ABSTRACT
In his Rules Without Meaning, 1 Frits Staal makes reference at several points to my writings on ritual - he is generous while not suppressing his critical sense - and in Chapter 25 he discusses some features of my book The Buddhist Saints of the Forest. 2 What Staal found most interesting in this work was the notion of the 'objectification of charisma in objects and fetishes' which I deployed in the description and interpretation of the cult of amulets associated with the forest monk saints of Thailand who were prominent at the time of my fieldwork in the seventies.
