In Buddhist Thailand, diviners such as astrologers, card readers, and spirit mediums are ubiquitous, yet discreet. They serve clients across lines of age, class, and political orientation, providing strategies for empowerment in a world shaped by karma. Despite their widespread influence, these figures frequently elude scholarly accounts of religion and politics.

Political Divinations offers an anthropological study of contemporary Thai divination. Based on over a decade of fieldwork during which the author also trained and practiced as a diviner, this vivid ethnography brings readers into public and private spaces of ritual practice: from busy roadside divination markets in nocturnal Bangkok to elite circles where renowned seers advise military officers, politicians, and business magnates.
Once a royal technology used to secure sovereign power with kings, divination was diffused after the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1932. Since then, generals, party leaders, and tycoons have consulted diviners to plan coups, elections, and corporate ventures, while ordinary citizens seek guidance on career, finance, and romance. Recently, prophetic narratives have sparked visions of democratic futures for the kingdom. In the 2020–2021 mass protests, activists finally drew on oracular traditions to challenge royalist regimes and reclaim popular sovereignty.

Bridging religious and political anthropology, Political Divinations contributes to scholarship on Theravāda Buddhism, Southeast Asian Studies, and sovereignty. It treats divination as an analytical lens to examine strategies of statecraft as well as modes of individual and collective empowerment in a modern Buddhist polity.

• Edoardo Siani, Author

  Edoardo Siani is assistant professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

• Political Divinations is an eloquent and risky (in all the best ways) ethnography of the place of magic in politics and everyday life in Thailand. Edoardo Siani moves beyond existing inadequate frameworks to develop a way of comprehending the links between the sacred and politics to contribute to religious studies, Buddhist studies, and Thai studies. What is exciting about the book is that Siani makes a call for readers to take diviners seriously—not to understand everyday religious practice of ordinary people—but to understand national politics. The ethnographic writing is eloquent and engaging. Combined with a bold methodology—becoming a practitioner of magic and the divine—this book unveils new views of politics, and new ways of thinking about how political life is made.
  —Tyrell Haberkorn, University of Wisconsin–Madison