Cambodian Buddhist teaching tends to absorb magic and protective charms into a broader Buddhist framework rather than either fully endorsing or flatly rejecting them. At the doctrinal level, the highest and most reliable protection is said to arise from the Three Jewels, moral purity, and the cultivation of wisdom through practices such as generosity, meditation, and adherence to the precepts. Charms, amulets, yantra tattoos, protective threads, and similar practices are treated as worldly, limited forms of protection, whose effects are impermanent and secondary to the deeper security afforded by wholesome conduct and insight. In this way, the folk heritage is not erased, but subordinated to a hierarchy of values in which ethical and spiritual development stand above ritual power.

Within this hierarchy, karma plays a central interpretive role. Protection is explained primarily as the fruit of one’s own wholesome actions, which create favorable conditions and lessen misfortune. Monks often stress that no ritual object can override unwholesome karma, and that charms used in the absence of ethical behavior are weak or ineffective. The perceived efficacy of amulets and blessings is commonly linked to the power of Pali chanting, the qualities of the Buddha invoked in those chants, and the virtue of the monastics who perform them, rather than to any inherent power of the object itself. In this way, folk practices are “Buddhistized” and drawn into a karmic and ethical logic.

At the same time, Cambodian Buddhism acknowledges pre-Buddhist spirits and ritual specialists while placing them within a Buddhist cosmology and moral vision. Local spirits such as neak ta are not usually denied, but are regarded as lower beings whose influence is limited and who themselves stand within a wider moral universe governed by karma. Traditional healers and ritual experts may incorporate Buddhist mantras and imagery, while monks conduct paritta chanting and blessing ceremonies that respond to lay concerns about health, fortune, and safety. These activities are often framed as skillful means: they meet people at the level of immediate fear and hope, yet gently direct attention back toward the Triple Gem and the path of practice.

A consistent thread in monastic teaching is a warning against excessive attachment to magic and the use of rituals for harmful or coercive ends. Practices aimed at injuring others or controlling their will are criticized as unwholesome and karmically dangerous, standing in tension with the cultivation of compassion and right intention. Even protective magic, when clung to as a primary refuge, is seen as a potential distraction from understanding impermanence, suffering, and non-self. Thus Cambodian Buddhism allows space for charms and protective rites as part of cultural continuity, but continually reinterprets them so that they serve, rather than supplant, the ethical and contemplative heart of the tradition.