We’ve always believed in magic. As a child watching a magic show; or as a captive audience watching the amazing iPad magic on Ellen DeGeneres talk show on TV; or even as a tourist in Cairo watching a street magic act. At least for a moment, the magic captures our imagination completely.
Magic has been around for the longest time, existing in our cultures, films and society. It’s not too far from the truth when we say that in every civilisation magic has played an important part to spur creativity and innovation. Perhaps the reason for this is because magic deals with the unknown. And we’re always driven to solve the riddles of the universe.
ANCIENT MAGIC
It’s hardly surprising then that when Ilham Gallery recently hosted a forum ILHAM Conversations: Malay Magic and Divination that it ended up being a full-house, standing-only event, attended by every race, creed and age. From the engaging session at the forum, we’re to believe that until today, this topic is regarded with fascination, even as its practice has dwindled in the face of modern society and new world medicine.
The speaker, Dr Farouk Yahya, currently the Leverhulme research assistant in Islamic Art and Culture at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, opened his enlightening session with the legend of Tun Teja to prove just how deeply entrenched these practices have been in our society. The legend tells the story of how Hang Tuah charmed Tun Teja Ratna Menggala, daughter of the Seri Amar DiRaja Bendahara Pahang Inderapura and whisked her away in the deep of the night away from her father and fiancé.
Tun Teja was in love with Melaka’s most famous Laksamana, Hang Tuah. Hang Tuah however, broke the news to the beautiful Tun Teja that he was taking her to the Sultan to be the king’s wife. To help her forget him, Hang Tuah gave Tun Teja a hate potion called hikmat pembenci. This perhaps was the most famous mention of Malay magic and spells in our manuscripts and legends; a story immortalised in the Unesco-recognised Hikayat Hang Tuah.
Sheepishly, Farouk confides that he hadn’t always been familiar with the world of magic. “I grew up in Kelantan, surely the hotbed of such practices. However, in our household, jampi serapah and magic spells were unknown,” begins the youthful-looking 43-year-old, before adding: “This I’m sure is strange coming from someone like me who spent my early years in a society in which most households had spells for almost everything, from little cuts and mishaps, to things that go bump in the night and how to win the lady of your heart among others.”
His interest, shares Farouk, was actually spurred by his love for art, and study in the artwork in Malay Manuscripts led him to manuscripts that recorded the complex world of Malay magic. Nevertheless, he found the subject fascinating enough to write his PhD thesis at SOAS, entitled Magic & Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
For Malay magic to be recorded in such manuscripts gives indication to its importance as part of the Malay World cornucopia of knowledge. The Malay manuscript, explains Farouk, was a well-respected tradition and the purview of people of knowledge. The text covered a broad spectrum of topics such as legal laws, religion, poetry and literature, knowledge and yes, magic.
Continuing, Farouk adds that magic, by definition, is practised through the act of spells, amulets and incantations for a specific outcome, and is usually performed by a bomoh or pawang, individuals regarded as men of knowledge who possessed the power to heal with good and bad inclinations.
So magic could be a double-edged sword. In our society, there are actually Malay bomoh, Chinese and Indian medicine men as well as many other pawang of every ethnicity. “The Malay World was never in isolation, true to its strategic location and the way of the people. They travelled and inter-married, conducted trade and interacted with diplomacy with the whole known world,” says Farouk, adding: “Therefore, practices in magic took in intercultural considerations and society beliefs, possibly to encourage acceptance.” The practised have evolved since those days when the people of the land practiced animism, Hinduism, Buddhism as well as Islam.
DIVINATION — A WAY OF LIFE
“Divination, on the other hand, attempts to predict the future through numerology, dreams and omens,” continues Farouk. In the West for example, during the Renaissance, it was quite the fashion for divination to be in the form of party games that utilised play-cards, rune stones, astrology and manuscripts.
Meanwhile, in our part of the world, it was customary for the people, royals, and the nobility to seek divination for important occurrences and life events. This included determining marriages, suitable dates, intended travels, businesses, opening new lands and many other daily life decisions.
The simplest example of divination can be the opening of a manuscript and interpreting the meaning of what’s contained on the page. However, it’s also quite normal to see a seer or nujum for divination who will reveal answers through charts, wheels of fortunes and horoscopes. The outcome of a series of actions would reveal certain fates. Some methods like the Lingkaran Barisan Laksmana, Ketika Lima and Rotating Naga indicate influences from Persia, India and Bali.
UNDER THREAT
When asked by the audience on what constituted the real threat to this legacy and culture of magic and divination, Farouk pauses before replying emphatically: “It’s the rise of modern medicine and knowledge as defined by the modern world and not religion as many would believe. The assimilation between beliefs and religion has been quite smooth.”
When people began choosing modern medicine over healings by magic, the need for a bomoh or pawang disappeared in time. Modern belief and amenities caused magic to lose its appeal and further saw the practice of magic and divination dwindling and fading away. Unfortunately, this also included the practice of healing such as herbalism and alternative medicine.
There’s a Japanese popular legend, the story of Urashimataro, where a sea enchantress kept him young and captive for over 300 years by way of a magic box. Today, we’re amazed by age-defying products produced by Japanese technology.
We can only hope that the preservation of magic and divination arts through publication and discussions all over the world will continue to remind us of the unique knowledge possessed by our ancestors.
Otherwise, one day we will wake up and find, just like the Japanese magic box in the Urashimataro legend, what is magic today, will be science tomorrow.