ritualGao yod, the nine spires

เก้ายอด · kao yot

Nine peaks up the spine. Almost nobody's first yant is anything else.

A finished spires yant across the upper back, at Sak Yant Chiang Mai.

NaN · Taken at Sak Yant Chiang Mai, used with permission · CC BY 4.0

What it is

A column of nine spires, placed in the centre of the upper back and running a little onto the neck. At Wat Bang Phra it is the standard first tattoo; other lineages start elsewhere.

The long version

Its extension is Yeesip Gao Yord, twenty-nine spires, spread across the whole upper back. After those two, Wat Bang Phra's practice treats the body as opened and able to receive what comes next.

Inference — the ordering matters more than the design. A first yant that everybody gets, in a place everybody can see, is an initiation before it is a protection: it marks that a person has stood in the line, made the offering and accepted the rules.

The same yant, with the shrine behind, at Sak Yant Chiang Mai. — NaN · Taken at Sak Yant Chiang Mai, used with permission · CC BY 4.0

Connected to

Sak yant The practice.
Wat Bang Phra Where.

Named here by

Sak yant The first one, almost always.
Wat Bang Phra What you get first.

Where each claim comes from

Field	Tier	Source	Note
default	cited	Wat Bang Phra — Wikipedia (en)
text_th	inference		written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated

Sources

Wat Bang Phra — Wikipedia (en)

cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there

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