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 cloth^253 (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:—