Malay Magic / Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula

by Walter William Skeat

Take a lemon (limau purut), a hen’s egg, a taper made of bees’-wax (lilin lĕbah), four bananas, four Malay (palm-leaf covered) cigarettes, four “chews” of betel-leaf, a handful of parched rice, washed rice, and rice stained with turmeric (saffron), one of the prickles or “thorns” (duri) of a thorn-backed mudfish, a needle with a torn eye (taken out of one of the sets of a “score” in which they are sold—jarum rabit dalam sĕkudi), and a couple of small whips, or rather birches, one of which must be composed of seven, and the other of twelve, leaf-ribs of the “green” cocoa-nut palm (niyor hijau).

Two of the bananas, two cigarettes, two chews of “betel,” half of each of the three kinds of rice, the egg, and the birch of seven twigs, must now be taken outside the house and set down under a tree selected for the purpose. When setting it down the egg must be cracked, the cigarettes lighted, and finally the taper also. On one occasion when I witnessed the performance, the taper, after being taken up between the outstretched fingers of my friend’s two hands, was waved slowly to and fro—first to the right and then to the left; finally it was set down on the ground and began to burn blue, the flame becoming more and more dim until it almost expired. On seeing this the medicine-man exclaimed, “He has promised” (dia mĕngaku), and led the way back to the house, where he proceeded to go through the remainder of the ceremony.

First, he deposited the brazier with incense upon the leaf of a banana-tree, then took the prickle of the fish and thrust it horizontally through the lower end of the lemon, leaving both ends exposed; then he thrust the needle through in a transverse direction, so as to form a cross, the ends of the needle being likewise exposed, and slipped the noosed end of a piece of silken thread of seven different colours over the points thus exposed.

Next he scattered the rice round the censer and fumigated the birch and the lemon, recited a charm as he held the latter in his right hand, recited the charm for the second time[213] as he took the birch in both hands, with the upper end close to his mouth and the lower (spreading) end over the brazier, and finally repeated the charm for a third time, suspending, as he did so, the lemon over the brazier by means of the thread held in his left hand and holding the birch in the right.

Everything being ready, he now began to put questions to the lemon into which the spirit was supposed to have entered, rebuking it and threatening it with the birch whenever it failed to answer distinctly and to the point. The conversational powers of this spirit were extremely limited, being confined to two signs signifying “Yes” and “No.” The affirmative was indicated by a pendulum-like swaying of the lemon, which rocked to and fro with more or less vehemence according to the emphasis (as my friend informed me) with which the reply was to be delivered. Negation, on the other hand, was indicated by a complete cessation of motion on the part of the lemon.

When it is required to discover, for instance, the name of a thief, the names of all those who are at all likely to have committed the theft are written on scraps of paper and arranged in a circle round the brazier, when the lemon will at once swing in the direction of the name of the guilty party. The best night for the performance of this ceremony is a Tuesday.

Sir Frank Swettenham’s account of a similar ceremony of which he was an eye-witness will serve as a good illustration of the methods in use for this purpose:—

“It was my misfortune some years ago to be robbed of some valuable property, and several Malay friends strongly advised me to take the advice of an astrologer, or other learned person who (so they said) would be able to give the name of the thief, and probably recover most of the stolen things. I fear that I had no great faith in this method of detection, but I was anxious to see what could be done, for the East is a curious place, and no one with an inquiring mind can have lived in it long without seeing phenomena that are not always explained by modern text-books on Natural Philosophy.

“I was first introduced to an Arab of very remarkable appearance. He was about fifty years old, tall, with pleasant features and extraordinary gray-blue eyes, clear and far-seeing, a man of striking and impressive personality. I was travelling when I met him, and tried to persuade him to return with me, but that he said he could not do, though he promised to follow me by an early steamer. He said he would be able to tell me all about the robbery, who committed it, where the stolen property then was, and that all he would want was an empty house wherein he might fast in solitude for three days, without which preparation, he said, he would not be able to see what he sought. He told me that after his vigil, fast, and prayer, he would lay in his hand a small piece of paper on which there would be some writing; into this he would pour a little water, and in that extemporised mirror he would see a vision of the whole transaction. He declared that, after gazing intently into this divining-glass, the inquirer first recognised the figure of a little old man. That having duly saluted this Jin, it was necessary to ask him to conjure up the scene of the robbery, when all the details would be re-enacted in the liquid glass under the eyes of the gazer, who would there and then describe all that he saw. I had heard all this before, only it had been stated to me then that the medium through whose eyes the vision could alone be seen must be a young child of such tender years that it could have never told a lie! The Arab, however, professed himself not only able to conjure up the scene, but to let me see it for myself if I would follow his directions. Unfortunately, my gray-eyed friend failed to keep his promise, and I never met him again.

“A local Chief, however, declared his power to read the past by this method, if only he could find the truthful child. In this he appeared to succeed, but when, on the following day, he came to disclose to me the results of his skill, he said that a difficulty had arisen, because just when the child (a little boy) was beginning to relate what he saw he suddenly became unconscious, and it took the astrologer two hours to restore him to his normal state. All the mothers of tender-aged and possibly truthful children declined after this to lend their offspring for the ordeal.