Karen wrist-tying rites

Wrist-tying is widely practised among different ethnic groups in mainland Southeast Asia. It is primarily associated with the notion of a soul (or spiritual essence) belonging to individual human beings. In a study on northeastern Thailand, Stanley J. Tambiah explained that ‘khwan (or soul in Thai) resides in the human body; it is attached to the body and yet can leave it …. The very act of its fleeing the body in turn exposes the owner to suffering, illness and misfortune’.Footnote ⁶ The well-being of individuals thus depends on the coherence of their soul–body components. The rite of calling the wandering khwan to return to the body and tying it to its owner is an effective way of remedying discomfort and diverse problems.

In general, the wrist-tying rite aims to strengthen individual well-being at various stages of life or at times when a person is exposed to risk. Cotton threads encircling wrists have subtly nuanced meanings across mainland Southeast Asia. In northern and northeastern Thailand wrist-tying (thamkhwan, in Thai) is used in rites of passage such as marriage and ordination, in rites of reintegration after the return from a long trip or recovery from illness, and in rites for healing a prolonged illness or for dispelling bad luck.Footnote ⁷ The central and northern Thai also bind the wrist of a newborn with cotton string in order to implore the soul to stay firm and to enjoy its pleasant surroundings or to protect infants against evil spirits.Footnote ⁸ The Hmong tie cotton threads to bless babies and persons who have been given new names after marriage, trauma or sickness.Footnote ⁹ Wrist threads are also employed to express solidarity in the Thai migrant worker movement; the act of blessing by wrist-tying represents a gesture of concern and compassion among members.Footnote ¹⁰

Similarly, the displaced Karen living along the Thai–Burma border currently conduct wrist-tying at various times for different purposes. During my fieldwork, I found that wrist-tying is performed on three different kinds of occasions. First, it is conducted as part of the traditional treatment for those suffering from a prolonged illness. I learnt about this kind of wrist-tying from Tipadu, an old man who is acclaimed as a cherla padu — great teacher. Footnote ¹¹ He offers various kinds of treatment to patients or sufferers; one of his cures is wrist-tying. He states that it has been a traditional way of healing any diseased persons. When individuals encounter adversity and are mentally exhausted, it is a sign that their souls have been dislodged from their bodies. An individual can recover by undergoing a wrist-tying rite, in order to appease the shocked soul and to awaken it from its state of fear.

According to Tipadu, in general, the Karen wrist-tying rite for a sick person was once a complicated and long-drawn out ritual, however. It had to be performed by respected elders in the community. Sacrificial offerings were used to lure the soul back. Before tying the patient's wrist, the elders conducted the soul-calling rite to ensure the soul's return. It was performed at several places: the site where the unfortunate or shocking incident had happened, at the foot of the entry ladder to a patient's house, beside the patient's bed and at the hearth in the kitchen. At each place where the soul-calling was performed, Karen elders applied a different method to check the status of the soul's return. For example, they burned white cotton threads near the patient's bed. If the flame flared in the direction of the patient, it meant the soul was back with the body. A similar rite was repeated for three evenings; only then was the final rite of wrist-tying conducted on the morning of the fourth day.

Karen people today no longer follow these procedures, said Tipadu. No one wants to spend so much time and do so much preparation for the rite. The Karen have become increasingly oriented toward Western medicine. Consequently, the wrist-tying rite has been largely modified to suit modern lifestyles and Karen tend to seek it only after a disease does not respond to Western treatment. When in need of this alternative treatment, Karen patients visit Tipadu and ask him for a short version of wrist-tying healing. Tipadu prepares the cotton strings himself, and the sick person just brings simple offerings such as tobacco, betel nuts, betel leaves, candles, and compensation money. The ritual lasts ten to twenty minutes from start to finish. Tipadu recites a soul-calling chant and ties the string around the wrist of the afflicted person.

