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-palm^256 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—
“Peace be to you! Ho, Prophet ’Tap, in whose charge the earth is,
Lo, I am burying the corpse of Somebody,
I am bidden (to do so) by the Prophet Muhammad,
Because he (the corpse) was a rebel to God.
Do you assist in killing him or making him sick:
If you do not make him sick, if you do not kill him,
You shall be a rebel against God,
A rebel against Muhammad.
It is not I who am burying him,
It is Gabriel who is burying him.
Do you too grant my prayer and petition, this very day that has appeared,
Grant it by the grace of my petition within the fold of the Creed La ilaha,” etc.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 Malays^257 ); you must wrap the image in a
shroud, and read the burial service over it; and, finally, in order to absolve