นะโมตัสสะภะคะวะโต
อะระหะโตสัมมาสัมพุทธัสสะ
ว่า ๓ จบ
พระวิษณุกรรม ประสิทธิ์ พลัง กัมมัง ลาโภ

Respects to the Blessed One,
the Worthy One,
the Perfectly Self-Awakened One (x3).
‍
May Phra Witsanukam bestow power, growth, and fortune.

Cult,
Cosmos,

and

Craft

at a

THAI art ACADEMY

Anthony Lovenheim Irwin, Kenneth M. George, Kirin Narayan
With visuals by Amelia Toelke and Heath Iverson

Layer One Layer Two Layer Three Layer Four Layer Five Layer Six Layer Seven Layer Eight Layer Nine

Layer One

Surface Impressions

We begin with a god and the surface from which he sometimes arises.
Look at the accompanying portrait (Figure 1). The god is Phra Sayomphuwanat (พระสยมภูวนาท)—a Thai deva whose name means ‘The God Who Self-Manifested’. Many Thai people think of Phra Sayomphuwanat as an avatar of the Brahmanical deity Shiva. Others say Phra Sayomphuwanat is no less than Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva all shining forth as one. The different views about the god’s Brahmanical identity won’t concern us here. What matters is that
the portrait represents a self-manifesting deva.

Figure 1.
The image of Phra Sayomphuwanat that
we show here dates to the rites held at
Poh Chang Academy of the Arts in 2018.
Photograph by Anthony Lovenheim Irwin.

อุณาโลม

An unalom,
the mark of a
perfect being

Deva means ‘shiny’ or ‘shining’ and denotes a radiant, celestial being whose brightness and benevolence are like the light of day or the sparkling of the stars. Whenever Phra Sayomphuwanat manifests himself, he manifests as light and lustrousness. Note how the face of Phra Sayomphuwanat in our portrait glistens, how it advances toward one’s eye, rising up from the folded, matte-black surface stretching beneath the portrait as a whole. We discern Phra Sayomphuwanat’s eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth as part of a luminous, symmetric, and textural whole. There is a ‘third eye’ on the god’s forehead,
just above and between the eyebrows, what in Thai is called an unalom (อุณาโลม)—a yantra-motif connoting the spiral of woolly hair that is the mark
of a perfect being. This same yantra adorns the lingam above the deva’s head,
a sign of the god’s perfection and protective power. Other sorts of yantras encircle the portrait of Phra Sayomphuwanat.

Phra Sayomphuwanat did not bring about this lustrous portrait in an act of self-manifestation. Rather, it came into being through the work of a master craft teacher, craft students, and their patron god at Bangkok’s Poh Chang Academy of the Arts as part of an annual ritual called khrop khru (ครอบครู), ‘covered by the guru’.¹ The emergent, glistening face of Phra Sayomphuwanat
is a material aim and artefact of the rite, but not the ritual’s driving purpose
or set or purposes. A larger, more encompassing account about khrop khru deserves telling, and we begin that below. It is an ethnographic tale about belonging and vocation, about futurity, and about craft technicity. It is also
a story about tools and touch, and a story, too, about the cultof devotees
who seek the favour and protection of a different deity altogether.²

Layer Two

Why Khrop Khru?

Khrop khru rituals are performed yearly at craft, performance, and technical-vocational schools around Thailand, where they are part of larger wai khru ( ไหว้ครู ) ‘teacher-respecting’ ceremonies. Wai khru ceremonies are all-day affairs that usually start off the school year and are ubiquitous at every level
of instruction in Thai educational institutions from elementary schools to PhD programs.³ Wai khru observances bring together not just teachers and students, but the attending patron deities associated with different fields of study. Not all teacher-respecting ceremonies include khrop khru, however,
as the latter is exclusive to the initiation ceremonies that induct new students into lineages of traditional dance, theatre, music, crafts, and vocational arts. While the roots of the ritual lie in the workings of premodern, court-based performance troupes, the khrop khru ritual we discuss in this article was first developed for craft and vocational education at Bangkok’s Poh Chang Academy of the Arts in the early twentieth century.⁴ Poh Chang is Thailand’s premier craft institution of higher education, and the khrop khru rituals begun there have spread throughout the country with the proliferation of state-established craft and vocational schools over the course of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.

Ethnomusicologist Deborah Wong conducted extensive field research at
Poh Chang, Srinakharinwirot University, and several other Thai academies in the 1980s and 90s, and subsequently wrote a superbly detailed and discerning book about wai khru ritual and its place in the history and gendered politics
of traditional Thai performance arts.⁵ In that work she acknowledges that wai khru ‘is actually two consecutive rites . . . wai khru proper . . . followed without pause by [khrop] khru, an empowering ritual that combines blessing and initiation.’ ⁶ Owing to the emphases of her book, Wong had little else to say about khrop khru. Our own research—sparked by our interest in bridging religion, art, and technology—brought us to Thai craft and technical schools whose khrop khru rituals have elements and dynamics distinct from those practiced in lineages of music, theatre, and dance explored by Wong.

