While by divination and by inferences from omens and dreams, Malays attempt to ascertain the course of fate, so by charms of the nature of amulets and talismans they sometimes endeavour to influence its direction or modify its force. Charms of the nature of invocations have been dealt with already under different headings in connection with a variety of matters, and it will only be necessary to refer here to a few miscellaneous ones of a less elaborate character. It should be observed that some charms are directly effective or protective, like amulets or talismans, while others are supposed to work only by influencing the volition of another mind. Under the latter head come the great mass of love-charms, charms for securing conjugal fidelity, or for compelling the revelation by another person of his or her secret thoughts, and the like, of which Malay books of magic are full; while under the former come sundry recipes of a more or less medicinal nature for the purpose of curing various diseases, of increasing physical power or virility, or of protecting the person against evil influences, natural or supernatural. In most of these cases the modus operandi is of the simplest character; the charm consists usually of a short Arabic prayer or a few letters and figures, sometimes quite meaningless and conventional, sometimes making up one or more of the sacred names (Allah, Muhammad, ʿAli, etc.). These charms are written on paper or cloth and worn on the person; sometimes they are written on the body itself, especially on the part to be affected; occasionally they are written on a cup which is then used for drinking purposes. Such prescriptions are infinite in number, and are to be found in Malay charm-books, wedged in amongst matter of a more strictly medical kind; in fact, it would be quite correct to say that letter-charms (rajah, ʿazimat) and sacred names have their place in the Malay Pharmacopœia side by side with spices, herbs, roots, and the like. But such charms are also used for many other purposes: “to ward off demons (sheitan), to make children feed at the breast properly, to prevent them from crying and from going into convulsions, to prevent the rice-crops from being devoured by pigs, rats, and maggots,” are consecutive instances of the charms contained in a page of one of the numerous Malay treatises on these matters. It would, from the nature of the case, be utterly impossible to exhaust this endless subject, and it is not necessary to dwell upon it at greater length, as the details of the charms used (of which a few are quoted in the Appendix) do not as a rule offer any features of general interest.251

Far more interesting is that form of the Black Art which attempts to “abduct,” or in some way “get at” another person’s soul, whether (as in the case of the ordinary love-charm), in order to influence it in the operator’s favour, or, on the other hand, with a view to doing the victim some harm, which may take the form of madness, disease, or even death.

These results can be arrived at by a variety of methods: in some of them the influence works entirely without contact, in others there is some sort of contact between the victim and the receptacle into which his soul is to be enticed. A few specimens of the methods employed will conclude this part of the subject; they are necessarily somewhat of a miscellaneous character; but it will be seen that they are really only different applications of the same general principle, the nature of which has already been indicated in the section on the Soul.252

The following is an instance of direct contact between the soul receptacle and its owner’s body—

“Take soil from the centre of the footprint (hati-hati tapak) of the person you wish to charm, and ‘treat it ceremonially’ (di-puja) for about three days.

“The ‘ceremonial treatment’ consists in wrapping it up in pieces of red, black, and yellow cloth253 (the yellow being outside), and hanging it from the centre of your mosquito-curtain with parti-coloured thread (pĕnggantong-nya bĕnang pancharona). It will then become (the domicile of) your victim’s soul (jadi sĕmangat). You must, however, to complete the ceremony, switch it with a birch of seven leaf-ribs taken from a ‘green’ cocoa-nut (pĕnyembat-nya lidi niyor hijau tujoh ’lei) seven times at sundown, seven times at midnight, and seven times at sunrise, continuing this for three days, and saying as you do so:—

“Then bury it in the middle of a path where your victim is sure to step over it (supaya buleh di-langkah-nya), and he will certainly become distraught. The only taboo in connection with it is that you should let no one share your sleeping-mat.” The soul-receptacle in this case is the lump of earth taken from the centre of the victim’s footprint. It is said to actually “become (the victim’s) soul,” but no doubt this is merely figurative, though it completely proves the identification of the soul with its receptacle in the Malay mind. The object of the birching is not self-evident, but may be intended to dispel evil influences, and so purify it for the incoming soul.

Another way of obtaining the required result is to scrape off some of the wood of the floor from the place where your intended victim has been sitting. Having secured this, take some of the soil from his or her footprint and mix them both together with wax from a deserted bees’ comb, moulding the figure into his or her likeness. Fumigate it with incense, and “beckon” to the soul by waving a cloth (lambei sĕmangat) every night for three nights successively, reciting this charm:—

Another method is as follows:—

Take parings of nails, hair, eyebrows, saliva, etc. of your intended victim (sufficient to represent every part of his person), and make them up into his likeness with wax from a deserted bees’ comb. Scorch the figure slowly by holding it over a lamp every night for seven nights, and say:—

After the seventh time burn the figure, and your victim will die.

