Sondhi Lim, The Tampax Brahmin

Chang Noi has more here:

For many years in the past, the powers of many sacred things including the spirit of the City Pillar, the Equestrian Statue of King Rama V, Phra Sayam Thewathirat, and the Emerald Buddha, have been suppressed by evil people using magic. 'Suppress' does not mean destroy, because sacred objects cannot be destroyed, as they have too much power. But 'suppress' means not allowing them to emit their power, by encircling them. This is true. So we have just finished rectifying this in the last two to three weeks. Like at the statue of the Emerald Buddha.


"Behind it there is a stone. Evil-minded people had allied with some in the Royal Household Bureau to allow a Khmer adept to go behind the Emerald Buddha and take the stone away, because that stone is the important thing for emitting power."

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Sondhi went on to describe his efforts in defence of the country. "The [base of the] Equestrian Statue is like this [draws hexagon with his hands] with the statue inside. Tacks had been inserted at the six corners so that the statue of the revered king could not emit its power. We drew out the tacks from all six places."


Presumably these tacks or nails are supernatural, imaginary articles anchoring an imaginary magical wall around the statue to pen in the spiritual forces. Presumably too, Sondhi's team used rituals to remove them rather than digging up the tarmac. He mentioned that "masters and adepts pulled out each of them". He went on to describe preventive measures for the future. Here the actions seem to have been real rather than imaginary.


"I must thank the women of the PAD because after [the tacks] were pulled out, to ensure they would not be replaced, they took sanitary napkins from menstruating women and placed them on the six points.


"Experts said the spirit adepts were furious because they could not send their spirits back; their magic was rendered ineffective."

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Menstrual blood is the most powerful symbol of this terrible, destructive power. There are rules and conventions about avoiding contact with this fearful force. In the past there were many restrictions involving women's underwear. But Sondhi is possibly breaking new ground by making active use of this substance as a weapon.


Since the clip of this speech made it to YouTube (search for "Sondhi"), contributors to several blogsites have concluded that Sondhi is "mad". Certainly he seems befuddled. Clearly he is espousing narrow-minded chauvinist prejudices about Thailand's neighbours and about women. Possibly his efforts to defend the capital's sacred sites are a form of desecration. The police, Fine Arts Department and Bangkok governor's office went to inspect the Equestrian Statue on the day after Sondhi's revelation, but no proceedings have been launched.


I wanted to blog about this before, but Sondhi Lim has left me speechless. I don't know if it is sexist, because it is playing to the middle-class housewives who make a big chunk of PAD support. Hey ladies, why chuck those pads in the bin, when you can play your part in saving the nation and use them to cleanse the country of Thaksin's evil Khmer voodoo?

For the sake of national health, I hope Thai women don't get any bright ideas of cleansing other evils in life with this lovely ritual.