongkom which appeared on the original philatelic items
(Anonymous, n. d.).
17 The Nation, 31 October 1994, 'Monk's reputation damaged over defamatory lucky
notes', p. AS.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 23

Furthermore, the charge that replacing the King's image with that of
Khoon was disrespectful to the monarchy was undermined when the
King himself visited Wat Ban Rai only a few months after the notes
first appeared for sale at streetside markets around the country. This
visit was widely seen as granting royal approval to the cult and to the
images and paraphernalia associated with it.

Charisma as marketing strategy: exploiting Khoon's image

Throughout the 1990s Khoon blessed the inauguration of a large
number of commercial enterprises and allowed his name to be associ-
ated with the promotion of a diverse range of services and products,
exploiting the Thai fascination with the chance meaning of his name,
'to multiply', to raise funds for his various projects. The abbot's acces-
sibility, his preparedness to bless almost anything, and his
relinquishment of control over the form and naming of the products
linked with his cult, also meant that his reputation and image were
capable of being appropriated for almost any commercial and adver-
tising purpose. Indeed, Khoon's image no longer circulates only within
the religious domain, having come loose from its Buddhist moorings
and being reproduced to promote all manner of services and products.
Baudrillard's (see Gane, 1991) account of the image as simulacrum in
post-industrial capitalism appears to provide an accurate description of
the promiscuous reproduction of Khoon's image throughout the Thai
economy, often with little regard for its original symbolic location
within the religious domain.
There is nothing unusual in Khoon's blessing of new commercial
undertakings such as office blocks, housing estates, and shopping malls,
as Buddhist monks are routinely invited to bless the inauguration of
most major commercial, state, and private activities. However, Khoon's
blessing of commercial enterprises takes an extreme form, commonly
becoming a selling point in advance advertising. For example, in August
1995 Khoon was invited to officiate at the opening of a new housing
estate, the Ban Sarinya Rangsit Khlorng 2 Estate on the northern
outskirts of Bangkok. An advertisement in Thai Rath for this official
opening stated that the first 30 people to place a deposit on a town
house at the opening ceremony would receive a specially minted gold
Luang Phor Khoon medallion. IS In October 1996 Thai Rath published
an advertisement for the opening of a live entertainment complex in

18 Thai Roth, 10 August 1995, p. 29.

24 South East Asia Research

Thonburi called Thonburi Entertainment.'? In addition to listing a

dozen well-known singers and comedians who would perform at the
opening, the advertisement included an image of Luang Phor Khoon,
but with no commentary. It was not clear whether Khoon was to be
present at the opening, or whether his image was simply used as an
advertising drawcard.
Also in October 1996, Thai Rath reported in a page one story that
Khoon had complained that the divine beings (thewada) were 'biased'
for not letting it rain at Wat Ban Rai while surrounding areas had been
flooded during that year's rainy season.P This comment was the banner
headline and dominated the opening paragraph of a report on the
flooding situation around the country, but which provided no addi-
tional information whatsoever about Khoon. Here Thai Rath simply
used Khoon as an attention grabber for its page one headline and first
paragraph, adding spice to an otherwise tedious listing of flood levels
in a number of provinces. The same issue of the paper included a
photograph of Khoon blessing the opening of yet another new housing
project, Mu Ban Nakhorn Thorng Park View 3, 4, 7 at Bang Bua
Thorng in Nonthaburi Province." In the photograph Khoon is standing
beside the owner of the project and a military police escort provided
by the Royal Thai Army to ensure his personal security. I discuss
Khoon's intimate associations with the police and security forces in the
following section.
When I visited the annual King Taksin memorial fair at Thonburi in
December 1997, an event commemorating Taksin's defeat of the
Burmese after the sack of Ayutthaya in 1767 and which includes a large
temporary market area, I was able to purchase a set of matching pillow
cases printed with Khoon's image and a blessing written in his hand-
writing. From my inquiries I discovered that the female vendor was
not linked with Khoon but had arranged for the printing herself as
part of her family business, appropriating Khoon's image as a design
element to promote sales of the family's cotton products.
However, Khoon's image and reputation are not always appropri-
ated for such innocuous if unconventional purposes, with criminal
elements being equally eager to take advantage of the old monk's fame.
One biography (Anonymous, n. d.) reports that in 1994 rumours circu-

19 Thai Rath, 24 October 1996, p. 30.

20 Thai Rath, 11 October 1996, 'Phor Khoon distressed, "The gods" are biased' (Phor
Khoon woi, 'thewada' iang), p. 1.
21 Thai Rath, 11 October 1996, p. 22.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 25

lated that Khoon had dreamed of rows of empty coffins in the parking
lot of a large new department store in Khorat city. Local residents
were alarmed by this rumour and avoided shopping in the commercial
complex for fear that it too would collapse like the ill-fated Royal Plaza
Hotel. The anxious owners of the department store consulted Khoon,
who insisted that he had never had such a dream and that others had
concocted the rumour, apparently as part of an attempt to undermine
the business by a competitor department store. Khoon has also
complained that what he terms 'religious demons' (man sasana) decep-
tively use his name to hoodwink people into buying fake amulets.F

Khoon as pop culture icon

However, Khoon has no control over the purposes to which his image
and reputation are used. His image has become so dissociated from its
religious origins that it is now a floating signifier capable of being appro-
priated for almost any purpose within the cultural-commercialdomain,
Khoon is prepared to bless anything, and his lack of concern about the
boundaries between religious and worldly activities means that he is
much more accessible to being appropriated within a secular cultural
frame than any other clerical personality. Indeed he is so prominent
and has linked himself so intimately with the material and financial
concerns of people of all classes and backgrounds that his image now
operates as a pop culture icon.
Khoon's image first appeared in the domain of popular culture in
1994 when the band Carabao released a song entitled 'Luang Phor
Khoon' on their fourteenth album, 'Nationbuilder' (khon sang chat).23
Carabao's folk-rock style is of the 'music for life' (dontri pheua chiwit)
genre, which developed in the early 1970s as a form of protest music
and became a cultural expression of the student-led protests against
the dictatorship of Field Marshal Thanom Kittikajorn and Praphat
Charusathien. Music for life bands such as Carabao remain some of
the most vocal critics of corruption and other social evils in contem-
porary Thailand, and while 'protest music' went out of fashion in the
West long ago, it continues to enjoy a significant following in Thailand.

22 Thai Rath, 11 November 1996, 'Dr Khoon, "I won't accept doctorate" (dorktor
Khoon, ku mai ao dork), p. 1.
23 Carabao Album No. 14 'Nationbuilder' (khon sang chat), song 'Luang Phor Khoon',
lyrics and tune by Phayap Khamphan and Aet Carabao, copyright Warner Music
Thailand, 1994.
26 South East Asia Research

At times the Carabao song verges on satirizing Khoon's rural eccen-

tricities. Nevertheless, the overall message focuses on calling on all
those who seek the abbot's blessing to be good, especially politicians,
who are portrayed as typically bullying and harassing the population.
While the members of Carabao may find Khoon quaint and eccentric,
they nevertheless represent him as displaying an honest folksy wisdom
that cuts through the pretentious facades created by the rich and
powerful to obscure their corruption, greed, and brutality. Carabao
celebrates Khoon as a folk hero who uses his old-fashioned 'local
wisdom' (phum-panya) to criticize social ills. Carabao's support for
Khoon was further demonstrated in 1996 when the band celebrated its
fifteenth anniversary with the release of double CD and audio cassette
album compilations of their hits. These albums included a special Luang
Phor Khoon amulet called the 'For life batch' (run pheua chiwit), with
an image of a squatting Khoon smoking a cheroot beneath a buffalo
skull, the symbol of the band. The title of this live album set, written
in Khoon's own shaky handwriting, is 'I want you to love the nation'
(ku hai meung rak chat).24 Albums with the amulet attached sold for
a premium, with the additional money going to Khoon for him, in turn,
to donate to royal charity projects on the occasion of the fiftieth
anniversary of King Bhumipol's accession to the throne. The complex
symbolism of these albums reflects Carabao's often ambiguous posi-
tion as pro-democratic monarchist nationalists who use their music to
expose political corruption, excoriate military dictatorship, and high-
light the plight of the underprivileged.
Khoon's iconic status in Thai pop music was further marked in 1995
by the release of an album by the popular rural folk style (luk thung)
singer Yortrak Salakjai entitled 'Luang Phor Khoon help me' (Luang
Phor Khoon chuay duay).25 In this album's title track, a poor country
man beseeches Khoon to bless him in his quest to win the hand of a
beautiful young woman when a rich man comes courting her. In the
song's final line the man laments, 'I sit with tears flowing, because I
lack Reverend Father money (khat Luang Phor ngern)'. This person-
ification of money, granting it an honorific title usually reserved for
abbots, reflects the power of money in influencing the course of
personal relationships in contemporary Thailand.

