Dedication

This project is dedicated to Phra Ngang — a mysterious and controversial folk saint found in Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. He's their version of Legba or Maximón. A chthonic, mercurial trickster who looks like a mischievous green imp and specializes in seduction, intoxication, and gambling. He's also sometimes called the holy fool. That's accurate.

So anyway — back to the project. Somehow or another I got my life back together and decided I wanted to honor him in some way. The channel was open. He wanted this to exist. What I'm transmitting here is my own vision and devotion, but the inspiration was real and direct.

I collect Southeast Asian religious artifacts and I'd noticed over the years that pha yants of Phra Ngang were almost impossible to find. Part of why this exists is to bring more attention to him — to expand his reach and reputation in proportion to what he actually offers. Outside Thailand and Cambodia he's almost unknown.

So what's a pha yant? Quick version: a yantra is a ritual diagram — sacred calligraphy and sorcerer's sigils with a deity in the center. Thais tattoo them on skin (sak yant) or print them on fabric (pha yant). The cloth version is designed to catalyze cosmic forces and bring their energy into your life. Or give certain entities a foothold in your world. (See Innovation for the full breakdown.)

At first the idea was simple — a generative art version of Phra Ngang. Depending on which one you acquired, he'd be holding bags with the symbols of different cryptocurrencies on them. Very 2021.

But then I thought — what if instead of making this a crypto joke, I made it real? Like actually real, in the format it's supposed to be in.

I found a tattoo artist in Bangkok. He didn't want to do it at first. He told me this was dark magic, that I was going to disrespect the spirit. I convinced him I was sincere. We ended up getting along great and produced a lot of beautiful work together. We established the basic composition — Phra Ngang in the center, the surrounding elements, the overall structure.

Then I brought in a Thai ajarn, Ajarn Maha Mettaboon (a Buddhist folk magician) — a practicing sak yant artist who'd been initiated into saiyasart, the Thai tradition of folk magic that covers everything from herbal medicine to necromancy to astrology. He went through everything I'd spent three years designing with the Bangkok artist and told me the Sanskrit was all wrong and the Khom — ancient Khmer script used exclusively for magical purposes — was also wrong. Basically everything had to be redone.

So we redid it. He gave me material from his personal grimoires. I copied it over, put it into the images, and bounced every single element off him over and over until everything was right. In the process I learned what the words meant. I learned the letters. I learned which scripts were for protection, which were for attraction, which were for drawing wealth, which were for evading enemies.

Then I decided it had to be a flag. And if it was going to be a flag, it had to be blacklight — the medium that matches what these objects actually are. Sacred art that lives in two registers: one for daylight, and one for the dark.

That's how we got here.