The second type of Karen wrist-tying is performed to bring auspiciousness to a couple during their wedding. It is regarded as an important, compulsory rite for Karen weddings and represents the acknowledgment of marriage, a major transition in life. During marriage one person's soul is exposed to that of another. The rite is practised to calm the couple's souls and enhance their married lives. The parents and grandparents of both the bride and groom tie white cotton strings around their wrists individually. Each family member calls the souls of their children to be with their bodies before the tying, blessing them during the actual act of tying the string. Karen weddings I attended in both Thailand and Burma featured wrist-tying as the most important procedure of the ceremony. Many poor Karen couples who met on the border just perform a simple rite of wrist-tying to mark their union.

The last type of wrist-tying is the one called (in Pwo-Karen) lakhao knaing dju, ‘the eighth month wrist-tying’. This is an annual exclusively Karen ceremony held both in Thailand and Burma. The ceremonial date is set on the full moon day of the eighth month of the Buddhist lunar calendar, which mostly falls in August. The forcibly displaced Karen in Mae Sot valley actively participate in the event. In each Karen refugee camp, the ceremony has been organised annually by the camp committees. Karen living outside the refugee camps can attend a ceremony supported by the Karen Youth Organisation (KYO), the civilian arm of the Karen insurgent group. In Mae Sot town, the KYO has been holding the event since 1992 for the displaced Karen living and working in and around the town.

Community-wide wrist-tying events are inclined to develop in opposite directions among Karen of Thai origin and Karen on the border. Thai Karen communities near Mae Sot town no longer hold the ceremony. As Yoko Hayami observed, there was declining participation in the ritual in her study area (Chiang Mai Province), due to discontinuity in the office of traditional ritual leaders and economic difficulties experienced by Karen families.Footnote ¹² In contrast, lakhao knaing dju has become a significant occasion for the displaced Karen on the border. It is an event which allows them to publicly reassemble annually. In Mae Sot town, lakhao knaing dju has been held continuously for 18 years at Dawya Kyaung (‘forest temple’, in Burmese). The ceremony at this temple is open to any Karen living in the Mae Sot valley. The organiser facilitates participants' journeys to the venue by coordinating with the local (Thai) police to allow Karen to travel to Mae Sot without risk of arrest. Many working Karen take the day off and walk to the venue to get the white cotton tied around their wrists.

Recently, other small settlements of displaced Karen around Mae Sot town have also initiated lakhao knaing dju for and by themselves. In 2009, I found Karen communities in the villages of Sawtika, Timboti, and Mao near Mae Sot holding the ceremony.Footnote ¹³ Informal Karen leaders in these villages coordinate with the appointed local Thai leaders to organise the activity. While about four to five thousand people took part in the ceremony at Dawya Kyaung in 2009, more than one thousand participants gathered in each of these village ceremonial sites. At least four schools for Burmese migrants (mostly ethnic Karen) also hold the lakhao knaing dju for students as well as their parents. The multiple venues of lakhao knaing dju indicate the popularity of this rite among the large ethnic Karen population in this Thai town.

The growth of lakhao knaing dju among the Karen refugees raises several questions for the anthropological study of this traditional custom. Large numbers of Karen participate wholeheartedly in the ceremony, although they have been physically uprooted from their homeland. How has lakhao knaing dju been transmitted over the course of six decades of suffering due to civil war? In displacement, why does the ceremony remain so important to Karen people, and attract such large crowds? Why are the organisers so determined to hold the event? And how do ordinary Karen refugees perceive the ceremony in their present context? This article attempts to answer these questions by an ethnographic investigation of a wrist-tying ceremony in one of the three villages mentioned, Sawtika.

Karen nationalist influences

This section describes how the contemporary lakhao knaing dju is organised and discusses how its ritual elements are influenced by the Karen National Union (KNU). I will discuss these points, based on what happened in the ceremony held by Karen leaders in Sawtika village. Lakhao knaing dju in Sawtika village is a significant cultural event, attracting a large number of Karen living in the vicinity. Timaw and his assistants, as informal Karen community leaders, have held the ceremony every year for the past ten years. It is largely made possible by the financial support of and donations from Karen resident on both sides of the border. In 2009 the ceremonial date was set as 5 August by Karen leaders in the village. Doctrinally, the ceremony is unrelated to Theravada Buddhism, but the main hall of Sawtika's Buddhist monastery was borrowed as the ceremonial venue.