Our core aim is twofold: to show how khrop khru connects Thai artisans, technicians, master teachers, and their schools in a craft lineage to their patron god, Phra Witsanukam (พระวิษณุกรรม); and to trace some of the personal, social, material, technical, and cosmo-religious implications of
being ‘covered by the guru’. Craft lineages in contemporary Thailand are seldom hereditary. They derive instead from initiation rites at government
-run vocational schools. These schools hold khrop khru to initiate students
into spiritual-and-vocational lineages exclusive to a host of trade-professionals including, but not limited to, engineers, machinists, tile-workers, welders, technicians, telecommunications workers, electricians, and traditional artisans of every stripe. This seemingly disparate groups of professionals all go through khrop khru, and by way of that ritual become adherents in the devotional cult that worships Phra Witsanukam. To use Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology, khrop khru is a rite of consecration and institution: it separates those who go through it from those who will not go through it, and so institutes and consecrates a lasting difference between those to whom the rite applies and those to whom it does not apply.⁷ There is no cult of Phra Witsanukam
outside of the craft lineages associated with the vocational schools.

Like Wong, we wish to call attention to khrop khru as a rite of empowerment. Yet our equally deep concern is to understand how the ritual begins to shape—and leave evidence of—adherents’ techno-affective capacities, their vocational belonging, and their spiritual prospects. As we plan to show, khrop khru is a ‘future-making’ endeavour, with implications for worldly technology and design and for a Thai artisan’s trajectory in a Buddhist cosmology, too. Along with this, we aim to capture the ways that surface, touch, and iterative trace might be construed as evidence of Phra Witsanukam’s presence in cosmo-technical activity.

Layer Three

Who is Phra Witsanukam?

Phra Witsanukam is the Thai name for the deity or demiurge known to
Hindus and Buddhists as Vishwakarma (Viśvakarmā [Sanskrit]; Vissakamma [Pali])—literally ‘Maker of the Universe’ or ‘All-Maker’. Although celebrated as the divine craftsman who made marvellous weapons and dwellings for the gods, Vishwakarma gets only brief or passing mention in the Vedas, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and the Jatakas. There is also evidence to suggest that ‘Vishwakarma’ was not a singular god in India’s Vedic and epic literatures but rather an epithet attributed to any god with striking creative and technical powers. No surprise, then, that many Thai people think of Phra Witsanukam as a name for Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism.⁸ In all instances of his appearance across South and Southeast Asia, the figure of Vishwakarma is seen as the divine source of artisanal, architectural, industrial, and technical craft. By and large he remains a ‘small’ and relatively obscure god, associated today primarily with artisans, technicians, engineers, mechanics, and fabricators as their patron deity.⁹

In the Buddhist textual canon, Vishwakarma (Vissakamma) usually acts at
the behest of Indra (Sakka), king of the gods. Take, for example, the Jataka
tales, which recount the previous lives of the Buddha when he was born as the being known as the Bodhisattva, tasked with cultivating the moral perfections necessary to one day achieve Buddhahood. Whenever the Bodhisattva is in need of a pavilion, a dwelling, a staircase, a structure, or a device of some kind, Indra’s throne heats up. That, in turn, prompts Indra to summon Vishwakarma, the divine architect and engineer, to build (more often by way of mantra or imaginative will than with tools) whatever is required for the Buddha-to-be.
In other Buddhist literature and lore such as the Thupavamsa, the 13th century (CE) chronicle that describes the making of ‘The Great Stūpa’ (Mahathūpa) in Sri Lanka, Vishwakarma descends to earth to possess an unsuspecting villager or craftsman to create, in fulfilment of Indra’s command, magnificent worldly shrine to house some of the Buddha’s relics.¹⁰ Even the ceremonial name for Bangkok includes mention of Vishwakarma (Phra Witsanukam). In 1782, King Phutthayotfa Chulalok (Rama I) established himself as the monarch of Siam, founded Bangkok as its capital, and declared the city to be the ‘City of Angels, Great City of Immortals’. Then, in the mid-nineteenth century, Rama IV added to the name of the capital city still further appellations: ‘Magnificent City of
the Nine Gems, Seat of the King, City of Royal Palaces, Home of the Gods Incarnate, Erected by Witsanukam at Sakka's Behest’ [italics ours].

The Buddhist lore around Vishwakarma, we might say, portrays him as a faithful royal retainer, always ready to do Indra’s bidding. In the Thai context, just as as Phra Witsanukam heeds the will of Sakka, royal artisans are expected to heed the call and the wishes of the king. The founding of Thailand’s technical, craft, and art institutes under royal decree and patronage unsurprisingly enshrine Phra Witsanukam as the divine artisan-teacher from whom craft and technical knowledge must flow: Maha Thep Phra Witsanukam Baroma Khru—‘The Great God, Lord Witsanukam, the Utmost Teacher.’ ¹¹ For this reason, Phra Witsanukam is present on the altar at all technical and craft-based institutions’ wai khru ceremonies—along with the Buddha, Brahma, Shiva, Ganesh, and other gods—and presides as the divine guru in khrop khru. It is with this god’s assent and help that creative knowledge, energy, skill, and imagination are assured and believed to flow to the devotee. Should they not go through the ritual of khrop khru, artisans fear they may suffer mishap or misfortune in their craft and technical work. So central is this deity that each craft and technical institute in Thailand devotedly maintains and possessively guards the sacred Phra Witsanukam statue it has erected as a protective icon (or palladium) for the school’s identity and craft lineage (Figure 2). These icons of Phra Witsanukam also appear on amulets associated with the schools. As the artisans and technicians themselves explain it, the right to engage in their professional work, and the wherewithal to do it well, depend on their being ‘covered’ by Phra Witsanukam.

