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Banyan trees are killers. They start life in a nice mulchy fork of another tree’s branches, and as they grow, they send tendrily aerial roots twisting and twining down and around the host tree. Once the roots find the ground, they thicken and slowly choke the other tree to death. This is the ‘strangler’ fig. A large part of the world considers them sacred.The one in our front yard is at least three stories high and more than sixty feet around. The host tree has long ago vanished and rather than a discernable central trunk, the body of the tree is a braided mess of differently sized roots woven into densely knotted masses. Pillared roots form secondary trunks and hold up the tree’s mass, making it appear as if the one tree is actually a forest of smaller trees with small dark pathways leading into the tree’s interior. It also happens to be wrapped in a giant scarlet ribbon. And there’s an altar in front of it. Any seven-year-old on the planet, and at least one 47-year-old, would want to climb this tree. The problem is the spirits.
The first time we climbed into the tree unseen, but the second
time, Ware, one of the maids, came shooting out of the house like it was on fire. Then ensued the ridiculous part of life where someone tries to communicate something that we don’t understand for both linguistic and cultural reasons. In addition to the rather obvious point that we should get the hell out of the tree, I managed to fish the words ‘dangerous’ and ‘leaf’ out of the torrent of Thai. Later, Google confirmed that eating the leaves is inadvisable and that the sap might be a slight irritant, but I suspect this was just a smokescreen. The real concern was pissing off the spirits. Thais don’t take spirits lightly, and they try very hard to keep them happy.
Although Pong, our landlord, was okay with climbing the tree, he agreed the maids were probably worried about the spirits. Pong was unclear on the specifics of the tree spirits, but there had been a green apparition seen under the tree. And a ghost on the third floor. And, of course, there’s a spirit house in the yard. None of this is fringe crazy. This is just normal Thailand.
In fact, every house, every five-star hotel, every soapy
massage parlor, every government building, school, university, hospital, glittering skyscraper and mall, and a fair few abandoned lots have spirit houses. Perched on a pedestal, they often look like traditional sweeping roofed, high gabled, Thai houses or corncob-towered Khmer style temples. Sometimes there are two: one for the spirits of the ancestors; another for the spirits of the land displaced during construction. While venerating the ancestors is as Thai as rice, placating the land spirits is just common decency. If you take their land and don’t build them a house, they are going to haunt yours. Better to get on their good side.
But there is a right way and a whole lot of wrong ways to do this. To avoid supernatural bad juju, you are going to need an astrologer. There are rules about how you put up a spirit house and how you take it down, when you do it, which direction it faces, what color it ought to be, and where it can and cannot be placed. Once this is sorted, you also need a Buddhist monk, a Brahmin priest, or a shaman -- someone qualified to exorcise residual malignant spirits, lift old curses, bless the
auspicious things you bury under the spirit house, sprinkle the holy water, burn the incense, chant the chants, and coax, or chase, if necessary, the spirits into the new house.
Once the spirit house is placed and prepped, it needs to be properly populated. Inside, there are statues of an old couple, who seem like good candidates for representing the ancestors, or Phra Chai Mongkolis, a gilded figure with a sword in one hand and a bag of gold in the other. S/he is some combination of angel, Lord of the land, and household protector (sword) and bestower of good fortune (gold). Maybe. This is monk-priest-astrologer-shaman esoterica not foreigner at Au Bon Pain knowledge. A very specific group of bystanders, including some combination of servants, dancers, elephants, zebras, horses, and roosters, usually loiter around the house. Once everyone is in position, the house is open for business. Offerings can now be made to curry good fortune and keep bad luck at bay. The spirits seem to prefer marigold-gardenia garlands, lotus flowers, incense, betel nut, cigars, fresh fruit, little bowls of rice, and red Fanta, which is the modern substitute for the blood from the good old days of animal
sacrifices.
Like spirit houses, sacred trees are easy to spot. They are usually big, old, and wrapped in rainbow ribbons. Occasionally, there are also traditional silk dresses hanging from the branches. While the silk-dresses-in-the-tree spirit resides only in the takhiam tree, a different spirit haunts wild banana groves. Spirits and ghosts from Thai folklore have names, stories, and known behaviors, but the bodhi and banyan tree spirits are more mysterious. Their mo jo comes from mother India, who has ‘we invented religion’ status. While that is reason enough, both trees also grow real old and real big, so obviously spirits are going to live in them.
In a world inhabited by spirits, it matters little whether you label something folklore, Buddhism, Animism, or Hinduism. These -isms are mostly white people trying to classify the exotica of the mysterious Orient. The Thais seem wholly unconcerned with specifying who does what in exchange for red Fanta and flowers. What matters is that whoever it is, is happy. As for trees, it wasn’t so very long ago that everyone everywhere venerated them. The ‘modern’ world may be intent on draining the magic from the world, but ever since we climbed down
out of the trees, there has been an archetypical memory lodged deep down in the lizard brain layer of the human mind that trees are awesome. Luckily, in Thailand, they wrap them in ribbons to remind us of the fact, even if they frown upon climbing them.
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Kuan Yin
Karen Johnson
Erawan Shrine
You are probably familiar with the Erawan Shrine outside the Grand Hyatt, it's hard to miss. I was told that when the Grand Hyatt hotel was being built, it was plagued by all manner of problems: workers were getting injured, construction materials were being lost, and there were lots of cost overruns, to name a few. An astrologer was consulted, and he advised that the bad karma came about because the foundation was laid on an inauspicious date. He further suggested that a shrine be built to counter all the negative energy around the site. The Erawan shrine was built in 1956, and the mishaps ceased. You can look down on the shrine from the Skytrain station at Chit Lom.