First, a committee was set up, comprising of eight senior and respected Karen men and women. They had a meeting and planned to raise funds for the ceremony. The necessary donations were gathered from both internal and external sources: a fixed fee (THB50 or about US$1.6) was compulsory for each Karen household in the village, while nearby Karen village headmen collected donations from their members. Some affluent Karen families from outside gave substantial amounts of money — THB1,000 to THB3,000 each (US$34–100). All the donations were then pooled together and disbursed by a committee who kept the accounts for the event.

The ceremony required substantial preparation. The day before, leaders and several residents of Sawtika's Karen community gathered for the final preparations at the monastery, mostly for the communal feast the following day. More than ten men chopped firewood and worked in front of a stove with giant cooking pots. Around forty women prepared the ingredients — cleaning, peeling, and chopping large piles of vegetables.

The wrist-tying ceremony at Sawtika was characterised by the prominence given to distinctive markers of Karen ethnicity, both in terms of the decorations and cultural and ritual performances. Inside the monastery hall, two young men set up a ‘stage’ simply by hanging a giant blue sheet of cloth on one wall. On the cloth backdrop was written both in Pwo-Karen and in Burmese: ‘The 10th traditional Karen white-thread wrist-tying ceremony — Sawtika 5 August 2009’.

The stage decoration consisted of cultural symbols of Karen identity, which the KNU has continually disseminated, including Karen clothes and materials. Two life-size drawn figures dressed in traditional Karen costumes — male and female — were placed on the right and left sides of the backdrop. While the male figure played a Karen banjo, the female figure was drawn in a dance pose. Pictures of a Karen bronze drumFootnote ¹⁴ and two water buffalo horns were also attached to the top of the cloth backdrop. Chodee, the stage decorator, considered the drum and horns as important symbols of Karen ethnicity. They are used by the KNU in its national flag and badge. Chodee explains that he designed the stage setting from his childhood observations of several such ceremonies in the refugee camp where he grew up. These symbols are very familiar to all those who have spent time in the camps.

In addition to the decorations, the evening's entertainment illustrated the intrusion of KNU imagery in the way lakhao knaing dju is held. All ceremonial sites that I visited organised a Karen cultural performance competition the night before the wrist-tying day. The competition included a variety of solo and group cultural performances. In Sawtika, the 2009 show included individual and choral singing, dances, a short drama, and a children's fashion show of Karen costumes; the top three winners in each category received awards. The performers were local residents and guests from other Karen communities living in Thailand or Burma. One of the committee members explained that the night session was for fun and to encourage participants to learn about Karen culture and language. Karen cultural appreciation is often stressed by elders who used to be KNU leaders, even though it contradicts the general use of Burmese during the ceremony. The latter is a lingua franca among diverse Karen subgroups in Burma.

Karen nationalist elements became much more explicit on the day of the wrist-tying ceremony in Sawtika. The ceremony began in the morning rather formally. As soon as all the participants had arrived, Timaw, the village headman and ceremonial moderator, announced the opening of the ceremony. Most participants sat down on the floor of the hall, facing the stage. Those remaining outside the hall were requested to be quiet. Timaw greeted and welcomed his fellow Karen. Then he asked everyone in the audience to stand up to sing the opening song of the ceremony, ‘aukoo aukong’ (discussed later in this article). Then the three elders sitting on the stage were invited one by one to give a speech.

One of the three elders reminded the audience that the Karen had migrated from the same place of origin; their current cultural differences are only the result of separation during migration and of having to settle in different places. He also mentioned that lakhao knaing dju was a traditional custom that all Karen subgroups shared before converting to other world religions (Buddhism and Christianity). The performance of lakhao knaing dju, he said, is an annual occasion for the reunification of Karen subgroups. He emphasised the importance of having all Karen participate in the ceremony. For him, the practice contributes toward Karen prosperity as a group because it represents Karen national unity, which means that the Karen then cannot be easily destroyed or separated.