24 Copyright Krabeu and Kho [buffalo and cow] Co. Ltd.

25 Copyright Big and Best Marketing Ltd, Chatchai Phetchuchat, May 1995.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 27

In September 1996 anti-smoking activists approached Khoon to

promote their campaign. Khoon, who had long been a heavy smoker
and was often photographed smoking a home-made cigar, initially
turned down the request. However the activists were finally able to
convince him to write a brief note for the campaign, saying 'Those who
are able to quit cigarettes and alcohol are excellent human beings' .26
In December 1996 Khoon suffered dizzy spells caused by arterioscle-
rosis, and doctors at Bangkok's Ramathibodi Hospital advised the
abbot to give up smoking for the sake of this health. Khoon complied
and on 7 January 1997 Daily News ran a page one banner headline
'Phor Khoon returns to monastery, announces he has given up ciga-
rettes, will refrain from accepting invitations for 3 months'." Khoon's
conversion to the anti-smoking camp was sealed in May 1997 when the
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Foundation held a festival at
the Bangkok Convention Centre, Central Plaza, Lard Phrao. As
reported by The Nation, 'Posters of Luang Phor Khoon Parisuttho, the
respected monk who recently gave up cigarettes, will be on sale at
Central Plaza, Central (Pinklao) and Fashion Island until Sunday. All
proceeds will be donated to the Ramathibodi Foundation'." When I
visited Wat Ban Rai in August 1997 the monastery's sermon hall was
draped in large banners proclaiming 'Wat Ban Rai - cigarette-free zone
(khet plort buri)'.
The seemingly endless purposes to which Khoon's charisma is applied
was further demonstrated on St Valentine's Day in 1997. In recent
decades younger Thais have enthusiastically appropriated the American
mania for celebrating 14 February as an annual 'day of love' (wan
haeng khwam-rak) with greeting cards, flowers, and gifts being
exchanged by sweethearts. In February 1997 The Nation reported that
3,295 Thai couples 'tied the nuptial knot on the Day of Love', with a
record 1,140 couples registering their marriages at the offices of the
Bang Rak district offices in central Bangkok." 'Bang Rak' literally
means 'village of love'. The newspaper also reported that,

26 Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 5 September 1996, 'Monk joins the cause'.
27 Daily News, 7 January 1997, (Phor Khoon klap wat laeo, prakat la-lerk buri, ngot
rap nimon 3 deuan), p. 1.
28 The Nation (Internet edition), 28 May 1997, 'If you still need a reason to quit smoking
.. .', Focus Section, by Uma Pandey.
29 The Nation (Internet edition), 15 February 1997, 'St Valentine inspires mass wedding
blitz'.
28 South East Asia Research

Chumphon Pholrat, Bang Kapi district chief [in Bangkok], said that 284 couples
preferred to register their marriages in his district because the certificates issued
by his office were blessed by revered monk Luang Por Khoon Parisutho.

Political appropriations: Khoon and Thailand's power

elites

Buddhism's changing political relevance

In the 1990s one of the most notable religious trends in Thailand has
been the rise of a diverse range of movements and cults at the periphery
of the state-controlled Buddhist monkhood and an associated shift in
the historical pattern of relations between Buddhism and secular polit-
ical authority. The organization of the sangha, the forms of religious
ritual, and the interpretation of doctrine propagated by the order of
celibate monks have been important in legitimating the exercise of state
power by Thai kingdoms since at least the Sukhothai period in the
thirteenth century. Several authors (for example, Somboon, 1982; Ishii,
1986; Jackson, 1989) have argued that Buddhism's political importance
as a system of legitimating practices and discourses explains the inten-
sification of state control that was exercised over the sangha in the
twentieth century through a series of efforts to restructure the monk-
hood in the image of the secular political order. State-initiated and
enforced Sangha Acts - in 1902, 1941, and 1962 - decreed that the
national organization of the monkhood should have a form that
mirrored the changing structures of secular power - from absolute
monarchy, to popular democracy, and subsequently to military dicta-
torship.
However, in the 1990s this historical situation has been significantly
transformed. While a semblance of state control over the sangha
remains in the form of the Sangha Act administered by the Department
of Religious Affairs, effective state control over Buddhism has declined
markedly. This rapid decline in politicians' interest in controlling the
forms of Buddhist religiosity - except to eradicate clerical corruption
or counter immorality - has permitted the rise of a range of religious
movements which in earlier decades would be likely to have incited
political and legal intervention to enforce normative practice and
teaching. Somboon (1993) suggests that this withdrawal from control-
ling Buddhism reflects the increasing secularization of the Thai state
and a shift to instrumental values of wealth creation and socio-economic
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 29

development as legitimating bases of political power. However, while

Buddhism may no longer be central to political legitimation, religion
retains political utility in Thailand.
In earlier periods, Thai absolute monarchs and authoritarian mili-
tary rulers established legitimatory relationships between Buddhism
and the state by decree. Buddhism was a state-sponsored and state-
controlled religion with an arm of the civilian bureaucracy, the
Department of Religious Affairs, dedicated to monitoring and
enforcing the decreed organizational structure of the monkhood and
the form of state-sangha relations. However, the popular authority of
this organizational form of Buddhism is now in crisis (see Jackson,
1997; Keyes, unpublished). The perceived irrelevance of the central
Buddhist hierarchy, the Mahatherasamakhom or Sangha Council, and
intensive media reportage of moral scandals and corruption among
sections of the sangha have encouraged a decentralization of religiosity
and an exodus from state-sponsored institutional Buddhism, often to
personality-focused religious movements. Today neither elected politi-
cians nor the bureaucracy or the monarchy possess sufficient influence
to reform the religion or enforce a new state-decreed mode of ritual
practice or doctrine. In this context, politicians and state institutions
are capable only of resuscitating and perpetuating the old symbolic
power of Buddhism, by appropriating popular movements, rather than
initiating their own doctrinal and organizational trends, such as King
Mongkut and King Chulalongkorn did in the second half of the nine-
teenth century.
At a time when Thai Buddhism is seen to be plagued by charla-
tanism and sex scandals, Khoon has been represented by the popular
press as being above rebuke. He is seen as not having been corrupted
by his association with the rich and powerful or by his dealings with
huge sums of money. Khoon has supervised the building of a lavish
monastery complex at Wat Ban Rai, but does appear to have recycled
most of the money donated to him to projects for the poor.
Furthermore, he is old and celibate, and no sex scandal has tainted
him or others associated with his monastery. Khoon appears to epito-
mize the Buddhist monastic ideal of detachment, being in but not of
the world, acting as a disinterested channel for redistributing funds
from often wealthy donors to the needy. In the absence of a national
system of public welfare, Khoon can perhaps legitimately be credited
with effecting a minor redistribution of income from the wealthy to
the poor.
30 South East Asia Research

Khoon's intimate links with Thailand's power elites are documented

in this section. To understand the significance of these associations, it
is important to note that Buddhism now has a somewhat different value
for the politicians who jostle for re-election from that which it has for
the administrative and symbolic institutions of the state, that is, the
civilian and military bureaucracies and the monarchy. This difference
lies in the fact that politicians use Buddhism to acquire power, while
the bureaucracy and the monarchy seek linkages with Buddhist
symbolism in order to legitimate their established authority. It is also
important to note the breadth of Khoon's symbolic associations with
diverse forms of power.

Competition and risk: Khoon as site of masculine protec-

tive power
Khoon is popular not only with politicians seeking election or re-elec-
tion, or with a bureaucracy and a monarchy seeking to reaffirm
established privilege. The old abbot is also highly popular with boxers
and sportsmen. In the mid-1990s, one was just as likely to find a photo-
graph of Khoon blessing a champion boxer on the first page of
newspaper sports sections as to see an image of him with a politician
or rich businessman on page one of the news section. For example, in
August 1995 Thai boxing champion Saen Sor (S.) Phloenchit was widely
photographed being blessed by Khoon at Wat Ban Rai before leaving
for Japan to defend his title against a Japanese challenger.v In this
sporting connection one can detect a contemporary expression of an
ancient Thai interest in seeking out sources of protective power. Indeed,
Khoon is a symbolic focus of an overlapping network of powers - reli-
gious, sporting, military, political, royal - with contemporary
power-political concerns being incorporated within a persistent animist-
based symbolic complex. Mulder (1990: 24) contends that,
Thai animism, as a religious practice, is essentially a system that deals with
power. ... Whether the religious complexes that deal with such power are clas-
sified as animistic, Brahmanic, or Buddhist is irrelevant because the way in
which they deal with power is inspired by the same animist mentality. In that
mentality supernatural powers do not question intentions but react reflexively
to a show or respect, to ritual prescriptions and to ceremonial form.

30 Daily News, 24 August 1995, 'Om phiang', photo story in sports section, p. 21. Om
phiang is a hybrid Thai-Brahmanical-Chinese chant of blessing, combining the
Brahmanical incantation om (i.e. aum) with a Tae Jiw Chinese blessing, phiang, which
means 'May it be as I desire'.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 31

From this perspective one can discern symbolic continuities between

the diverse forms of power associated with Khoon, with the cult being
based on blessing activities where (predominantly masculine) power
and prowess are employed in contestation involving risk and possible
danger. Khoon's protective power is called upon by: (1) boxers before
they engage in title fights; (2) politicians before they embark on elec-
tion campaigns; and (3) the Thai military, in particular the army, an
institution based upon masculine force and power. Indeed, these three
groups - boxers, politicians, soldiers - are often found together in
Khoon's company, with senior politicians and military men commonly
sponsoring top boxers. In December 1995 Khoon was flown to Chiang
Mai in a military aircraft accompanied by the then head of the Royal
Thai Army, General Chettha Thanajaro (nicknamed 'Big Wiang'), so
the abbot could bless Thai boxers and other sportsmen and women
competing in the 1995 Southeast Asian (SEA) Garnes." For the occa-
sion, Khoon had 2,000 copies of a special amulet struck called the 'SEA
Games batch' (run SEA Game), which he distributed to all of
Thailand's competitors and trainers. He taught the boxers a special
victory incantation, Chaiyo chaiya khor hai ku mi chai-chana chaiya
chaiyo (Victory, victory. May I be victorious. Victory, victory), and
blessed them by knocking them on the head with his knuckles and spit-
ting on them.
Khoon's popularity among commercial groups can also be seen as
flowing from this same animist-based symbolic relationship to power,
being based on the belief that he possesses the power to bless commer-
cial undertakings involving risk and danger. In the concluding section
I develop this idea further, suggesting that animist-based expressions
of religiosity became more popular in Thailand during the boom years
because their emphasis on protection against risk and danger assuaged
anxieties arising from the disconcerting experience of engaging the
unpredictable and untamed power of Thailand's then roaring 'tiger
economy'.