Figure 2.
One of the two images of
Phra Witsanukam installed
on the grounds of Poh Chang University.
Photograph by Anthony Lovenheim Irwin

Layer Five

The 2019 Khrop Khru at Poh Chang

As part of our ongoing research on religion, craft, and technology in Thailand and India, we jumped at the opportunity to witness the annual wai khru ceremony at Poh Chang Academy in July 2019.¹⁴ The three of us arrived early
in the morning not long before observances began. The courtyard in front of Poh Chang’s main building was crowded with staff, students, dignitaries, alumnae, and guests. The officiating Brahmin priest whose task was to honour Phra Witsanukam along with a host of other deities—including local guardian spirits and a pantheon of Hindu and Buddhist gods—faced a gilded likeness
of the god bearing a plum bob (lukding [ลูกดิ่ง]) and adze (phueng [ผึ่ง]). Sitting
on a pedestal in the courtyard garden, this statue of Phra Witsanukam has watched over the school since its inception and has remained a focus
of its wai khru ceremonies since they began in 1920.¹⁵

The school’s first director, Prince Chuthathut, was central to the formalisation of the ceremony, and had a ritual manual composed by palace artisans with precise directions for the rites of wai khru and khrop khru. The manual is still in use today, and the Brahmin priest and the neatly organised attendants of the wai khru ceremony that we witnessed followed it closely. Offerings of fruit, meat, fish, sweets, incense, coconut, flowers, and burning lamps were spread out on a table in front of the god. Two gilded bowls rested on the stepped marble pedestal beneath the deity and were packed with envelopes stuffed with delicate orange cords. (We would later learn that these orange strings were each tied to a coin-type Phra Witsanukam amulet, forming necklaces
that were to be distributed to the students in the next phase of the ceremony.) As the Brahmin priest consecrated the offerings and chanted in worship, those assembled in the yard raised their joined palms to their chest or forehead to honour and thank their divine teacher, Phra Witsanukam. Attendants then adorned Phra Witsanukam’s statue with a golden sash and a garland of
jasmine and rose flowers.

Things next moved indoors, and after much milling about, nine Buddhist monks opened a new portion of the ceremony, the head monk blessing the gathering with holy water. A sea of seated or kneeling newly enrolled students filled the ceremonial hall. They wore formal attire (neatly pressed white tops over black skirts or slacks) and many of the young women had adorned their hair with jasmine and lotus blossom garlands. Some in the student cohort playfully sported lensless ‘designer’ eyeglass frames with glossy black rims
and bright yellow temples, expressing a jaunty enthusiasm for their coming induction into artistic circles. In time, the students assembled into columns, kneeling in the direction of a row of low tables.

An elderly professor garbed in white, having eased himself into a comfortable leather chair, sat alone on the stage. By virtue of his seniority and previous ritual observance, the professor served as the representative of ‘Pho Khru’—‘Father Guru’ as Witsanukam is affectionately called by the Poh Chang community.¹⁶ One by one, the master teachers from each of the different departments at Poh Chang filed up to the stage and knelt before this aged master emeritus. He adorned each professor with a necklace featuring a bronze Phra Witsanukam amulet designed specifically for this ceremony,
and while delivering a blessing smudged sandalwood paste on their foreheads (choem na phak [เจิมหน้าผาก]). The professors then left the stage and took their seats behind the row of tables, each with an assistant stationed by their side.

Once the professors were seated at the tables, the columns of students
began to slowly advance. One by one, students shuffled on their knees to their department’s master teacher, heads bowed, their palms and fingers pressed together and raised toward the chin or forehead in the gesture known as wai, which expresses honour, gratitude, and deference toward a teacher.¹⁷ The wai also anticipates the empowering gift of assent and recognition that will be offered by their professors in return. As soon as a student arrived at the table, their professor placed an amulet of Phra Witsanukam around their neck and put a smudge of sandalwood paste on their foreheads, repeating the ritual blessing they themselves had just received from the senior professor on
the stage.

Up to this point, the group of professors had handed out identical amulets
to the student cohorts without regard to their own department’s craft or technical specializations. Now came the moment for khrop khru—a disciple’s very first haptic experience with an emblematic and companionable ‘tool-of-the-craft’ as they began initiation into their teacher’s own craft and institutional lineage. Khrop khru is performed using a variety of media, but
the khrop khru medium used by the Department of Thai Painting at Poh Chang stands out particularly for its ability to illustrate the emergent relationship between master teacher, disciple, and Phra Witsanukam.