A sense of pride in Karen distinctiveness and an emphasis on national unity are ubiquitous during lakhao knaing dju. I found a similar emphasis at two other ceremonial sites in 2009. This is also reflected in an anonymous speech during a wrist-tying ceremony in a Karen village on the Burmese side of the border in 2004:

The quote demonstrates that the Karen nationalist movement has indeed appropriated lakhao knaing dju in the interests of their nation-making project. The KNUFootnote ¹⁶ has infused a sense of ethno-nationalism into the traditional ceremony practised by some, not all, subgroups of the Karen people.

The KNU's tactic of inserting the ethno-nationalist notion appears in its own version of the origin and function of this ceremony. Another example of this historical narrative is found in a document written in Burmese by Saw Aung Than, ‘The Karen traditional wrist-tying ceremony’.Footnote ¹⁷ Twenty copies of this piece were distributed at the ceremony in Sawtika village in 2009. The document narrates the story of the origin of the wrist-tying ceremony supporting Karen nationalists' accounts of their ancestral migration.Footnote ¹⁸ Saw describes how their ancestors migrated from the high plateau of present-day China down to lower Burma, in search of a peaceful settlement. The boat journey along the various rivers separated them, resulting in diverse Karen subgroups and dialects. Following this period of separation, a meeting of Karen leaders and elders organised lakhao knaing dju as an annual activity to celebrate Karen reunification.

Saw Aung Than's account makes it clear that the Karen nationalist movement has fostered lakhao knaing dju as a collective ceremony for the whole community. The ceremony, as a collectively-organised activity, first appeared in the early twentieth century. Tipadu does not dispute that the present-styled lakhao knaing dju was influenced by Karen nationalist organisations like the KNU. According to Tipadu, in the past lakhao knaing dju had been practised only at the household level. Each household within a community conducted the rite on the same day in their homes, with elders and visitors moving from house to house in order to conduct the wrist-tying for families. Today, lakhao knaing dju has become a large collective event in towns or large rural villages, although some remote rural Karen villages still practise it at the household level.

Karen soul theory

The ceremony has clearly become saturated with Karen cultural boundary-marking and ethno-nationalism. Lakhao knaing dju is an effective creation by Karen ethno-nationalists, given the large crowds of Karen eager to attend the ceremonies. To quote Rajah, the wrist-tying ceremony seems to be a ‘manifestation of a pan-Karennic-speaking nation of intent, one that transcended dialectal, religious and locale-specific differences with entirely modern, secular, civic aims’.Footnote ¹⁹ Put differently, lakhao knaing dju is an invented tradition of the Karen nationalist movement — in the sense of the reproduction of cultural repertoires and the promotion to the status of a national symbol. How and to what extent has this appropriation of vernacular culture by the KNU taken place in the late twentieth century? In the following sections, I examine the way that the movement borrowed existing cultural elements to disseminate the Karen nation-making project.

To what extent is the Karen wrist-tying ceremony a continuation of pre-existing practices? This is an important question because Eric Hobsbawm's argument about the invention of tradition has always involved the recognition of cultural reproduction. Invention does not mean a completely new creation and discontinuous with, in this case, the rest of the Karen social and cultural repertoire. Rather, the invention of tradition is a process of cultural adoption and utilisation. This article argues that the popularity of the wrist-tying ceremony draws greatly upon the way in which Karen nationalists appropriated the indigenous conception of idiomatic soul–body relations into their rhetoric.

My immersion in the preparations provided insights into the way Karen participants themselves comprehend the ritual. Other rites also take place during the ceremonial gathering days, but are rarely discussed in public representations made by Karen about their culture. One of them is the soul-calling rite. The rite is a part of lakhao knaing dju, but it is conducted rather quietly. Although this rite provides an alternative meaning to the ceremony, it appears to have been intentionally overlooked by many Karen leaders in Sawtika during our interviews.

On the preparation day, I found a group of women sitting at one corner of the monastery hall, preparing a sweet made from glutinous rice mixed with red beans and wrapped in banana leaves. Pairs of these packages were bound together with plastic bands before being placed into a giant steaming pot. The sweet is called in Pwo-Karen go mi aing (sweet glutinous rice). Go mi aing is said to be one of the seven compulsory ritual objects used in the soul-calling rite, which is conducted in the late evening of the day before wrist-tying. The soul-calling rite requires seven ritual objects: water, white cotton threads, sugarcane, flowers, bananas, rice balls, and steamed glutinous rice. At Sawtika, seven bamboo trays, each carrying seven items, were arranged for the coming rite.

