From black magic to drugs – welcome to Thailand as you’ve never seen it before.

This is Part II of the Darkside of Thailand Series

Thailand is often portrayed as a country of bright beaches, smiling locals, and a generally tolerant culture that is open to people from all orientations and walks of life. A utopian paradise, in short.

But beyond the country’s necessary façade to make the country look more open and welcoming to the rest of the world are the cracks and crevices where the dark and unspoken aspects of Thai culture are largely hidden from view.

While there is no official orchestration to hide these aspects of Thailand, we now shed a beam of light on two social phenomena that will make people take a closer look at how Thai society works.

Thai Black Magic & Voodoo

Folk beliefs and traditions exist in every country in the world, not just Thailand. But the pervasiveness of these ideas depends on the worldview of the natives of a country, as well as the culture itself.

If a culture is largely spiritual and eschews too much dependence on logic, reality, and all these material disciplines, then you can be certain that voodoo, black magic and superstitious beliefs will be plentiful – as is the case for Thailand.

It might be hard to believe that such a progressive country that has such a global outlook in terms of tourism would still have parts of its culture immured with folk beliefs, like voodoo. And yet a simple look at recent arrests and investigations into horrific events in Thai civil society will reveal that black magic is still largely a concrete part of Thai life.

Practitioners of Thai black magic, or simply the occult, are not snaggletoothed crones mixing a black cauldron, as old Disney movies would like us to believe.

Practitioners of the craft range from rural folk who want better fortune to come upon them, to Westerners who come all the way to Thailand to continue learning more magic from the masters. And the spells they learn are actually ‘practical’ in a twisted sort of way: spells for appearing to be more charming than you really are, bewitching gazes to make women have sex with you more quickly, better luck for business, and so on.

But there are times when the love for the occult goes a bit too far. Disaster happens almost immediately.