The period of Khmer Rouge rule brought a profound rupture to the syncretic religious life of Cambodia, in which Theravāda Buddhism had long been interwoven with pre-Buddhist folk beliefs, spirit veneration, and ancestral rites. Monasteries were closed, defaced, or converted to secular uses, monks were killed or forced to disrobe, and religious texts and ritual objects were destroyed or hidden. Public rituals that blended Buddhist doctrine with spirit worship, astrology, healing rites, and protective magic were banned as superstition and as remnants of an “old society” to be eradicated. Village and territorial spirit shrines were neglected or vandalized, and communal festivals linked to them disappeared in many places. Under such pressure, people either ceased these practices or maintained them only in secret, and the visible fabric of Cambodia’s folk-Buddhist synthesis was nearly torn apart.

This assault was not only against buildings and visible rites, but also against the human carriers of syncretic knowledge. Monks, lay ritual specialists, traditional healers, and fortune-tellers were persecuted, breaking the lines of transmission for complex ceremonies such as ordinations, house blessings, agricultural rites, and healing rituals. Oral traditions that had woven together Buddhist teachings with Khmer folk cosmologies were gravely weakened as elders died or were silenced. The result was a deep vacuum: younger generations were cut off from direct apprenticeship in the subtle arts of negotiating with spirits, honoring ancestors, and invoking Buddhist power for protection and healing.

Yet the syncretic religious imagination was not entirely extinguished. After the fall of the regime, Buddhism and its intertwined folk elements resurfaced wherever surviving elders, families, and hidden objects could serve as seeds of renewal. Temples were rebuilt, monks reordained, and many pre-Buddhist practices—spirit veneration, ancestor rituals, and protective magic—reappeared, though often in simplified or reconfigured forms because so many specialists and texts had been lost. In some contexts, the reconstruction of religious life emphasized more formal Buddhist observance, while the revival of folk elements proceeded more slowly and unevenly, leaving significant regional variation and gaps in ritual continuity.

The long shadow of that era continues to shape the religious landscape. The fundamental pattern of Cambodian religiosity—a Theravāda framework suffused with spirits, magic, and ancestral presence—survived, but it bears the marks of trauma and interruption. Postwar rituals sometimes turn explicitly toward ghosts and restless spirits, giving religious form to collective suffering and loss. In this way, the very wound inflicted on Cambodia’s syncretic Buddhism has itself become part of the tradition’s ongoing transformation, as communities seek to heal by reweaving broken strands of memory, practice, and belief.