The soul-calling rite aims to call a person's soul back to live in harmony with his or her body. It reflects Karen spiritual beliefs and animist practices; every human body has a custodial spirit that Karen call the soul. Generally, the soul tends to leave the body when a person is shocked or frightened — its departure results in physical or mental sickness and misfortune. Therefore the soul must be called back to restore personal health and strength. According to Karen elders, the rite should be performed at dusk because they believe that the evening is the time when wandering souls get tired, become conscious that they are far away from home and then wish to be back. In discussion with elders, there was no unanimity about what the soul is. Some say it is a single entity, while others believe that there are seven souls residing at seven different locations in the human body.

The soul-calling rite is conducted under the instruction of a revered ritual leader. In the Sawtika ceremony, this was Tipadu, who was invited by the organisers to take responsibility for the duty. While the Karen refugees in Sawtika do not have a permanent ritual leader, this traditional healer was seen as the appropriate person to conduct the rite. At sunset on 4 August 2009, the rite was conducted at the entrance to the monastery. The passage represents the residential gate through which the soul will return home to the body. The procession was led by Tipadu, other elders, and seven teams carrying the seven bamboo trays. Each team comprised an elder (a man or a woman), a girl and a boy, thus symbolising successive Karen generations.

The main part of the rite was the soul-calling chant. Tipadu started the rite by asking elders at each tray to light a candle and then tap their trays with wooden spoons. According to Tipadu, candlelight makes the way back home visible to wandering souls, and the tapping sound of a familiar utensil helps souls to recall the place to which they should return. At the same time, he improvised a soul-calling chant. Among other things, Tipadu says the following:

At the end of the chanting, the elders stopped tapping their trays. Tipadu asked: prü g'la kaey thai voe yao aah? (Have all souls come back?); and all tray holders as well as other participants replied simultaneously: kaey thai voe yao ([they] have already come back). The question-and-response was repeated thrice, and the rite then ensured that the soul had returned. The wandering soul was thus restored to the body that evening. It stays and relaxes overnight at home. As all will be relaxed and calm the following morning, the wrist-tying rite then takes place. When the soul is reunited with the body, physical well-being is restored.

It was notable that except for the elders and teenagers I mentioned above and some ceremonial committee members, no other Karen attend the rite. I asked an elder the reason for the absence. She said people had to go to work that day, and their homes were also far from the venue. In her opinion, the soul-calling is quite relevant; it is compulsory before the collective act of wrist-tying. She added that, allowing for time and transportation constraints, Tipadu would conduct the rite again on the main ceremonial day, when people could stop work and bring their entire family to attend the ceremony. A small group of people would take part in the soul-calling rite in the evening, and the short rite would also be repeated for everyone the following day.

The soul-calling rite shows clearly that lakhao knaing dju is not exclusively about the Karen imagined community, but is a matter of individual security and psychological well-being. The returning of the soul to the body was further reinforced by an added protective and strengthening measure.

Karen view the world outside their homes as being full of malevolent spirits that can harm or weaken wandering souls. Blessings from powerful beings can enhance the well-being of individual souls. So a short Theravada Buddhist rite was also intentionally conducted after finishing the soul-calling rite, although Karen leaders frequently claim that the wrist-tying ceremony is a quintessentially Karen custom separate from their practice of Buddhism or other religions. The seven trays were brought back to the monastery hall, and a Buddhist monk was asked to recite a series of chants before these trays. Tipadu explained that the Buddha's teaching (in the form of the chanted verses) is powerful, providing protective and soothing effects to the returned souls. Obviously the Karen animist rite was supplemented by a Theravada Buddhist element, for ensuring the soul–body connection. After the monk finished chanting, all seven trays holding the offerings were carefully put away in readiness for the wrist-tying rite the next morning.

