Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay PeninsulaSkeat, Walter William
Religion
Malay Magic: Being an introduction to the folklore and popular religion of the Malay Peninsula
Skeat, Walter William
Magic -- Malay Peninsula; Malays (Asian people) -- Folklore; Malays (Asian people) -- Social life and customs
"Peace be with you, O Breath!
Hither, Breath, come hither!
Hither, Soul, come hither!
Hither, Little One, come hither!
Hither, Filmy One, come hither!
Hither, I am sitting and praising you!
Hither, I am sitting and waving to you!
Come back to your house and house-ladder,
To your floor of which the planks have started,
To your thatch-roof 'starred' (with holes).
Do not bear grudges,
Do not bear malice,
Do not take it as a wrong,
Do not take it as a transgression.
Here I sit and praise you.
Here I sit and drag you (home),
Here I sit and shout for you,
Here I sit and wave to you,
Come at this very time, come at this very moment," etc.
Another way of recalling the soul is as follows:--
Put some husked rice in a rice-bag (sumpit) with an egg, a nail, and
a candle-nut; scatter it (kirei) thrice round the patient's head, and
deposit the bag behind his pillow (di kapala tidor), after repeating
this charm:--
"Cluck, cluck, souls of So-and-so, all seven of you,
Return ye unto your own house and house-ladder!
Here are your parents come to summon you back,
Back to your own house and house-ladder, your own clearing
and yard,
To the presence of your own parents, of your own family and
relations,
Go not to and fro,
But return to your own home."
When three days have expired, gather up the rice again and put it all
back into the bag. If there is a grain over throw it to the fowls,
but if the measure falls short repeat the ceremony.
Again, in order to recall an escaping soul (riang semangat) the
soul-doctor will take a fowl's egg, seven small cockle-shells (kulit
k'rang tujoh keping), and a kal [681] of husked rice, and put them
all together into a rice-bag (sumpit). He then rubs the bag all over
the skin of the patient's body, shakes the contents well up together,
and deposits it again close to the patient's head. Whilst shaking
them up he repeats the following charm:--
"Cluck! cluck! soul of this sick man, So-and-so,
Return into the frame and body of So-and-so,
To your own house and house-ladder, to your own ground and yard,
To your own parents, to your own sheath."
At the end of three days he measures the rice; if the amount has
increased, it signifies that the soul has returned; if it is the same
as before, it is still half out of the body; if less, the soul has
escaped and has not yet returned. In this case the soul is expected
to enter the rice and thus cause its displacement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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