The description of the next ceremony is taken word for word from a charm-book which I obtained from a Langat Malay (named ’Che Indut), and which is still in my possession. As it illustrates several new points about these wax figures, and as such charms are exceedingly rare and all but impossible to obtain, I here give a word for word translation of the whole text, the original Malay version of which will be found in the Appendix:254—

“This refers to making images to harm people. You make an image to resemble a corpse out of wax from an empty bees’ comb,255 and of the length of a footstep. If you want to cause sickness, you pierce the eye and blindness results; or you pierce the waist and the stomach (lit. the waist) gets sick, or you pierce the head and the head gets sick, or you pierce the breast and the breast gets sick. If you want to cause death, you transfix it from the head right through to the buttocks, the ‘transfixer’ being a gomuti-palm256 twig; then you enshroud the image as you would a corpse, and you pray over it as if you were praying over the dead; then you bury it in the middle of the path (which goes to) the place of the person whom you wish to charm, so that he may step across it. This refers to when you want to bury the image—

There are, as I have said, several new points to be got from this charm. You must make the image resemble a corpse; you must make it of the length of the footstep (doubtless that of the intended victim); you must pierce the part which you want to affect; if you want to kill your man, you must transfix him from the head downwards with the twig of a gomuti-palm (that is to say, with one of the black splinters used as pens by the Malays257); you must wrap the image in a shroud, and read the burial service over it; and, finally, in order to absolve yourself from blood-guiltiness, you shift the burden of your crime on to the shoulders of the Archangel Gabriel!!!

There are, of course, many slight variations of the actual ceremony. Sometimes the wizard, during the insertion of the pins into the image, exclaims:—

And then, after “waving” the figure in the smoke of the incense, and depositing it in the centre of a sacrificial tray (anchak), he invites the spirits to banquet upon his victim’s body:—

When the ceremony is over the image is buried in the usual way in front of the victim’s door-step.

Another method is described as follows:—

“Make the wax figure in the usual way and with the usual ingredients. At sundown take parched rice, with white, black, green, and yellow (saffron) rice, a “chew” of betel-leaf, a wax taper and an egg—this latter as the representative of a fowl (ʿisharat ayam). Burn incense, and recite this charm:—

This is a charm for sowing dissension between husband and wife (pĕmbĕnchi):—

Make two of the wax figures in the ordinary way, but taking care that one resembles the husband and the other the wife. Sit down with your legs stretched out before you, and hold the figures face to face while you repeat the charm thrice, and at the end of each repetition breathe upon their heads. Then lay the man upon the ground on your right side close to your thigh, but looking away from it; and the woman at the side of the left thigh in a similar position, so that they both look away from each other. Then burn incense and recite the same charm twenty-two times over the man and twenty-two times over the woman. Now put them back to back, and wrap them up in seven thicknesses of the leaves of tukas,260 and tie them round with thread of seven colours wrapped seven times round them, repeat the charm and bury them. Dig them up after seven days and see if they are still there. If you find them the charm has failed, but if not, it will work, and they will assuredly be divorced. The charm runs as follows:—

Which, so far as it is intelligible, appears to mean:—

The following is a clear example of soul abduction without contact:—

The simplest way, perhaps, of abducting another person’s soul is to go out, when the sun clears (matahari mĕncharak, at sunrise?), or when the newly-risen moon looks red, and standing with the big toe of the right foot resting on the big toe of the left, to make a trumpet of your right hand and recite the appropriate charm through this improvised speaking-trumpet thrice. At the end of each recital you blow through the hollowed fist. The charm runs as follows:—

A second method is to beat your own shadow,261 ceremonially; according to this method you take a cane (of rattan or rotan sĕga), in length as long as your body, fumigate it with incense and recite a charm over it seven times, striking your own shadow with the cane once after each recital. Repeat this at sundown, midnight, and early morning, and sleep under a coverlet made of five cubits of white cloth, and the soul you wish for will assuredly come to you. The following is the charm, a very curious one:—

Another method of abducting another person’s soul is as follows:—

“Take a lime branch which has seven limes on a single stalk, and suspend it from the top of your mosquito-curtain on three successive nights. When you suspend it recite the charm already given262 (beginning ‘Om! shout it again and again!’).”