Blessing political risk taking

Khoon's popularity among senior national politicians is one of the most
prominently reported aspects of the cult, and politicians' visits to the
abbot are often highly publicized media events. Eager to remain in the

31 Thai Roth, 13 December 1995, 'Phor Khoon has arrived!' (Phor Khoon rna /aeol),
photo story, p. 1.
32 South East Asia Research

public eye and attract popularity, and desirous of being seen to be

honest, respectable supporters of Thai cultural values and religious
institutions, politicians manipulate visits to prominent monks such as
Khoon as part of their public relations and electioneering strategies.
The assistant abbot of Wat Phra Thammakai, a Buddhist movement
based just north of Bangkok, aptly summarizes the symbolic relations
between Buddhism and politics in Thailand in the 1990s as follows:
'monks can by no means put any pressure on the politicians. But when
a monk has charisma (barami), politicians run to him' (cited by Apinya,
1993: 177) In a 1994 newspaper article criticizing supernatural beliefs
amongst politicians, Guthep Saikrachang, a Palang Dhamma Party MP
from Srisaket Province in the north-east, observed that visiting famous
monks is the 'cheapest way for politicians to promote themselves',
adding the sceptical remark that politicians do not have genuine faith
in particular monks, 'Politicians tend to visit any monk who is famous
at the time'."
The way in which popular monks such as Khoon can act as propa-
gandists for politicians who become known as their faen ('fans' or
followers) or luk-sit (disciples) is shown in the following 1994 report
in The Nation:
According to Khru Job [a clerical follower of Khoon] Luang Phor Khoon
understands everybody, 'That's why many politicians who need emotional
support have faith in him. When politicians are attacked, Luang Phor gives
them courage with his good thoughts and amulets'. Recently, Gen. Chavalit
Yongchaiyudh, Interior Minister and leader of the New Aspiration Party, visited
Luang Phor to ask if he would ever become Prime Minister. Luang Phor's
reply was 'Yes'. In the last general election in 1992, Luang Phor told
Nakhonratchasima people that Gen. Chatichai Choonhavan, the leader of the
Chat Pattana Party, was a good politician because Chatichai and his people
had done good things for people in the province. 'Did I say something wrong?',
said the monk. 'Chatichai really has done good things for Nakhonratchasima
people and Chavalit really will be Prime Minister if he wants to be.'33
Thousands of well-wishers visited Wat Ban Rai on the occasion of
Khoon's nnd birthday in 1994 to celebrate his numerologically auspi-
cious sixth twelve-year cycle. Visitors included politicians such as
former prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan, Chart Pattana Party
deputy leader Korn Dabbaransi, the party's deputy secretary general
32 The Nation, 10 March 1994, 'Politicians warned credibility at stake', p. A2.
33 The Nation, 3 March 1994, 'The humble face of Buddhism', by Nithinand Yorsaengrat,
pp. CI-C2.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 33

Suvat Liptapallop, and Nakhonratchasima MP Wannarat Channukul.

In covering the event the Bangkok Post reported:
In past years, Luang Pho Khoon usually gave Gen. Chatichai his blessing and
predicted he would once again return as prime minister. This year, he said,
'This will be decided by the people. It depends on whether they see his work
has results or not. But I can see he had a lot of achievements when he was
prime minister'.... New Aspiration Party leader Chavalit Yongchaiyudh regu-
larly visits Luang Pho Khoon, so the monk can touch his head. A former
Seritham Party MP for Khon Kaen and now adviser to Public Health Minister
Arthit Ourairat, Somsak Khunngern, once invited Luang Pho Khoon to chair
the production of a batch of amulets named 'Lua kin lua chai' (Abundancej.f
In the same article Chaiyaphum Province MP Wuthichai Sa-nguan-
wongchai was quoted as saying:
All politicians in the Northeast are strong followers of Luang Pho Khoon, not
only because of the effectiveness of his sacred objects but also [because of]
the fact the monk has donated proceeds from Wat Ban Rai to needy people .
. . . Luang Pho Khoon himself said last year he had donated over 300 million
baht to the poor. He said he intended to channel funds form this year's dona-
tions, expected to amount to about 300 million baht, to build schools and
temples among other things."
Some political parties are more closely linked with Khoon than others,
those most visibly associated with him in press and media reporting
being Chart Pattana, formerly led by the late Chatichai Choonhavan,
and New Aspiration led by Chavalit Yongchaiyudh. Both these men
are former prime ministers from the north-east, Chatichai's electoral
base being in Khoon's home province of Nakhonratchasima, while
Chavalit's electoral base is in Nakhon Phanom province bordering
Laos. Both also regularly stage-managed photo opportunities with
Khoon in the mid-1990s. For example, Khoon's 'private' visit to
Chatichai's Bangkok home in Soi Rajakhru in December 1994 was
given considerable media prominence." and in 1995 Chavalit
Yongchaiyudh was photographed having his palm read by Khoon, with
The Nation giving the following caption to its publication of the photo,
'Keen fan: Luang Phor Koon and [then] Deputy Prime Minister

34 Bangkok Post Weekly Review, 14 October 1994, 'Thousands in Korat for celebrated
monk's birthday', p. 6.
35 Ibid.
3~ Bangkok Post Weekly Review, 30 December 1994, photo story, p. 3.
34 South East Asia Research

Chavalit Yongchaiyudh. The monk says he acts like a fortune-teller

because he wants to give "encouragement" to his followers."?
By no means all Thai politicians support Khoon's supernatural and
commercialized form of Buddhism. Members of the Democrat and
Palang Dhamma parties are among the monk's most vocal critics.
Critiques of Khoon are considered in detail in the following section.
Here it is sufficient to note that the alignment of some political parties
for Khoon and others against him reflects a religious divide between
the followers of competing supernatural and rationalist formulations of
Buddhism, and the fact that the pro- and anti-Khoon parties are respec-
tively supported by different constituencies. More populist parties with
a rural base in the country's populous but impoverished north-east,
such as Chart Pattana and New Aspiration, are linked with the super-
natural religion espoused by Khoon, while other parties with a more
urban and middle-class base, such as the Democrats led by Chuan
Leekpai and the now all but defunct Palang Dhamma, are more closely
linked with rationalist formulations of Buddhism.
In 1995 The Nation interviewed Palang Dhamma Party founder
Major-General Chamlong Srimuang, reporting that the former promi-
nent politician and close follower of the heterodox monk Phra
Phothirak, does not wear amulets, although he stated that he used to
wear amulets as a young soldier before he began studying Buddhism
seriously. Chamlong said that after years of thorough study of the reli-
gion, he found that 'real' Buddhists do not need to wear amulets. 'You
won't see a Buddhist monk wearing an amulet, otherwise he is not a
monk at all', he told The Nation. 38
While some politicians manipulate their association with Khoon to
promote their careers, there is also no doubt that significant numbers
of MPs genuinely believe in Khoon's miraculous powers, and their links
with the cult cannot be explained as mere calculated manipulations of
popular religiosity. In 1995 The Nation published a background article
entitled 'The politics of superstition', reporting that 'The House of
Representatives must contain one of the country's greatest concentra-
tions of Buddhist amulet collectors. According to one estimate,
nearly one-third of its MPs collect amulets as a hobby.P? Phisan
Moonlasartsathorn, then Labour Minister in the government of

37 The Nation, 21 September 1995, 'Law makers and luck: the politics of superstition',
p. AS.
3ll Ibid.
39 The Nation, 21 September 1995, p. AS.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 35

Banharn Silapa-archa (Chart Thai Party) and a former science minister,

was cited as being 'among the country's leading collectors of amulets;
he is also a chairman and adviser to several amulet collector associa-
tions.?" The article also noted that Pracharkorn Thai Party leader and
then Deputy Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, 'wears amulets to
remind him of Lord Buddha. He also believes they have magical powers
that protect him from danger. The Prachakorn Thai leader always wears
three amulets, one of which was made by Luang Phor Koon."" Khoon's
popularity with some politicians must therefore be seen as an amalgam
of self-interest and persistent belief in ancient forms of supernatural
power, with the melding agent holding these pre-modern and contem-
porary elements together into a single symbolic complex being the
power of the electronic media and sensationalist press to promote both
religious and secular careers.

Blessing the 1996 general election campaign

Using the criterion of the frequency of his appearance in the press and
media, Khoon's popularity appears to have peaked in late 1996 as
competing political parties sought to enlist his support for their respec-
tive campaigns in the general election held in November that year. In
the period leading up to the election, a continuous stream of politi-
cians visited Khoon, and the abbot was sought out and interviewed by
a wide range of television programmes. On 3 November, the then Prime
Minister Banharn Silapa-archa was photographed paying his respects
to Khoon when he was in Nakhonratchasima to campaign for his Chart
Thai Party." In mid-November rival candidates for the New Aspiration
and Chart Pattana parties in Nakhonratchasima Province distributed
thousands of audio cassettes reproducing separate speeches by Khoon
purportedly supporting candidates from their party, with these rivals
using mobile loudspeakers to broadcast the speeches at opponents'
rallies. Prasert Chanruangthong, a New Aspiration Party candidate for
Nakhonratchasima, hired
40 vehicles [with loudspeakers] to broadcast the monk's speech near the Chart
Pattana rally site where more than 10,000 villagers were expected to attend. The
NAP candidate said he has to resort to the same tactic used by his opponents

40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Daily News, 3 November 1996, photo story 'Seeking Phor Khoon's blessing' (khor
phorn Phor Khoon), p. 1.
36 South East Asia Research

because many constituents have turned to support the two Chart Pattana can-
didates after listening to Luang Phor Khoon's speech supporting them.P
Luang Phor Khoon amulets were extremely popular among candidates
and canvassers across Thailand as gifts to constituents, with one of
Khoon's followers telling the Bangkok Post:
Politicians had bought as many as 50,000 amulets for 10 to 20 baht each ....
Most interest apparently comes from New Aspiration, Chart Pattana and Chart
Thai party candidates in 19 Northeastern provinces .... The abbot said he did
not mind his amulets or speeches being used in the campaigns nor did he
favour any particular party; instead he gave his blessing to any candidate who
asked."