Traditional–modern ties

In his Introduction to a vibrant collected volume about the study of ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Philip Taylor proposes the new approach of ‘minorities at large’, which emphasises ‘their capacities for agency, spatial relationships and representation of their identity by themselves and others’.Footnote ²⁰ Taylor argues for the moderate recognition of structural forces over social transformations. The approach acknowledges the continuing role of a minority's tradition and competencies in the modern world of capitalism, state power, and other social changes. He rightly mentions that ‘the modern condition, in which ethnogenesis, boundary-marking and assertions of traditional authenticity occur … are not historically unprecedented conditions, and … the contemporary dynamics of ethnicity may have important “premodern” antecedents’.Footnote ²¹

Another intriguing work on the continuation of particular traditional practices is Ian Harris's study of the political discourse on territory in Cambodia. Harris vigorously suggests that the modern understanding of the state as a bounded territory did not result merely from the imposition of Western concepts such as modern mapping and surveying techniques. His historical research is predicated on Carl Schmitt's argument that most elements in the modern doctrine of the state are ‘secularised religious concepts’. Ian Harris's article then points out that Cambodia's border obsession and xenophobia over neighbours' invading Khmer territory ‘contain strongly exorcistic and purificatory dimensions deriving from indigenous religious categories’.Footnote ²² By exploring the transition of the concept of sima (the monastic boundary) in the Cambodian Theravada tradition, Harris finds that it was only after Cambodia's purified and rationalised Sangha reforms and the rise of Buddhist modernism ‘that this creative tension began to unravel and the “fluid” frontiers of the past transmogrified into the fixed or solid boundaries of the present’.Footnote ²³

Based on these discussions, I suggest that it would be too simplistic to conclude that the Karen nationalist emergence resulted only from exposure to external forces and modernity. Rather than seeing this ethnic boundary as merely a modern and derivative social artefact, it is necessary to investigate the relations between the primordial culture and the allegedly invented one. Mikael Gravers' criticism of the postmodernist position also reminds us to be careful in examining Karen ethno-nationalism. He argues that populism ought not to be read as a sign of inauthenticity; the Karen have indeed been active participants in the making of their own history.Footnote ²⁴ Anthropologists then can examine the complex social realities of ethnic representations without overlooking ties with old cultural practices.

Following the notion of continuities, I would like to argue that the Karen nationalist movement structures Karen culture as well as is reciprocally structured by it. The Karen wrist-tying ceremony indicates that the relationship between nationalists and lakhao knaing dju is reciprocal and complicated. While the Karen nationalists appropriate lakhao knaing dju to promote a primordial identity and the unified nation-making project, the soul theory implied in the ceremony also has a significant influence on Karen national ideology. An example of the relationship explicitly appears in the opening ceremony song ‘Aukoo aukong’. The lyrics of the song are as follows:

‘Aukoo aukong’ was composed by a Karen nationalist in the 1930s in support of their nationalist movement in Burma. Given the similarity of its lyrics with soul-calling chants, the song appears to be an effective creation by ethno-nationalists based on the vernacular prayer. The song calls back dispersed Karen in the same manner as chants call wandering souls home, asking Karen to live in proximity, as in the soul–body association. While the soul is told not wander away from the body to dangerous places, the Karen are reminded that they should not be separated by religion, geography, or language. The reunion of the soul–body is a metaphorical reference to Karen realignment. Just as soul–body togetherness brings personal well-being, such an alignment renders Karen collective well-being as well. Finally, the song reminds Karen that they should live in close association until death, as in the soul–body companionship.

The song used in the wrist-tying ceremony thus demonstrates that Karen nationalism has been popular and efficacious as a political utterance by borrowing structure and content from the soul-calling incantation. It is a genuinely nationalist song, attempting to assert the notion of a unique Karen ethnic identity, aiming to overcome differences in religion, dialect, and origin among the so-called ‘Karen’ people. This Karen nationalist song substantiates their political goal of nation-making through roots in the soul–body theory. Its lyrics show that Karen ethno-nationalism has spiritual connotations. The song also use primordial and vernacular Karen idioms of identity and well-being. The composition speaks about Karen nation-making as analogous to the creation of one unified, gigantic soul.