The specifics of khrop khru are clearly spelled out in the ritual manual compiled in 1920, which instructs the teacher to guide the hand of the students in drawing the face of the god. This should be done in the following fashion: First, the outline of the face; then each of the two eyes; then the nose; and lastly the mouth. This makes for a total of five objects that the teacher guides the student’s hand in tracing. This is the khrop for drawing and design and is important because drawing is the first of all crafts. In order to advance in any craft practice, students must first become skilled in drawing and design.¹⁸

The head professor of the Department of Thai Painting now opened an accordion-fold, matte-black manuscript with an outlined portrait of Phra Sayomphuwanat and placed it flat on the table before him. A new manuscript
is used every year for the ritual, and, indeed, an accordion-style manuscript had been freshly prepared by the department for use in the 2019 khrop khru that we were observing. Taking and covering the ‘working hand’ of each student in turn, the master teacher and disciple together grasped a pencil.
The professor’s hands covered and guided the student’s hand as they together traced over the face of Phra Sayomphuwanat—‘The Self-Manifesting God’—outlined on the manuscript’s open page. They first traced the lines of the god’s facial shape; next, Phra Sayomphuwanat’s eyes, nose, mouth, and the swirling yantra between the god’s eyebrows; and then finally the larger swirling yantra adorning the god’s lingam-shaped crown. In this act, the students have offered their hand to the covering grasp and movement of their professor’s hands, and by ritual association, to the ‘covering’ guidance of Phra Witsanukam. As they traced over the face of ‘The Self-Manifesting God’, both professor and disciple quietly recited a prayer written on the upper-right portion of the manuscript. The prayer is one, first, of homage to the Buddha and then of supplication to Phra Witsanukam:

นะโมตัสสะภะคะวะโต
 อะระหะโตสัมมาสัมพุทธัสสะ 
ว่า ๓ จบ
พระวิษณุกรรม ประสิทธิ์ พลัง กัมมัง ลาโภ

Respects to the Blessed One, 
the Worthy One,
 the Perfectly Self-Awakened One (3x) .

May Phra Witsanukam bestow power, growth, and fortune.

As the master teacher and series of initiands applied their pencil to
the manuscript page over and over again, the base outline image of Phra Sayomphuwanat that had been so precisely sketched in yellow ink grew more and more obscure. The face of Phra Sayomphuwanat that now emerged from the matte-black surface further softened and glistened with each ‘covering’ layer of pencil lead. The god’s visage became ever more shiny, expressive,
and alive.

Similar khrop-ing gestures happened up and down the row of teachers representing other departments. The professor of sculpture placed clay-forming tools in the hands of his students, grasped their hands and guided them in sculpting a traditional motif in a flattened mound of wet clay. Another master teacher received her painting students, guiding their hands in flowing gestures as a brush wet with watercolour filled in the form of a butterfly. Not far from her a professor of photography wound the film in an analogue camera on the table before him in time to receive the extended hand of his next student. He took the index finger of the student’s right hand, placed it on the shutter of the camera, and pressed his own finger on theirs. Khrop and click! This ritual only ended when each and every student (about 100 on this day) had been received and khrop-ed beneath the hands of their master teachers and Phra Witsanukam’s protective grace, in gestures emblematic of their department’s craft practice.

Layer Six

Lineage and Cult Membership

Khrop khru sacralises an empowering, Guru-and-teacher-guided haptic acquaintance with basic craft skills and emblematic tools. Although the disciples’ deference to their professors appears to be on solemn display during the ritual, the students are by no means passive. To the contrary, the students show themselves actively cultivating their own receptivity to the guiding discipline and protective, empowering ‘cover’ of Phra Witsanukam, their teacher, and their school as an institutional whole. That readiness and receptivity on the part of the disciple are key to their future acquisition
of skills, to achieving mastery of materials and design, and to finding
good fortune.

The enveloping gesture of khrop khru also symbolically recruits students
into what may be called ‘craft lineages’. The ritualised touch of a teacher’s
hand confers a belonging upon the student who has been khrop-ed. The student becomes ritually absorbed into the line of predecessors associated with the teacher and their collective ‘ancestral’ craft specialty or specialties. The initiated thus join with their master teacher, their teacher’s master teacher, and that teacher’s master teacher, in a line (or chain of khru-disciple relationships) stretching back to vocational-ancestral members of the expert ‘Ten Craft Groups’ (chang sip mu [ช่างสิบหมู่]), established generations ago by the Siamese royal court and with whom Prince Chuthathut consulted in establishing the khrop khru ritual at Poh Chang.¹⁹ This ‘craft lineage’ is also
a ‘ritual lineage’. The lineage is, as mentioned, one through which members acquire their artisanal skills and knowledge, but it is also a lineage of
protective ritual touch, a vocational kinship established by a succession of khrop encounters between teachers, disciples, and Phra Witsanukam through the years. The craft-and-ritual lineages do not stand apart from the academy or school; lineage identity and professional networking are embedded thoroughly in an affiliation with a specific school, be it Poh Chang or any one of the many art, craft, and technical schools set up to train and sanction an artisanal or technical workforce across the country. For this reason, artisans and technicians characteristically show a striking devotion to their school, to their school consociates, and to the school’s guardian statue of Witsanukam.²⁰