Khoon's 'fatal strategy': undermining Buddhism's political

legitimating role
Whether intended or not, Khoon's support for all candidates in the
election undermined the value of the much-criticized phenomenon of
vote buying. The vast majority of Thailand's monks remain aloof from
the political process, not wanting to comment on or be associated with
any candidate for fear of being seen as breaching the sacred/profane
divide that has historically separated the institution of Buddhism from
direct involvement in worldly affairs, However Khoon takes a different
approach, countering criticism that he has become too world-involved
by saying that even politicians deserve his blessings, which he confers
upon all political candidates indiscriminately. But this means that
partisan attempts to use his blessing as a tactic to increase votes can
backfire, as in the case of the rival Khorat candidates in what the
Bangkok Post colourfully called 'The war of the holy speeches'.
In a letter to the Bangkok Post published just after the election, one
Chiang Mai reader calling him or herself 'Impotent poll watcher'
reported that in villages where local officials had engaged in buying
votes, householders incensed by this corrupt activity had hung large
cloth banners from their windows proclaiming Khoon's advice to
villagers who are confronted by the temptation of being offered money
by political canvassers. The quotation read 'Take the money and buy
some fish sauce. Then go out and vote for anyone you like'." By

43 Bangkok Post, 12 November 1996, 'War of the holy speeches', p. 3.

44 Bangkok Post, 14 November 1996, 'Luang Phor Khoon fever', p. 3.
45 Bangkok Post, 19 November 1996, letter to the editor 'Take the money', p. 13.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 37

drawing on his 'local wisdom' to advise poor villagers to accept the

money offered by vote-buying politicians and then to exercise their
own choice on election day, Khoon undermined the impact of vote-
buying as well as politicians' attempts to use Buddhism to boost their
electoral chances.
Commenting on new charismatic religious movements in East Asia,
Jean Comaroff (1994: 311) has observed that these cults,
provide a dynamism to be harnessed by institutionalised forces, both orthodox
and oppositional, forces with which they may move in tandem for at least a
time .... But because they march to a different drummer, these movements
are never reducible to the rhythm of temporal politics; inspirations remain out
of step, their loyalties to worldly power suspect.
Khoon subverted politicians' efforts to use him for their personal
advantage by supporting all alternative candidates, adopting something
akin to what Baudrillard has described as a 'fatal strategy'. Baudrillard
(see Gane, 1991: 65) has sought to find an impasse out of the failure
of Marxist-inspired revolutionary politics and post-modern cultural
implosion in the West. As part of this quest he has put forward the
notion of a 'fatal strategy' to undermine post-industrial capitalism by
accentuating its features to their logical but absurd and monstrous
conclusions, rather than by presenting an alternative revolutionary
model that he believes would only be doomed to reproduce the author-
itarian structures it seeks to overthrow. I doubt whether Khoon sees
himself as radical. Nevertheless, the consequences of the way in which
he relates to political power in Thailand's emerging semi-democratic
politics has the effect of undermining the historical relationship between
Buddhism and secular authority.
The successful harnessing of religious charisma to enhance an indi-
vidual's political career depends upon establishing an exclusive
relationship to that charismatic source and denying access to competi-
tors. However, Khoon is indiscriminate and promiscuously blesses all
political players, magnifying the historical legitimating relationship
between Buddhism and secular power to include all contenders in the
political domain. By taking the political legitimating function of
Buddhism to its logical conclusion and adopting a universal approach
to the granting of blessings and the dissemination of charismatic power,
Khoon invalidates the legitimatory function.
Khoon's actions in the 1996 general election show how the history
of Buddhism's legitimatory role in Thai politics has been based on a
38 South East Asia Research

monopolization of that relationship by the state. The long but now

increasingly superseded history of state control over Buddhism, which
often involved the suppression of movements outside the state-spon-
sored sangha hierarchy, is revealed as having been an exercise of power
designed to prevent alternative competing centres of power from
claiming association with sources of religious authority. In the contem-
porary era of Thailand's multi-party semi-democracy which is marked
by an end to the monopolization of political power, the legitimatory
function of Buddhism is undermined once it ceases to be contained
and assumes the universal character that the religion's teachings
proclaim it should in fact take.
In Khoon's subversion of competing parties' attempts to claim his
support in the 1996 election we can perhaps see the beginning of the
end of Buddhism's legitimatory role in Thai politics. Paradoxically, that
long relationship has not been challenged by social revolution, as might
have been predicted as recently as two or three decades ago. Rather,
it has been subverted by a rampant inflation of the legitimatory func-
tion across the political spectrum, rendering it worthless for individual
contestants because it can no longer supply any comparative symbolic
advantage by being claimed to offer exclusive support.

Blessing the state and the monarchy

Khoon's cult has also been appropriated by the civilian and military
bureaucracies and most recently by the Thai monarchy. In the 1990s
the Thai state and monarchy can no longer direct the manufacture of
their own sources of religious charisma, as Mongkut did in the nine-
teenth century by establishing and nurturing a royalist Buddhist reform
movement and instituting the worship of a new patron deity of the
Siamese state, Phra Sayamthewathirat. Rather the state and monarchy
seek to enhance their symbolic capital by appropriating suitable popular
religious movements. The monarchy became associated with Khoon
only after the press had established his supernatural reputation, after
he had become the de facto religious patron of the Thai economic
boom, and after prime ministers and politicians had become his
followers. This royal connection was also preceded by Khoon's incor-
poration within the ritual and administrative frame of the national
bureaucracy.
In the 1990s Khoon became in effect the patron monk of
Nakhonratchasima Province, with it being de rigueur for local officials
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 39

to seek his blessing for their activities. For example, in October 1996
Daily News pictured the new governor of Nakhonratchasima Province,
Prawit Sisophon, seeking Khoon's blessing before taking up his duties."
State involvement in sponsoring and protecting the cult is also demon-
strated by the fact that a police box located inside the Wat Ban Rai
monastery gate is called the 'Parisuttho Public Welfare Unit' (nuay
borikan prachachon Parisuttho). The local police station in the district
centre of Dan Khun Thot about twelve kilometres from the monastery
is also called the 'Parisuttho Public Welfare Unit', symbolically uniting
the monk with local sites of state power.
Khoon's charisma inflated yet further in January 1995 when King
Bhumipol and Queen Sirikit visited Wat Ban Rai to officiate at a cere-
mony to install a relic of the Lord Buddha in the roof of the monastery's
main temple building." The ceremony was held to mark Khoon's
seventy-second, or sixth twelve-year cycle, birthday, and on this auspi-
cious occasion the abbot donated seventy-two million baht to the
monarch for royal charities, incorporating the monarchy within the
circuit of the cult's symbolic-economic influences. Also present were
Chatichai Choonhavan, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, and MPs from their
respective parties. Then Prime Minister and leader of the Democrat
Party, Chuan Leekpai, did not attend.
Royal support for Khoon was again expressed visibly in late 1996
when the King and Queen became involved in ensuring the old monk
received the best available medical care after he fell ill. In mid-
December 1996 Khoon was hospitalized in Khorat after suffering dizzy
spells at Wat Ban Rai, subsequently being flown by army helicopter to
Bangkok, where he was admitted to Ramathibodi Hospital as a private
patient by the Queen." Khoon was diagnosed as suffering from
constriction of the arteries to the brain." On 21 December 1996 Thai
Rath published a page one photo of Privy Councillor M. L. Thawisan
Lada-an at Khoon's hospital bedside communicating the King's wish
that the abbot look after his health by resting and not letting his many

46 Daily News, 10 October 1996, photo story, 'Seeking blessings' (khor phorn), p. 3.
47 Bangkok Post Weekly Review, 20 January 1995, 'Monk donates big sum to His
Majesty', p. 4.
4S Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 18 December 1996, 'Ailing abbot now in city
hospital'.
49 Thai Rath, 17 December 1996, 'Phor Khoon ill: orders will made' (Phor Khoon aphat:
sang tham phinaikam), p. 1.
40 South East Asia Research

followers disturb him while he was in hospital" Khoon remained in

hospital for 21 days, and in early January 1997 was escorted home to
Wat Ban Rai in a military vehicle followed by an entourage of 5,000
lay supporters in a fleet of buses and cars."
The King and Queen's visit to Wat Ban Rai in January 1995 and
their visible concern for his health have been widely interpreted as
granting a royal imprimatur to the cult and have had a number of
important consequences. In terms of symbolic capital, the support of
the King and Queen has added yet further to Khoon's charismatic
appeal. Royal support for the cult has also silenced criticisms of Khoon
that appeared regularly in the English-language press and Thai-
language newspapers such as Matichon and Siam Rath up to early 1995.
These now-silenced criticisms are considered in the following section.
Similarly, while there had been public criticism of the printing of the
lucky banknotes with the King's image replaced by that of Khoon, the
royal visit - occurring shortly after this event - was interpreted as
evidence of royal support for these cultic objects, and the banknotes
have subsequently gone through several further reprintings. Later
versions of the lucky bank notes include a photograph of the King
standing in a respectful pose beside Khoon at Wat Ban Rai, the effect
of this image being to demonstrate tacit royal approval for the cult in
general and the lucky banknotes in particular.
Numerous rumours and apocryphal stories now link Khoon with
members of the royal family. These stories circulate nationally, and in
visits to Thailand in 1996 and 1997 I was told variations of the same
tales by sources as diverse as the head of an NGO project in the north-
east, a sales assistant in a Khorat department store, and a Bangkok
taxi driver hailing originally from Udon Province in the north-east.
While differing in their details, these apocryphal stories all reflect anxi-
eties about the future of the monarchy and Khoon's predictions about
who will succeed King Bhumipol on the throne, relating supernatural
and humorous events that are supposed to have happened when one
or other member of the royal family visited Khoon at Wat Ban Rai.
The stories consistently portray the King and his oldest daughter

50 Thai Rath, 21 December 1996. 'Royal concerns about Phor Khoon, requests visiting
to cease so Luang Phor can get lots of rest' (song huang Phor Khoon, rap sang ngot
yiam pheua hai Luang Phor phak mak-mak). p. 1.
5\ Daily News, 7 January 1997. 'Phor Khoon returns to monastery, announces has given
up cigarettes, to refrain from accepting invitations for 3 months' (Phor Khoon klap
wat laeo, prakat la-lerk buri, ngot rap nimon 3 deuan). p. 1.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 41

Princess Sirinthorn in a positive light, and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn

in a negative light.

