Gallery 2

 

Magic Tattoos

 

                    

 

The skin is the monk’s canvas

 

 

Using the bare skin as his canvas and the long needle his brush, a Thai Buddhist monk paints an intricate design on a layman’s back with its tattooing skills.

 

Wat Bang Phra is 50 km (31 miles) west of Bangkok. Once a year, thousands of young men of uncertain occupation gather here to be tattooed by monks. The monks do this every day of the year – the tattoos are popular and are thought to afford protection to their wearers – but the big tattoo gathering happens just once a year.

 

 

The ink that has been infused with snake venom and Chinese herbs

 

A story to share: -

A man had been harassed by his neighbors. He feared their designs upon his wife, his young daughters, and his little farm. He begs Luang Phor Pern to inject into his body the spirit of the great Naga, Muchalinda, the immense cobra who coiled his body seven times around the meditating Buddha and flared his great hood to protect The Blessed One from a violent rainstorm. As the monks chant, Luang Phor Pern begins to entwine the man's body with a long blood-puddle that, as an attendant monk blots the serpentine form into recognition, culminates in the center of the man's chest in a hooded, fang-bared cobra's head. The ink does its work and the man begins to hiss and writhe on the ground, raising his chest and turning his head, open mouthed with his lips drawn back to reveal teeth that are ready to bite... incisors, lateral incisors, and canines surround a flicking tongue imitating that of the bifurcated snake tongue, in what are truly terrifying gestures. He flails and slithers uncontrollably as several attendant monks attempt to subdue him. Their efforts are in vain. The man has received the power of the great Naga and only exhaustion will bring him to rest.

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