Mae Nang Kwak (Thai: แม่นางกวัก) or Nang Kwak is a spirit or household divinity of Thai folklore. She brings prosperity.

Iconography
Mae Nang Kwak is represented as a beautiful woman wearing a red dress (less frequently in some other colors) in the Thai traditional style. She also wears a golden crown on her head and is in the sitting or kneeling position. Her right hand is raised in the Thai way of beckoning a customer, with the palm of the hand pointing downwards. Her left hand is resting on her side or holds a bag full of gold on her lap.


The figure of Mae Nang Kwak evolved from Mae Po Sop แม่โพสพ), the Siamese rice goddess, in recent times. The only difference is that she is not wearing the harvested rice sheaf on her right shoulder. These goddesses in turn have their origin in the Hindu goddess Sri Lakshmi.
The position of her hand is quite likely borrowed from the Japanese Maneki Neko beckoning cat.


Symbolism
Mae Nang Kwak is a benevolent spirit. She is deemed to bring luck, especially in the form of money, to the household.
Thai people like to have a figurine or poster of this goddess in their home or shop, where it is often placed by the shrine. Some people also wear amulets with her figure around the neck.


The spirit is dressed in traditional Thai dress. In her left hand is a money bag and her right hand is beckoning Thai style-plam down. She is either beckonline customers to come into the store or asking for wealth to come her way.

It has been said that this goddess is one Thailand’s most intriguing cross-cultural and cross-species religions luck symbols that exists.

It is thought that Nang Kwak originally evolved from the Hindu Goddess Parvathi, the daugher of the mountains, who it was said was the first to grow rice.

She first appeared in Thailand as a rice and prosperity goddess with a sheaf of rice over her shoulder. The money bag in her lap and the beckoning hand were added at later dates, design elements almost certainly borrowed from the familiar Japanese Maneki Neko beckoning cat, agood luck talisman for merchants. In some examples she is ever featured with feline characteristics, notably a tail.


Add to this to the fact that Nang Kwank is offer represented in the form of a phallus or Thai Palad Khik with her body conforming to the shaft of the male organ and wearing a hat in the shape of the glans- an iconographic reference to the incorporation of very Hindu Shaivism into Thai Buddhism.