The sky was streaked with purple once I boarded the early-morning prepare from Bangkok to the Nakhon Chai Si District in central Thailand. For the complete hourlong trip, a monk sat quietly in entrance of me, smiling, gusts of wind swirling the orange robes over his tattoos.
We disembarked on the identical cease, a small station surrounded by thick timber and rice paddies. I watched as he took a seat on the again of a bike and sped off, adopted intently by a number of different passengers. One of many final individuals left on the station, I requested the one remaining driver if he may take me to the Wat Bang Phra.
A couple of minutes later, the golden spires of the temple, glowing within the daylight, got here into view.
It was 2016, and, having simply accomplished an project in Bangkok, I had a free day earlier than departing for Cambodia.
For years I’d been intrigued by the designs of sure tattoos I’d seen all through Southeast Asia, and I wished to search out out extra. A detailed pal, listening to of my curiosity, directed me to Wat Bang Phra.
The early historical past of Wat Bang Phra is murky, although the temple doubtless dates again tons of of years. By the twentieth century it had develop into the famend residence of the apply generally known as sak yant, a type of tattooing that, in response to believers, conveys protecting powers together with the ink of its scripts, geometric patterns and animalistic designs.
The monk Luang Phor Pern, a honored guru who served because the abbot of Wat Bang Phra and died in 2002, is credited with refining and popularizing the temple’s sak yant model. (The concept that tattoos confer particular powers has existed in elements of East Asia — from China and India to Thailand and Cambodia — for 1000’s of years.)
After I arrived on the temple, I walked previous the imposing statues of tigers guarding the primary entrance and slowly made my manner via a maze of ornate buildings and pavilions. Eradicating my footwear and coming into a crowded corridor, I discovered myself weaving via dozens of vacationers who had arrived hours earlier than me and had been sitting on the ground, ready within the dim mild.
In entrance of them, two sak yant masters had been tapping on the backs of two males with lengthy skinny needles, intently centered on their swift, exact and hypnotic jabbing.
After just a few moments of disorientation, I made my solution to the grand corridor, the place the temple’s present abbot, Luang Phor Samang, was sitting earlier than a protracted line of devotees. The guests had been on their knees, holding trays of choices.
I bought an providing set for round 100 Thai baht, or about $3, and joined the road. When it got here time to talk with the abbot, I described my intentions: I used to be not right here for a tattoo, I mentioned, however hoped to take photos of the monks and their apply. Whereas pictures, underneath regular circumstances, is strictly forbidden, the abbot smiled and granted me permission.
Translated actually, sak yant means “to faucet yantras,” a phrase that refers back to the geometric designs used as aids in tantric meditation. Yantras are believed to carry well being, wealth, safety and plenty of different advantages. The apply is embraced by some Thai monks, although it isn’t particularly associated to conventional Buddhist teachings. The apply’s origins — and its purported results — are each non secular and superstitious.
The designs utilized in sak yant embrace geometric motifs, animal shapes and divine representations, accompanied by phrases and spells in Pali, an historical language intently associated to Sanskrit.
Finally I wandered to the temple’s second flooring. By then, a lot of the sak yant masters, together with a handful of unordained tattoo artists, had paused for his or her noon break. Just one was prepared to start out once more. Seated on an armchair, he welcomed me to sit down beside him.
This monk was answerable for listening to guests’ needs, issues and weaknesses, and for guiding them to the precise selection of tattoos. In entrance of him, a newlywed Thai couple was going via a heavy plasticized catalog brimming with designs: deities, tiger figures, geometric shapes.
To be spiritually and superstitiously efficient, sak yant tattoos historically require their bearer to comply with a sure life-style. A customized listing of guidelines and ethical vows — typically together with Buddhist precepts and, in some circumstances, dietary restrictions — is established by the monk who blesses them. If the prescribed guidelines aren’t adopted, then the tattoo is not going to confer its advantages.
Again downstairs, I watched as a monk repeatedly pressed a needle into the again of a person who, clearly in ache, needed to be held nonetheless by two assistants.
I used to be struck by the silence of the ceremony and the velocity of the tapping course of. A sak yant grasp takes between 15 and half-hour to finish a easy tattoo, which could include round 3,000 jabs.
At Wat Bang Phra, a devotee’s first tattoo is often positioned as near the pinnacle as potential — sometimes on one’s again, on the base of the neck — within the type of a triangular form referred to as a “kao yot,” typically thought-about a very powerful sak yant motif. The nine-spired design is thought for its common protecting energy.
Elsewhere within the temple, I discovered the office of the skilled laymen who had been granted permission to apply their artwork at Wat Bang Phra regardless of not being ordained as monks.
A few of them outlined their designs earlier than starting, whereas others started tattooing instantly on clean pores and skin. All of them used lengthy metallic needles, about 18 inches in size, instead of the sharpened bamboo sticks that had been used traditionally. They paused every now and then to dip their needles into bowls of darkish ink.
These males can’t carry out blessings, so, to be spiritually efficient, their tattoos, as soon as accomplished, should be blessed by a grasp monk.
After observing the rituals, I sat for some time within the temple’s lush gardens, watching the river stream previous and listening to schoolchildren chatting and laughing alongside its banks.
The apply of sak yant, I knew, was not with out controversy. Some query its hygiene; others fear that, as worldwide curiosity within the apply grows, sak yant’s non secular parts are being misplaced, leaving solely the shell of its aesthetic enchantment.
However seated at Wat Bang Phra, I felt extra hopeful. Right here, there was an actual sense that this historical type of non secular artwork — interwoven with mysticism and the traditional threads of historical past — was discovering new practitioners, new expression, new life.
Francesco Lastrucci is a photographer primarily based in Florence. You’ll be able to comply with his work on Instagram.
