A few days after I had arrived in Laos in September, On told me that a special ceremony would be held to celebrate our son Jeremy Aaron’s birth. In Laos it is customary when a child is born to hold a special ceremony called a Baci (pronounced baa-see) to welcome the arrival of the child and for friends and family members to pay their respects to the parents.

(The Baci can also be held to celebrate other special events including, but not limited to, marriage, a homecoming, for a mother recovering from birth, for people suffering from illnesses to facilitate a cure, as well as for young boys who are going to become a monk. The ceremony can take place any day of the week and all year long, preferably before noon or before sunset; ours would be in the morning before noon.)

While the ceremony itself can be quite simple and varies from one part of the country to another, the basis of the ceremony is a little more complex in that the Baci is centered on Su Kwan, which literally means the “calling of the soul”. This term can be best described as being the components of the soul or “vital forces, that give harmony and balance to the body, or part of it”, an inner or “private reality of the body, inherent in the life of humans and other creatures from the moment of their birth,” and simply as “vital breath”.

(If that explanation is a little hard to follow, it gets a little more complex. It is an ancient belief in Laos that the human being is comprised of a union of 32 organs and that the Kwan watches over and protects each one of them. It is imperative that as many kwan as possible are kept together in the body at any one time. Since all kwan are often the attributed cause of an illness, the ceremony calls the kwan or souls from wherever they may be roaming back to the body and thereby re-establishing equilibrium, not to mention bringing a lot of good luck and prosperity. Sounds pretty deep and thought provoking for this Western mind to comprehend but there’s no question that it is a very interesting concept.)

An important part of the ceremony is the making of a pha kwan, an arrangement consisting of a silver dish or bowl from the top of which sprouts a cone or horn made of folded banana leaves that contain flowers and white cotton threads (later these threads would be tied on the wrists of On, our son Jeremy Aaron, and myself). The small white, yellow, and purple flowers used have evocative meanings that symbolize love, longevity, and cheerfulness.

This task of preparing and setting up the pha kwan or flower trays for the ceremony is often shared by elderly women in the community. The day before our Baci, some elderly women came to On’s home and spent the day making the pha kwan. (In addition to making the pha kwan, younger women who were friends of the family would be responsible for cooking the food that would be served after the ceremony was finished.)

Around the base of this is the food for the Kwan. The food consists usually of hard boiled eggs (symbolizing the fetus), fruits and sweets (symbolizing the coming together of several parts, in this case the forming of a community through a stalk of bananas, khaotom, boiled sweet rice wrapped in banana leaves), a bottle of rice whisky for purification and finally a boiled whole chicken with head and feet with claws for divination purposes.

During the ceremony, the pha kwan is placed on a white cloth in the center of the room, with the Maw pawn sitting facing it. The Maw pawn or Mohkwan is a village elder who officiates the ceremony by chanting and summoning the Kwan. We would sit directly opposite of him, on the other side of the pha kwan with all the guests in attendance sitting around us.

The ceremony for Jeremy Aaron began with the village elder reading from an old book with yellowed pages summoning the wandering Kwan to return and bring good luck for Jeremy Aaron, On, and myself. If you’ve never heard Laos spoken before, it is similar to Thai and what he read reminded me of some Theravada Buddhist chanting evoking Pali-sounding words.

When he finished this invocation, he handed me the plate with the symbolic food on it and held it up for him whereby he took the cotton thread from the pha kwan and wrapped it around my extended wrist. While securing it with a few knots, he chanted a shorter version of the invocation strengthening the power of the blessings. After he had tied the thread on my wrist he tied one on On’s wrist and then one on Jeremy Aaron’s wrist.

After he had finished tying the thread around our wrists, guests in attendance did the same thing. In Laos, white is the color of peace, good fortune, honesty and warmth. The white cotton thread is a lasting symbol of continuity and brotherhood in the community and permanence. In addition to have the white threads tied on our wrists, many guests also attached 1000, 2000, and 5000 Kip notes to the thread also for good luck.

It is customary that the white threads should be worn for at least three days and should be untied rather than cut off. Usually it is preferred that they are kept until they fall off by themselves. We kept ours on for three days.

The Baci is a very special ceremony that runs deep in the culture and psyche. While the ceremony differs slightly in meaning from village to village as well as different parts of the country, the ceremony, with its emphasis on such values as social and familial bonds, forgiveness, prosperity, renewal and homage to heavenly beings is an important part of the Lao culture.