The traditional and modern continuities are also explicit in the nationalists' use of material symbols. The bronze drum and water buffalo horns at Sawtika's wrist-tying ceremony are usually claimed as Karen cultural symbols. While the drum is used on the Karen national flag, both drum and horns appear as the KNU symbol. In one of my trips to Hp-an plain inside Burma, a Karen nationalist friend also tried hard to find the drum collection and show me one of the few remaining traditional Karen drums. These drums and horns are musical instruments that Karen have used for spirit worship since ancient times. Richard M. Cooler states that the ancestors of the Karen initially used the drums in the last quarter of the first millennium A.D. and that drum ornamentation was gradually developed to express their beliefs.Footnote ²⁶

Experiences of ritual objects

The Karen fascination with cultural materials and traditional practices may not necessarily involve a wholehearted endorsement of the Karen nation-making ideology, however. Participants' own understandings of the ceremony are quite diverse, depending on how they see and interpret different elements of the event. The current wrist-tying ceremony is persuasive and effective because of continuities and ties with existing practices that permit subtly nuanced and multiple, coexisting meanings — either contradictory or supplementary. This section investigates how the ceremony is important in a different way to participants, by looking for the way they make sense of the ritual objects.

At the end of the opening session, the wrist-tying ceremony in Sawtika village turned into a mode of ritual action, led by Tipadu. As mentioned above, the soul-calling rite was first conducted on the eve of the main ceremonial day, but a repeat took place in the monastery hall with about 1,500 participants. The soul-calling incantation was chanted. The short interrogative dialogue asking whether the soul had returned was loudly and clearly uttered three times. After assuring the soul's return, the ritual leader and participants started the wrist-tying rite. Tipadu ordered those sitting beside the trays with offerings to start tying threads around wrists. Elders picked up white cotton threads from the trays to tie around the wrists of boys and girls who sat next to them. The older person would rub the child's wrist with a thread, then intone a short soul-calling chant while wrapping the thread and knotting it. Other participants waited their turn in queues. The ritual objects on the seven bamboo trays were split up into additional trays to create more service stations for wrist-tying. Very quickly, the monastery hall was filled with many different small groups as young Karen waited to ask revered elders to tie threads around their wrists.

As an anthropologist observing the rite, I attempted to conduct informal interviews with participants about the significance of lakhao knaing dju, but it was not as easy as I anticipated. I received two broad types of answers. A few Karen described the act of tying as a fixing of the soul to their body, but could not explain what the soul actually was. Many interviewees just said that it was a traditional ceremony that Karen people have long practised, one which they inherited from their ancestors. My attempt to explore the symbolic meaningFootnote ²⁷ of the lakhao knaing dju failed because the ritual elements were conducted in a habitual way and the participants were unable to express their significance verbally.

What struck me during the ceremony in Sawtika was the Karen fascination with materials used in the event. Ritual materials seemed to have great appeal for the Karen participants; they spent a lot of time preparing them and treated them as if each had its own special potency. At one point during the wrist-tying rite, each participant would hold a small portion of a ritual object in his or her hand. Many attempted to grasp a fragment of one of the objects before getting their wrists tied. What do ordinary Karen actually perceive about the materials used during this ritual?

Several participants actively employed analogical reasoning to explain the ritual objects. The most well-known metaphor, among leaders as well as ordinary Karen, is the use of the twin go mi aing sweets as an analogy for unification and integration. During his speech at the opening ceremony, the senior Karen leader had claimed that the seven ritual materials represented particular qualities of the Karen. While go mi aing was described as an example of harmony, he also drew analogies between water and coolness, between cotton thread and strength, between a bunch of bananas and orderly coexistence, between flowers and resilience, between evenly-jointed sugarcane stems and consistency, and between rice and power/potency. Overall, the metaphors, he claimed, promise a future of prosperity, harmony, well-being, and betterment for the Karen people and the continuity of the Karen race.

