ABSTRACT
Over the last decade of the ninth reign and the first years of the tenth, three emblematic symptoms of the deployment of the eschatological anguish can be identified, namely, in order of increasing degree of intensity, the scramble for amulets, the staging of “karmic” battles and the practice of exorcisms in public space, Bangkok becoming a symbolic battlefield. In addition to the probable acceleration of the manufacture of various types of charms, which in any case remains difficult to quantify, one of the attestations of this widespread malaise is the extraordinary success since 2006 of the recent “Jatukham Ramathep.” The resurgence of eschatological tension in the daily life of the Thai people extended far beyond the realm of amulets or astrological technique. The competition at the top of the state apparatus was now part of a karmic war, whose actors “revealed” themselves one after the other as reincarnations of historical royal figures.