Critiques of Khoon
Luang Phor Khoon's cult enjoys widespread popular support because
of its supernatural and highly commercial character. However, these
same qualities have also made the cult an object of criticism. While
representing only a minority of the total Buddhist population, signifi-
cant numbers of educated and middle-class Thais are openly critical of
both supernatural beliefs and rituals and the commercialization of
Buddhism. Critiques of Thai supernaturalism date from the second half
of the nineteenth century, and religious commercialization and the
booming trade in amulets were widely criticized in the years before
Khoon's rise to national prominence. Writing in the Bangkok Post in
early 1993, journalist Suthon Sukphisit exemplified this critical perspec-
tive, attacking the commercialization of religion, including activities
such as monks giving predictions on winning lottery numbers and
distributing amulets in exchange for donations. According to Suthon,
'These activities are so widespread that the role of monks in modern
society seems to deviate from what Lord Buddha preached'Y Suthon
is correct in saying that activities such as telling fortunes in exchange
for donations violate monastic codes of conduct laid down in the
Buddhist scriptures. However, these activities are long-established prac-
tices and represent part of the complex hybrid form of Thai religion.
While there are indeed cases of rampant corruption and even sexual
exploitation within the sangha, rationalist critics such as Suthon some-
times lump these crimes together with more benign activities that many
less-educated and especially rural Thais see only as ordinary, expected
parts of their religious practice. What these critiques reflect is the exist-
ence of starkly differing interpretations of what it means to be a
Buddhist, with rationalists seeking a fundamentalist purging of non-
Buddhist rituals and practices in accord with doctrinal principles.
In this context Khoon himself was frequently criticized in the early
1990s for his indiscriminate blessing of commercial undertakings and
for debasing Buddhism by bringing the market-place into the heart of
his monastery. Politicians' interest in seeking supernatural support for

52 Bangkok Post, 16 March 1993, 'Selling short the monkhood', by Suthon Sukphisit,
Outlook Section 3, p. I.
42 South East Asia Research

their careers was also stridently criticized by rationalist monks, acad-

emics, and some other politicians. While not naming Khoon, in 1994
The Nation reported Phra Thepwisutthimethi (former clerical name
Phra Panyananda), a well-known follower of the rationalist philoso-
pher monk Buddhadasa (see Jackson, 1988[a]), as saying,
politicians who pay regular visits to popular monks for mystical purposes are
spiritually weak and lack a proper understanding of Buddhism. All the monks
who practise magic are idiots. So are the politicians who visit them.P
At the same time, Social Action Party deputy leader Dusit Sopicha
warned superstitious political colleagues that they could lose credibility
if they continued to flock to well-known monks such as Luang Phor
Khoon. The Nation quoted Dusit as saying,
Buddhism teaches rationalism, yet many politicians visit famous monks simply
to get amulets and to ask for an oracle regarding their wish to become minis-
ters ... some politicians pay homage to respected monks simply for political
reasons, to become popular with their electorate who respect the monk.>'
The same article quoted Amnuay Suwankhiri, a Democrat Party MP
from Songkhla Province in the far south and former Chairman of the
House Committee on Religious Affairs, as saying that top national
leaders' 'fallacious religious beliefs' could negatively impact on social
values by distorting the Lord Buddha's teachings and leading many to
believe that their lives depend on fate. Amnuay added that some politi-
cians have manipulated certain (unnamed) monks to work as their
political canvassers because monks can guide the people in local areas.
As the Thai economy boomed, more and more people were able to
make large donations to revered monks and religious foundations, often
involving many millions of baht. With this rapid increase in donations
to monasteries came the potential for massive fraud - instigated either
by monks or lay monastery committees. While to date Khoon has
remained free of the taint of financial scandal, some newspaper reports
have expressed concern that the huge sums of donated money that
flow around Khoon and through Wat Ban Rai leave him open to
exploitation by unscrupulous people, and may involve him in unseemly
conflicts of interest.

53 The Nation, 10 March 1994, 'Superstitious politicians and monks taken to task', p.
A2.
54 The Nation. 10 March 1994, 'Politicians warned credibility at stake', p. A2.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 43

For example, in May 1996 conflict over Khoon's visit to Wat Mae
Kri monastery in Phattalung Province in southern Thailand reflected
the significant commercial interests connected to him. The Bangkok
Post reported that Khoon's presence at this monastery's stone laying
ceremony was expected to generate over three million baht in dona-
tions from local residents" On the morning of the ceremony the
provincial governor, Prasit Phanpisuth, invited Khoon to his home: but
then could not bring the abbot back to Wat Mae Kri in time for the
stone laying because Khoon's tight schedule meant he had to attend a
ceremony at another monastery. Villagers were enraged by Khoon's
non-show and refused to donate any money. Khoon's absence meant
that Wat Mae Kri incurred a loss rather than making the expected
profit on the event. Tempers were so inflamed that demonstrating
villagers later blocked the Asian Highway, the main road route to
Malaysia, and demanded that the Interior Ministry transfer the
governor out of the province. The Interior Ministry placated the
incensed villagers by subsequently transferring the governor to an inac-
tive post and reporting that he had agreed to pay 850,000 baht
compensation to Wat Mae Kri from his own pocket." Khoon told the
media that because he had accepted invitations to four different events
on that day, it had been impossible for him to keep the Wat Mae Kri
appointment. As the Bangkok Post commented:
The massive popularity this unassuming monk has attracted brings with it added
duties and responsibilities that have become routine. Luang Phor Khoon seems
to be caught in a web of meeting people and receiving donated money ....
This practice has put monks in a spot where they come under the influence
of consumerism, similar to the general public. Such distractions can easily lure
men with no religious conviction into the monkhood with the hope they would
profit. 57

Khoon's willingness to bless almost anyone or anything has meant that

he has not always been associated with the most savoury or reputable
of people. In late November 1996 a national outcry erupted over police
abuse of power when six suspected amphetamine dealers were
summarily executed in broad daylight, after having been arrested in a

55 Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 5 May 1996, 'Donated temple funds, are they being
spent honestly?', by Thnya Sukpanich.
56 Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 25 May 1996, 'Ex-Phatthalung governor "will have
to pay up'",
57 Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 5 May 1996, 'Donated temple funds, are they being
spent honestly?', by Thnya Sukpanich.
44 South East Asia Research

sting operation in a village in the central province of Suphanburi. The

six suspects had initially held a village family hostage as they tried to
escape the police, but the group eventually surrendered and released
their hostages unharmed. Bangkok Post reporter Suvit Suvit-Swasdi
recounts what happened next:
The police later led the suspects back into the family home [where they had
held the family hostage], claiming they were searching for hidden weapons.
Within minutes, shots rang out at regular intervals. When reporters rushed into
the house, the six [suspects] lay dead on the floor with wounds to their heads."
Police General Salang Bunnag, Deputy Director-General of the
national police force, claimed credit for ordering the extra-judicial
killings. Suvit added: .
When Pol. Gen. Salang went to visit popular monk Luang Phor Khoon Prarit-
Sutho [sic] last December [some weeks after the extra-judicial killings] to seek
his advice and blessing for his campaign against Ya Bah [amphetamines], many
people from the provinces turned up at Wat Ban Rai ... to lend their moral
support. There was much fanfare, with Pol. Gen. Salang arriving with a
squadron of eight helicopters carrying at least 50 policemen .... But behind
the public show of support were the hasty cremation of six bodies [of the
executed suspects] and the demolition of a shack that had been a family homc/"
In this case Police General Salang used his very public visit to seek
Khoon's blessing as a public relations strategy to support his position
in the media war of words that followed the police action.

