เครื่องรางธงลุงตา (ธงมนต์ม้าลม)Lung ta prayer flagརླུང་རྟ།

The centre of the printed field is a horse carrying three flaming jewels on its back. The horse stands for speed and for the turning of bad fortune into good; the three jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. Around the horse run versions of some four hundred traditional mantras, each addressed to a particular deity, including mantras of Padmasambhava, Avalokiteśvara — Chenrezig, patron of the Tibetan people — and Manjusri. The four corners carry the Four Dignities: the dragon, the garuda, the tiger and the snow lion. Prayers for a long life of good fortune are often added for whoever puts the flags up, and wishes are written on them.

The flags are held to have come out of Bon, where shamanistic Bonpo used plain flags in primary colours. Sutras first written on cloth banners travelled as prayer flags; legend ascribes the origin to the Buddha, whose prayers were written on the battle flags the devas carried against the asuras. That knowledge reached Tibet by 800 CE, and the flags themselves no later than 1040 CE, where they were modified further; the Indian monk Atisha (980–1054) brought the Indian practice of printing on cloth flags to Tibet and Nepal.

What the flags do is stated in the negative as often as the positive. They do not carry prayers to gods — the source calls that a common misconception. As wind passes over the cloth the air is held to be purified and sanctified by the mantras, and the blessings are carried to all beings. The printed images fade with exposure, and the fading is not decay in this reading: the prayers become a permanent part of the universe as the images go, and new flags are mounted beside the old ones, which is read as a welcome to life's changes.

During the Cultural Revolution prayer flags were discouraged but not eliminated, and many traditional designs may have been lost.

Printed from woodblocks onto the five colours, strung, and raised. Timing matters: some hold that flags hung on inauspicious astrological dates may bring negative results for as long as they fly, and the best time to put new ones up is the morning of a sunny, windy day. Because the symbols and mantras are treated as sacred, flags are not to be put on the ground or used on clothing. In Tibet old flags are replaced with new ones every year at the Tibetan New Year, and old flags should be burned.

Strung across passes, roofs, bridges and monastery courtyards throughout the Tibetan world as of 2026, and sold worldwide as decoration, often in the right five colours and the wrong order, and often hung where nothing is renewed and nothing is burned. Different styles can now be seen across the Tibetan region.