The khrop khru ritual also ushers lineage disciples into the cult of Phra Witsanukam. Membership in this cult will now serve as the devotional basis for these students’ educational and professional lives, throughout which a disciple might seek inspiration and help from this divine ‘All-Maker’. Membership in
this cult also has implications for initiates’ existence beyond the realm of their educational and professional lives. As many devotees of Phra Witsanukam explain, once one has been initiated through the khrop khru ritual, new trajectories of spiritual and cosmic development are possible, and one’s successive rebirths through cosmic time can be positively impacted by the work of crafting that one performs as a devotee of Phra Witsanukam.
In short, the khrop khru ritual can shape the vocational, social, ethical,
and soteriological worlds of those who participate in it.

As a material artifact of khrop khru, the lustrous accretions on the portrait
of Phra Sayomphuwanat trace more than the simple manipulation of a covered hand. Rather, they amount to socio-aesthetic evidence or indices of growing lineage numbers.

Figure 3.
The image of Phra Sayomphuwanat that we show here dates to the rites held at Poh Chang in 2018.
Photograph by Anthony Lovenheim Irwin

‘The Self-Manifesting God’ whose glistening face arises from the manuscript page indeed attests to swelling lineage membership. All in all, then, the khrop khru ritual is a moment in which the social, the material, and the divine work together to confer upon the initiand new prospects as a fully recognised student in the program; as a member of the year’s incoming cohort; as a
recruit to their teacher and institution’s craft lineage; and as a new
devotee in the cult of Phra Witsanukam.

Layer Seven

Khrop Khru and
the Sacralisation of Technicity

Paintings, drawings, statues, and amulets that picture Phra Witsanukam customarily show him wielding a plumb bob along with an adze, a set square, or a measuring stick. Nonetheless, Phra Witsanukam requires no hand tools
or contraptions to make something. The story goes that Witsanukam made
the city of Bangkok with a mantra alone—a sounding, or sound-tool, that brings something thought or imagined into being. Poh Chang professors
and their disciples may have mantras, but not ones powerful enough to craft worldly things. Like all artisans and technicians, they require tools, materials, and surfaces, in order to fabricate or fashion something. However much the anticipated and emergent teacher-disciple relationship characterises the
rite, khrop khru puts ensembles of making on display, ensembles that include elements, objects, and beings that span the human, the non-human, and the divine. Khrop khru involves not just a master teacher, a disciple, and a god
but also iconic materials, surfaces, and tools or machines-of-the craft. Those affiliating with a sculptor’s craft lineage, for example, might work a thick
sheet of clay with a potter’s rib, a loop tool, or a modelling tool, and under
the professor’s steady and surrounding hand bring shape, pattern, and texture to the clay. Such tools, we need to remember, have been designed in a way
that anticipate handling, movement, and force in the task of working a surface.
The materials, surfaces, tools, teachers, disciples, and the patron deity found
in khrop khru all belong to what Gilbert Simondon would call a ‘society’ of technological/artisanal ensembles and relations.²¹ The gathering of this ‘society’ and its activity in khrop khru together render technē visible
and grounded in the cosmos.²²

A partial inventory—or partial census—of ‘khrop khru society’ would include: Phra Witsanukam; teachers and initiands (and their respective palms and fingers); ritual manuals, diagrams, and yantras; craft-specific tools (e.g., brush, pencil, compass, straight-edge) or devices (e.g., a camera, or a drill); surfaces to be worked; blessings of sandalwood paste smudged on the forehead (choem); ceremonial (not workshop) dress; school amulets that depict Phra Witsanukam (phra khrueang [พระเครื่อง]); formulaic invocations to the god; the haptic and proprioceptive sensibilities of the participants; the ‘resistance’ of surfaces and materials; and the technical or artisanal consciousness that gives the ensemble sufficient coherence and compatibility to bring something into being, to make something happen. In an important respect, khrop khru makes Phra Witsanukam visible: his image is on altar and amulets, and he is embodied
in the figure of the professor who initiates new disciples into their chosen lineage, and present in the tool that is grasped by teacher and student in
the ritual. Khrop khru is thus an occasion in which the god or his ‘covering’ presence is immanent in the substance, surface, and design of technical objects and technical activity. This is a moment of theophany and technophany, a moment in which technicity—the capacity to make,
to fabricate—visibly aligns world and cosmos.²³

The protective cover of khrop khru is said to empower the disciple as an artisan-technician and lineage practitioner. Empowering and guiding them toward what? To be sure, disciples have ahead of them an open-ended future with respect to their artisanal or technical capacities (and, as we will soon explain, to their potential rebirth as Phra Witsanukam). Khrop khru is a starting point, the ritualised moment from which disciples begin to acquire the techno-affective dispositions ideally suited to their vocation.