Sacred/profane: was there any difference in boom time

Thailand?
Khoon would also seem to be open to legitimate criticism because of
his disregard for upholding the sacred/profane dichotomy that has
historically kept Buddhist monks out of the sphere of worldly involve-
ment. Blessing money-making, political power-seeking, and violent
sports such as boxing appear to contradict doctrinal Buddhism's
emphasis on detachment, equanimity, and quietening desires and strong
emotions. However, Khoon's lack of respect for the religious/secular
distinction reflects the persistent supernaturalism of his cult and also
much popular religious belief. Buddhist teachings draw a clear line
between the religious domain, to which a monk should restrict his
5H Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 16 January 1997, 'Forgotten: a never-ending night-
mare', by Suvit Suvit-Swsasdi.
59 Ibid.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 45

concerns, and the secular domain with which he should have no direct
involvement. However, Thai supernaturalism does not draw such a
clear line. In supernatural beliefs any worldly phenomenon may be
subject to good or bad supernatural influences and it is the task of
Thai specialists in supernaturalism to attempt to control the spiritual
influences that impact upon everyday life. Many monks like Khoon
combine in one person the Buddhist renunciate and the specialist in
supernaturalism. While material wealth and political success may not
be proper concerns for Buddhist monks, these areas are central to the
concerns of specialists in supernaturalism. Khoon's disregard for the
sacred/profane division instituted by Buddhism reflects the fact that
the beliefs he invokes and responds to are often more animist than
Buddhist, even though the discourse he invokes and the form of his
ritual are predominantly, but not exclusively, Buddhist. The multiple
sources of Thai religious practice, while contained within a Buddhist
symbolic frame, often lead to the strict letter of Buddhist doctrine being
disregarded.
When pressed to explain the supernaturalism surrounding his cult,
Khoon has at times replied that he is misinterpreted and misunder-
stood by some of his followers. In 1995 he told The Nation that he did
not possess any magical powers, despite the fact that belief in his super-
natural abilities is central to his cult. Khoon said, 'The Buddha images
I consecrate and bless for worshippers to wear are meant to instil the
Buddha's teachings in their hearts so they avoid doing evil deeds.t'"
He claimed that his intention in giving amulets to politicians was to
help them maintain their moral integrity, not protect them, explaining,
'The images I gave [certain] politicians are meant to remind them not
to succumb to evil. They were not intended to be used as supernat-
ural charms to protect wearers from bullets, knives or club attacks."!
However, on other occasions Khoon has defended his supernatu-
ralism. In a Thai-language biography, Khoon responded to critics who
accuse him of practising supernaturalism (saiyasat) in contravention of
Buddhist principles, saying:
If I do something that counters the principles of Buddhism and does not appear
in the scriptures, but which helps people to be freed from their kamma and
benefits the public well-being, then I believe I should indeed perform that
activity (Anonymous, n. d.: 25).
eo The Nation, 21 September 1995, 'Those not-so-magic charms of Luang Phor Koon',
p. AS.
6\ Ibid.
46 South East Asia Research

The above statement demonstrates Khoon's pragmatic rather than

doctrinal approach to Buddhism, and his openness to an eclectic form
of religious practice. In this biography he proudly proclaims as good
the very thing his critics say discredits his Buddhist credentials.
There also appears to be a disjuncture between Khoon's views, or
at least the representations of his views, in English- and Thai-language
publications. In English publications, whose primary audience is among
educated Thais, Khoon is commonly represented as being on the defen-
sive, stating that followers' claims about his supernatural reputation
misrepresent his views. However in Thai-language publications, which
have a much more popular and less-educated audience, he tends to
take an uncritical and accepting position on supernaturalism.
With the royal family's growing association with Khoon since 1995,
direct criticism of the abbot has largely disappeared, perhaps because
of the risk that it might be construed as a critique of the monarchy
and lead to prosecution under Thailand's strict lese-majeste law. In
December 1997 well-known investigative journalist Sanitsuda Ekachai
wrote in the Bangkok Post, 'monks should in no way express a desire
for donations or be instrumental in acquiring money. After all, the
Buddha prohibits monks from touching money, let alone raising it'.62
Such statements are as close as one comes to finding a critique of
Khoon in the Thai press today. The practices he engages in may be
critiqued, but he himself is rarely named, the reader being left to make
the connection for himself or herself.
Throughout the debates over the legitimacy of Khoon's supernatu-
ralism and his commercialization of Buddhism, the Sangha Council has
remained conspicuously silent, neither commenting to support or
oppose Khoon. It is difficult to interpret this silence, as in the 1990s
the Sangha Council has remained quiet on almost all contentious reli-
gious issues except cases of sexual impropriety, fraud, or other illegal
activities by monks. Can this silence on Khoon be read as implicit
support or as a desire to avoid inciting possibly contentious public
debate? I suspect that whatever individual members of the state-
appointed Sangha Council may think of Khoon, after the damaging
religious scandals of recent years they would be unlikely to criticize
any monk who is seen as restoring a degree of public confidence in
Buddhism, even if he is eccentric and unorthodox.

62 Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 24 December 1997. 'A gaping gap in the Sangha's
wisdom', commentary by Sanitsuda Ekachai.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 47

The post-modernization of Thai Buddhism and the

poverty of theory
The dizzying complexity of the Luang Phor Khoon phenomenon defies
simplistic analysis. In the preceding sections I have commented in turn
upon the religious, media, economic, and political aspects of the cult
in order to describe its multi-dimensionality. However, this traditional
step-by-step approach of isolating variables and analysing one dimen-
sion at a time does not satisfactorily represent the totality of the
phenomenon. In analytical terms how does one do justice to a phenom-
enon that is simultaneously a religion, a commercial enterprise, a media
creation, an expression of popular culture, and a focus of contesting
political and state powers? Which of these dimensions, if any, should
be given explanatory priority? I believe that these issues indicate that
current approaches are no longer adequate either to describe or to
account for expressions of religiosity in 1990s Thailand.
The inadequacy of current analytical approaches is further demon-
strated by the fact that the actual condition of new expressions of
religiosity in 1990s Thailand is far more complex than represented here.
Intimate symbolic relationships exist between the cult of Luang Phor
Khoon and other religious phenomena that emerged in the boom years,
such as the cults of the spirit of King Chulalongkorn (see Nithi, 1993),
the Chinese bodhisattva Guan Yin (see Nithi, 1994), and a range of
other figures linked with wealth and prosperity such as Luang Phor
Ngern (Reverend Father Money). Each of these historical and myth-
ical figures forms the focus of a distinct cult which is as
multi-dimensional as the Khoon phenomenon, yet all are also related
in an emerging symbolic complex. For example, cultic products such
as Khoon's lucky banknotes include images of King Chulalongkorn,
Guan Yin, and the Thai deity of wealth, Nang Kwak. In this article I
have simplified the analysis of Thai boom-time prosperity religions by
focusing only on the personality-based cult of Khoon. I am exploring
the symbolic interrelationships of the complex of these religions in
current research.
One way out of the analytical dilemma that studies of Thai religiosity
now confront is to seek an altogether different frame of reference
within which to understand the Khoon phenomenon and the other
prosperity cults of the 1990s. Perhaps the phenomenon needs to be
seen not as a traditionally structured religion but as a semiotic complex
that draws upon religious, economic, political, and other sources to
48 South East Asia Research

create a system of meanings. I agree with Jean Comaroff's (1994:

303-04) proposition that we need to regard Asian forms of capitalism
as 'signifying systems' and contemporary forms of religion in East and
South East Asia as 'evidence of the symbolic richness of the modern
mind ... in response to an explosion of market commodities'. My only
quibble with Comaroff's proposition is that I would replace her use of
'modern' with 'post-modern', for it is clear that the Khoon phenom-
enon and the other prosperity religions cannot be described as
modernist religious expressions based on notions such as rationaliza-
tion, doctrinalism, or demythologization.
In the era of globalizing markets and telecommunications technolo-
gies, our understanding of the religion/capitalism matrix is in flux.
Classical arguments about the relationship between religion and capi-
talism were dominated by Weber's so-called Protestant ethic thesis and
his account of the disenchantment of the social and cultural worlds in
the face of the instrumental rationality of industrialization and moder-
nity. However, as Roberts (1995: 2) points out, 'in an era of resurgent
capitalism [since the collapse of the Soviet bloc] there is a mutual and
dynamic relation between religion and economic processes, involving
in some contexts the growth of new forms of religiosity in the context
of economic activity and wealth creation itself'. This is what Comaroff
means when she says that we need to think of Asian capitalisms as
signifying systems. Such an approach may lead us beyond a reifying
analysis in which 'religion', 'economy', 'media', 'popular culture', and
'politics' are conceived as discrete constructs whose relations then need
to be described and theorized, enabling us to see all as interrelating
semiotic domains marked by hierarchy and contestation. A semiotic
analysis would also help us rethink the religion--eapitalism relationship
and lead us beyond a focus on Thai prosperity religions as a commer-
cialization of Buddhism to view them from an alternative perspective
as a spiritualization of the market.

