Black Magic

I am back! Writing is a whole lot easier compared to finding a suitable topic or what people like to read. I usually ended up erasing what was written afraid that the article could be a bore to readers. For this week, I thought of 2 titles, one about black magic in Malay community and the other about death and funeral rituals in Islam. After some consideration, I chose black magic over the latter.

Believe it or not, black magic still exists in today's modern day. It has been practised in many cultures.I don't have much believe in this subject but it kept emerging right on my face be it from friends, acquaintances or those who were unfortunate enough to  experience the chilling period.

We've heard of Indians black magic, the Afrikaans' Voo Doos (or was it Haitians), Thais, Java's and now I wish to write a little about Malaysian black magic according to my understanding. These black magic wasn't widely practised as it used to be twenty or thirty years ago but it does exist.

The most famous black magic over here is called "santau". "Santau" was a way of getting even with a person who had knowingly or unknowingly hurt a feeling or did something damaging to another person. Usually done through the wind. The grudge-holder will find a shaman who'd require some items such as hair (of the persons he/she wants to place the santau), bamboo fine hair, shards or broken glasses and a few other things). The shaman would then say some mantra into these items. From what I understand, the grudge holder would say the mantra (given by the shaman) and later on call out the victim's name sent through the whisper's of the wind. It will work gradually and, slowly one can see the intended person was suffering when he/she coughs blood, falling and thinning of hair and losing weight
The victim to this santau could end up dead within weeks, months or years depend on the strength of the items used. A doctor won't be able to help when presented with this type of case. What can be done is to find an equally strong pious man or a good shaman to fight back or break the black spell.

I had an experience of witnessing my aunt ( I think she is in her seventies now). A very pious person, she was a registered nurse in a government hospital before. Her husband died a few years ago (he himself was a school principal in an elementary school) leaving her a few houses. After retiring from her job, she moved to a house in Penang, not too far away from my sister's place. I didn't meet her for a few years so I didn't know what was going on until I met my aunt and her daughter at a wedding function. We got into talking about her mother. I asked her what happen to her mom's voice. Slowly she said her mom's sick. Her voice had changed from the normal tone to hoarse and choking-like. I swear, that wasn't her voice before. I was told someone from my aunt's husband side bear a grudge against her for owning the house that she lives in. They tried to get her evicted from the house by using black magic. It wasn't santau but something similar to voo doo. After numerous visits to hospital and she never seemed to get better, they went to visit an imam ( a pious man ). He read a few verses of Quran and with a help of a few other things, he said someone was out to destroy her life. At first she was sceptical but after the imam came to her house and did a prayer and an inspection surrounding her house, they found something chilling. A few string-like doll being buried around her house. And each of the doll were choked around the neck.
She is getting better now and had since moved back to her old house.

Another thing is "Hantu Raya". Hantu in malay means ghost. This is not black magic. It's an entity, a ghost that was called upon and required some mantra reading to avail it to become our slave. In olden days, it was being kept by a person to help him/her to look after the farm, or to command this ghost to frighten people but the scariest of all, this thing could change itself to resemble the owner. This happened when the owner had to be away from his home and somebody had to look after his farm or home. It served it's master as long it's being fed regularly. It gives me the creeps just to think about it.

There were still many other stories told by the older generations that I didn't put down in writing as it would be too long and dragging. There's one memory that I can't forget. When I was little, it scare the wit out of me to pass by a house that was said to be keeping "hantu raya" at her home. But now, when I think of it, she seemed like a nice person always smiling whenever we passed by her house on our way for Quran reading. It could just be rumours by the villagers. Poor woman! I felt sorry for her.

Okay, that's all for today. Hope to meet again in my next article. Be happy and don't frown too much. It takes away the beauty from your face! Cheers..

Rose
25th.Feb '13