I would argue that the seven ritual materials used in the ceremony are the meaningful vehicle in the ritual, and that the referents' meaning in polarised relations between physiological terms and normative values are linked to Karen principles of social life. Christopher Tilly points out that ‘[m]etaphor is part and parcel of cultural creativity … It allows an understanding of ritual in its performative and social context, and in terms of the individuals who take part in them and their improvised and contingent transmission of knowledge’.Footnote ²⁸ The materials and metaphors embedded in the ceremony provide the foundation for Karen ethno-nationalism. The ceremony has become significant to Karen who have embraced this ideology. Some senior community members, who are ex-leaders of the KNU, were earnestly urging passersby to attend the ceremony. One of them even railed against those of his fellow Karen who were abstaining from the event.

Many ordinary Karen ceremonial participants drew upon and understood the meaning of the analogies in their own way. While some borrowed the symbolism of these materials to invoke the notion of national uniqueness, most Karen are inclined to imagine the order and well-being of their own (or their family's) lives. Ordinary Karen make sense of the seven ritual objects in diverse ways. These referents embodied potentially multiple meanings, as Victor Turner says about multivocality — a symbol represents many different things and actions.Footnote ²⁹ Christopher Tilley also argues that ‘[a] ritual message can be interpreted simultaneously by different participants using different keys for decoding’.Footnote ³⁰

There are at least two interpretations of the use of ritual materials in the ceremony, and these are sometimes ambiguously combined for some Karen informants. The first type of interpretation sees these objects as food to satisfy the returned soul. At Sawtika, I asked a few elders to tie threads around my wrist; a few familiar elders responded, including Moe Tin Tin, who intoned a distinct soul-calling chant as she rubbed a cotton thread just above my wrist:

For Karen, the soul is a spiritual essence that knows hunger and can become satisfied after eating. Moe Tin Tin explained that a wandering soul is usually tired and hungry. As soon as it hears the calling and returns home, it is pleased with a feast which comprises rice (the staple food of the Karen), fruits, and sweets (such as go mi aing). Once a soul returns, it becomes once again a part of the participant's body; only a soul whose stomach feels full, she claims, tends to be pleased and wants to stay with the personal body, bringing health and well-being to those who participate in the ritual.

Another interpretation takes the ritual materials as nonliteral and having implicit cultural relevance, which Karen access by means of their presence at the ceremony. Ordinary Karen hold bits of rice, sticky rice, flowers, sugarcane, and banana because these objects embody properties they would like to acquire. While young Karen held ritual materials in their hands, an elder would dip a cotton thread in a glass of water and tie the thread around the recipient's wrists. The tip of the thread was pulled off and placed on the receiver's head, one of the bodily spots where the soul resides. The bodily gesture of holding objects, while undergoing the wrist-tying, hosts social meaning in itself.

Penny van Esterik argues that ‘the Thai gains access to their gender and identities and their sexuality through their bodies’.Footnote ³¹ With an emphasis on bodies as repositories of cultural understanding, I would like to argue that Karen participants gain access to the qualities of materials through bodily sensations such as tactile and palate experiences. While a dual packet of go mi aing encodes the soul–body reunification for some Karen participants, others might not be able to explain its literal significance. I saw a Karen woman putting a bit of go mi aing into her three children's mouths and her own. She had acquired the symbols' efficacy for herself and her children through somatic experiences and analogical processes. For her, ritual objects do something rather than have explicit meaning; they operate on behalf of the well-being and health of her family.

The investigation in this section implies that the ritual objects used during lakhao knaing dju produce different experiences within the Karen wrist-tying ceremony. These materials allow for different interpretations that make sense to particular individuals or groups. This ambiguous understanding indicates the coexistence of nationalism, animism, and magic. While the Karen nationalist narrative presents the objects as metaphors of Karen people's unity and prosperity, this discourse does not eliminate other ways in which ordinary Karen experience the ritual elements. Ordinary Karen support the seemingly nationalist-dominated ceremony because they have their own personal preferences over materials, which are based on the premodern notion of soul–body harmony. By literally internalising lakhao knaing dju's material elements in their bodies, they acquire the meaning of a balanced life and reorient their present lives toward spiritual security which is based on soul–body harmony.