Beyond Weber: the enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism

As Jones (1995: 9) observes, Enlightenment thinkers endeavoured to
trace the progressive and rational goal of human history, and the soci-
ologies of Durkheim and Weber sought methodologies that 'could
detect the emergence of increasingly more rational social systems
appropriate to the modernity which the physical sciences and their tech-
nological knowledge had rendered possible'. However, Thai religions
of prosperity such as the cult of Luang Phor Khoon indicate that, rather
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 49

than heralding a further triumph of the progress of reason, the boom

years of the past decade were accompanied by a proliferation of super-
natural non-reason. Rapid capitalist growth has not been associated
with an increasing dominance of instrumental rationality in the reli-
gious domain but by a mystification, spiritualization, and enchantment
of the market and capitalist enterprise.
Writing at a historical moment which marked the zenith of modernist
religious expression in Thailand, Kirsch (1977) provides a useful
summary of the modernizing reforms of Thai Buddhism initiated by
King Chulalongkorn in the 1890s and which were continued by a succes-
sion of civilian and military governments through the first seven decades
of the twentieth century. As Kirsch (1977: 265) observes, the modern-
ization of Thai Buddhism was characterized by doctrinal rationalization
and an administrative centralization of the sangha which paralleled the
organization of the government: 'National standards were set for
monks .... The overall thrust of these modern developments has been
to emphasize the central position of Buddhism in Thai religion and
society'. This modernist emphasis on the centrality of Buddhism was
also accompanied by indirect opposition to and at times direct suppres-
sion of supernaturalism.
However, as noted above, since the early 1990s the state has effec-
tively withdrawn from its historical role of guiding the modernization
of Thai religion, leaving expressions of religiosity to individual monks,
interested lay people, and business people who produce, market, and
profit from the burgeoning trade in religious products. Religiosity in
Thailand is no longer 'modern' in the sense of following a path of
doctrinal rationalization accompanied by organizational centralization
and bureaucratization. In the 1990s Thai religion has become increas-
ingly post-modern, characterized by a resurgence of supernaturalism
and an efflorescence of religious expression at the margins of state
control, involving a decentralization and localization of religious
authority. While this transformation has been made possible by the
state's increasing indifference to using its authority to direct expres-
sions of religiosity, or perhaps because of its lack of authority to
intervene, the trend away from rationalism towards supernaturalism
has also been actively encouraged by numerous individuals holding key
positions within the government and state bureaucracies. The institu-
tion of the state may no longer be capable of moulding and remoulding
the sangha in its own changing image. Nevertheless, individual agents
of the state - politicians, civilian bureaucrats, police and military
50 South East Asia Research

officers, the royal family - retain an active interest in the political effi-
cacy of Buddhist symbolism and ritual. However, this religiosity is
increasingly an individual phenomenon and the cults these influential
players attach themselves to are popular, personality-based phenomena
not expressions of state ritual.
To understand the direction of religious change in Thailand, we can
no longer rely on a study of laws or formal pronouncements on
Buddhism or religious interventions by state authorities. We must even
look outside the monastery, to department stores, shopping malls, and
market-places, for it is in these locations that contemporary forms of
Thai religiosity are now most visibly expressed, where popular Thai
religion is commodified, packaged, marketed, and consumed.
In these final sections I explore semiotic approaches to the Khoon
phenomenon, providing an analysis of the cult as an attempt to impose
meaning and symbolic order upon the disorienting dynamism of Thai
economic, political, social, and cultural life during the disruptions of
the boom years. I locate the personality cult symbolically within the
dominant mood of growth euphoria that enveloped Thailand in those
years. A much more sophisticated semiotic analysis than that provided
here is needed in order to understand the Khoon phenomenon and
other prosperity religions in relation to the general resurgence of Thai
supernaturalism during the boom years. At this point I confess a clearer
idea of the deficiencies of current theoretical approaches than of the
form that a semiotic analysis of post-modern expressions of Thai reli-
giosity should take. My remarks here are therefore of the nature of a
proposal about the future direction of research rather than a realiza-
tion of such an analysis.

Pre-modern religion for a post-modernizing society: the

boom and resurgent supernaturalism
The boom years of the 1990s were not characterized by secularization
or any general decline in religiosity in Thailand but rather by a rela-
tive decline in the cultural prominence of rationalist formulations of
Buddhism and an increase in the popularity of a variety of forms of
supernatural belief and ritual. After the death of Buddhadasa in 1993,
the rationalist, critical, and reformist form of Buddhism espoused by
this philosopher monk and his many followers in the Thai intelligentsia
and middle classes was increasingly silenced in public discourse in the
face of a noisy proliferation of supernatural cults. What is the rela-
tionship between the economic boom and resurgent supernaturalism?
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 51

Writers on Thai religious complexity such as Kirsch (1977) and

Mulder (1990) have emphasized that while the Buddhist, Brahmanical,
and animist components of Thai religion are broadly integrated into a
single syncretic phenomenon, each component tends to have a more
prominent symbolic and ritualistic role in distinctive social contexts.
This model of Thai religion as multiple and contextualized perhaps
helps us understand how the different symbolic components of the
Buddhism-Brahmanism-animism complex may rise and fall in popu-
larity over time, with one aspect becoming more prominent for a time,
only to be overshadowed by another component as economic, polit-
ical, social, and cultural circumstances change.
Kirsch and Mulder describe the Buddhist component of Thai reli-
gion as a dominant spiritual form in social domains marked by law and
predictability. Buddhist doctrine describes the cosmos as an ordered
domain guided by a universal rule of righteous law, dhamma, and
unbreakable karmic relations between actions and reactions, and
Buddhism is often the dominant religious form within social and
cultural spaces characterized by established, formalized, hierarchical
relations. Buddhism is the Thai religion of those social domains where
power has been contained, controlled, channelled, rendered
predictable, and so safe. On the other hand, Thai animism is a reli-
gion which dominates in domains of life characterized by
unpredictability, uncertainty, caprice, and chance, where luck and the
raw power of the individual determine survival and success rather than
conformity to established law, custom, and propriety. Animism is a
religion of those domains of social life where power is still uncontained,
uncontrolled, unpredictable, not subject to the rule of law, and so poten-
tially dangerous, a situation which is more likely to pertain in domains
of life outside those contexts which have traditionally defined patterns
of interaction.
Rapid socio-economic change during the boom years saw a prolif-
eration of new commercial settings which operated largely outside the
historically defined patterns and contexts of social life with which most
Thais were familiar. In this period of disorienting rapid change a vast
range of new social contexts was created within which 'success' often
appeared to be beyond the control of the participant actors, deter-
mined instead by the capricious power of the market. It is perhaps
then understandable that these new areas of social life should come to
be related more closely to animist forms of spirituality than to
Buddhism. Formal rationalist Buddhism may have declined in
52 South East Asia Research

popularity during this period of vertigo-inducing change because the

number of social contexts over which this religion has historically
provided an interpretative and legitimatory frame declined relative to
the number of contexts in which chance and risk were the dominant
themes. By this argument, the most popular Buddhist monks in the
boom years of the 1990s would be those like Khoon whose teachings
and ritual practices catered for the experience of chance, risk, and
caprice, and who linked Buddhist authority with access to protective
animist power.

Nostalgia
This animistic atavism appears related to the strong nostalgic aspects
of the Khoon phenomenon. Luang Phor Khoon is perceived to be an
old-fashioned monk who nevertheless operates extremely successfully
within the hi-tech world of Thailand's globalizing economy. His lack
of concern for cultural boundaries and social divides means that he is
perfectly adaptable and open to change while at the same time
presenting an extremely conservative image. In earlier decades of the
twentieth century, rationalist monks such as Buddhadasa and educated
lay social critics sought to reform Thai Buddhism and, in their eyes,
make it more relevant to the modernizing society by a fundamentalist
emphasis on Buddhist scripture, excising Brahmanical and animist
'accretions' and returning to the religion's doctrinal roots.
Khoon's adaptable conservatism shows that an alternative and defi-
nitely more popular strategy for ensuring that Buddhism retains cultural
and social relevance in the post-modern era is not to institute funda-
mentalist reforms but rather to remain faithful to old religious forms
and bless social change. Khoon has provided religious sanction for
Thailand's socio-economic transformation while appearing to remain
unchanged himself, remaining based in traditional lifestyles, language,
and beliefs. Khoon no doubt reminds many of a disappearing rural
world, responding to nostalgia for the idealized simplicity of the past,
while at the same time supporting technological innovation and the
social and cultural consequences of globalization and rapid growth.
Khoon creates an illusion of remaining stationary and being anchored
in the past while in fact being intimately involved in the creation of
the new capitalist society. He provides a symbol of change with stability,
of becoming something new while remaining something old, and of
blessing the disconcerting new market economy by resorting to old-
fashioned comforting rituals.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 53

The monastery as microcosm of the market: Khoon as

Buddhist patron of Thailand's boom
The market is integrated into every level of the Khoon phenomenon,
from the associations of his name and the symbolic form and produc-
tion of his cultic objects, to the activities he blesses and the rituals
observed within the grounds of his monastery. The cult is a highly
material phenomenon and reproduces within the sacral space of Wat
Ban Rai activities that are central to the market economy, symboli-
cally sanctifying commerce, investment, and speculation. Investing
money in expectation of reaping a profit and conspicuous consumption
of new commodities - both key experiences of the globalizing Thai
society - are symbolically recreated within the grounds of Wat Ban
Rai and conferred with supernatural authority.
The donation of banknotes to Luang Phor Khoon, a physical transfer
from the hands of devotees to those of the abbot, mirrors investment
in the market-place. However, here the investment is sacralized and
the return is conceived in terms of merit and good luck rather than
immediate financial profit. Devotees are also able to consume Luang
Phor Khoon paraphernalia. Wat Ban Rai is a Buddhist market-place,
an open air Buddhist shopping mall, with shopping and even bargaining
for Luang Phor Khoon trinkets being an integral part of the experi-
ence of visiting his monastery. This is consumerist Buddhism, where
one can choose from a wide range of religious items to suit one's taste,
or lack of taste. Purchasing Luang Phor Khoon paraphernalia at Wat
Ban Rai affirms one's visit to the monastery, just as conspicuous
consumption within the air-conditioned space of a shopping mall affirms
one's transition from the old subsistence village lifestyle to participa-
tion in the new commercial domain of the city. The person of Luang
Phor Khoon and the experience of visiting Wat Ban Rai symbolize
both the mysterious abstraction of the market and the concrete expe-
rience of consumption. It is then little wonder that given his
media-promoted charisma, his indiscriminate approach of 'bless every-
thing, criticize nothing', and the meaning of his name, Khoon became
the religious patron of Thailand's boom and a symbol of the sanctity
of the country's economic success.
54 South East Asia Research