The teacher-guided tracing of the deva is not about cultivating drawing
skills alone. It is also a gesture, a ritual instant, of mutual recognition that will nurture affective lineal attachments between teacher, student, their artisanal or technical vocation, and Phra Witsanukam. No less important are the affective ties between lineal consociates who together undergo khrop khru on the same ceremonial day, or the regard and connection students may feel for their predecessors at the school. The student consociates who go through khrop khru at the same time will inhabit a consecrated vocational lifeworld together. They will be present for and with one another as their artisanal or technical skills deepen and find purposive creative expression. So, too, will they join together in devotion to their teachers and Phra Witsanukam.

Layer Eight

Khrop Khru, Cosmos,
and Far-Futurity

Ideas about khrop are helpful for grasping how Thai craftspeople understand both their creative labours, and the ontological positionality that comes as a result of their membership in the cult of Phra Witsanukam. But the concept
of khrop also illuminates the logics that Thai craftspeople use to explain the special nature of their work as it relates to divinity, and the way they situate themselves in the long-span, multi-life trajectories of birth, rebirth, and enlightenment that are exclusive to those who have been initiated into
the cult of Phra Witsanukam through khrop khru.

Viewed as ritual practice and material manoeuvre, khrop khru may help us reconceptualise the ‘future-oriented’ slant of design and design anthropology as they seek to create solutions for people’s everyday lives. Khrop khru and its importance in the cult of Phra Witsanukam press upon us new ideas about design as a cosmo-collective process that ‘makes futures’ in ways that resonate with design anthropology’s goals of incorporating new time horizons into its considerations of the values and perspectives of people who actually design the world at hand.²⁴ Put simply, the way that khrop khru establishes possible social, material, and cosmic futures for craftspeople, and for the things they create, expands consideration of the futurity implied in acts of design.

The ritual process of khrop khru, together with the texts and prayers recited during the rite, establish a cosmic trajectory unique to initiated craftspeople. During the ritual, the authority and power of Phra Witsanukam flow from the deity, through the body of the teacher, to surround and cover the student as they hold the tool. The divine presence of Phra Witsanukam does not flow through the body of the teacher alone, however. A group of professors at Chiang Rai Technical College all insisted to us that Phra Witsanukam may reside in, and be materially represented by, tools themselves. The ‘khru’ in the khrop khru ceremony, then, may not only refer to Phra Witsanukam or to the professors in the college in their roles as teachers, but also to the tools used in the ceremony. As the staff at Chiang Rai Technical College put it, ‘The tool is our khru’. The work of khrop khru, then, involves human, non-human, and divine beings in ways that complicate the dynamics of ritualised covering and surrounding. Phra Witsanukam, we have come to understand, may be both a surrounding and surrounded presence in khrop khru, embodied either in the figure and the hands of the human teacher or in the figure of the ‘tool-being’-as-teacher when being held.²⁵We thus have begun to see the sensibilities that animate Thai craft lineages a bit differently than we did at the outset of our work. Affective and professional attachment of the initiands to the craft
lineage may flow through the teacher, the emblematic tool, or both.

As khrop khru ritual ushers initiands into lineage membership, it simultaneously expresses the nested ontology that is a hallmark of how the cult explains the close relationship between cult members and their patron god, Phra Witsanukam. Being initiated through khrop khru ritual opens up educational, vocational, social, and cosmic possibilities for the individual in ways scaled from the realms of the classroom and the workshop to the realm of the cosmos. The ritual presents an expansive futurity for the craftsperson. This futurity is couched within a Theravada Buddhist cosmology where all
lives—even those of the deities—are temporary. The gods of the Thai Buddhist pantheon, including Phra Witsanukam, are not deathless beings, but rather divine stations into which beings are reborn at different moments throughout cosmic time. That some members of the cult regard Phra Witsanukam as a cosmic station, and not as a distant, deathless god, leads them to insist that
the khrop khru ritual can change the future of an initiand’s successive lives,
and possibly result in their own eventual rebirth as Phra Witsanukam.

The cosmic significance of the khrop khru ritual was explained to us by
Achan Natachak Na Chiang Mai—alumnus of Poh Chang University, current professor at Chiang Mai Technical College, Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Thailand, and one of Thailand’s foremost experts on all things
Phra Witsanukam. As Achan Natachak showed us a portfolio of his exquisite drawings of the various forms of Phra Witsanukam, he explained that for
those initiated through the khrop khru ritual, rebirth as Phra Witsanukam is something that eventually may happen after many, many lives spent engaged
in ethical work. He also made clear that in between rebirth as a human and rebirth as Phra Witsanukam, an initiated member of the cult may be born
as a deva who is on their way to eventual rebirth as Phra Witsanukam.

To illustrate this idea, Achan Natachak showed us designs he had done for
the prayer-hall doors at Wat Chomphu, a Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai. The doors each feature a four-armed deva—a male on one door and a female on the other—floating over a field of ornate flowers and holding specific implements in each of their four hands. Achan Natachak explained that these devas are simultaneously illustrative of the cosmic trajectory of those on their way to eventual rebirth as Phra Witsanukam, and ethical devices meant to inspire temple-goers to engage in honest work. The neighbourhood around the temple is home to many construction workers, and the male deva is named Thep Prasit Narueman (เทพประสีทธ์นฤมาณ), which translates to something
like, ‘The male deva of successful building’.