The following ceremony is one in which the soul of another person is abducted without any direct contact between the soul-receptacle, which in this case is a head-cloth, and the soul-owner. The directions are as follows:—

“Go out on the fourteenth night of the lunar month (full moon) and two successive nights; seat yourself on a male ant-hill (busut jantan) facing the moon, burn incense, and repeat the charm:—

Here wave the end of your head-cloth (puncha detar) in the direction of the moon seven times every night for three successive nights. Then take the turban (detar) home and place it under your pillow (for the three nights). If you want to use it by day, burn incense, and say:—

At sundown, when the sun is hovering on the brink of the horizon (matahari ayun tĕrmayun), chew betel, and spit out (sĕmborkan) the chewed leaf thrice. Then stand opposite the door, looking if possible towards the west, burn incense, and repeat this charm:—

Although this looks at first sight not unlike a love-charm, the last two lines show that it is really intended to induce a wandering soul (sĕmangat riang) to return to its owner. In fact, the wizard who gave me this charm told me that it was taboo to let any one pass during the whole evening, when this charm was used, between the light and the patient.

It seems possible, however, that it might be used on occasion, and mutatis mutandis, as a love charm as well.

The following ceremony is professedly a species of divination (tilek or pĕnilek), but as it is clearly only another form of soul-abduction I give it here. The instructions are as follows:—

“First take some wax from a deserted bees’ comb and make a wax taper out of it as well as you can; stick it upon the rim of a white cup, and repeat this charm, when you will be able to see the person you wish to affect in the taper’s flame (buleh di-tengo’ orang-nya didalam puchok api). The charm runs as follows:—

“Next you take a fathom’s length of thread, with seven strands, and seven colours running through the strands (bĕnang tujoh urat, tujoh warna mĕlintang bĕnang), and a pen made of a splinter of the sugar-palm (puchok kabong), and draw a portrait of the person you wish to charm (mĕnulis gambar orang itu). When the portrait is finished you suspend it from the end of a pole by means of the parti-coloured thread, and make fast the lower end of the pole to the branch of a tree, fixing it at an angle, so that the portrait may hang free and be blown to and fro without ceasing by every breath of wind. This will cause her heart to love you.”

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It will be noticed that a general similarity underlies these several methods of soul-abduction in spite of their apparent variety, and the diversity of the objects in view in the different cases. On this point it is impossible to enlarge here: the purpose of this book has been primarily to collect authentic specimens of the various magic practices in vogue among the Malays of the Malay Peninsula, and to indicate the nature of the beliefs on which these practices are based, leaving it for others to draw from them such inferences and to make such comparisons as may throw further light on the subject. It has not been deemed desirable to anticipate such inferences and comparisons here; but, without trespassing beyond the scope of the present work, it may be noticed that there is a special appropriateness in concluding it with the above account of the various methods of soul-abduction. From them, taken together with what has already been said on the subject,264 a fairly complete idea can be gathered of the Malay conception of the Soul; and it is hardly too much to say that this conception is the central feature of the whole system of Malay magic and folklore, from which all the different branches with their various applications appear to spring.

The root-idea seems to be an all-pervading Animism, involving a certain common vital principle (sĕmangat) in Man and Nature, which, for want of a more suitable word, has been here called the Soul. The application of this general theory of the universe to the requirements of the individual man constitutes the Magic Art, which, as conceived by the Malays, may be said to consist of the methods by which this Soul, whether in gods, men, animals, vegetables, minerals, or what not, may be influenced, captured, subdued, or in some way made subject to the will of the magician.

It would, however, probably be a mistake to push this analysis too far; for side by side with the theory of a universe animated by souls, which by the use of the appropriate words and forms can be cajoled or threatened, there are the ideas of Luck and Ill-luck, and the notion, strong in Muhammadans all over the world, of a preordained course of events. Sometimes, presumably in extreme cases, there is no escape from this destiny: if a man is fated to die at a certain time, die he must, whatever he may do. But to a great extent ill-luck can be avoided if one knows how; though we cannot stop it, we need not expose ourselves to its influence. Thus a particular hour may be unlucky for the doing of a certain act; but if we know that it is so, we need not incur the danger.

There are, therefore, for a Malay three alternatives, it would seem: viz. Charms, for occasions where moral pressure can be brought to bear; Divination, to assist in detecting dangers which in the ordinary course must come but can be avoided; and, finally, Islām (Resignation), when he has to meet the inevitable, whether it be regarded as the course of Fate or the eternal purpose of God.