Commercializing Thai spirituality or spiritualizing Thai

capitalism?
Writing of new cults that emerged in other East and South East Asian
societies during the boom years of the 199Os, journalist Yojana Sharma
has observed: 'Governments across East Asia are becoming increas-
ingly wary of religious cults that are filling a spiritual vacuum in this
region of fast economic growth'F' As examples, he cites the deadly gas
attack by the Aum Shinri Kyo sect on the Tokyo subway system in
1995, and the 1996 arrest in Taiwan of Sung Chi-Ii, leader of the Taoist
Sung Chi-Ii Transmogrification Society, after Sung had swindled
followers of millions of dollars by convincing them he had miraculous
powers. According to Sharma, such cults are an amalgam of indige-
nous beliefs and Western millenarianism, and at times have become
linked to political parties and personalities. For example, Sung was
reportedly linked with members of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive
Party.
However, millenarian cults were not prominent in Thailand during
the boom years and the religious situation in the country during this
period seems to differ from that described by Sharma for some East
Asian countries. Rapid growth did not see a rise in the popularity of
a subversive anti-establishment movement but rather the emergence of
a cult that was symbolically linked with money-making, the state, the
military, and the monarchy. The hybrid Thai religious complex has
produced new cults based on nostalgic revivals of ancient symbolisms
that are widely perceived as having contemporary relevance, with Thai
Buddhism proving eminently capable of being integrated into the new
economically based power structures. While embracing economic glob-
alization and new communications technologies, large numbers of Thais
simultaneously supported a resurgence of ancient supernaturalism and
a return to pre-modern symbolisms. The adaptable multiform character
of the symbolic amalgam that constitutes Thai religion meant that the
Thais had no need to look to the West for new religious forms that
are seen as relevant to the changing social and economic situation.
While many other areas of Thai cultural life were increasingly
Westernized during the boom, religion remained steadfastly Thai and
South East Asian.

03 The Nation, 26 October 1996, 'Local sects thrive on new prosperity', by Yojana
Sharma, p. A4.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 55

Prosperity religions such as Khoon's cult represent attempts symbol-

ically to integrate the new money economy into Thai cultural patterns.
This spiritualizing of the market, investment, and capitalist risk-taking
can be seen as a symbolic 'taming' or 'containing' of the unruly power
of resurgent capitalism, representing an expansion of the Thai symbolic
domain to incorporate the market. By this, the novel and formerly
alien capitalist form of life is resymbolized and indigenized, being inte-
grated with Thai religio-symbolic expectations. Rationalist Buddhist
critics contend that the Luang Phor Khoon cult represents the all-
enveloping power of the market to co-opt and debase Thai culture.
However, the Khoon phenomenon also represents the converse of this,
namely, the plasticity of Thai cultural forms and their capacity to incor-
porate and indigenize new ways of living and working.

The Thai lust for globalization

The Khoon phenomenon provided a source of stability during the
'anything goes' days of the boom, with the resymbolization of the
market meaning that the dramatic changes of the 1990s were able to
be read as a Thai phenomenon rather than as a foreign incursion. As
a symbolic Siamization of local capitalist forms, the Khoon cult facil-
itated socio-economic change by avoiding labelling the disruptive
cultural and other consequences of the boom as foreign or Western, a
divisive situation which emerged in some other South East Asian soci-
eties undergoing rapid global enmeshment and which provoked
anti-Western reactions. In neighbouring Malaysia, the 1990s globalizing
boom provoked identity anxieties among sections of the Muslim Malay
population and saw the further rise of anti-Western rhetoric and Islamic
fundamentalism. By contrast, in Thailand the 'foreign' economic-
cultural form of globalizing capitalism was re-dressed in the comforting
image of a saffron-robed grandfatherly monk, both permitting and
inciting an active lust for global engagement and national transforma-
tion rather than provoking resistance. This lust for globalization
is reflected in Thai academic analysis of the period. As Reynolds
(forthcoming) observes, in general Western post-modernist and post-
structuralist theories have had only a minimal reception among the
Thai intelligentsia. In contrast, 'one theoretical discourse that has flour-
ished in Thailand since the early 1990s is that of 'globalization' (often
rendered as lokkaphiwat, formerly as lokkanuwat),.
The persistence of local symbolic systems and their capacity to be
appropriated for new purposes has permitted Khoon and other
56 South East Asia Research

prosperity cults, such as the worship of Guan Yin and King

Chulalongkorn, to be linked with nationalist narratives of Thai devel-
opment, growth, and cultural pride. The symbolic linking of the Chinese
cult to Khoon is especially significant, and I am exploring this associ-
ation in current research. In brief, I suggest that the Khoon-Guan Yin
link is a semiotic indicator of the integration of Thailand's ethnic
Chinese population into nationalist narratives, permitting Sino-Thai
economic success during the boom to be read as a Thai success story.
While the boom years saw an accentuation of anti-Chinese sentiment
in countries such as Indonesia, in Thailand the 1990s have seen a further
'deproblematization' of the Chinese question, with more complete
enmeshment of the Sino-Thai population into Thai political, cultural,
and religious life, and the beginning of a blurring of the Thai/Chinese
distinction.
In this context it is easy to understand the conservative rather than
subversive character of the Khoon phenomenon and the extent of its
military, bureaucratic, and royal connections. As religious patron of
Thailand's boom, Khoon was taken into the heart of the Thai state,
providing the army, the civilian bureaucracy, and the monarchy with
a symbolic link to the burgeoning economic activity which to a signif-
icant extent was directed by Sino-Thai business elites but which also
became the focus of the lives of most Thai men and women whatever
their ethnic background. Khoon linked 'the (ethnic) Thai people',
Sino-Thai business interests, and the state under the comforting
symbolic roof of Buddhism and rustic animist ritual, becoming a symbol
of a Thailand united in a common quest for national self transforma-
tion through global enmeshment, productive activity, and wealth
creation.
The Khoon phenomenon therefore represents much more than a
quaint or eccentric religious cult. For a few years in the middle of the
19908, the cult of Luang Phor Khoon brought together popular aspi-
rations for a richer, better life with nationalist narratives of Thailand
taking its 'proper place' in the world, and of some day soon becoming
a 'developed country'. At the height of the boom, Khoon became a
symbol of national unity in which all sectors of the population - ethnic
Thai labourers, Sino-Thai business people, politicians, bureaucrats, the
monarchy - imagined themselves as working to become rich together,
proud of their country's seemingly unstoppable march to globally recog-
nized developed status. For a moment all this seemed not only possible
but inevitable.
 The enchanting spirit of Thai capitalism 57

Postscript: Khoon after the crash

Charismatic deflation after the collapse of the bubble

economy?
In this article I have limited my analysis to the period before the floating
of the Thai baht in July 1997 which triggered the devastating financial
crisis throughout South East and East Asia. The deep recession, some
say depression, into which the Thai economy has now sunk will have
inevitable cultural consequences. However, it is still too early to say
what impact the bursting of the Thai bubble economy will have on
prosperity religions such as the Khoon cult, and I am currently
collecting data for a study of the phenomenon in the aftermath of July
1997. Rather than make any hasty predictions, I will conclude here
with some observations on the human limits to the expanding popu-
larity of personality cults, which even in the absence of economic
disasters, ordain an inevitable decline when the man at the centre of
attention inevitably falls sick or passes away.
As suggested in the preceding analysis, once a focus of supernatural
power or charisma is established, then under certain conditions it can
continue to attract more and more followers in an almost exponential
process of charismatic inflation. The contemporary mass media simul-
taneously facilitate and incite this exponential process, becoming agents
promoting the fame and reputation of the man and his cult. However,
human factors impose limits upon the exponential increase in the popu-
larity of a personality-focused charismatic cult. One man can do only
so much, and human finitude provides an upper limit to a personality
cult's influence. When the man at the centre of such a cult tires from
overwork, becomes ill, or passes away, then the process of exponen-
tial charismatic inflation may come undone, being followed by a process
of rapid charismatic deflation. Bangkok Post journalist Thnya
Sukpanich has written about the collapse of formerly popular cults,
saying that:
[A] problem in Thai society is that the average Buddhist follows and respects
particular monks rather than the Buddhist teachings themselves. Therefore,
when highly respected monks pass away ... [their] temple loses its members,
who, in turn seek the guidance of other monks/"

64 Bangkok Post (Internet edition), 5 May 19%, 'Donated temple funds, are they being
spent honestly?'. by Tunya Sukpanich.
58 South East Asia Research

Khoon fell ill soon after the November 1996 general election, forcing
him to cancel his nationwide touring schedule and cut back drastically
on the number of visitors he could receive at Wat Ban Rai. Since this
illness Khoon has been much less prominent in the press, suggesting
a possible unravelling of the manifold influences and connections of
the cult."
However, it is also possible that, given the materiality of the Khoon
cult and the relocation of the monk's charisma into cultic objects, the
passing of the man may have only a limited impact, with spiritually-
charged objects and locations associated with Khoon continuing to exert
a powerful charismatic attraction. The relocation of Khoon's charisma
into the multitude of his reproduced images was forcefully demon-
strated during my visit to Wat Ban Rai in August 1997. Tho life-sized
bronze images of Khoon are installed at Wat Ban Rai, one located in
a large sermon hall immediately underneath the main temple building,
and the second located beside an image of the Lord Buddha in a shrine
on the patio outside the main temple. Both these images had gold leaf
attached, signifying that ritual respect had been shown to them. During
my visit I observed some of the faithful respectfully wai-ing these
images and others kneeling in front of them for extended periods in
prayer. These images of the monk, located close to, but not actually
within, the most sacred space of the monastery, were being prayed to
at precisely the same time as the living Khoon was teaching his dhamma
lesson and giving his blessings in another sermon hall only fifty metres
away.
65 Khao Sot, 29 November 1996, 'Phor Khoon reduces activities' (Phor Khoon lot kit-
nimon), p. 1.

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