The Malay Charm

The Malay Charm
There are three words used by Malays for incantation or charm, two of them Sanskrit (jampi, mantra), the other the Arabic word for prayer (do’a).

Charms are employed in agricultural operations, by fisherman, hunters, fowlers and trappers; to abduct or recall the soul; to revive ore in a mine in a patient on a bed of sickness; against cramp, poison snakebite, enemies, vampires, evil spirits; at birth and at teeth, filing; to save men from tigers, and crops from rats and boars and insect; for beauty, virility, love; to weaken a rival in a race or in a fight; to divert a bullet or break a weapon as it is being drawn.

A Malay charm may form part of a primitive ritual, like that of the rice-year, conducted by a skilled magician. It may be merely recited in an appropriate occasion by any layman who has learnt it.

One may buy the words of a love charm for example, from an expert “for three dollars, three yards of white cloth, cotton and thread, limes and salt, areca-nut and betel-vine,” or for “limes and salt, three small coins, five yards of white cloth and a needle.”

The charm may require to be supplemented by contagious and by homoeopathic or mimetic magic.

Sand from the foot-print of the woman loved, earth from the graves of a man and woman, the hair-like filaments of bamboo, black pepper: these are often steamed in a port while a love-charm is being recited.

Another method is to “take a lime, pierce it with the midrib of a fallen coconut palm, leaving one finger’s length sticking out on either side whereby to hang the lime.”

Hang it up with thread of seven colors, leaving the thread also hanging loose an inch below the lime.

Take seven sharpened midribs and stick them into the lime, leaving two fingers’ length projecting.

The sticking of the midribs into the limes is to symbolize piercing the heart and liver and life and soul and gall of the beloved.

Put jasmine on the end of the midrib skewers. Do this first on Monday night, for three nights and then on Friday night. Imagine you pierce the girl’s heart as you pierce the lime.

Recite the accompanying charm three or seven times, swinging the lime each time you recite the words and fumigating it with incense.
The Malay Charm