The deva delicately holds tools in each hand: two hammers in his upper
arms, and like Phra Witsanukam, an adze and plumb bob in his lower arms.
An inscription accompanying Achan Natachak’s design for this door remarks that this deva was once a human who was pure of heart and highly skilled in visual arts, and who has now been reborn in the Brahma Heavens. The Brahma Heavens are distinct planes in the thirty-one realms of existence that make up the Buddhist cosmos. Known as the ‘Fine-Material World’ (rupa-loka), these realms of blissful existence exist above the abodes of sensual pleasures. The way beings are reborn into the Brahma Realms is explained by the Buddha in the ‘Jhana Sutta’. In the Sutta, the Buddha explains that beings are able to enter into these realms by practicing mental absorption, or meditation (jhana), and being reborn amongst the deva, these beings are able to reside in these
realms for aeons before again passing away.²⁶

The female deva on the corresponding door is named Thep Nari Naruemit (เทพนารีนฤมิตร), which means ‘the female deva of creativity.’ Her upper hands hold blooming flowers and her lower hands hold a sieve and noodle strainer—tools used to make a specialty dish for which the Wat Chompu temple community is known. The inscription above the deva’s head relates that after
a life of creating highly refined artistic work, which was praised all throughout the universe, she has been born in the Brahma Heavens as a result of following the righteous path. Achan Natachak designed these devas to reflect the temple community’s primary vocations (construction work and selling noodles), as well as to spell out the cosmic trajectory of those Phra Witsanukam devotees who have been reborn in the Brahma Heavens along the way.

Achan Natachak did not specify into which of the Brahma Heavens these
‍devas might be born. In both inscriptions, however, he cites refined artistic skill as the causative factor in their heavenly rebirth. When read in conjunction with the ‘Jhana Sutta’, which specifies mental absorption (meditation) as resulting in rebirth in the Brahma Heavens, it becomes clear that Achan Natachak equates the benefits of properly performed creative labour with those of mental absorption. Achan Natachak asserts that one can enter pure mental states that result in positive cosmic progression through things like drawing, construction work, painting, and making noodles. By extension we can apply this type of cosmic benefit to all types of work performed by devotees of Phra Witsanukam.

The ‘righteous path’ that has led the female deva to rebirth in the Brahma Heavens refers both to the path towards rebirth as Phra Witsanukam, and
the path towards eventual enlightenment or Buddhahood. The relationship between birth as a deva or a god, and the ability to interact with a Buddha and eventually gain enlightenment is implicit in the Theravada Buddhist cosmology evoked by Achan Natachak and other devotees of Phra Witsanukam. We have already explored how Phra Witsanukam (Vissakama) is found throughout the Jataka tales being called upon numerous times to assist the Bodhisattva throughout his many rebirths on the path towards Buddhahood. Meanwhile, the proximity of Phra Witsanukam to the Buddha is brought into even sharper focus by still another account. In both his interview with us and in his contribution to เพาะช่าง ๑๐๐ ปี (100 Years of Poh Chang), Achan Natachak explained that one of the Buddha’s primary disciples, Moggalāna, had been Phra Witsanukam in a former life. Reborn as a human companion and the ‘left- hand disciple’ of the Buddha, Moggalāna had lived as Phra Witsanukam in the past for aeons. According to Achan Natachack, the Buddha identified Moggalāna as the Phra Witsanukam who had built him his hut during
his penultimate rebirth as Prince Vessantara.²⁷

For Achan Natachak, the vocational purview of Phra Witsanukam devotees—crafting, designing, contracting, drafting, engineering, and so on—may lead to their angelic rebirth as a deva. Furthermore, he maintains that central figures of the Buddha’s cosmic biography had either interacted with—or themselves had been—Phra Witsanukam at different moments through cosmic time. Importantly, the Bodhisattva’s cultivation of moral perfection described in
the Jataka, and the gradual progression towards rebirth as Phra Witsanukam mentioned by Achan Natachak, all unfold in a categorically amoral and imperfect world. The narrative explanations of Phra Witsanukam’s role in
the previous lives of the Bodhisattva and the historical Buddha illustrate
the cosmic connections of beings from the past, and firmly depict Phra Witsanukam as a facilitator of the Buddhist project. Moreover, as was emphasised to us time and again, they also frame the far-futurity made possible by the khrop khru ritual. Devotees of Phra Witsanukam have no doubt that their patron god was an active figure in the Bodhisattva's cultivation of moral perfection as detailed in the Jataka. As they look forward into the far futures marked by the successive rebirths of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, members of the cult maintain that the Phra Witsanukams of the future will
also play a crucial role in the lives of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas yet to come.

Writing about a global design regime, anthropologist Lucy Suchman points
out that the ‘professionalisation of [d]esign in the last century has included
a legacy of hegemonic claims to adjudicate the question of whose knowledges are relevant to our collective future-making’.²⁸ In the Thai case, the twentieth and twenty-first century state campaign of establishing craft, technical, and vocational schools around the country had all to do with the ‘professionalisation of design’, complete with its own share of hegemonic claims. Indeed, many of these schools were established as part of an effort to prepare the nation and its subjects for an industrialised capitalist modernity. The incorporation of the khrop khru ritual into these schools’ wai khru ceremonies sacralised the realms of state-backed design regimes, and achieved goals that are undoubtedly national and capitalistic.

