The guardian spirits

This reminded me of the ritual cow slaughtering scene in Apocalypse Now. It's an interesting story, about a ritual buffalo sacrifice that takes place annually to this day in Chiang Mai province.

The siblings Pu Sae and Ya Sae, the traditional guardian spirits of Chiang Mai, still roam the slopes of Doi Suthep.

The Lawa, the original inhabitants of this area, were cannibals in ancient times. Today, the ancient activities of the Lawa are closely bound up with the Pu Sae-Ya Sae ritual as it is still practised.

Legend has it that when Lord Buddha visited Chiang Mai, the brother and sister followed him with the intention of killing and eating him.

Buddha stopped, spoke to them and managed to persuade them to give up their cannibalistic ways. They pleaded with him to be allowed to eat buffalo flesh instead, even if only once a year.

So it is that once a year at the beginning of the rainy season, this year on June 1, a buffalo is ritually sacrificed near Doi Kham temple in Tambon Mae Hia, home of the planned Night Safari and multi-billion-baht horticultural projects.

The prince of Chiang Mai used to preside over the ceremony, which was also attended by Buddhist monks. This very ancient occasion now seems to be an attempt to bring together Shamanism and Buddhism and also unite the Lawa people, some of whom still live in the area, and the Thais who replaced them.

The ceremony is gruesome; buckets of fresh blood are drunk and flesh is torn off the buffalo carcass and eaten. Lao khao (rice whiskey) is poured down the throat of a spiritually possessed man who runs around with his eyes rolled up into their sockets, climbing trees.

In the words of the Pu Sae-Ya Sae invocation, “Let not the rice of the Lawa die in their swiddens; let not the rice of the Thai whither and die in their paddies.” Clearly, the association between Lawa and Northern Thais is both long and close.