hubby getting back in to wai phra and kataas, again (hubby's best friend, now ex monk of 8 yrs,here in israel to work and make money, so all the cronies are getting reinterested in thassana again). he and buddies are getting in to sak yant and 'lek' (lottery stuff) again too so suddenly we've got incense burning and horoscopes in thai laying around teh house... got me curious but still cant read thai

he has now taped a kataa print-out over our bed under our buddha alter: he explained (in thai) that is the 8 precepts listed along with other stuff/

i am familiar with the 8 precpts can google myself... cant find what he calls - kataa chum nom thevada.... which i tried but cannot find in google. he says he used to know it by heart but as forgotten so put it up, so obviously something said daily, or often, that most thais that spent a few months as a monk would know.

any clues? ...

he'll find it for me in thai but today im in a research mode so...

maybe i can take it off the wall and scan it later tomorrow, for u to all see...

bina

israel

kataa chum nom thevada are verses for petitioning spirits (to do something on your behalf).

oh. sabaijai, as usual a font of knwlege. that would make sense since he's starting a new job and things arent running that smoothly.

how do i find them in english transliteration? any ideas? ive been to the usual accessinsite etc sites...

he's taken a turn for the superstitious lately. typical , covering all bases just in case scenario ) ... well, it certainly cant hurt either...

will scan today hopefully....

bina

israel

Bina, I haven't seen any books that contain transliterations of these, or even the Thai originals.

They don't come directly from the Pali canons so won't appear on accesstoinsight or such.

They're typically a pastiche of Thai and Pali, handed down from one weecha master to another. Weecha (vijja in Pali) literally means 'knowledge' but more colloquially means mastery over spells and magic. The spells differ from lineage to lineage. One of the most famous lineages is that of the late Luang Pu Suk from Chainat, for example. It's a bit secretive in Thailand, ie the masters don't normally share their kathaa outside their own lineage. Some are never written down at all.

The only thing I could suggest is to ask your husband to recite the verses for you and you could write down your own transliteration.

duh... why didnt i think of that, and thanx, didnt know that these kataa were oral only... or by lineage

thats fascinating... i really have to learn to read thai... he got them from the internet, although he knew what he was looking for... the funny thing is that the guys have been sitting around discussing all the supernatural stuff and they forget that i do listen in and understand large parts of conversations (when they dont move to korat dialect or others)... so when i ask questions they they give me bs answers (i guess that ists things women arent supposed to discuss too much-- it seems to me that much of the kataa/sak yant/len kong is a mascualine thing although there are women who deal with this stuff i've noticed its predominantly men... mixing monks and magic i suppose)

although its the women that do most of the 'thassana' in the wat, anon says...

any other info ?...

bina

You're right, the world of sak yan and katha is very masculine. In some ways tit's like clubs for auto buffs, except instead of collecting antique cars and swapping rare parts, it's text, tattoos, amulets and other stuff having to do with the Thai occult world. I've seen Thai men sit around for six hours talking and sharing the 'stuff.'

There are certain katha that everyone knows, and these are probably the ones from the Internet. Sometimes they're reductions of long Pali passages to short sets of monosyllables representing the first letter of every word in the first line of the text only. Everything is about the encapsulation and portability of weecha, which is magic power. To make all this stuff maintain it's power, the user must follow a strict moral code, which include the 5 precepts we all know along with a few more arcane rules, like refraining from starfruit and not walking under a bridge without wearing a hat.

Each sak yan has its own katha. The Five Buddhas sak yan, for example, carries the simple five-syllable katha "Namo Phutthaya" (Hail Buddha).