At the same time, though, this sacralisation introduces a new relevant knowledge system that can be incorporated into ‘collective future-making’.
The forward-looking work of design as carried out by those inducted into the cult of Phra Witsanukam achieves something we could call ‘far-future-making’. This far-futurity is defined by people like Achan Natachak who are at the forefront of sculpting the functional logics of the cult. The khrop khru ceremony sets initiands on the path of this far-future trajectory, a path in which crafting and design can have ethical and cosmic impact. For devotees
of Phra Witsanukam, the worldly work of design and fabrication touch upon the social, the infrastructural, and the cosmic simultaneously. The khrop khru ritual, then, has the power to impact collective future-making not only in our worldly realms of life, but also in the specifics of the Buddhist cosmological universe as it is slowly traversed by beings engaged in the work of crafting, engineering, and design. Still, as they make these claims about the role of crafting, design, and the far-future, members of the cult of Phra Witsanukam are, like all beings, embedded in an imperfect present. Since the codification
of the khrop khru ritual at Poh Chang in the early twentieth century, Thailand has experienced periods of significant political upheaval, military rule, and authoritarianism. In many ways the cosmo-ethical logics informing khrop
khru also organise the hegemonic institutional authority that runs the kingdom. It is no surprise, then, that some members of the cult of Phra Witsanukam, especially among students in vocational schools, were recruited into royalist anti-communist cadres during the Cold-War period, and in the present day can be heard expressing virulent support of the Thai monarchy amidst popular calls for reform from a growing youth movement.

Layer Nine

Conclusion

The base image of Phra Sayomphuwanat used in Poh Chang’s khrop khru ritual is drawn afresh every year by a professor in the Department of Thai Painting. The image is similar to ones found in Thai design motif books and folios that depict traditional images of gods and ornaments and often provide step-by-step instructions on how they are to be drawn. Professors in the Department of Thai Painting have drawn and redrawn these motifs so often that they are able to render them freehand with no forethought, like musicians playing through familiar scales. One of the professors we met at Poh Chang, Achan Pramot Buntem (Achan Mot), is so skilled that he can draw Thai design motifs with both hands simultaneously. There is a YouTube video of him performing this feat for a classroom full of students at Poh Chang.²⁹

In this video, Achan Mot stands before a green blackboard with a piece of chalk in each hand. In perfect symmetry, his hands simultaneously draw the outline of a face. Starting at the forehead, his left and right hands swing down either side in graceful unison as they mark out the cheeks and end together, meeting at the chin. He then moves on to the eyebrows, drawing the left and right as perfect mirror images of each other. His fingers gingerly hold the chalk while drawing the bottom of the nose, defining each nostril with choreographed flourishes. They then extend upward, forming the bridge of the nose on either side. Next, he draws the mouth in sweeping movements out from the invisible centre line that divides each side of the face. Nearby on the blackboard, other faces are drawn, each gridded out in specific proportions to mark out the dimensions of their features. Achan Mot works without any guiding lines or grids, just his two hands moving simultaneously before him, as if he is conducting a symphony. At one point the video cuts to a shot of the students smiling and clapping, and then back to their professor, who expertly completes the image’s eyes, pupils, ears, neck, flowered crown, elaborate earrings, and shoulders. The finished chalk drawing is not dissimilar to the image of Phra Sayomphuwanat that is used in the khrop khru ritual.

There is no doubt that Achan Mot is a master. The presence of mind and the ambidextrous technical skill he has developed over the years as a devotee of Phra Witsanukam is on full display in the video. For incoming students at Poh Chang, tracing the face of Phra Sayomphuwanat together with their professor in khrop khru ritual is the first step towards achieving this type of focused mastery. While they might not gain the same two-handed skill of Achan Mot, after studying under him and his fellow professors, these students will most likely be able to render perfectly proportioned Thai design motifs with
little effort.

The divine face that Achan Mot drew on the blackboard that day was flawless, no line out of place or mis-proportioned. This is in stark contrast to the faces that build up on the khrop khru ritual medium. As the face becomes more and more glistening and blurred with each successive pencil line, the hand of the professor still guides the student’s hand, as if to suggest that as a member of the cult of Phra Witsanukam, one will be able to remain focused on the task
at hand, regardless of the messiness and distractions of the world. The lines traced over the elements of the face of Phra Sayomphuwanat are products
of craftwork done in ritual absorption, representing the first tracks of the righteous path that may lead new initiates to rebirth in the Brahma Heavens, eventual rebirth as Phra Witsanukam, and possible enlightenment off in the far cosmic future. The way through cosmic time may be fraught, but when held in the protective hands of one’s master teachers, empowered by the blessings of one’s patron god, and trained in the proper skills, one may be able to approach their vocational, artistic, and infrastructural creations with a focused mind
and a steady hand.

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